Many informations will be afforded by this book
to the biographer. I know not where else it can be found, but here, and
in Ward, that Cowley was doctor in physick. And, whenever any other
institution, of the same kind, shall be attempted, the exact relation of
the progress of the Royal society may furnish precedents.
These volumes consist of an exact journal of the society; of some papers
delivered to them, which, though registered and preserved, had been
never printed; and of short memoirs of the more eminent members,
inserted at the end of the year in which each died.
The original of the society is placed earlier in this history than in
that of Dr. Sprat. Theodore Haak, a German of the Palatinate, in 1645,
proposed, to some inquisitive and learned men, a weekly meeting, for the
cultivation of natural knowledge. The first associates, whose names
ought, surely, to be preserved, were Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Wallis, Dr.
Goddard, Dr. Ent, Dr. Glisson, Dr. Merret, Mr. Foster of Gresham, and
Mr. Haak. Sometime afterwards, Wilkins, Wallis, and Goddard, being
removed to Oxford, carried on the same design there by stated meetings,
and adopted into their society Dr. Ward, Dr. Bathurst, Dr. Petty, and
Dr.
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