Not that his countrymen can be charged with being insensible of his
excellencies, till other nations taught them to admire him; for, in
1718, he was chosen to succeed Le Mort in the professorship of
chymistry; on which occasion he pronounced an oration, "De chemia
errores suos expurgante," in which he treated that science with an
elegance of style not often to be found in chymical writers, who seem
generally to have affected, not only a barbarous, but unintelligible
phrase, and to have, like the Pythagoreans of old, wrapt up their
secrets in symbols and enigmatical expressions, either because they
believed that mankind would reverence most what they least understood,
or because they wrote not from benevolence, but vanity, and were
desirous to be praised for their knowledge, though they could not
prevail upon themselves to communicate it.
In 1722, his course, both of lectures and practice, was interrupted by
the gout, which, as he relates it in his speech after his recovery, he
brought upon himself, by an imprudent confidence in the strength of
his own constitution, and by transgressing those rules which he had a
thousand times inculcated to his pupils and acquaintance. Rising in
the morning before day, he went immediately, hot and sweating, from
his bed into the open air, and exposed himself to the cold dews.
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