[1135]Dr. Harvy[EU] told me, and any one if he examines himself will find it to be true, that a man could not fancy--truthfully--that he is imperfect in any part that he has, verbi gratiâ, teeth, eie, tongue, spina dorsi, etc. Natura tends to perfection, and in matters of generation we ought to consult more with our sense and instinct, then our reason, and prudence, fashion of the country, and interest. We see what contemptible[1136] products are of the prudent politiques[1137], weake, fooles, and ricketty children, scandalls to nature and their country. The heralds are fooles[1138]--_tota errant via_. A blessing goes with a marriage for love upon a strong impulse.
[1139]_Sowgelder._ To see, Sir John, how much you are mistaken; he that marries a widdowe makes himself cuckold. Exempli gratia, to speake experimentally and in my trade, if a good bitch is first warded with a curre, let her ever after be warded with a dog of a good straine and yet she will bring curres as at first, her wombe being first infected with a curre. So, the children will be like the first husband (like raysing up children to your brother). So, the adulterer, though a crime in law, the children are like the husband.
_Sir John._ Thou dost talke, me thinks, more understandingly of these matters then any one I have mett with.
_Sowgelder._ Ah! my old friend Dr. Harvey--I knew him right well--he made me sitt by him 2 or 3 hours together discoursing. Why! had he been stiffe, starcht[1140], and retired, as other formall doctors are, he had known no more then they. From the meanest person, in some way, or other, the learnedst man may learn something. Pride has been one of the greatest stoppers[1141] of the advancement of learning.
[EQ] Aubrey gives (MS. Aubr. 6, fol. 64) in trick the coat:--'or, on a chief indented sable 3 crescents argent [Harvey]; quartering ..., 2 bars wavy ..., on a chief ... a lozenge charged with a Maltese cross....'
[ER] i.e. the inscriptions given here are extracted from the lost volume B. of Aubrey's antiquarian collections. July 2, 1674, Aubrey to Wood, in MS. Ballard 14, fol. 103:--'My brother William hath my liber B, wherin is the epitaph etc. of Dr. William Harvey's life.'
[ES] On MS. Aubr. 6, fol. 61, the blank address-side of Francis Potter's letter (of date Dec. 7, 1652) to Aubrey are found Aubrey's jottings of this conversation:--