henry miles, f.r.s. (1698-1763) and thomas birch, f.r.s. (1705-66)

Henry Miles, F.R.S. (1698-1763) and Thomas Birch, F.R.S. (1705-66)Author(s): Marie Boas HallSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Jun., 1963), pp. 39-44Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/530901 .

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39

HENRY MILES, F.R.S. (I698-1763) AND

THOMAS BIRCH, F.R.S. (1705-66)

By MARIE BOAS HALL

Imperial College of Science and Technology, London

[Plate 5]

H ENRY MILES was the epitome of the eighteenth century's version of the virtuoso, a perfect pattern to which many Fellows (and more

would-be Fellows) aspired. In the Dictionary of National Biography he is

succinctly characterized as 'dissenting minister and scientific writer'. Little record of his clerical activities remain, though he was a highly esteemed member of the learned dissenting world. He spent his active life in Tooting (Surrey), where his only published sermon was preached under the gently pious title

Doing Good, and Communicating Sacrifices Well-pleasing to God (London, 1738) to the 'Society for the Relief of the Widows and Orphans of Dissenting Ministers'. He was made honorary D.D. of Aberdeen in 1744, for what reason is not clear. Even the clergyman who preached his funeral oration could find little beyond conventional platitudes to say of his professional life, though his character was clearly above reproach: 'the simplicity of his

spirit and manners, was very remarkable. He was free from all guile himself, and absolutely unacquainted with the deceitful ways of man. His conversation, though instructive and entertaining, was the furthest possible from being assuming. His countenance was always open, mild and amiable; and his

carriage so condescending and courteous, even to his inferiors, as plainly discovered a most humane and benevolent heart' (I).

Like his younger contemporary, Gilbert White, Miles's real interests

lay far from his duties. 'Scientific writer' is certainly an exaggeration: yet Miles was the author of some thirty papers in the Philosophical Transactions after I74I. Many of these are meteorological; some are microscopical; the most important are electrical. Miles was one of the first to discover that certain substances (most notably phosphorus) could be kindled by an electric

spark, and to notice that an excited tube produced pencils of visible rays or coruscations (2). Clearly he was more interested in his scientific efforts than in his sermons; equally he was much more seriously interested in scientific

pursuits than many of the Fellows whom he met when he became F.R.S. in I743.



40

Yet Miles's name would remain merely an obscure listing in The Record

of the Royal Society and the D.N.B., had it not been for the fortunate chance that led him to acquire the greater part of Robert Boyle's manuscripts from one Thomas Smith, an apothecary formerly in Boyle's service, now an old man and executor to John Warr, one of Boyle's original executors (3). Why Miles did so, and whether their acquisition indicates an already estab- lished scientific bent or mere biographical interest is not clear. But he evident-

ly made his possession of the papers known, and the fact of his possession was sure to attract interest. For Boyle's works were still in demand and the

abridged editions by Richard Boulton (1700) and Peter Shaw (1725) had sold well. Among others, John Ward, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, about to become the author of the invaluable Lives of the Professors of Gresham

College (1740), learned of Miles's possession of the manuscripts. And on 7 August 1738 Ward took Thomas Birch down to Tooting to inspect Miles's papers (4).

Thomas Birch represents a quite different eighteenth-century type from Miles. Born a Quaker, the son of a coffee-mill maker, he was too much the opportunist not to be converted to Anglicanism. He found a staunch

Whiggism and a predilection for English history an invaluable means of

ingratiating himself with the Hardwicke family, who helped him to

preferment after preferment, until he was a gross pluralist. Presumably their

patronage also helped him into the Royal Society: he became F.R.S. in 1734 when his contributions to the world of learning consisted of nothing more than numerous articles relating to English history in A General Dictionary (a revision of Bayle) published in that year. Though he was later to render

signal service to the Royal Society by his collection of its day-to-day affairs embodied in his History of the Royal Society, and (less certainly) by his service as Secretary, his scientific interests appear to have been very slight indeed.

Birch had early discovered the possibilities inherent in editorial as well as in biographical work and it is thus not at all surprising that he should have

thought of producing that collected edition of Boyle's works for which there had been so many abortive proposals earlier, especially since he had found that there was a market for unpublished papers (5). Obviously he already conformed to the character later ascribed to him by Horace Walpole of 'a worthy good natured soul, full of industry and activity, and running about like a young setting-dog in quest of anything new or old' (6).

When he went to Tooting, Birch had evidently decided to include

Boyle's correspondence in his projected edition, because he had noted in his

Diary the acquisition from John Ward of a number of letters from Henry



Plate 5

THOMAS BIRCH, F.R.S.

From a portrait by J. Wills in the Royal Society.

[Facing page 40



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Oldenburg, first Secretary of the Royal Society, to his friend and patron Boyle. What he saw in Tooting increased his interest. But perhaps it dismayed him as well, for there was a formidable mass, as anyone who has worked in the Miles collection of Boyle Papers now in the Royal Society (presented to the Society by Miles's widow) will testify. Cautious negotiations for assistance went on for some time. Serious work began in the spring of 1741, when Miles sent to Birch, Boyle's autobiography ('An Account of Philaretus during his Minority', later published in Birch's Life of Boyle; the manu-

script Miles sent is now in the British Museum in the Birch collection) (7). Evidently Miles had been at work sorting and cataloguing his treasures: he found a strange mixture of drafts and copies of published and unpublished materials, letters, treatises by others, chemical and medical recipes and

juvenilia, all on the loose sheets Boyle affected to avoid having his papers stolen. In the summer of 1741 a formal agreement was reached; Miles's draft reads 'Memorandums in order to prepare for the new Edition of Mr Boyle's Works' (8). These included editorial policy and defined Miles's share of the work. Each of Boyle's books was to be printed from 'the best Editions', which were to be collated, and those not in Miles's possession to be purchased -it is not stated by whom, nor is it clear who was to do the work. (In fact, the works are in each case printed from the fullest edition.) Further, the printed works were, where possible, to be checked against the manuscripts 'in Mr Miles's hands'-presumably by Miles. Miles was specifically designated to choose unpublished manuscripts for publication and to transcribe the second (hitherto unpublished) part of the Christian Virtuoso, as well as 'such of the letters to Mr Boyle as he thinks proper'. Miles was also to supply particulars of Boyle's life. And as a consequence, it is probable, of the securing of such assistance, Andrew Millar confidently announced publication of the new edition in December 1741, hoping it would be ready for the press within six months (9).

Miles evidently set to work with a will; it is less clear what Birch did to assist. In June 1741 Birch noted in his Diary that he had gone to Tooting with Ward to confer with Miles about the new edition of Boyle's Works-the first entry for the year. A month later he could report the completion of proof of Volume I, the other volumes following rapidly, though final printing had to wait for the next spring. (There is as yet no mention of the Life.) This suggests that Miles had attended to the requisite editing of the works, as he was certainly attending to the editing of the letters. In February I74I/2 he wrote to Ward regretting the difficulty of finding any of Boyle's own letters, though letters to Boyle were plentiful, and by August he had over three

4B



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hundred selected (io). He thought Birch and Ward should decide on the arrangement and selection of the letters, an opinion he had preserved when two months later he wrote to Birch that he had sorted, selected and numbered all the letters: he hoped Birch would keep them all, since, he confessed, he had enjoyed reading them, even when 'they have not contained any point of Instruction in Learning or Morality'. (ii) Evidently Birch found Miles a thoroughly convenient and satisfactory sub-editor, a position with which Miles was quite satisfied, naively assuming that his work would, somehow, be transmuted in Birch's hands; as he wrote, 'I am taking all the pains I can to furnish you with Stones and Timber, you must be the Architect- & I shall think my self happy if I can ease you of the trouble of collecting materials, in any measure, knowing you will have work eno' on yr hands to form them meet for the Edifice, and to put them toger' (I2).

But Miles both under-estimated himself and over-estimated Birch. Letter after letter shows Miles at work, collecting materials for both the edition and the Life, exhaustively enquiring for copies of sketches for biographies of Boyle prepared earlier, commenting critically on these accounts, sorting jumbled sheets, dating miscellaneous pieces of Boyle's composition by the hand. Most revealing are the number of occasions on which Miles sent Birch specific materials for inclusion in the Life, which Birch in every case incorporated exactly-as 'Sr I.N.'s two Lr & the Titles of his Discourses on light read before the R.S' (13). Also suggestive are the sheets in Miles's

handwriting to be found scattered through the Boyle Papers, now bound

up by a nineteenth-century librarian in a disarray calculated to make Miles sick at heart. Here are transcriptions, lists, comments, and a valuable

chronology of Boyle's early life and acquaintance (I4). No wonder that Birch could note in his copy of the octavo edition of the

Life (now in the British Museum) that he had begun it on 9 June 1743 and finished it on 27 July. This astonishing speed of composition becomes easier to understand when one realizes that Miles had begun to compile materials in the previous November, and that more than half the Life consists of original documents. These latter, needless to say, were transcribed by Miles, and

arranged in order ready for Birch to slip into place. And when Birch's labour ended Miles's did not, for in August Miles was very busy correcting and

criticizing Birch's efforts (IS). For two more months Miles continued to send information and additional material, until completion of the printing forced him to stop. The Life was prefixed to Volume I of the Works, with

separate pagination. From the manuscript material available it is abundantly clear that the



43

lion's share of credit for the 1744 edition of Boyle's Works belongs to Miles, not Birch. Even its defects are traceable to this circumstance. It is remarkable that there are very few letters from Boyle to Oldenburg to be found in the

printed edition, though there are a good number of these in the guard books of the Royal Society. Now, Miles was not made F.R.S. until 1743. (It would be interesting to know whether he owed his election to his scientific papers of the last two years or to his work with Birch.) Birch had long been a Fellow; and when, a dozen years later, he went through the guard books in order to prepare the History of the Royal Society (1756) he found these, and refers to them often in footnotes, without apology. Once again it is clear that Birch did little if anything of the actual editorial work. Birch evidently felt perfectly secure in relying on Miles's judgment as well as fully justified in appropriating Miles's work at the price of a graceful acknowledgment of the latter's 'labour, judgment and sagacity', in the Preface. Miles never

complained. Perhaps his much-admired modesty would have prevented his

accomplishing the work without Birch. Certainly they worked harmoni-

ously, and left a most valuable monument.

NOTES

(I) Philip Foureaux, A Sermon Occasioned by the Death of the Reverend Henry Miles, D.D. and F.R.S. (London, 1763), p. 35.

(2) See Phil. Trans., 43, pp. 290, 441 (1745) and P. Fleury Mottelay, Bibliographical History of Electricity and Magnetism (London, 1922), p. 172.

(3) For the intricacies involved see R. E. W. Maddison, 'A Summary of Former Accounts of the Life and Work of Robert Boyle', Ann. Sci. 13, 1957 (published 1958), 90-Io8, esp. p. IOI. This contains much material on the relationship between Miles and Birch.

(4) Birch's Diary (British Museum Add MSS. 4478c), quoted in Maddison, Ann. Sci. 13 p. 97. (5) In 1737 Birch published the Miscellaneous Works of John Greaves; in 1738, Memoirs of

the Secret Services ofJ. Macky and An Historical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of John Milton.

(6) Quoted in D.N.B., s.v. 'Birch'.

(7) Birch's Diary; Maddison, Ann. Sci., 13 p. 97. The MS. itself is British Museum Add 4228 in Miles's hand; Boyle's original is in the Royal Society Boyle Papers, 37.

(8) In Royal Society Boyle Papers, 36 (Miscellaneous), dated I5 July 1741. (9) Proposalsfor Publishing by Subscription A Complete Collection of the Works of the Honourable

Robert Boyle Esq: . . .

(Io) Miles to Ward, io February 1741/2, British Museum Add 6210, f. 182; Add 4314, Birch Letters Me-Morti (containing letters from Miles to both Millar and Birch) letter to Millar of 3 August 1742.

(II) Miles to Birch, I9 October 1742, Add 4314, f. 62.

(12) Miles to Birch, I6 August 1742, Add 4314, f. 64.



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(13) Miles to Birch, 2 February 1742/3, Add 4314. It is startling to realize that we owe the first publication of Newton's letter to Boyle on the aether to Miles's industry alone.

(14) Cf. especially Royal Society Boyle Papers, 36, where one finds such notes as 'Mr Evelyn Lr of Sep. I0 1703 thinks Mr B was initiated among the Spagyrists at Oxon-but he was initiated before he went thither. By M' Worsley & Mr Hartlib'.

(I5) Cf. Miles to Birch, Io August I743, Add 4314.



henry miles, f.r.s. (1698-1763) and thomas birch, f.r.s. (1705-66)

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