27 FEBRUARY 1948, Page 18

TWO WILLIAM HARVEYS

Sat,-:-Through a misunderstanding into which there is no need to enter, there was a slight derangement of Harveys in my review of Mr. J. A. Venn's Alumni Cantabrigienses in' last week's Spectator. The William Harvey commemorated there was not the discoverer of the circulation of the blood—he was in fact dead and buried before the beginning of the period which the volume covers—but the Rev. William Harvey, who for a brief moment attained a notoriety almost equal to the other Harvey's lasting fame when, though a Cambridge man, he took an ad eundem degree at Oxford at Mr. Gladstone's instance, in order that Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister might appoint him to the benefice of Ewelme, which could only be held by an Oxford graduate. This explanation, to which I would add an apology for carelessness, has, I hope, -straightened the