Lewis Morin was born at Mans, on the 11th of July, 1635, of parents
eminent for their piety. He was the eldest of sixteen children; a
family to which their estate bore no proportion, and which, in persons
less resigned to providence, would have caused great uneasiness and
anxiety.
His parents omitted nothing in his education, which religion requires,
and which their fortune could supply. Botany was the study that
appeared to have taken possession of his inclination, as soon as the
bent of his genius could be discovered. A countryman, who supplied the
apothecaries of the place, was his first master, and was paid by him
for his instructions with the little money that he could procure, or
that which was given him to buy something to eat after dinner. Thus
abstinence and generosity discovered themselves with his passion for
botany, and the gratification of a desire indifferent in itself, was
procured by the exercise of two virtues.
He was soon master of all his instructer's knowledge, and was obliged
to enlarge his acquaintance with plants, by observing them himself in
the neighbourhood of Mans. Having finished his grammatical studies, he
was sent to learn philosophy at Paris, whither he travelled on foot
like a student in botany, and was careful not to lose such an
opportunity of improvement.
When his course of philosophy was completed, he was determined, by his
love of botany, to the profession of physick, and, from that time,
engaged in a course of life, which was never exceeded, either by the
ostentation of a philosopher, or the severity of an anchoret; for he
confined himself to bread and water, and, at most, allowed himself no
indulgence beyond fruits. By this method, he preserved a constant
freedom and serenity of spirits, always equally proper for study; for
his soul had no pretences to complain of being overwhelmed with
matter. This regimen, extraordinary as it was, had many advantages;
for it preserved his health, an advantage which very few sufficiently
regard; it gave him an authority to preach diet and abstinence to his
patients; and it made him rich without the assistance of fortune;
rich, not for himself, but for the poor, who were the only persons
benefited by that artificial affluence, which, of all others, is most
difficult to acquire. It is easy to imagine, that, while he practised
in the midst of Paris the severe temperance of a hermit, Paris
differed no otherwise, with regard to him, from a hermitage, than as
it supplied him with books and the conversation of learned men.
In 1662, he was admitted doctor of physick. About that time Dr. Fagon,
Dr. Longuet, and Dr. Galois, all eminent for their skill in botany,
were employed in drawing up a catalogue of the plants in the Royal
garden, which was published in 1665, under the name of Dr. Vallot,
then first physician: during the prosecution of this work, Dr. Morin
was often consulted, and from those conversations it was that Dr.
Fagon conceived a particular esteem of him, which he always continued
to retain.
After having practised physick some years, he was admitted
_expectant_ at the Hôtel-Dieu, where he was regularly to have
been made pensionary physician upon the first vacancy; but mere
unassisted merit advances slowly, if, what is not very common, it
advances at all. Morin had no acquaintance with the arts necessary to
carry on schemes of preferment; the moderation of his desires
preserved him from the necessity of studying them, and the privacy of
his life debarred him from any opportunity. At last, however, justice
was done him, in spite of artifice and partiality; but his advancement
added nothing to his condition, except the power of more extensive
charity; for all the money which he received, as a salary, he put into
the chest of the hospital, always, as he imagined, without being
observed. Not content with serving the poor for nothing, he paid them
for being served.
His reputation rose so high in Paris, that mademoiselle de Guise was
desirous to make him her physician; but it was not without difficulty
that he was prevailed upon by his friend, Dr. Dodart, to accept the
place. He was by this new advancement laid under the necessity of
keeping a chariot, an equipage very unsuitable to his temper; but
while he complied with those exterior appearances, which the publick
had a right to demand from him, he remitted nothing of his former
austerity, in the more private and essential parts of his life, which
he had always the power of regulating according to his own
disposition.
In two years and a half the princess fell sick, and was despaired of
by Morin, who was a great master of prognosticks. At the time when she
thought herself in no danger he pronounced her death inevitable; a
declaration to the highest degree disagreeable, but which was made
more easy to him than to any other, by his piety and artless
simplicity. Nor did his sincerity produce any ill consequences to
himself; for the princess, affected by his zeal, taking a ring from
her finger, gave it him, as the last pledge of her affection, and
rewarded him still more to his satisfaction, by preparing for death
with a true Christian piety. She left him, by will, a yearly pension
of two thousand livres, which was always regularly paid him.
No sooner was the princess dead, but he freed himself from the
encumbrance of his chariot, and retired to St. Victor, without a
servant; having, however, augmented his daily allowance with a little
rice, boiled in water. Dodart, who had undertaken the charge of being
ambitious on his account, procured him, at the restoration of the
academy, in 1699, to be nominated associate botanist; not knowing,
what he would doubtless have been pleased with the knowledge of, that
he introduced into that assembly the man that was to succeed him in
his place of _pensionary_.
Dr. Morin was not one who had upon his hands the labour of adapting
himself to the duties of his condition, but always found himself
naturally adapted to them. He had, therefore, no difficulty in being
constant at the assemblies of the academy, notwithstanding the
distance of places, while he had strength enough to support the
journey. But his regimen was not equally effectual to produce vigour
as to prevent distempers; and, being sixty-four years old at his
admission, he could not continue his assiduity more than a year after
the death of Dodart, whom he succeeded in 1707.
When Mr. Tournefort went to pursue his botanical inquiries in the
Levant, he desired Dr. Morin to supply his place of demonstrator of
the plants in the Royal garden, and rewarded him for the trouble, by
inscribing to him a new plant, which he brought from the east, by the
name of Morina orientalis, as he named others the Do-darto, the
Fagonne, the Bignonne, the Phelipée. These are compliments proper to
be made by the botanists, not only to those of their own rank, but to
the greatest persons; for a plant is a monument of a more durable
nature than a medal or an obelisk; and yet, as a proof that even these
vehicles are not always sufficient to transmit to futurity the name
conjoined with them, the Nicotiana is now scarcely known by any other
name than that of tobacco.
Dr. Morin, advancing far in age, was now forced to take a servant,
and, what was yet a more essential alteration, prevailed upon himself
to take an ounce of wine a day, which he measured with the same
exactness as a medicine bordering upon poison. He quitted, at the same
time, all his practice in the city, and confined it to the poor of his
neighbourhood, and his visits to the Hôtel-Dieu; but his weakness
increasing, he was forced to increase his quantity of wine, which yet
he always continued to adjust by weight [48].
At seventy-eight his legs could carry him no longer, and he scarcely
left his bed; but his intellects continued unimpaired, except in the
last six months of his life. He expired, or, to use a more proper
term, went out, on the 1st of March, 1714, at the age of eighty years,
without any distemper, and merely for want of strength, having
enjoyed, by the benefit of his regimen, a long and healthy life, and a
gentle and easy death.
This extraordinary regimen was but part of the daily regulation of his
life, of which all the offices were carried on with a regularity and
exactness nearly approaching to that of the planetary motions.
He went to bed at seven, and rose at two, throughout the year. He
spent, in the morning, three hours at his devotions, and went to the
Hôtel-Dieu, in the summer, between five and six, and, in the winter,
between six and seven, hearing mass, for the most part, at Notre Dame.
After his return he read the holy scripture, dined at eleven, and,
when it was fair weather, walked till two in the Royal garden, where
he examined the new plants, and gratified his earliest and strongest
passion. For the remaining part of the day, if he had no poor to
visit, he shut himself up, and read books of literature or physick,
but chiefly physick, as the duty of his profession required. This,
likewise, was the time he received visits, if any were paid him. He
often used this expression: "Those that come to see me, do me honour;
those that stay away, do me a favour." It is easy to conceive, that a
man of this temper was not crowded with salutations: there was only
now and then an Antony that would pay Paul a visit.
Among his papers was found a Greek and Latin index to Hippocrates,
more copious and exact than that of Pini, which he had finished only a
year before his death. Such a work required the assiduity and patience
of a hermit [49]. There is, likewise, a journal of the weather, kept
without interruption, for more than forty years, in which he has
accurately set down the state of the barometer and thermometer, the
dryness and moisture of the air, the variations of the wind in the
course of the day, the rain, the thunders, and even the sudden storms,
in a very commodious and concise method, which exhibits, in a little
room, a great train of different observations. What numbers of such
remarks had escaped a man less uniform in his life, and whose
attention had been extended to common objects!
All the estate which he left is a collection of medals, another of
herbs, and a library rated at two thousand crowns; which make it
evident that he spent much more upon his mind than upon his body.