‘It is not uneasy but a pleasure,’ declared Roger North towards the conclusion ofNotes of Me, ‘to sit as I now doe, passing the pen from side to side of the paper’ (243). When he wrote these words, probably in the mid-1690s, he had reached roughly the halfway point of his long life. There were still about forty years left to him to indulge his pleasure in writing and to add to the store of manuscripts he was now beginning to accumulate.

The range of subjects treated by North is wide. There are his writings in natural philosophy that...

The onely felicity,¹ which came at my nativity, attended me to this hour, and will to that of my last breath, and after all, leav a perfume, in a reasonable good name, at parting, is that of being descended from religious, vertuous, wise, and sound parents;² that they were so, is granted by all that knew them, and that I am happy from their vertues, I know and can affirme. And if I should goe about to trace all the stepps, by which I perceiv it, I must make a journall of my life, but that is too much, at...