Whalley, in the full confidence "that there is no puritanical taint in
his writings, and that his taste had evidently been formed upon better
models.[27]" Had these early theological and literary delinquencies
of the physician of Clitheroe been communicated to his historian, it
may be questioned whether the portals of his provincial temple of fame
would have opened to receive so heinous a transgressor. But Dr.
Whitaker's deduction would have been perhaps perfectly warrantable,
had Webster left no remains but his _History of Metals_, and
_Displaying of Witchcraft_--so little do an author's latest works
afford a clue to the character of his earliest. From 1654 to 1671,
when he published his _History of Metals_, little is known of
Webster's course of life. He appears to have retired into the country
and devoted himself to medical practice and study, and to have taken
up his residence in or near Clitheroe. He complains, that in the year
1658 all his books and papers were taken from him, an abstraction
which, so far as his manuscripts are concerned, posterity is not
called upon to lament, if they all resembled his _Judgment Set and
Books Opened_. But his capacious and acute understanding was gradually
unfolding new resources, supplying the defects, and overcoming the
disadvantages of his imperfect education and desultory and irregular
studies, while his matured and enlightened judgment had abandoned and
discarded the fanatical pravities and erroneous tenets, which his
ardent enthusiasm had too hastily imbibed. When he again became a
candidate for the honours of authorship, it was evident that he knew
well how to apply those quarries of learning into which, during his
long recess, he had been digging so indefatigably, to furnish
materials for solid and durable structures, rising in honourable and
gratifying contrast to the fabrics which had preceded them. In 1671
came forth his "Metallographia, or History of Metals,"[28] in which
all that recondite learning and extensive observation could bring