2
The Platonists who flourished as a school of metaphysics at
Cambridge from the 1650s to the 1690s, in particular as members of his
own college, are well represented here. There is also a good selection of
contemporary Levantine and Arabic studies, in which some other
members of his college were distinguished scholars. So one might
suppose that such books reflect special interests which Dr Plume
derived from his undergraduate life and subsequent association with
Christ’s College, suggesting perhaps his familiarity with the Platonist
philosophers Henry More and Ralph Cudworth and with Dr John
Covell, Sir John Finch, Sir Thomas Baines and others of the college
who had travelled in Greece and Asia Minor.
A visitor who knows that by his Will of 1704 Dr Plume founded the
Professorship of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at Cambridge
University and that he was Vicar of Greenwich when the Royal
Observatory was established there (1675) will not be surprised to find
on the shelves treatises on astronomy, chemistry, mechanics,
mathematics, botany, anatomy, with many issues of the
Philosophical
Transactions
published by the Royal Society. It will be found
appropriate that these books and tracts form a distinctive and
considerable proportion of the entire Library.