• New Experiments Physico-Mechanical Touching on the spring of air and its effects (1660), and a continuation, 1669.
• The Sceptical Chemist (1661).
• Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy (1663), with a 2nd pt. in 1671.
• Experiments and Considerations upon colours, with Observations on a Diamond that Shines in the Dark (1663).
• Hydrostatical Paradoxes (1666); Origin of Forms and Qualities According to the Corpuscular Philosophy (1666).
• Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Origin or Production of Particular Qualities (1676), incl. notes on magnetism.
• Memoirs for the National History of the Human Blood (1684).
• Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters (1685).
• Medicina Hydrostatica (1690); Experimenta et Observationes Physicae (1691).

Other works incl. Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects (1665) - ridiculed by Swift in A Pious Meditation upon a Broomstick, and by Butler in An Occasional Reflection on Dr Carlton’s Feeling a Dog’s Pulse at Gresham College; further, Excellence of Theology compared with Natural Philosophy (1664); Discourse of Things above Reason (1681); High Veneration Man owes to God (1685); A Free Enquiry into the vulgarly received Notion of Nature (1686); Christian Virtuoso (1690). Posthumous works incl. The General History of the Air (1692), ‘designed and begun’; Medicinal Experiments (1692-98), a collection of choice remedies; A Free Discourse against Customary Swearing (1695); incomplete and unauthorised edn. of his works (Geneva 1677).

• The Philosophical Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle: Abridged, methodized, and disposed under the general heads of physics, statics, pneumatics, natural history, chymistry, and medicine / The Whole illustrated with notes, containing the improvements made in the several parts of natural and experimental knowledge since his time by Peter Shaw, M.D. [1st Edn.], 3 vols. (London: printed for W. and J. Innys ... and J. Osborn, and T. Longman ... M. DCC. XXV. [1725]), ill ; 24 cm.
• Thomas Birch, ed., The Works of Robert Boyle, with a life, 5 folio vols. (1744), Do. [2nd edn. in 6 quarto vols.] (1772) [but see infra].

• F. Masson, Robert Boyle: A Biography (1914) [listed in Encyclopedia Britannica, 1949].

• Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio & Lawrence M. Principe,. eds., Correspondence of Robert Boyle, 1636-1691, 6 vols.(London: Pickering & Chatto 2001) [3,000+pp.].

[In one of his lengthiest pieces, Ryan gives a full account of Boyle’s childhood and prodigious gifts, his career as a scientist and a leading cultural figure of his day - including somewhat angular relations with Isaac Newton - and, finally, an account of his final illness and obsequies in these characteristic terms:]

[...] His complaints continuing still to increase, after a tedious and lingering illness, which may be regarded as a complete decay of nature, he departed this life on the 30th December, 1691; exactly one week after the decease of his dear sister Lady Ranelagh, which afflicted him so much, as no doubt to hasten that melancholy event.

On the 7th of the following January, he was buried at St. Martin in the Fields; his funeral sermon being preached by Dr. Gilbert Burnet, whom he had much assisted in his publication of the History of the Reformation, and who had gratefully acknowledged his kindness in the preface to his second volume. He states in this sermon, that twenty-nine years of intimate conversation with Mr. Boyle, have enabled him to give a complete character of him. He descants upon his zeal for the christian religion, and mentions with particular approbation his foundation for lectures in its defence against deists, atheists, &c. without interfering with any of those points on which christians {174} are divided into sects; and which has since produced so many volumes of excellent discourses. He was at the expense of £700 for printing the Irish bible, which he caused to be distributed in that country, as well as large sums towards the Welch bible, and that in the Irish language for Scotland, besides many other gifts of a similar nature: In other respects, the bishop informs us, so great were his charities, that they amounted to upwards of £1,000 per annum.

He then proceeds to enlarge upon Mr. Boyle’s astonishing abilities. After stating and extolling his knowledge of the Hebrew, of the fathers, and of the controversies on the Scriptures, his acquirements in the mathematics, particularly in geometry, his accurate and intimate acquaintance with geography and history, and his skill in physic; he says, “but for the history of nature, ancient and modern, of the productions of all countries, of the virtues and improvements of plants, of ores and minerals, and all the varieties that are in them in different climates, he was by very much the readiest and the perfectest I ever knew in the greatest compass, and with the nicest exactness. This put him in the way of making all that vast variety of experiments, beyond any man, as far as we know, that ever lived. And in these as he made a great progress in new discoveries, so he used so nice a strictness, and delivered them with so scrupulous a truth, that all who have examined them, have found how safely the world may depend upon them. But his peculiar and favourite study was chemistry, in which he was engaged with none of those ravenous and ambitious designs, which draw many into it. As he made chemistry much the better for his dealing in it, so he never made himself either the worse of the poorer for it. It was a charity to others as well as an entertainment to himself; for the produce of it was distributed by his sister and others into whose hands he put it.”

Such is the character of Boyle, as delivered to us by {175} his great contemporary and intimate friend; and from the facts of his life, and the internal evidence of his writings, we cannot conceive that the hand of friendship: has been called upon to slur over the faults which might otherwise have appeared, or to place in a stronger light the virtues he possessed; to draw the character of Boyle it needed not the pen of a friend, it is handed down to us in his works of science, in his religious reflections, and in his deeds of charity.

Mr. Boyle was in person, tall and slender, with a pale countenance, and a weakness in his eyes, which made him very careful of them. His constitution was so delicate, that he hadi cloaks of different. substances, to wear: when he went out, and which he put: on according to the thermometer, although he was in his infancy committed to the care of a country nurse, his father, as he informs us, “having a perfect aversion for the tenderness of those parents which made them breed: their children so nice and tenderly, that a hot sun or a good shower of rain, as much endangers them as if they were made of butter, or of sugar.” The effect of this hardy treatment was a strong and vigorous state of health, which was unfortunately soon destroyed on his return home, through too much indulgence and mistaken kindness. For the last forty years, of his life, so low were his health and spirits, that it was a wonder to all who knew him, how he could: read, study, make experiments, and write in the manner he did: He also had an impediment in his speech, which continued through the whole of his life, he having contracted it when a child, from mocking the stutter of other children of the same age.

Mr. Boyle was never married though he is said by Evelyn to have formed an attachment to the interesting daughter of Cary, Earl of Monmouth; and: there is extant a letter of Dr. John Wallis to him, by which we find, that there was an overture made him with respect to Lady Mary Hasting, sister to the Earl of Huntingdon. Burnet {176} informs us that he refrained from marriage at first through prudential motives, and afterwards more philosophically; and from a letter of his to the Lady Barrymore his niece, which yet remains, we may infer that it was neither owing to a dislike to the sex, nor to an austerity of disposition, every word in it breathing the truest spirit of gallantry and politeness.

In the habit of familiar intercourse with Charles II James II and William III all of whom were much attached to him, we might wonder that he was never raised to the peerage, especially as his four elder brothers were all of that rank. He was, however, in the habit of speaking his mind freely, with respect to the measures of government, and it might have been conceived that these kings, though pleased with him as a man, might think him unfit for a courtier, were it not that we are informed that the offer of a peerage was frequently made to him, and as constantly declined: That it is not in the power of titles to ensure fame, is evinced by two of his brothers, of whom we now know nothing but the name; while the history of the untitled Robert Boyle remains as a beacon to future ages, which points out exertion as the surest means of arriving at splendid celebrity.

[Here lists posthumous works which,] joined to those before mentioned, together with his numerous scattered pieces in the Philosophical Transactions, have been collected together and published by Dr. Birch, in 6 vols. 4to.