Letters on England [22]
which have been made since his time. Scarce one of them but is
hinted at in his work, and he himself had made several. He made a
kind of pneumatic engine, by which he guessed the elasticity of the
air. He approached, on all sides as it were, to the discovery of
its weight, and had very near attained it, but some time after
Torricelli seized upon this truth. In a little time experimental
philosophy began to be cultivated on a sudden in most parts of
Europe. It was a hidden treasure which the Lord Bacon had some
notion of, and which all the philosophers, encouraged by his
promises, endeavoured to dig up.
But that which surprised me most was to read in his work, in express
terms, the new attraction, the invention of which is ascribed to Sir
Isaac Newton.
We must search, says Lord Bacon, whether there may not be a kind of
magnetic power which operates between the earth and heavy bodies,
between the moon and the ocean, between the planets, &c. In another
place he says either heavy bodies must be carried towards the centre
of the earth, or must be reciprocally attracted by it; and in the
latter case it is evident that the nearer bodies, in their falling,
draw towards the earth, the stronger they will attract one another.
We must, says he, make an experiment to see whether the same clock
will go faster on the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine;
whether the strength of the weights decreases on the mountain and
increases in the mine. It is probable that the earth has a true
attractive power.
This forerunner in philosophy was also an elegant writer, an
historian, and a wit.
His moral essays are greatly esteemed, but they were drawn up in the
view of instructing rather than of pleasing; and, as they are not a
satire upon mankind, like Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," nor written upon
a sceptical plan, like Montaigne's "Essays," they are not so much
read as those two ingenious authors.
His History of Henry VII. was looked upon as a masterpiece, but how
is it possible that some persons can presume to compare so little a
work with the history of our illustrious Thuanus?
Speaking about the famous impostor Perkin, son to a converted Jew,
who assumed boldly the name and title of Richard IV., King of
England, at the instigation of the Duchess of Burgundy, and who
disputed the crown with Henry VII., the Lord Bacon writes as
follows:-
"At this time the King began again to be haunted with sprites, by
the magic and curious arts of the Lady Margaret, who raised up the
ghost of Richard, Duke of York, second son to King Edward IV., to
walk and vex the King.
"After such time as she (Margaret of Burgundy) thought he (Perkin
Warbeck) was perfect in his lesson, she began to cast with herself
from what coast this blazing star should first appear, and at what
time it must be upon the horizon of Ireland; for there had the like
meteor strong influence before."
Methinks our sagacious Thuanus does not give in to such fustian,
which formerly was looked upon as sublime, but in this age is justly
called nonsense.
LETTER XIII.--ON MR. LOCKE
Perhaps no man ever had a more judicious or more methodical genius,
or was a more acute logician than Mr. Locke, and yet he was not
deeply skilled in the mathematics. This great man could never
subject himself to the tedious fatigue of calculations, nor to the
dry pursuit of mathematical truths, which do not at first present
any sensible objects to the mind; and no one has given better proofs
than he, that it is possible for a man to have a geometrical head
without the assistance of geometry. Before his time, several great
philosophers had declared, in the most positive terms, what the soul
of man is; but as these absolutely knew nothing about it, they might
very well be allowed to differ entirely in opinion from one another.
In Greece, the infant seat of arts