latitude of a place by a quadrant in the dark without sun or stars?
. . .
I have acquired 17 a copy of Lord Bacon’s Remaines , first printed in 1648.
. . .
March
My friend Mr Francis Potter 18 is coming to stay with me in Broad Chalke and while he is here I will take him to Wilton House to visit the Earl of Pembroke and show off his design for a clock operated by bellows rather than cogs, which he invented when he was still a student at Trinity College. I have tried to find out from my kinsman Sir John Danvers how Mr Potter might obtain a patent for his invention.
. . .
Sir John Danvers’s house 19 at Chelsea is very elegant and ingenious. As you sit at dinner in the hall you are entertained by two delightful vistas: one southward over the Thames and towards Surrey; the other northward into a curious garden. Over the hall is a stately room of the same dimensions, which has the same prospect, where there is an excellent organ, which I have heard the organist and composer Christopher Gibbons play. The house is vaulted, which meliorates the sound. I have never heard better harmony than in that room.
Lord Bacon came often 20 to visit Sir John Danvers at Chelsea. Sir John told me that after his lordship wrote the History of Henry VII , he sent a copy of the manuscript to him, desiring his opinion of it before it was printed. Sir John said: ‘Your lordship knows that I am no scholar.’ ‘’Tis no matter,’ Lord Bacon replied, ‘I know what a scholar can say; I would know what you can say.’ Sir John read it and gave his opinion, for which Lord Bacon was grateful. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘a scholar would never have told me this.’ I am sorry that I have forgotten what it was Sir John misliked in the manuscript.
. . .
April
Mr Potter is greatly obliged 21 to me for letting him have John Wilkins’s book, Mathematical Magick , which interests him very much. The book contains accounts of strange phenomena and happenings, e.g. water round the moon and the magnetic attraction of bodies. Mr Potter has discussed with me the earth’s magnetism and motion. His idea is that if there were loose parts round the moon they would fall to the centre of the earth. He wonders if the interior of the moon may be inhabited, though not the exterior. He doubts the opinion expressed in the book that the higher from the earth bodies go the lighter they are, losing their gravity the more distant they are from the earth’s centre.
Mr Potter considers 22 that flight is impracticable because materials could not stand the strain – the weight being so great and the material too fragile in proportion to motive power (he compares a flea and an ape). But given materials of sufficient strength he says he can imagine the possibility of flight. He is interested too in the possibility of submarine navigation and has a conception of how it could be done, providing the water under the surface is calm (he envisages a pipe from the surface to the boat, aided by bellows). He has also sent me a pencil sketch of an ingenious cart with legs.
. . .
I have fallen in love – at first sight – with the incomparable good-conditioned gentlewoman Miss Mary Wiseman.
I am like Virgil’s Dido 23 , wounded by love:
Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves,
From street to street the raving Dido roves.
So when the watchful shepherd, from the blind,
Wounds with a random shaft the careless hind,
Distracted with her pain she flies the woods,
Bounds o’er the lawn, and seeks the silent floods,
With fruitless care; for still the fatal dart
Sticks in her side, and rankles in her heart.
. . .
May
Mr Lydall tells me that Dr Petty has discovered how to set a field of corn by means of a sowing and harrowing engine; that Mr Christopher Wren of Wadham College has invented a means of weighing grains, scruples, drams and ounces with the same weight, and also an engine for double writing. Mr Lydall now has of a copy of Athanasius Kircher’s Ars magna lucis et
. . .
I have acquired 17 a copy of Lord Bacon’s Remaines , first printed in 1648.
. . .
March
My friend Mr Francis Potter 18 is coming to stay with me in Broad Chalke and while he is here I will take him to Wilton House to visit the Earl of Pembroke and show off his design for a clock operated by bellows rather than cogs, which he invented when he was still a student at Trinity College. I have tried to find out from my kinsman Sir John Danvers how Mr Potter might obtain a patent for his invention.
. . .
Sir John Danvers’s house 19 at Chelsea is very elegant and ingenious. As you sit at dinner in the hall you are entertained by two delightful vistas: one southward over the Thames and towards Surrey; the other northward into a curious garden. Over the hall is a stately room of the same dimensions, which has the same prospect, where there is an excellent organ, which I have heard the organist and composer Christopher Gibbons play. The house is vaulted, which meliorates the sound. I have never heard better harmony than in that room.
Lord Bacon came often 20 to visit Sir John Danvers at Chelsea. Sir John told me that after his lordship wrote the History of Henry VII , he sent a copy of the manuscript to him, desiring his opinion of it before it was printed. Sir John said: ‘Your lordship knows that I am no scholar.’ ‘’Tis no matter,’ Lord Bacon replied, ‘I know what a scholar can say; I would know what you can say.’ Sir John read it and gave his opinion, for which Lord Bacon was grateful. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘a scholar would never have told me this.’ I am sorry that I have forgotten what it was Sir John misliked in the manuscript.
. . .
April
Mr Potter is greatly obliged 21 to me for letting him have John Wilkins’s book, Mathematical Magick , which interests him very much. The book contains accounts of strange phenomena and happenings, e.g. water round the moon and the magnetic attraction of bodies. Mr Potter has discussed with me the earth’s magnetism and motion. His idea is that if there were loose parts round the moon they would fall to the centre of the earth. He wonders if the interior of the moon may be inhabited, though not the exterior. He doubts the opinion expressed in the book that the higher from the earth bodies go the lighter they are, losing their gravity the more distant they are from the earth’s centre.
Mr Potter considers 22 that flight is impracticable because materials could not stand the strain – the weight being so great and the material too fragile in proportion to motive power (he compares a flea and an ape). But given materials of sufficient strength he says he can imagine the possibility of flight. He is interested too in the possibility of submarine navigation and has a conception of how it could be done, providing the water under the surface is calm (he envisages a pipe from the surface to the boat, aided by bellows). He has also sent me a pencil sketch of an ingenious cart with legs.
. . .
I have fallen in love – at first sight – with the incomparable good-conditioned gentlewoman Miss Mary Wiseman.
I am like Virgil’s Dido 23 , wounded by love:
Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves,
From street to street the raving Dido roves.
So when the watchful shepherd, from the blind,
Wounds with a random shaft the careless hind,
Distracted with her pain she flies the woods,
Bounds o’er the lawn, and seeks the silent floods,
With fruitless care; for still the fatal dart
Sticks in her side, and rankles in her heart.
. . .
May
Mr Lydall tells me that Dr Petty has discovered how to set a field of corn by means of a sowing and harrowing engine; that Mr Christopher Wren of Wadham College has invented a means of weighing grains, scruples, drams and ounces with the same weight, and also an engine for double writing. Mr Lydall now has of a copy of Athanasius Kircher’s Ars magna lucis et
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