220 MICHAEL A. IIOSKIN 



have any just foundation, and a great many things in natural 

 philosophy, which have been since found out by the pains and 

 industry of later philosophers, are here selected from the best 

 writers; and there are also several things added out of the 

 observations of the ancient writers of natural philosophy and 

 natural history, where they seem to explain and illustrate 

 matters." " 



Clarke was not the first to annotate Rohault's text; Antoine 

 Le Grand had provided animadversiones to the edition of 

 Bonet's translation published in Amsterdam in 1682. The 

 Bonet-Le Grand version was published again in Amsterdam 

 in 1700, and Le Grand's notes were later appended to Clarke's 

 translation and notes when these were published in Amsterdam 

 in 1708 and in Cologne in 1713. In total length the two sets of 

 notes are much the same. But whereas those of Le Grand are 

 individually of some length, most of Clarke's are slight, and he 

 refers to a bewildering variety of earlier authors: to classical 

 writers like Aristotle, Pliny, Seneca, Livy, Plutarch and Mac- 

 robius, to Cartesians such as Regis, Malebranche, Perrault and 

 Le Clerc, and to accounts of experiments by the Accademia 

 del Cimento, Hooke and Boyle, as well as to the writings of 

 Newton himself. 



Newton is first mentioned in a note to the passage where 

 Rohault, following Descartes, concludes from the identity of 

 matter and extension that a vacuum is not possible. Clarke 

 notes that this is controversa et plena dissensionis inter Phi- 

 losophos, and refers the reader to Regis, where he will see that 

 the objections brought against Descartes are only slight. 

 He then adds, almost as an afterthought: sed lanceTn de- 

 primit Clariss. Newtonus, and gives a reference to the Prin- 

 cipia.^^ There is another reference to the Principia in a note 

 on the propagation of sounds.^^ In the notes to the chapter 



^° Where appropriate, English translations are cited from John Clarke's 1723 

 edition. Samuel Clarke made curiously few alterations in his Prefaces, even when 

 the role played by the notes he is introducing clearly change. 



" n, p. 187. 



" n, p. 208. 



