62 ESSKX WORTHIES. 



It remains to he told how Ciilhert's work was received. The 

 book, which he pubhshcd in Latin, was followed by two editions, 

 also unfortunately both in Latin, published in Germany. No 

 Enghsh edition has ever been published. Strange to say it fell 

 somewhat flat. The world was hardly prepared to accept a sober 

 treatise, based on simple facts, in place of the wild and speculative 

 treatises which had hitherto passed as philosophic. Men knew that 

 Gilbert had travelled abroad, and it was known that he had made 

 researches with the magnet; but they were expecting him to write 

 such a treatise as might have been produced by Thomas x\quinas, 

 who was capable of discussing how many angels could dance on the 

 point of a needle. Scaliger, in one of his epistles {ad Casaubon, 

 1604), speaks of a certain Englishman who three years previously 

 had brought out a book on the magnet, which was nothing worthy 

 of the expectation which it had excited. Bacon, whom so many 

 revere as the founder of the inductive science, calmly appropriated 

 and reproduced as his own in his " Opuscula Philosophica," whole 

 paragraphs, almost verbatim, from the " De Magnete," but he did not 

 say who discovered the truths set forth ; and when he mentioned 

 Gilbert, sneered at him, in his " De Augmentis,"as the man who had 

 made a whole philosophy out of the observations of a loadstone ; 

 and, in another place, he refers to " De Magnete " as a " painfull and 

 experimentall work." In another place, in the " Novum Organon," he 

 accuses Gilbert of having created so many fables about the electric 

 operation, which, he adds, is nothing else than the appetite of the 

 body excited by gentle friction ! Others there were indeed who 

 better appreciated the magnitude of Gilbert's work. Galileo, as we 

 have seen, spoke of him as of enviable greatness. Kepler warmly 

 welcomed the new doctrine of the earth's magnetism, and devoted a 

 long chapter in his Treatise on Astronomy to the exposition of 

 Gilbert's views. Barlowe, the learned Archdeacon of Salisbury, 

 whose " Magneticall Aducrtisements " was published in 161 8, speaks 

 of " De Magnete " as " the very true fountaine of all magneticall know- 

 ledge." Dr. Marke Ridley, who in 1613 published "A Short 

 Treatise of Magneticall Bodies and Motions," speaks of Gilbert's 

 labours as " the greatest and best in Magneticall Philosophic." Sir 

 Kenelm Digby classed Gilbert along with Harvey, the discoverer of 

 the circulation of the blood, as men by whose means our nation 

 may claim, even in this latter age, a crown for solid philosophical 

 learning. 



