[ lOO ] 



If two clocks were furnifhcd with hands, and with dial-plates 

 containing the alphabet, the motion of each of them might be 

 unlocked at a momentary flafli or found, and they might be 

 flopped together at any letter by a fecond explofion. I am 

 informed that a very ingenious member of this Academy has 

 fpoken of fuch a contrivance* — With proper precautions, and by 

 fubltituting numbers correfponding with a vocabulary inftead of 

 an alphabet, this invention may be perfeded. I cannot help re- 

 marking, that by the experiment of Sir T. Browne with two 

 diftind dials, &c. a hint might have been obtained of a pradli- 

 cable contrivance J but by Dodor Johnfon's cork, with two 

 needles thruft through it, nothing could be obtained but difap- 

 pointment. Vulgar tradition and poetic allegory are neither to 

 be implicitly trufted nor haftily defpifed -j-. The incredulity of 

 mankind in fome inftances appears as furprifmg as their credu- 

 lity in others. The difpofition to ridicule every fcientific pro- 

 je6t as abfurd until it has been abfolutely brought to perfedion 

 has been the common topic of complaint amongfi: men of inven- 

 tive genius ; and. it is curious to obferve that poets, who fufFer 

 fo much themfelves by the taunts of men of the world, and by 

 the apathy of the vulgar, Hiould in their turn revenge them- 

 felves 



* A fimllar contrivance is mentioned in Hooper's Rational Recreations. 



f In a beautiful Arabian tale, written perhaps a hundred years before the time of 

 Gallileo, in which we expeft nothing but fi£lion and extravagance, we find that the 

 air balloon and the telefcope are introduced in the contrivance of the fable. 



