60 Lord Napier's different Contrivances 



tery; Fubjoining thereto, for the better persnodiug him, 

 that it were a thousand pities that so excellent an invention 

 should be buried with him in the grave, and that after lus 

 decease nothing should be known thereof; hi«; answer was, 

 *' That for the ruin and overthrow of man there were too 

 many devices already framed, which, if he could make to 

 be fewer, he would with all his might endeavour to do ; and 

 that therefore, seeing the malice and rancour rooted in the 

 heart of mankind will not suffer them to diminish the 

 number of them, by any new conceit of his, they should 

 never be increased." Divinely spoken truly ! " — Urqu/iart's 

 Tracts, Edinburgh 17/4. 8vo. p. 57. 



IV. To justif)^ lord Napier's fourth proposal, not to 

 certify it, but merely to abate from its apparent incredibi- 

 litv, to ordinary minds, the reader may refer to the 58th 

 and nine following articles of the ever memorable marquis 

 of Worcester's Century of Inventions. Thev are all iu 

 some measure kindred devices to those of Napier; and one- 

 of them (the 61th) the noble inventor says, was tried and 

 approved before king Charles I., accompanied by one hun- 

 dred lords and commons. 



V. The concluding paragraph of the memoir before us 

 contains nothing specific, except " devices of sailing under 

 the water." And some years after the date of this memoir, 

 perhaps during the life of its noble author, this mode of 

 sailing appears to have been successfully exemplified ; but 

 whether in the way or ways known to Napier, no histori- 

 cal documents authorizes us to say *. All that we know 

 with any certainty is, that the famous Dutch philosopher 

 Cornelius Drebell, the reputed inventor of the microscope 

 and the thermometer f, constracted for king James I. a 

 subaqueous vessel, which he tried on the Thames, and 

 which carried twelve rowers, besides some passengers, for 

 whom the effete air was again rendered rospirable by a li- 

 <juor the composition of which Drebell never would com- 

 municate to more than one person, and that person told 

 Mr. Boyle what it was J. 



The next subaqueous navigator seems to hav^a been the 



marquis 



• Siverien Dyt.'O'r. art. ^'ahscau U'.hmtoire. 



•f- See Savcrien'? Diction., articles Miaoic.pc and ThfrmOTJiefre ; aho 

 Borsut, Hi:!. Gt.. de Maihe.m. pir. iii. cb. b-, an interesting work, 

 which h<ts Idtoly bt-Ln translated by ?t'Ir. Bomncastle. 



J See Boyle's Exp. Phys. Mcch. of the Spring of the Air ; also Hut- 

 t^n's Diet., art. Di'ving. De Coetiogon, in his Univ. Hist. oF Arts and 

 Sciences, art. Diving, ridicules the accounts ^iven of this liquor by Hoy Is 

 io'i Chv.T»bcr<;, and «ays ht " would bt apr to imagine that Drebell's 



iifjuor 



