ifi LIFE, TIMES, AND SCIENTIFIC LABOURS [1627-1628. 



trating the situations and motions of the heavenly 

 bodies. 



From this serious discourse, by a grave scholar, and 

 contemporary, relating to the labours of the first mathe 

 maticians of a bygone as well as of the existing age, we 

 may form a valuable conception of the state of science, 

 in its popular character, when Edward, Lord Herbert, 

 entered upon his own course of practical philosophical 

 pursuits, affording the ground work of his Century of 

 Inventions, the accumulated digest of whatever he had 

 effected during the early, middle, and later years of his 

 life. Viewed from any other point than the period in 

 which he lived, the means of information around him, 

 and the comparatively limited extent of scientific know 

 ledge, the modern reader would form a serious miscon 

 ception of his singular abilities, his versatile mechanical 

 talent and the fecundity of his inventive ingenuity. 

 There can be little or no doubt but that he was well 

 versed in the mathematical knowledge of his times, 

 and that it principally contributed in aiding him to 

 obtain those mechanical results, to which we conse 

 quently find him restricting his attention. 



Lord Bacon had died but the year before the publi 

 cation of Peacham s work. Alchemy still ruled and 

 had its adepts and votaries 5 and Ashmole made a large 

 collection of alchemical writings, for Chemistry was 

 but just faintly emerging from the mysticisms of its 

 precursor, Alchemy. 



In the year 1628 Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, 

 being then about 27 years of age, married Elizabeth, 

 daughter of Sir William Dormer, eldest son of Eobert 

 Lord Dormer of Weng, and .sister to Robert Earl of 

 Carnarvon. 5 She became in 1629 the mother of Henry* 



5 Atkyns. 



* Henry, Duke of Beaufort, died in 1699, at 70 years of age, so that he must 

 have been born in 1629. 



