x PREFACE. 



a very discordant and uninviting miscellany, a sad 

 satire on the material and style of a certain class of cri 

 ticism, too much encouraged in our current literature. 

 It is painful to observe its constant want of sympathy 

 with the pains and penalties which unhappily are the 

 too frequent lot of lofty, original, inventive genius. 

 The case might fairly i&amp;gt;e paralleled by supposing 

 Voltaire and others to have successfully established 

 a clique against Shakespeare, to misrepresent and 

 malign the great dramatist up to the present time; 

 when, suddenly should appear, the^rs^ work, to settle 

 his literary claims ! Of course it is declared impossible ; 

 and so it is, with a literary work; but it is not so with 

 Inventions. The fame of the Marquis of Worcester 

 rests less on his book than on his Water-commanding 

 Engine. The book we see and read, but probably not 

 one man in ten thousand knows anything about the 

 Engine. Here is the weak point when the tide turns 

 against the Inventor, against the man, a man politically 

 and religiously proscribed. A great man for his Engine 

 but hated by those politicians who side with the Stuart 

 dynasty, for his luckless association with Charles the 

 First. And misunderstood by the dilettanti Walpole, a 

 connoisseur in paintings and works of vertu, but in 

 matters of science more ignorant of the Marquis of 

 Worcester s worth, than Voltaire was of Shakespeare s 

 genius. But we regret there is a third conspicuous 

 offender in the field, and as he is the latest, so we hope 

 he is the last of the clan of vituperative critics. 



Our largely gifted historian, Lord Macaulay, never 

 wrote such feeble lines as those in which he attempted 

 to depict the Marquis of Worcester ; but the historian 

 is a tower of strength, and his words may here be 

 quoted without a fear of our object being either mis 

 taken, or open to misrepresentation. Depreciation is not 



