PREFACE. ix 



hope to be advanced by discussing the automata of the 

 1 7th century, its fountains, improvements in fire-arms, 

 bows, keys, stairs, boats, fortifications, and many other 

 promising inventions. But a Life of the Marquis of 

 Worcester, without the &quot; Century,&quot; would be a drama 

 without its most important character. It is, therefore, 

 no act of supererogation to give a commentary on that 

 little, but perplexing book ; it is something more than 

 a mere amusement, it is a necessary adjunct, and is not 

 wholly useless considered as a matter connected with 

 the history of science. The commentator on the 

 &quot;Century&quot; may hope to render the biography of its 

 noble author interesting from another and most import 

 ant point of view, which would be wholly lost by its 

 omission, or by treating it as secondary or unimportant. 

 The &quot; Century&quot; is the exponent of the man ; the 

 author without his pocket-journal of his life-long 

 labours is reduced to a nonentity, with nothing higher 

 left to him to boast of than his descent from royal 

 blood, the unimpeachable character of his noble line 

 of ancestry, and his own spotless rectitude of character 

 an amiable, unintellectual man ! 



The &quot; Century,&quot; the only work he is known to have 

 left to posterity, sorely perplexed the fastidious Horace 

 Walpole, was too much of a mechanical production for 

 the astute David Hume, and has thoroughly bewildered 

 the legal acumen of Mr. Muirhead, the biographer of 

 James Watt. It has challenged the skill of critics of 

 every degree, from contributors to the Gentleman s 

 Magazine to those of the Harleian Miscellany, and even 

 in all sketches of the history of the steam-engine, perco 

 lating thence through biographies, and popular accounts 

 of Raglan Castle, to the latest and best illustrated works 

 on our castles and abbeys. So many writers, so many 

 minds, whose judgments in a collected form, would afford 



I 



