306 LIFE, TIMES, AND SCIENTIFIC LABOURS [1670. 



likewise in large posting bills. Besides which a model 

 was deposited with the Chancellor of the Exchequer as 

 required by the Act. It was also the subject of 

 much correspondence. That it excited the attention of 

 intelligent sight-seeing travellers we ascertain from the 

 Diaries published first by M. Sorbiere, and five years 

 later by Cosmo de Medici. And after the noble inven 

 tor s decease, his warm-hearted and enthusiastic widow 

 brought herself under priestly censure for her active 

 endeavours &quot; to enrich herself by the great Machine ;&quot; 

 on which, alas ! both had built reasonable, but such as 

 were at that time considered extravagant, expectations 

 of present fortune and future fame. 



With the Marquis of Worcester this invention was 

 no idle fancy, no mere experiment, no amateur work, 

 no casual, doubtful trial, and was not lightly estimated 

 by himself. He had by practice so thoroughly satis 

 fied himself, that, long after 1655, amidst all his 

 troubles, without his notes, and to oblige a friend, he 

 wrote off, con amore, three distinct accounts of his 

 invention, under the titles of, u A fire water-work 5&quot; u A 

 semi-omnipotent engine &quot; and lastly, u A stupendous 

 water-work.&quot; 



How it happens that the Marquis of Worcester 

 should have been wholly unnoticed for his inventions 

 by contemporaries it is difficult to offer anything like a 

 sufficiently reasonable or satisfactory conjecture. But 

 surprise might seem to vanish when such diarists as John 

 Evelyn and Samuel Pepys, with all their curiosity and 

 all their apparent pleasure in recording scientific novel 

 ties, although they name the Marquis, notice Worcester 

 House, and mention Vauxhall, never so much as hint 

 at one invention by the Marquis of Worcester. When 

 these gossips had nothing to say, conjecture may well 

 cease to promise a satisfactory solution. 



