NOTE Y Y. 



mines, and famous for his curious water-works, in Oxfordshire, by which he 

 imitated rain, hail, the rainbow, thunder and lightning. This secret cannot be 

 that instrument which we call litrum calendarc, or the weather-glass, the Lord 

 Bacon in his writings, speaking of that as a thing in ordinary use, and com 

 mending, not water, but rectified spirit of wine in the use of it. Nor (being an 

 instrument made with water) is it likely to have shewed changes of the air with 

 so much exactness as the latter baroscope made with mercury. And yet, it 

 should seem to be a secret of high value, by the reward it is said to have pro 

 cured. For the Earl of Essex (as he in his Extract, page 17, reporteth) when 

 Mr. Bacon had made a present of it to him, was pleased to be very bountiful in 

 his thanks, and bestow upon him Twicknam Park, and its garden of paradise, 

 as a place for his studies. I confess I have not faith enough to believe the 

 whole of this relation. And yet I believe the Earl of Essex was extremely 

 liberal, and free even to profuseness ; that he was a great lover of learned men, 

 being, in some sort, one of them himself ; and that with singular patronage he 

 cherished the hopeful parts of Mr. Bacon, who also studied his fortunes and 

 service. Yet Mr. Bacon himself, where he professeth his unwillingness to be 

 short, in the commemoration of the favours of that earl, is, in this great one, 

 perfectly silent. 



Of his practical inventive powers, more fit for the hand of a mechanic than 

 of a philosopher, Tennison, in his Baconiana thus speaks : I doubt not but 

 his mechanical inventions were many. But I can call to mind but three at 

 this time, and of them I can give but a very broken account; and, for his in 

 struments and ways in recovering deserted mines, I can give no account at all ; 

 though certainly, without new tools and peculiar inventions, he would never 

 have undertaken that new and hazardous work. Of the three inventions which 

 come now to my memory, the first was an engine representing the motion of 

 the planets. Of this I can say no more than what I find, in his own words, in 

 one of his miscellany papers in manuscript. The words are these : &quot; I did 

 once cause to be represented to me, by wires, the motion of some planets, in 

 fact as it is, without theories of orbs, &c. And it seemed a strange and extra 

 vagant motion. One while they moved in spires forwards ; another while they 

 did unwind themselves in spires backwards : one while they made larger 

 circles, and higher; another while smaller circles, and lower: one while they 

 moved to the north, in their spires, another while to the south,&quot; &.c. 



But there is, in his Apologie, another story, which may seem to have given 

 to Mr. Bushel the occasion of his mistake. &quot; After the Queen had denied to 

 Mr. Bacon the Solicitor s place, for the which the Earl of Essex had been a 

 long and earnest suitor on his behalf, it pleased that earl to come to him from 

 Richmond to Twicknam Park, and thus to break with him : Mr. Bacon, the 

 Queen hath denied me the place for you. You fare ill, because you have 

 chosen me for your mean and dependance : you have spent your thoughts and 

 time in my matters ; I die if 1 do not do somewhat towards your fortune. You 

 shall not deny to accept a piece of land which 1 will bestow upon you.&quot; And 

 it was, it seems, so large a piece, that he undersold it for no less than eighteen 

 hundred pounds. 



Of this 1 find nothing, either in his lordship s experiments touching Emission, 

 or Immateriate Virtues, from the Minds and Spirits of Men ; or in those con 

 cerning the secret virtue of Sympathy and Antipathy. Wherefore I forbear to 

 speak further in an argument about which I am so much in the dark. 



I proceed to subjects upon which I can speak with much more assurance, his 

 inimitable writings. 



Note. The late Lord Stanhope invented an instrument of this nature to dis 

 cover the insensible perspiration. It consisted of a small crystal cylinder, very 

 convex at one end, and less convex at the other, and when the large convexity 

 was pressed upon the skin it was immediately beaded with perspiration as with 

 dew, which was perceptible by looking through the great convexity. I once had 

 the instrument in my possession. I have seen other inventions of the same 

 nature, as small fish made of a thin horny substance, which, with the heating 

 of the hand, became apparently animated. B. M. 



