NOTE 7, Z. 



Before time of Bacon. 



Proof that similar presents were made to other statesmen. 

 After time of Bacon. 



Bishop Williams. 

 After time of James. 



Sir M. Hale. 

 Present times. 



Preface. 



It is, says Lord Bacon, (a) a secret in the art of discovery, that the nature 

 of any thing is seldom discovered in the thing itself. If this doctrine is true, it 

 may be expedient in entering upon this inquiry, to ascertain what has been the 

 custom in other times and in other countries, with respect to solicitations and 

 presents being made by the suitors to the judges. 



Custom in former times. 



Homer. 



Aaot d tiv ayopy taav dOpooi tvQa de veiicog 

 tr duo S dvdptQ tveiiceov t iveica TTOIVTJQ 

 cnro(j)0ifjivov o pfv t# ro iravr 

 Tri&amp;lt;f&amp;gt;avaKW 6 cT avaivt 



iE&amp;lt;TOn.v TTI VOTOOI T 

 Aaoi 5 afi(j)orepoi&amp;lt;nv eTrriTrvov, ju0&amp;lt; apwyor 



(a) The nature of any thing is seldom discovered in the thing itself. It com 

 monly happens, that men make experiments slightly, and as in the way of 

 diversion, somewhat varying those already known ; and if they succeed not to 

 their expectation, they grow sick of the attempt, and forsake it. Or, if they 

 apply in earnest to experiments, they commonly bestow all their labour upon 

 some one thing, as Gilbert upon the loadstone, and the alchemists upon gold. 

 But this procedure is as unskilful as it is fruitless : for no man can advan 

 tageously discover the nature of any thing in that thing itself; but the inquiry 

 must be extended to matters that are more common. 



And if any one applies himself to nature, and endeavours to strike out some 

 thing new, yet he will generally propose and fix upon some one invention, 

 without further search : for example, the nature of the loadstone, the tides, the 

 theory of the heavens, and the like ; which seem to conceal some secret, and 

 have been hitherto unsuccessfully explained; whereas it is, in the highest 

 degree, unskilful to examine the nature of any thing in that thing itself. For 

 the same nature which in some things lies hid and concealed, appears open and 

 obvious in others, so as to excite admiration in the one, and to pass unobserved 

 in the other ; thus the nature of consistence is not taken notice of in wood or 

 stone, but slighted under the term of solidity, without further inquiry into its 

 avoidance of separation, or solution of continuity ; whilst the same thing appears 

 subtile and of deeper inquiry, in bubbles of water, which throw themselves into 

 their skins of a curious hemispherical figure, in order, for the instant, to avoid a 

 solution of continuity. 



And again, those very things which are accounted secrets, have, in other 

 cases, a cpmmon and manifest nature, which can never be discovered whilst the 

 experiments and thoughts of men run wholly upon them. 



Whoever shall reject the feigned divorces of superlunary and sublunary 

 bodies ; and shall intentively observe the appetences of matter and the most 

 universal passions, which in either globe are exceeding potent, and transverbe- 

 rate the universal nature of things, he shall receive clear information concerning 

 celestial matters from the things seen here with us : and contrariwise from those 

 motions which are practised in heaven, he shall learn many observations which 

 now are latent, touching the motion of bodies here below, not only so far as 

 their inferior motions are moderated by superior, but in regard they have a 

 mutual intercourse by passions common to them both. 



