336 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



tion, had written books on navigation, was lecturer on that 

 subject to the East India Company, and ultimately became 

 a tutor of the Prince of Wales. Wright actively assisted 

 Gilbert, not only in the gathering of material and the edit- 

 ing of his treatise, but is said to have prepared the twelfth 

 chapter of the fourth book, in which there appears a table 

 of the fixed stars. 1 He also wrote the address to Gilbert 

 which is prefixed to the De Magnete. It seems not unrea- 

 sonable to assume that his belief in the practical importance 

 of the instruments which Gilbert describes caused him to 

 advocate speedy publication of the work, in order to bring 

 them into the hands of the merchant adventurers and nav- 

 igators as soon as possible, and this may account for the 

 brevity of the final chapters, wherein Gilbert develops his 

 cosmical theories. For these speculations Wright, al- 

 though a Copernican himself, had'little fancy, and merely 

 mentions them perfunctorily in his preface. 



While Wright was a navigator who had learned his art 

 at sea, Barlowe was one who believed himself to have 

 acquired it in cathedrals. In 1597 he published a book 

 entitled the Navigators' Supply, dedicated to the Earl of 

 Essex, wherein he ingratiates himself with the sea-faring 

 man by the following remarkable preface: "Touching 

 experience in these matters (compasses, etc.) I have none. 

 For, by natural construction of body, even when I was 

 young and strongest, I altogether abhorred the sea. How- 

 beit, that antipathy of my body against so barbarous an 

 element could never have hindered the sympathy of my 

 mind and hearty affection towards so worthy an art as 

 navigation is ; tied to that element, if you respect the out- 

 ward toil of the hand, but clearly freed therefrom, if you 

 regard the apprehension of the mind." But the refreshing 

 naivete of this is even surpassed by his effort to neutralize 

 its effect by claiming the especial consideration of the 

 reader for his book because it "Was written by a bishop's 

 sonne, and, by affinitie, to many bishops kinne" 

 1 Ridley: Magnetical Animadversions. London, 1617, p. n. 



