LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 65 



WALTER WARNER TO ROBERT PAYNE. 



[MS. Birch, Brit. Mus. 4279, fol. 290, Orig.] 



Westminster, October 17th, 1634. 



Good Mr. Payne, For the problem of refractions, which 

 you write of, I pray you by any meanes send it to Mr. Hobbes, 

 together with my most harty love and service, or whatsoever 

 els you shall receve from me that may be thought worth the 

 communicating, yf it plese you to impart it to him, you shall 

 do me a plesure. For 1 have found him free with me, and I 

 will not be reserved with him, yf it plese God I may live to see 

 him again. That analogy which you have, though it be 

 but a particular passion of the subject it concerns, yet it is 

 very conducible to the theory and investigation of the cause 

 of refraction, the intention whereof ex principiis opticis is the 

 grettest magistery in the optik science, and for the practise 

 it is of that consequence, as without it the table of refractions 

 for glasse and crystall, which is of grettest vse, can never be 

 constructed, without which table the dioptrick part of that doc- 

 trine, which begins not by reson of the glasses to be in grettest 

 esteem, will still remayne imperfect, at best not in that degree 

 of perfection by much, as by the help of a well constituted 

 table of the angles of refraction the busines, as I conceve it, 

 might be brought to. I would be very glad to see Mons r . 

 Mydorge's way ; yf he make a secret of it, I doubt not but 

 Mr. Hobbes will know how to trafik with him. So I rest 

 Your very loving and true friend, 



WALTER WARNER. 



ROBERT PAYNE TO WALTER WARNER. 



[MS. Birch, Brit. Mus. 4279, fol. 171, Orig.] 



Welbeck, June 21, 1635. 



Worthy Sir, I have here returned you back your papers, 

 conteining the probleme of the mid-ship-mould. S r Charles 

 and myself have perus'd them, but cannot understand more 

 of them then is written in Latine ; the rest we suppose are 

 notes of remembrance, which serve well for your use, but give 

 us not light sufficient to understand your meaning. Only the 

 sixtene cases we apprehend well ; but the demonstrations of 

 them we yet understand not, farther then that in the Latine 



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