PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS OF LORD BACON. 421 



There is a letter from Sir Toby Matthew to Bacon, which 

 contains a curious piece of information, not hitherto parti- 

 cularly noticed, I believe, by any of the learned. It was 

 written from Brussels in 1619, when Sir Toby was on his re- 

 turn to Florence, where, during a former residence, he had 

 published an Italian translation of Bacon's Essays. " There 

 " was with me to-day," says he, " one Mr Richard White, 

 " who hath spent some time at Florence, and is now go- 

 " ittg to England. He tells me, that Galileo had answer- 

 " ed your discourse concerning the flux and re-flux of the sea ; 

 " and was sending it unto me ; but that he hindered Ga- 

 " lileo, because his answer was founded upon a false sup- 

 " position ; namely, that there was in the ocean a full sea but 

 " once in the twenty-four hours. But now," adds Sir Toby, 

 " I will call upon Galileo again *." As the discourse on the 

 Tides, here alluded to, was not published till several years af- 

 ter Bacon's death j~ , it must have been sent to Galileo in ma- 

 nuscript. What farther communication took place upon the 

 subject, does not appear. There is no allusion to any of Ba- 

 con's writings, so far as I know, in the works of Galileo ; 

 though the circumstance just mentioned, and the unquestionable 

 notoriety of these writings in Italy, during his time, render it 

 difficult to believe, that he had not perused them. The fol- 

 lowing passage, contained in a letter written from thence to the 

 Earl of Devonshire, near, but before the time of Bacon's death, 



furnishes 



* Bacon's Works, vol. iii. p. 562. 



f It was first published, I believe, by Isaac Gruter in 1653, in the collec- 

 tion entitled Fran. Bacon i de Verulamio Scripta in Nalurati ct Universali Phi- 

 losophia, ll'mo, Amst. The pieces contained in this collection, were given to 

 Gruter by Sir William Boswell, the English Resident in Holland, to whom 

 Bacon had committed them by his will. 



