^06 M. Van Swindeii on the Invention (yf' PendulurtuClocks 
da quel poco che fii mmiupidato ed abhozata dal figliuoloy^ To 
which Huygens, according to the same writer, would have an- 
iswered : “ Jaut hien crohx pourtant^ puisqdim tel Prince 
Vassure, que Galileo ait eu aiiparavant moi cefte penseeT" 
{Storia della litter atur a Italiana^ t. vhi. p. 156.) This letter 
of the Prince I have not found among the papers in my hands. 
The words above quoted from Huygens, relate to what Count 
Malvasia had published in his Ephemerides^ printed in 1662 at 
Florence, that he possessed at his house a clock, “ the motion 
of which was regulated by a pendulum, according to the man- 
ner discovered at Florence some years heJoreT This does not 
prove that tliis clock existed before the publication of Huygens's 
description, but merel}^ that Malvasia considered the application 
of pendulums to clocks as an invention of the Florentines. 
Nor does he attribute it directly to Galileo ; but he certainly 
takes it away from Huygens. That the Florentines claimed 
the discovery, was not new to the latter, since, ^already two years 
before, he had received from Rome a letter, (dated March 1660,) 
in which the writer informs him, that he had heard at Florence 
that pendulum-clocks had been invented there for some time, and 
that somebody had even sketched out to him in a rough manner 
what Galileo had to make on that principle. Nor 
was he ignorant of what Prince Leopold de Medicis wrote in 
April 1659, to Bouillan at Paris, from whom he had received 
a copy of the description of Huygens, namely, that the appli- 
cation of the pendulum to clocks had been a subject attended to 
at Florence for three years, and that an artist had made a clock, 
which he (the Prince) hoped would succeed. Consequently this 
v/ork had not yet been perfectly finished. Extracts of that let- 
ter were sent to him by Bouillan, {Leyden MSS.) and this lat- 
ter gentleman, upon receiving Huygens's answer, expresses him- 
self highly satisfied with it, and sent his own words to the 
Prince, who, in a subsequent letter, acquits Huygens entirely 
of the charge of having wilfully attributed to himself the dis- 
covery of Galileo, {Ib.). This defence of Huygens to Bouillan 
would throw much light on the subject ; unfortunately it has 
not come down to us, and he himself seldom kept minutes of his 
letters ; but very rarely we find short remarks subjoined to letters 
