36 M. Van Swinden mi the Invention (^‘ Pendulumr-Cloclcs 
manifestly refers to the description already given above. The 
mistakes on this subject have arisen probably from a prevailing 
notion, that Hortensius, the Amsterdam professor, had been 
actually dispatched to Italy. This is confidently asserted by 
Brucker, in his Historia Philosopliice^ vol. v. p. 673, and has 
been copied in Bailly’s Hist, de VAstron. moderne, and Montu- 
cla’s Hist, des Mathematiques. The fact is, that Hortensius never 
departed on this voyage, though great preparations had been 
made, and the States had granted 2000 guilders for it ; it was 
first delayed, and then prevented by his death. Of the truth of 
this any one may be convinced, who will be at the trouble of 
perusing the letters of Vossius and Grotius, written, it must be 
remembered, about twenty years before Huygens claimed any 
invention, or before any controversy on the subject could arise. 
3. Of more consequence appears the direct assertion in the 
Acts of the Academy del Cimento^ which we quoted before, 
that the idea of conjoining the pendulum with the clock had 
been first of all conceived by Galileo, and actually put in prac- 
tice by his son Vinccnzio Galilei in 1649. I have already, I be- 
lieve, abundantly shown, that, in his communication to the 
States, Galileo had suggested nothing that can with propriety 
be termed a clock furnished with a pendulum., the only contri- 
vance to which Huygens lays claim. His last letter is of the 
30th December 1639, but he may, before his death, in 1641, 
have made the discovery, or his son, on the suggestion of his 
father, may have found it. From what I am enabled to pro- 
duce on this head, it appears to me unquestionable that Vincen- 
zio did accomplish, or endeavour to accomplish something. 
We need not go back to the period of 1636, to which the 
supposed invention of pendulum-clocks was referred by Prince 
Leopold de Medicis, in the same letter to Bouillau, the friend 
of Huygens, of which an extract was given in the earlier part 
of this narrative, except to remark^once more how egregiously 
Galileo’s communications to the States-General had been mis« 
taken. Indeed, so little have these been looked into by the 
writers who profess to found their claims upon them, that Bren- 
na, in his life of Galileo, (in Fabroni’s collection of Vital, Italo- 
rum excellentium), quotes the very letter which I have extract- 
ed under the first head, and says of it, De fabrica atque usu 
