the Secretary of State, in order to subject the lands he discovered to the crown of Great Britain.

Now if, by these hints, the reader can help himself to a farther discovery of the nature and contents of these travels, he is welcome to as much light as they afford him; I am obliged, by all the ties of honour, not to speak more openly.

But if any man shall see such very extraordinary voyages, into such very extraordinary nations, which manifest the most distinguishing marks of a philosopher, a politician, and a legislator; and can imagine them to belong to a surgeon of a ship, or a captain of a merchantman, let him remain in his ignorance.

And whoever he be, that shall further observe, in every page of such a book, that cordial love of mankind, that inviolable regard to truth, that passion for his dear country, and that particular attachment to the excellent Princess Queen Anne; surely that man deserves to be pitied, if, by all those visible signs and characters, he cannot distinguish and acknowledge the great Scriblerus.

CHAP. XIV.

OF THE DISCOVERIES AND WORKS OF THE GREAT SCRIBLERUS, MADE AND TO BE MADE, WRITTEN AND TO BE WRITTEN, KNOWN AND UNKNOWN.

HERE therefore, at this great period, we end our first book. And here, O reader, we entreat thee utterly to forget all thou hast hitherto read, and to cast thy eyes only forward to that boundless field the next shall open unto thee; the fruits of which (if thine, or our sins do not prevent) are to spread and multiply over this our work, and over all the face of the earth.

In the mean time, know what thou owest, and what thou yet mayest owe, to this excellent person, this prodigy of our age; who may well be called, the philosopher of ultimate causes, since, by a sagacity peculiar to himself, he hath discovered effects in their very cause; and without the trivial helps of experiments, or observations, hath been the inventor of most of the modern systems and hypotheses.

He hath enriched mathematics* with many precise and geometrical quadratures of the circle. He

* How justly soever the knowledge of mathematics is said to contribute to make men sound reasoners; yet it may be observed, that neither Hobbes, nor Bayle, nor Locke, nor Hume, nor Chillingworth, nor Hooker, nor Butler, some of the closest and most acute reasoners that ever wrote, knew much of the mathematics. Warton.

first discovered the cause of gravity, and the intestine motion of fluids.

To him we owe all the observations of the parallax of the pole-star, and all the new theories of the deluge.

He it was, that first taught the right use sometimes of the fuga vacui, and sometimes of the materia subtilis, in resolving the grand phenomena of

nature.

He it was, that first found out the palpability of colours; and by the delicacy of his touch, could distinguish the different vibrations of the heterogeneous rays of light.

His were the projects of perpetuum mobiles, flying engines, and pacing saddles; the method of discovering the longitude by bomb-vessels, and of increasing the trade-wind by vast plantations of reeds and sedges.

I shall mention only a few of his philosophical and mathematical works.

1. A complete Digest of the Laws of Nature, with a review of those that are obsolete or repealed, and of those that are ready to be renewed and put in force.

2. A Mechanical Explication of the Formation of the Universe, according to the Epicurean Hypothesis.

3. An Investigation of the quantity of real Matter in the Universe, with the proportion of the specific gravity of solid matter to that of fluid.

4. Microscopical Observations on the Figure and Bulk of the constituent parts of all Fluids. A calculation of the proportion in which the fluids of the earth decrease, and of the period in which they will be totally exhausted.

5. A Computation of the Duration of the Sun, and how long it will last before it be burned out.

6. A Method to apply the Force arising from the immense Velocity of Light to mechanical pur

poses.

7. An Answer to the question of a curious Gentleman: how long a New Star was lighted up before its appearance to the Inhabitants of our Earth? To which is subjoined a Calculation, how much the Inhabitants of the Moon eat for Supper, considering that they pass a Night equal to fifteen of our natural days.

8. A Demonstration of the natural Dominion of the Inhabitants of the Earth over those of the Moon, if ever an intercourse should be opened between them. With a proposal of a Partition Treaty, among the earthly Potentates, in case of such discovery.

9. Tide-Tables, for a Comet, that is to approximate towards the Earth.

10. The Number of the Inhabitants of London, determined by the Reports of the Gold-finders, and the Tonnage of their Carriages; with allowance for the extraordinary quantity of the Ingesta and Egesta of the people of England, and a deduction of what is left under dead walls, and dry ditches.

It will from hence be evident, how much all his studies were directed to the universal benefit of mankind. Numerous have been his projects to this end, of which two alone will be sufficient to show the amazing grandeur of his genius. The first was a proposal, by a general contribution of all princes, to pierce the first crust or nucleus of this our earth, quite through, to the next concentrical sphere. The advantage he proposed from it was, to find the parallax of the fixed stars; but chiefly to refute Sir Isaac Newton's Theory of Gravity, and Mr. Halley's of the Variations. The second was, to build Two Poles to the Meridian, with immense light-houses on the top of them; to supply the defect of nature, and to make the longitude as easy to be calculated as the latitude. Both these he could not but think very practicable, by the power of all the potentates of the world..

May we presume after these to mention, how he descended from the sublime to the beneficial parts. of knowledge, and particularly his extraordinary practice of physic. From the age, complexion, or weight of the person given, he contrived to prescribe at a distance, as well as at a patient's bedside. He taught the way to many modern physi

* Many idle projects of Maupertuis deserve the same ridicule; and this passage, though written many years before those of the philosopher of Berlin, may pass for an able satire on them, and exactly hit their absurdities; which Voltaire has effectually exposed with infinite wit and ridicule, and for which Maupertuis took ample revenge, by occasioning the rupture betwixt this poet and the King of Prussia. Warton.