| Title: | Letter, W. Rand To Hartlib |
|---|---|
| Dating: | 1 September 1651 |
| Ref: | 62/27/1A-4B |
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My much honoured freind,
Yesterday I received your kind letter with a parcell of bookes for which as also the former two packets, which I perceive yow ment to me, I give yow very many thankes, as also for your kind acceptance of my writeing, with desire to continue correspondence in this kind, which I readily embrace & were I not by profession a Christian & a Stoik I should be sorry & ashamed in regard of my poore condition that enforces me to accept with thankes of the favour you are pleased to doe me in the release of postage expences./ And now (Sir) ere I come to take notice of your Paris Doctors animadversions &c I think it very pertinent to say, that I conceive Dr Browne of Norwich the Author of Pseudodoxia Epidemica, is a man able to give yow much satisfaction in questions of that nature; as being a man not only (as I conceive) very well studyed, but that has made frequent experiments in nature bestowing much time paines & cost to that end./ The Dr of Paris is sorry the author of the large Epistle should give any advantage to carpeing witts, in which sorrow I would willingly beare a share & that our mourning may be the more solemne, I shall observe one solecisme that the Dr has not observed, which in many places, to my apprehension marrs the sense more then some passages noted by him & that is, the use of the word ingenuity in a sense in which to my knowledge it has never bin received in the latine or English, which solacisme, though in me it works no other effect then a harsh discord in musik, grating mine imagination; yet in æmulators it will give an occasion to scoff & traduce & therfore in the following edition I wish that some other word may be put in the roome, as wits, active spirits, activityes or Ingenies. I confess when I emended my booke, I hunted for some word of as plausible & [melting?] a pronunciation, but have not yet found any, the u & i in the middle & the y in the end have made that word very lushious & pleasing to [left margin:] the palate & apt to obtrude it selfe where it had no right. I would define Ingenuity to be an uprightnes & gallantry of mind, makeing a man owne truth & justice though to the prejudice of his owne interest. In the Romane Commonwealth, where they had slaves who being extremely kept short
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would often filtch & sharke & to save themselves from whipping, would frequently & grossly lie; it was counted the property of a freeman & one of an honest & generous nature, to acknowledge the truth upon all occasions; hence from ingenuus which noted a free man, came the abstract ingenuitas, noteing that candid disposition of owneing freely the truth upon all occasions. which quality is founded principally next the freedome of a mans civil condition, in a love of the faire idea of Truth & Iustice, an abhorring of fraud & injustice, with an undervalueing of all Things desireable or formidable that are wont to allure or scare men./ As for Helmont I have long bin of the Doctors mind that he had much of the mountebank in him, however of a good wit & giveing many pretty hints; all which, notwithstanding, are not his owne, but <many> borrowed from former writers, whom not nameing he does un-ingenuously: I could instance in many, but at present it shall suffice to say that he stole the invention of Gometius Pereira a learned & ingenious spanish physitian, who first discovered that a fever was the multiplication of naturall heat caused by the Hearts labouring to free it selfe from assaults made upon the Vitall faculty. the Spanyards bookes being hardly found, Campanella first & then Helmont made a great noyse with his Invention, never nameing the gallant Author. & Helmont to make his theft more cleanly, disguised the invention with the barbarous terme of archeus & archei furor. That smutty oates should cause the Neapolitan disease I account an hypochondriacall conceit of Helmont. & what ever may be the cause of smuttynes in corne, I conceive it not altogether irrationall to contemplate some graines in a microscope; to see whether the blacknes be radically in all the minute particles, or whether it be not discernable that there is a mixture of particles tainted & heterogeneall with others that are naturall, white & sound. The sense of that passage of the
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of wheat, the one from Spaine the other from the Northern parts, being first measured in that measure & then weighed. If the measure shall be distinctly set downe & the weight with reference to the measures & weights used in our parts, the passage will I suppose be very plaine. The passage about sweet-marjerom, with the helpe of a
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particular providence of God to accommodate the lower world, wee shall be in danger to asperse the same providence with that injustice which is noted in that old proverb, which forbids us to rob Peter that we may pay Paul: forasmuch as some other orbes must be defrauded by our accommodation. yea & we must acknowledge a decay in the Earth or sunn or both, which must make it needfull that there should be such a descent. So that I encline to the negative & if I were convinc't of a descent I should doubt, whether it were not regular & according to the Law of the sunns Creation & constant oeconomie, to descend & ascend againe in certaine great revolutions of yeares, for the interchangeable accommodation of superior & inferior orbes, as it enclines to the North & South yearly according to the Interests of the severall inhabitants of the orbe wee inhabit. However I agree with the Doctor to handle such a point controverted by so able wits & of such industry & activity, with all possible modesty. And now it comes into my mind that I may be mistaken in the whole question; but let it pass./ I take howing to be weeding & an how to bee a weeding-hook: wheats lodging to be the bending of the eares downewards, caused by the falling of some weighty showre of haile or raine. Hawes & Hipps are (I suppose) those red berryes, which are found in our hedges in the winter being food for the black-bird & thrush & an invitation to feildefares & other outlandish birds to visit us in the hard weather. The haw I account the round & smaller berry growing as I remember upon a kind of thorne; the hip is the larger of a conicall figure representing the hip of a man from whence it had (perhaps) its name, & growes upon a kind of bramble if my memory faile me not. the piles on marish sides I take to be timber that has bin sharpened at one end & drove into the ground for the makeing of barricades against the sea; which being upon occasion of repaire pulled up are left there lieing &c. The tale of the Glassenbury Hawthorne is old, how that it flowers every christmas in memory of
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Ioseph of Arimathea, who is said to have preached the Gospel in England & to have resided Glassenbury: Cambden I suppose mentions it. I have allwayes counted it a fable, but your freind avouches the truth & makes no wonder of it. To what your English freind sayes about silkewormes & planting of willowes I have little to adjoyne, save that I am no more a freind to the makeing of silke then of Gold, in regard of the vaine delight that too many take in those shimering materialls, unless silke or gold might be made so plentifull, as to be contemned. The contemplation of the nature & artifice of the silkeworme, I take to be very delightfull. And now (Sir) yow heare what I have to say to the premises./ I am glad my thoughts are acceptable to Mr Dury (to whom I beseech yow present my service) & that the rather because I doubted some disgust from that passage about the publique assemblies: & thinke fit now to add, that I am not against all distinction of persons according to their quality in matter of goeing, sitting, &c provided in the whole, it be not to much affected or too superciliously managed. Yet that in that place other men come in humbly to present themselves before the infinite & dreadful majesty of God, who takes no regard to ther dignityes or distances, in whose eye oft times, the poorest & meanlyest-accoutred, is more honourable then he that is as richly trapped as ever was Bucephalus, or my Lord Majors horse on the greatest holy-day; that then & there men & woemen should take care to coope themselves up in severall coopes emblematically distinguished according to the value they putt upon themselves, or others put upon them because of the high place they hold in the favour of great Mammon: this I conceive to be a shame to Christianity. And I must againe commend the christian prudence & modest sobriety of the dutch nation in that particular in all their meeting places of what sect soever of Christians. I shall not contend much with him that shall say, that persons in place in the commonwealth, to preserve their reputation for the publik goods sake, ought to have their seates in the synagogues somewhat dignified: but I shall wish it may
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be done with more sobriety & less affectation then may (perhaps) be not only allowable, but commendable & requisite in places of civil concourse. As slight a thing as this may seeme to any man, I account it of as much moment to reforme the synagogues through England in this point, almost as the pulling downe of images & Altars <was> & had I the power of Mr Hobbs his Liviathan in England, it should be the first worke I would doe, to order the churches so as that every one that comes there to worship God, might be told by his eyes where he is, & that the day is hasting when he shall be judged upon even ground & equall termes with the meanest & most contemptible hee or she present. This ocular sermon would doe a great many more good, then all the sermons they now heare in a twelvemoneth, while they are busyed in reflecting upon their owne bravery & eminence, with the notice others take of that &c. Many I suppose would come to church no more. but it matters not, their roome will be better then their company. and so far by way of apology & explication of that point. I shall be very readie to satisfie Mr Dury in any thing he shall please to propound, according to my skill./ I have very little insight into the high-dutch; the low-dutch in bookes I understand indifferent well. Acontius had bin now well ended in case I had received the bookes when I first sent <to my brother> for them. but partly busynes & partly discouragement because the first part was not vented has (I thinke) kept him from sending me the bookes, howbeit I have lately againe writ for them. It has bin printed in dutch & the Edition sold, neither can I get a latine copie in this towne. Perhaps Hancock at Popeshend-alley-corner dissembles the sale of the bookes, because he is to give me somewhat for the Copy as by arbitration of freinds shall be judged reasonable. Yow may please sometime to try him, by askeing if he can furnish yow with halfe a hundred of those bookes to send into the Countrey &c when yow come from the change. The bombast title which the booke seller would needs affixe to it I beleive has done the booke no good. If he did print a new title SATHANS STRATAGEMS in 8 Bookes by IACOBUS ACONTIUS & no more with
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the date of the present yeare, it could well helpe the sale of the bookes. In a dutch Ecclesiasticall history in folio, of great account in the towne, there is notable mention made of the worke of Acontius, which I conceive has caused the sale of the bookes in this place. I wish that history spake English. Tis called Uten-bogaerts History & would be very acceptable & profitable in my opinion to the english nation. I desired by Mr Worseley that yow would please to take notice of it. If yow cannot get a sight of it there, I shall send a summary therof in writeing, by sea./ I desire to know what late
Your much obliged freind to serve
Amsterdam September yow,
1. 1651. new style W. Rand.
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For my much honoured freind
Mr Samuel Hartlib att
his house neere Charing-cross
over against Angel Court
London
[squiggles]
[below, hand Y:]
Mr Rand of Natural Phylosophy
Chymistry &c