John Aubrey: My Own Life (15 page)

Lord Bacon came often
²⁰
to visit Sir John Danvers at Chelsea. Sir John told me that after his lordship wrote the
History of Henry VII
, he sent a copy of the manuscript to him, desiring his opinion of it before it was printed. Sir John said: ‘Your lordship knows that I am no scholar.’ ‘’Tis no matter,’ Lord Bacon replied, ‘I know what a scholar can say; I would know what
you
can say.’ Sir John read it and gave his opinion, for which Lord Bacon was grateful. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘a scholar would never have told me this.’ I am sorry that I have forgotten what it was Sir John misliked in the manuscript.

. . .

April

Mr Potter is greatly obliged
²¹
to me for letting him have John Wilkins’s book,
Mathematical Magick
, which interests him very much. The book contains accounts of strange phenomena and happenings, e.g. water round the moon and the magnetic attraction of bodies. Mr Potter has discussed with me the earth’s magnetism and motion. His idea is that if there were loose parts round the moon they would fall to the centre of the earth. He wonders if the interior of the moon may be inhabited, though not the exterior. He doubts the opinion expressed in the book that the higher from the earth bodies go the lighter they are, losing their gravity the more distant they are from the earth’s centre.

Mr Potter considers
²²
that flight is impracticable because materials could not stand the strain – the weight being so great and the material too fragile in proportion to motive power (he compares a flea and an ape). But given materials of sufficient strength he says he can imagine the possibility of flight. He is interested too in the possibility of submarine navigation and has a conception of how it could be done, providing the water under the surface is calm (he envisages a pipe from the surface to the boat, aided by bellows). He has also sent me a pencil sketch of an ingenious cart with legs.

. . .

I have fallen in love – at first sight – with the incomparable good-conditioned gentlewoman Miss Mary Wiseman.

I am like Virgil’s Dido
²³
, wounded by love:

Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves,

From street to street the raving Dido roves.

So when the watchful shepherd, from the blind,

Wounds with a random shaft the careless hind,

Distracted with her pain she flies the woods,

Bounds o’er the lawn, and seeks the silent floods,

With fruitless care; for still the fatal dart

Sticks in her side, and rankles in her heart.

. . .

May

Mr Lydall tells me that Dr Petty has discovered how to set a field of corn by means of a sowing and harrowing engine; that Mr Christopher Wren of Wadham College has invented a means of weighing grains, scruples, drams and ounces with the same weight, and also an engine for double writing. Mr Lydall now has of a copy of Athanasius Kircher’s
Ars magna lucis et umbrae
, on experiments in geometry and illusion, and if he finds in it secrets worth imparting he will share them with me.

Here are some
²⁴
of the most interesting problems Mr Lydall is thinking about:

– How by means of a cylinder to make any image appear hanging in the air.

– How to draw pictures on a cone, so that at one set distance they shall appear in true proportion, and at all others deformed.

– How by the use of many plain glasses reflecting light in the same place to burn anything at a distance.

– How to make a statue like Memnon’s, in the Theban Necropolis, which, when heated by the sun, shall breathe and send forth a sound.

. . .

August

My friend from Trinity College, Anthony Ettrick, has married Anne Davenant, one of the great mathematician Edward Davenant’s daughters. She is a notable algebrist. I know this from when her father taught me.

. . .

23 August

On this day
²⁵
, after dinner, I saw Mr Christopher Love beheaded on Tower Hill for plotting against the Commonwealth. I have never seen a person beheaded before, and hope never to again. The sky was as clear and delicate as any I have seen, but shortly after Mr Love’s suffering and execution it began to thicken, the clouds gathered black and dismal, and since then there have been terrible claps of thunder through the night, the greatest I have ever heard. I believe this is an omen: such a tempest tonight as one might think the machine of the world is dissolving. His poor wife – now widow – is pregnant with their fifth child.

. . .

The bookseller Mr Crooke
²⁶
at the Green Dragon in St Paul’s Churchyard has printed Mr Hobbes’s
Leviathan: or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil
. Mr Hobbes wrote the book in exile in France where he has been for over a decade now. From the printing press in London,
Leviathan
has flown forth to neighbouring regions, passionately attacking those who fail to see that the monarch – not the parliament under him – is the absolute representative of his people. Since the execution of the King, there has been talk of a free state in England and praise for the benefits of republicanism. But Mr Hobbes will have none of it. He is hostile to the English and Scottish rebels and an ardent defender of monarchy. He is as hostile to the Presbyterian clergy as he is to the Church of Rome, which both pretend that the Kingdom of God is of this world. Mr Hobbes insists that religion cannot have a power distinct from that of the civil state. He is opposed to what he calls religious ‘enthusiasm’.

. . .

My friend Dr William Petty
²⁷
knows Mr Hobbes. They met in Paris a few years ago, studying anatomy. Dr Petty has drawn the illustrative schemes for Mr Hobbes’s treatise on optics. When he was a boy, his greatest delight was to watch the artificers – smiths, watchmakers, carpenters, joiners, etc.

Since the printing of
Leviathan
, Mr Hobbes has lost the protection of the King’s supporters in France, who are angered by his arguments against religion. He will come back to England before the end of the year.

. . .

15 November

My friend Anthony Ettrick’s son was born today.

. . .

At last I have met
²⁸
Dr Harvey, whom I admired from a distance when I was a student and heard so much about from mutual friends. He is an old man now and a critic of the Commonwealth. He lives here in London with his brother Eliab and they drink coffee together. He has given me advice about my longed-for tour of Italy: what to see, whom to visit, what to read. He recommends Aristotle, Cicero and Avicenna particularly. He has very bad handwriting. Dr Harvey grieves for his papers that were destroyed in Whitehall at the start of the rebellion against the King: papers concerning dissections of frogs, toads and other animals, and a book he had written about insects. He says, ‘Man is but a great mischievous baboon.’

I have met Mr James Harrington recently too, through one of my cousins. He is of middling stature, a well-trussed man, strong and thick, well set, sanguine, quick-hot-fiery hazel eyes, thick, moist curled hair.

Mr Harrington was
²⁹
an acquaintance of Sir Walter Raleigh’s, whose grand-nephews I knew at school. He told me an amusing story about the famous courtier. Being invited to dinner with some great person, where his son was to go with him, Sir Walter said to his son: ‘Thou art such a quarrelsome, affronting creature, that I am ashamed to have such a bear in my company.’ Master Walt promised his father he would behave himself. So away they went, and young Master Walt was very demure at least until halfway through the dinner. Then he said: ‘I, this morning, went to a whore. I was very eager of her, kissed and embraced her, and went to enjoy her, when she thrust me from her, and vowed I should not, “For”, she said, “your father lay with me but an hour ago.”’ Sir Walter, being so strangely surprised and put out of countenance at so great a table, fetched his son a damned blow over the face. His son, rude as he was, would not strike his father, so struck the face of the gentleman that sat next to him and said: ‘Box about, ’twill come to my father anon.’ It is now a common proverb.

. . .

Anno 1652

March

I have been to see Mr Hobbes
³⁰
. He has returned to London from Paris. He lives for the most part in Fetter Lane, where he is finishing his book
De Corpore
in Latin. In cold weather he wears a black velvet coat lined with fur, and all year round he wears boots of Spanish leather, laced or tied along the side with black ribbons. He enjoys the company and learned conversation of Mr John Selden, Dr William Harvey, etc.

. . .

A coffee house has opened, the first in London, in St Michael’s Alley in Cornhill, opposite the church. Mr Hodges, who trades in Turkish merchandise, encouraged his coachman, Mr Bowman, to set it up and promote the virtues of the coffee drink. It will prevent drowsiness and make one fit for business, but should not be drunk after supper as then it will prevent sleep.

It was Mr Mudiford
³¹
who first introduced the practice of coffee to London about two years ago. This worthy gentleman deserves the respect of the whole nation! Chaco-lati, or chocolate, was first brought out of Spain by Sir Arthur Hopton who was ambassador there in about 1647. My lady Browne, wife of Sir Richard Browne, was the first English lady who brought it into common use after residing with the French King in whose house Sir Arthur Hopton lived after he was recalled from Spain.

. . .

August

Dr William Petty
³²
has been recommended to Parliament for appointment as one of the surveyors of Ireland. My good friend Edmund Wylde of Glazeley Hall, Salop, MP for Droitwich, helped secure this employment for Dr Petty, even though he was not previously acquainted with him. Mr Wylde is a great promoter of talented good men on grounds of merit alone. The survey of Ireland will be exact and comprehensive and Dr Petty will make use of ordinary fellows, foot soldiers perhaps, to circumambulate with their box and needles and take measurements even without understanding what they are doing.

. . .

Sir Charles Cavendish
³³
died earlier this year of scurvey. During his lifetime he collected (in Italy, France, etc.) enough manuscript mathematical books to fill a hogshead. He intended to have them printed. His executor, an attorney of Clifford’s Inn, died soon afterwards, and left his wife executrix. She has sold Sir Charles Cavendish’s incomparable collection by weight as waste paper to the paste-board makers. This is a caution to all those who have good manuscripts to take care to see them printed in their lifetimes.

. . .

October

The London physician
³⁴
Mr Samuel Bave has examined my father and finds he is an utter wreck: almost all his organs are diseased and his ailments are like a many-headed hydra. Even so, Mr Bave will persevere trying to cure him.

. . .

21 October

On this day my father
³⁵
died. Three (or maybe four) days ago – grief disorders my memory – I lay perfectly awake in my bed at nine o’clock in the morning and heard three distinct knocks on the bedhead, as though with a ruler or ferula. I believe this was an omen warning of his death.

. . .

26 October

We buried my father today in the south-east chancel of Kington St Michael church.

. . .

November

My friend Mr Potter
³⁶
sends his condolences upon the death of my father. He promises to find the time to prepare the crooked pipe we will need for the experiment we have been planning on the anatomy of veins. When he has done so, I will go and visit him in Kilmington, or else he will come to me. I remember how the witch Medea’s rejuvenation of old Aeson got Mr Potter thinking about the circulation of the blood. If only the physicians could have succeeded as Medea did. If only they could have rejuvenated my father.

I will go to London soon and find lodgings there.

. . .

At Wilton House
³⁷
, the Earl of Pembroke introduced me to the poet Sir John Denham. He was much beloved by the late King, who valued him for his ingenuity. I remember when Sir John’s
Cooper’s Hill
was printed at Oxford in 1643 after the Battle of Edgehill, on brown paper, for they could get nothing else at that troubled time. Later in the war, before the execution of the King, Sir John got the two young dukes out of London and conveyed them to the Prince of Wales and Queen Mother in France. He came back to England this year and since he is in some straits, financial, etc., the Earl of Pembroke is kindly entertaining him in London and Wilton. Sir John is translating Virgil’s
Aeneid
, and also burlesquing it.

. . .

December

I am lodging at the Rainbow-Stationer in Fleet Street near the Middle Temple.

Today I went
³⁸
for the first time to the intelligencer Mr Hartlib’s house, in Charing Cross, over against Angel Yard. I sought him out on my own initiative because he has a large number of ingenious correspondents in this country and beyond (he was born in Poland around 1600, but has lived most of his life in London). He has collected a wealth of information about books, manuscripts and inventions, which he disseminates widely. Three years ago, the Parliament voted Mr Hartlib a pension of 100 li. a year for the advancement of arts and learning.