[DS] Aubrey gives in colours the coat: 'gules, 3 lozenges ermine [Denham],' surrounded by laurels. He adds the note:—'this coate is in stone and thus coloured, on the roofe or vaulting of the cathedral church at Winchester: Sir John told me his family was originally westerne.' He adds the reference 'vide A. Wood's Hist. Oxon.'
[DT] Aubrey, in MS. Wood F. 39, fol. 193, writing Oct. 22, 1672, says:—'Sir John Denham wrott an essay against gameing, to shew his detestation of it to his father, printed by N. Brookes, at the Angel in Cornhill. I have it, about 3 or 4 sheetes, 8vo. His name is not to it, but I know 'twas his; and a kinsman of his, that was one of his father's clarkes, gave the copy to Brookes: and Sir John Denham owned it to me.'
René Descartes (1596-1650/1).
[825]Monsieur Renatus Des Cartes,
'nobilis Gallus, Perroni dominus, summus mathematicus et philosophus; natus Hagae Turonum pridie Calendas Apriles, 1596; denatus Holmiae Calendis Februarii, 1650'—this inscription I find under his picture graved by C. V. Dalen.
How he spent his time in his youth, and by what method he became so knowing, he tells the world in his treatise entituled Of Method. The Societie of Jesus glorie in that theyr order had the educating of him. He lived severall yeares at Egmont (neer the Hague), from whence he dated severall of his bookes. He was too wise a man to encomber himselfe with a wife; but as he was a man, he had the desires and appetites of a man; he therefore kept a good conditioned hansome woman that he liked, and by whom he had some children (I thinke 2 or 3). 'Tis pity but comeing from the braine[826] of such a father, they should be well cultivated. He was so eminently learned that all learned men made visits to him, and many of them would desire him to shew them his ... of instruments (in those dayes mathematicall learning lay much in the knowledge of instruments, and, as Sir H. S.[827] sayd, in doeing of tricks), he would drawe out a little drawer under his table, and shew them a paire of compasses with one of the legges broken; and then, for his ruler, he used a sheet of paper folded double. This from Alexander Cowper (brother of Samuel), limner to Christina, queen of Sweden, who was familiarly acquainted there with Des Cartes.
[828]Mr. Hobbes was wont to say that had Des Cartes kept himselfe wholy to geometrie that he had been the best geometer in the world. He did very much admire him, but sayd that he could not pardon him for writing in the defence of transubstantiation which he knew to bee absolutely against his judgment[829]—quod N. B.