This quotation is from memory, and perhaps may not be verbally correct.
[23] In this passage the author seems to have anticipated, and exposed the absurdity of an argument now considered very forcible against astrology: viz. that “if the art were true, then any two individuals born under the same meridian, in the same latitude, and at the same moment of time, must have one and the same destiny; although one were born a prince, and the other a mendicant.” Such a monstrous conclusion is nowhere authorized by any astrological writer; it is, on the contrary, always maintained by all of them, that the worldly differences and distinctions, alluded to in the text, inevitably prevent this exact resemblance of destiny; and all that they presume to assert is, that, in their respective degrees, any two individuals, so born, will have a partial similarity in the leading features of their fate. Whether their assertion is uniformly borne out, I will not take upon me to determine, but it would be unfair not to subjoin the following fact:—
In the newspapers of the month of February, 1820, the death of a Mr. Samuel Hemmings is noticed: it was stated that he had been an ironmonger, and prosperous in trade; that he was born on the 4th of June, 1738, at nearly the same moment as his late Majesty, and in the same parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields; that he went into business for himself in October, 1760; that he married on the 8th September, 1761; and finally, after other events of his life had resembled those which happened to the late King, that he died on Saturday, the 29th January, 1820.
These coincidences are, at least, highly remarkable.
[24] The Greek word for this, γοναι, though found in the Elzevir edition from which this translation is made, does not appear in other copies; the Basle edition of 1553 says merely, η τε τιμη και το αξιωμα, “honour and rank,” which is the sense also given in the Latin translation of Perugio, 1646, without any mention of “offspring.”
[25] In allusion to the sympathetic powers anciently attributed to certain stones.
[26] Whalley, in translating this chapter, makes the following remark on this mention of the magnet: “However much later it was that the loadstone became known in Europe, what is mentioned of it in this chapter makes it evident that it was known in Ægypt, where Ptolemy lived, in his time.”—That worthy translator forgot (if indeed he ever knew) that the loadstone’s property of attracting iron was known to Thales, and commented on by Plato and Aristotle, all of whom lived some centuries, more or less, before Ptolemy. It is its polarity that was not known until the 11th or 12th century; and the French say that the earliest notice of that polarity is found in a poem of Guyot of Provence, who was at the Emperor Frederick’s Court at Mentz in 1181.—See the French Encyclopædia, &c.
[27] Respecting the effect here asserted to be produced on the magnet by garlick, I have found the following mention in a book called “The Gardener’s Labyrinth,” printed at London in 1586. “Here also I thought not to ouerpasse the maruellous discord of the adamant-stone and garlike, which the Greeks name to be an Antipatheia or naturall contrarietie betweene them; for such is the hatred or contrarietie between these two bodies (lacking both hearing and feeling), that the adamant rather putteth away, than draweth to it, iron, if the same afore be rubbed with garlike; as Plutarchus hath noted, and, after him, Claudius Ptolemæus. Which matter, examined by divers learned, and founde the contrarie, caused them to judge, that those skilful men (especially Ptolemie) ment the same to be done with the Egyptian Garlike; which Dioscorides wrote to be small garlike, and the same sweete in taste, possessing a bewtifull head, tending unto a purple colour. There be which attribute the same to Ophioscoridon, which Antonius Microphonius Biturix, a singular learned man, and wel practised in sundry skilles, uttered this approoued secrete to a friend whom he loued.”
In the same book, the “Ophioscoridon” is thus spoken of: “There is another wild garlike which the Greeks name Ophioscoridon; in English Ramsies; growing of the owne accord in the fallow fieldes.”
Cornelius Agrippa (according to the English translation) has stated that the presence of the diamond also neutralizes the attractive power of the magnet. But as that great magician was somewhat inclined to quibbling, it is not impossible that by the word he uses for “diamond” (viz. adamas) he may mean the adamant or loadstone; which would reduce his assertion merely to this, that one magnet will counteract another.