Sir “Jan” was offered money, or a place under government, but he did not choose to accept of either, informing the queen that he had “fifty pounds out at use,” and he apprehended that the number of people he saw about her must be very expensive. The queen, however, made lady Duddlestone a present of her gold watch from her side, which “my lady” considered as no small ornament, when she went to market, suspended over a blue apron.
I first found this interesting account in “Corry’s History of Bristol,” which was published a few years ago; but whence it was derived that author does not mention. As the editor of the Table Book is equally uninformed, perhaps some of his correspondents may be able to point out its origin; and, if it be authentic, communicate some particulars respecting the worthy knight and his dame.
Discoveries
OF THE
ANCIENTS AND MODERNS.
No. VI.
The Corpuscular Philosophy.
The two illustrious moderns, Newton and Gassendi, attribute the continual change which happens in bodies to the different figure and magnitude of their minute corpuscles; and affirm, that their different junction or separation, and the variety of their arrangement, constitute the differences of bodies. This corpuscular philosophy can be traced from the times of Democritus, to its founder Moschus the Phœnician. It does not appear that the Phœnician school admitted the indivisibility of atoms; whereas, Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus did. And so the philosophers in all ages, down to the Cartesians and Newtonians, admit the same. Aristotle, as great in metaphysics as able in mathematics, treats of it in his works of both kinds. A modern proposition respecting it has been deemed new, although anciently it was expressed in almost the very same terms.
The Newtonians say, “that the smallest parcel of matter is able to cover the largest extent of space, by the number of parts into which it may be divided; and that without so much as leaving any one pore of the smallest dimension uncovered.” Anaxagoras had previously said, that each body, of whatever size, was infinitely divisible; insomuch, that a particle so small as the half of the foot of the minutest insect, might furnish out of itself parts sufficient for covering an hundred million of worlds, without ever becoming exhaustible as to the number of its parts. Democritus expressed the like proposition, when he affirmed that it was “possible to make a world out of an atom.” Chrysippus says the same, when he maintains that a drop of wine may be divided into a number of parts, each of itself sufficient to mingle with all the small particles of the ocean.
Motion—its Acceleration—the Fall of Bodies.
The ancients, as well as the moderns, define motion to be change of place, or the passing from one place to another; they knew the acceleration of bodies in falling, but not so exactly as to determine its law or cause. It was an axiom of Aristotle and the Peripatetics, that a body in falling acquired a celerity of motion, proportionable to its distance from the place whence the motion began; but they knew not that this increase of the celerity of falling bodies was uniform, and that the spaces passed over in equal times increased proportionably to the unequal numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, &c. Two mistakes of Aristotle hindered him from arriving at the truth. The first was, that there were two tendencies in body; one downwards, carrying it to the centre, in those that were heavy; the other upwards, removing it from it, in those that were light. His second error was, that he thought different bodies rolled through space with a celerity proportional to their masses. He did not consider that the resistance of the medium was the only cause of this difference; for supposing them to move through an irresisting medium, or in vacuo, the lightest bodies would then fall with the same velocity as the heaviest. This is demonstrated by means of the air-pump, wherein paper, lead, and gold, descend with equal swiftness.
Yet all the ancients were not thus ignorant. Lucretius, instructed in the principles of Democritus and Epicurus, arrived at this knowledge, and supports it by such arguments, as might do honour to the most experienced naturalist of our times.—“Admitting that there was nothing in the vacuum to resist the motion of bodies, it necessarily followed, that the lightest would descend with a celerity equal to the weightiest; that where there was no resistance in the medium, bodies must always move through equal spaces in equal times; but that the case would be different in such mediums, as opposed divers degrees of resistance to the bodies passing through them.” Hereupon, he alleges the very same reasonings which Galileo draws from experience to support his theory. He says, that “the difference of velocities ought to increase or abate, according to the difference of resistance in the medium; and that because air and water resist bodies differently, they fall through these mediums with different degrees of velocity.” We shall [presently] see, that the ancients were acquainted with the principle of gravitation.