50
ESSEX WORTHIES.
III.—WILLIAM GILBERT, OF COLCHESTER, FOUNDER OF
THE SCIENCE OF ELECTRICITY.
By SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, D.Sc., B.A., F.R.A.S., &c.
(Principal and Professor of Physics, City and Guilds Technical College, Finsbury.)
[A Lecture delivered at the Meeting at Colchester, July 5th, 1890.]
AMONG the worthies whose names have made famous the
"spacious times of great Elizabeth," none in this nineteenth
century deserves greater honour than Dr. William Gilbert, President
of the Royal College of Physicians, and Physician in Ordinary to
Her Majesty the Queen.1 His name, though less familiar to the
general public, is known to every electrician as that of the man who
not only rescued from empiricism and mysticism the subject of the
magnet, but who also founded the theory of the compass by his
demonstration of the magnetism of the globe. In an age when the
fantastic philosophies of the schoolmen still prevailed he calmly
worked out the inductive method of reasoning from the known to
the unknown, trying his arguments by the touchstone of experiment.
Nor is even this his greatest glory. What Shakespeare is to the
drama—what Raleigh is to geography—what Drake is to naval
warfare—what Bacon is to philosophy—that, and more than that, is
Gilbert to the science of electricity. There were dramatists before
Shakespeare, geographers before Raleigh, naval heroes before Drake,
and philosophers before Bacon, but there were no electricians before
Gilbert. He stands forth not merely as the brilliant exponent of the
science of electricity, he is its absolute founder. His great work,
"De Magnete," published in 1600, after many years of patient,
laborious, and costly research, drew the attention of all the learned
men of Europe, and won for him an undying fame.
" I extremely admire and envy the author of De Magnete," wrote
Galileo, the famous astronomer. "I think him worthy of the
greatest praise for the many new and true observations which he has
made."
" Gilbert shall live till loadstones cease to draw,
Or British fleets the boundless ocean awe."
sang Dryden in his Epistle to Dr. Charlton.
l A considerable amount of information respecting Dr. Gilberd was given in the report of the
meeting at Colchester, in the Essex Naturalist, vol. iv. pp. 174-185.—Ed.