62
ESSEX WORTHIES.
It remains to be told how Gilbert's work was received. The
book, which he published in Latin, was followed by two editions,
also unfortunately both in Latin, published in Germany. No
English edition has ever been published. Strange to say it fell
somewhat flat. The world was hardly prepared to accept a sober
treatise, based on simple facts, in place of the wild and speculative
treatises which had hitherto passed as philosophic. Men knew that
Gilbert had travelled abroad, and it was known that he had made
researches with the magnet; but they were expecting him to write
such a treatise as might have been produced by Thomas Aquinas,
who was capable of discussing how many angels could dance on the
point of a needle. Scaliger, in one of his epistles (ad Casaubon,
1604), speaks of a certain Englishman who three years previously
had brought out a book on the magnet, which was nothing worthy
of the expectation which it had excited. Bacon, whom so many
revere as the founder of the inductive science, calmly appropriated
and reproduced as his own in his "Opuscula Philosophica," whole
paragraphs, almost verbatim, from the "De Magnete," but he did not
say who discovered the truths set forth ; and when he mentioned
Gilbert, sneered at him, in his "De Augmentis," as the man who had
made a whole philosophy out of the observations of a loadstone;
and, in another place, he refers to "De Magnete" as a "painfull and
experimental work." In another place, in the "Novum Organon," he
accuses Gilbert of having created so many fables about the electric
operation, which, he adds, is nothing else than the appetite of the
body excited by gentle friction ! Others there were indeed who
better appreciated the magnitude of Gilbert's work. Galileo, as we
have seen, spoke of him as of enviable greatness. Kepler warmly
welcomed the new doctrine of the earth's magnetism, and devoted a
long chapter in his Treatise on Astronomy to the exposition of
Gilbert's views. Barlowe, the learned Archdeacon of Salisbury,
whose "Magneticall Aduertisements" was published in 1618, speaks
of "De Magnete" as "the very true fountaine of all magneticall know-
ledge." Dr. Marke Ridley, who in 1613 published "A Short
Treatise of Magneticall Bodies and Motions," speaks of Gilbert's
labours as "the greatest and best in Magneticall Philosophie." Sir
Kenelm Digby classed Gilbert along with Harvey, the discoverer of
the circulation of the blood, as men by whose means our nation
may claim, even in this latter age, a crown for solid philosophical
learning.