[5 July 1710 at Gresham College]
On 5 July, Saturday morning, we drove to
Gresham ColledgeCollege.[*]Gresham
College. This, in 1710,
was the former dwelling-house of the
founder, Sir Thomas Gresham, in Bishopsgate
Street. The work of the college began in 1597. The old house was demolished in 1768. Dr.
Robert Hooke, the renowned mathematician, lived thirty-nine years
in the old college and died there on 3
March, 1703.
The Royal Society met in the college from
1660 to 1710, in which year the Society removed to 2 Crane Court, Fleet Street, and carried
on its affairs there till 1780, the
date of the Society's removal to Somerset
House.
It is really a Grammar School, named after its
founder, Gresham, v. Vieu of London, Vol.
II, p. 664 sq. Many excellent persons of good
parts have been professors there, and, as is well known, the Royal Society uses it
as its headquarters. It is an old building, extensive and irregular; and the inner
part, where the Society has its apartments, is still the best. Both in Germany and elsewhere an exalted idea of this
Society has been formed, both of it and of the collections they have in their
Museum, especially when one looks at the Transactions of this Society and the fine
description of the Museum by Grew.[*]GREW. This was Nehemiah Grew, 1641-1712, the professor of the anatomy of
plants. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 30 November, 1671. In 1672 he was appointed Curator to the
Society. He had taken his degree as a doctor of medicine at Leyden in 1671.
Thus foreigners have just grounds for amazement
when they hear how wretchedly all is now ordered. But it is the sight of the Museum
that is most astounding. It consists of what appear to be two long narrow chambers,
where lie the finest instruments and other articles (which Grew describes), not only in no sort of order or tidiness but
covered with dust, filth and coal-smoke, and many of them broken and utterly ruined.
If one inquires after anything, the operator who shows strangers round—v. Vieu of London, Vol. II, p. 687—will usually say: 'A rogue had
it stolen away,' or he will show you pieces of it, saying: 'It is corrupted or
broken'; and such is the care they take of things! Hardly a thing is to be
recognized, so wretched do they all look. But that is the way with all public
societies. For a short time they flourish, while the founder and original members
are there to set the standard; then come all kinds of setbacks, partly from envy and
lack of unanimity and partly because all kinds of people of no account become
members; their final state is one of indifference and sloth. This has been the case
with this Society too. The first six years of its Transactions are better and
contain more than all the rest put together. They can be purchased complete for
twelve pounds.
Now scarcely anything is done by them. The Society does not meet
during the whole of the summer and very little from Michaelmas onwards. The present
Secretary, Dr Sloane,[*]Von Uffenbach refers shortly
here to SIR HANS SLOANE, who was
Secretary of the Royal Society from 30
November, 1693, till 1712,
and to SIR ISAAC NEWTON, 1642-1727, who was President of
the Society from 1703 to 1728. He mentions the name of the noted
Dr. John Woodward here, and
interviews and describes him later.
is certainly an honest fellow
of great parts, but he is very much occupied by his own extensive Praxi medica as well as with his own great collection.
The President, Newton, is an old man and is
prevented both by his office as Director of the Mint and by the management of his
own affairs from concerning himself much about the Society. For the rest, if one
excepts Dr Woodward[*]JOHN WOODWARD, 1665-1728, the physician and geologist;
F.R.S., 30 November, 1693;
F.R.C.P., 22 March, 1703. He
died at Gresham College on 25 April, 1728.
Von Uffenbach was greatly edified with
Woodward's characteristics and
peculiarities.
and one or two other Englishmen as well as the foreign members, there are none but
apothecaries and other such people who know scarce a word of Latin. Such members
contribute little to the honour and usefulness of the Society. But to return to the
subject of the Museum, I will mention one or two of the things that pleased us most,
although they have all been described by Grew,
and some of them also in Vieu of London, Vol. II, p. 666.
The great magnet
with thirty-two compasses made by Dr Wren for
the purpose of research on variationes and delineationes is one of the most
remarkable articles. The magnet itself is round and nearly six inches in diameter
and is not mounted. The two poles are marked with a cross. The operator did two
charming experiments for us with this magnet. First he took a paper of filings and
held the north pole of the magnet over it, so that for the moment the filings piled
themselves up on top of each other and stood up on
end, being also churned up like
water. The other was more notable: having placed the magnet in a hole cut in a
board, he strewed this with file-dust; when he struck the lower side of the board in
one or two places, all the filings divided themselves into lines, which stretched
from each pole round the circumference of the magnet to the middle point of the
pole; and in this position they remained, however much and often he might strike the
board. It looked exactly like the copper engraving made by the Cartesians to
illustrate their hypothesis of the effect of the magnet, for which they have been
mocked by Thomasio and others. This is much
more clearly shown by Fig. XLII and the following description and elucidation of it:
the letter a refers to a great round figure which represents
a table with thirty-two small holes in its circumference, c,
in which there are placed magnetic needles, these being covered with glasses like
other compasses. In the middle a round hole had been cut, and in this was placed a
spherically cut loadstone, 6, the two poles of which are
marked with a cross, d. After this stone had been set in
position with its north pole, all the needles standing round revolved towards e along the lines f and e. The dots round the loadstone represent filings, m, which had been thinly sprinkled about; and these range
themselves neatly in accurate semi-circles when one knocks underneath the table, so
that they move and raise themselves. Straight lines radiated from either pole; but
the nearer it was to the sides, the better was the semi-circle formed—better,
indeed, than it is here represented. If one then altered the stone with the poles,
setting them for example by the line gh, having been formerly
on that from ef, and knocked again on the table, the
semicircle and figures made by the filings altered their position and lay in the
former order with lines due north and south along the line gh, which was all prodigiously curious. We also noticed the chair made of some special root, which is
spoken of in Vieu of London, Vol. II, p. 319p. 685 n.319. There was a label hung on it with these words: 'This Chair
given by John Lord Sommers Baron of Evesham President
of the Royal Society from Chusan in
China, 30
Juny
June
1702'. The root looks almost as full of veins as our walnut
wood, of which cupboards are made. Moreover it is maintained both in that passage in
Vieu of London and by the operator that the chair is not jointed but
made from a single block of wood, so it is certainly very curious; but I cannot
possibly believe that art did not come to assist, so elegantly is it carved.
We saw also the ovula
of a female who had died of the dropsy, some of them being as big as
a cherry. They were in glasses filled with spirit.
There were other things there
too, mostly of a common sort; I was delighted at the way in which all these things
were fastened to small glass balls and floated in the spirit, so that all may be
seen with ease. Even when the spirit is somewhat evaporated, the things sink with
the balls and do not hang without moisture and perish, which they do when fastened
to the glass or the stopper, as they usually are.
We also found notably ana uterus with the bladder and other parts appertaining thereto; all had been excellently preserved, so that all the veins, ligaments, nerves, etc. were clearly
to be seen.
We also noticed the four black boards, on which all the venae arteriae
and nerves of the human body are very
well arranged, v. Vieu of London, p. 666, n. 3. But because these
boards hang quite unprotected on the wall, they are ruined by dust and smoke, so
that they look utterly black and wretched, which is indeed a pity.
We also saw an incomparably fine Nautilum petrefactum.
But there
is no need to mention anything more, for all is described in detail in the works to
which I have referred, especially in that of Grew. I only wish that all had been in good condition and that we could
have observed it at our leisure.
Then I asked to be shown the Library. Like the Museum
it is shut away in small
cupboards in a very long narrow passage. As is known and can be read in Vieu of London, Vol. II, p. 686, it was presented by the Duke of Norfolk, and I have the printed
catalogue in quarto. There are some good manuscripts which I found in two cupboards
standing together. But we could scarce glance at them—in such haste was the operator
in his English fashion, thinking indeed that he
had already spent too much time with us in the Museum.
We saw also, standing on one
of the book cupboards, the iron oven with which Dr
HoockHooke had succeeded in hatching out some eggs in the Egyptian manner, v. Vieu of London, Vol.
II, p. 683, n. 253. This too was spoiled.
On the ground lay the
prodigiously large antlers of a fallow deer, which had been found in a bog in Ireland. On either side there were eight wide
branches and the antlers were seven feet one inch apart in diameter.
We also saw here the model of a fortress which a clergyman called
Christner had made extremely accurately and well. It was very large and,
when all had been put together, would probably measure two surveyor's rods.
Finally we were shown the room where the Society usually meets. It is very small and
wretched and the best things there are the portraits of its members, of which the
most noteworthy are those of Boyle and HoockHooke.[*]ROBERT
HOOKE, the experimentalist, astronomer, inventor and chemist;
F.R.S., 3 June, 1663. He was
perpetual Curator of the Royal Society. In 1667 he was appointed surveyor of the City of London. He was an extraordinarily able mechanic.
He was Secretary of the Royal Society from October 1677 to November 1682.
John Aubrey wrote: 'He is but of middling
stature, something crooked, pale faced, and his face but little belowe, but
his head is lardge: his eie full and popping, and not quick; a grey eie.'
Aubrey had the highest opinion of Hooke, eccentric as Aubrey's views were.
He was born on 19 July, 1635,
according to John Aubrey.
Hooke was a leading inventor of
balance-springs for watches. The Posthumous
Works of Robert Hooke, by RichardWailerWaller, 1705, should be referred
to.
We saw
here also two fine
globosglobes
and a wooden model of an invention by which one man can move two oars with the help of a cord as swiftly and evenly as two men could. This was done by means of
half a wheel fastened to an axle, which lies on two bars. It will be described in
the Transactions and engraved there in copper, so there is no need for me to remark
on it further here. At the side of this room stood a large and handsome
pendulum-clock, on which this inscription might be read:
Societati Regali Ad Scientiam Naturalem
promovendam institutae
dono dedit
Reverendus in Christo Pater Sethus Episcopus
Exon.
ejusdem societatis Sodalis in
memoriam
Laurentii Rook,
viri omnium
litterarum genere instructissimi
in Collegio
Greshamensi primum astronomiae
dein Geometriae Professoris
dictaequae
societatis nuper Sodalis qui obit
1662.
In the afternoon we were at Mareschall's, where my
brother cut glass.