ACT BY FIENUS.

De Cometa anni 1618 dissertationes Thomae Fieni[106] et Liberti
Fromondi[107] ... Equidem Thomae Fieni epistolica quaestio, An verum sit
Coelum moveri et Terram quiescere? London, 1670, 8vo.

This tract of Fienus against the motion of the earth is a reprint of one
published in 1619.[108] I have given an account of it as a good summary of
arguments of the time, in the _Companion to the Almanac_ for 1836.

{75}

ON SNELL'S WORK.

Willebrordi Snellii. R. F. Cyclometricus. Leyden, 1621, 4to.

This is a celebrated work on the approximative quadrature, which, having
the suspicious word _cyclometricus_, must be noticed here for
distinction.[109]

ON BACON'S NOVUM ORGANUM.

1620. In this year, Francis Bacon[110] published his _Novum Organum_,[111]
which was long held in England--but not until the last century--to be the
work which taught Newton and all his successors how to philosophize. That
Newton never mentions Bacon, nor alludes in any way to his works, passed
for nothing. Here and there a paradoxer ventured not to find all this
teaching in Bacon, but he was pronounced blind. In our day it begins to be
seen that, great as Bacon was, and great as his book really is, he is not
the philosophical father of modern discovery.

But old prepossession will find reason for anything. A learned friend of
mine wrote to me that he had discovered proof that Newton owned Bacon for
his master: the proof was that Newton, in some of his earlier writings,
used the {76} phrase _experimentum crucis_, which is Bacon's. Newton may
have read some of Bacon, though no proof of it appears. I have a dim idea
that I once saw the two words attributed to the alchemists: if so, there is
another explanation; for Newton was deeply read in the alchemists.

I subjoin a review which I wrote of the splendid edition of Bacon by
Spedding,[112] Ellis,[113] and Heath.[114] All the opinions therein
expressed had been formed by me long before: most of the materials were
collected for another purpose.

The Works of Francis Bacon. Edited by James Spedding, R. Leslie Ellis,
and Douglas D. Heath. 5 vols.[115]

No knowledge of nature without experiment and observation: so said
Aristotle, so said Bacon, so acted Copernicus, Tycho Brahe,[116] Gilbert,
Kepler, Galileo, Harvey, etc., before Bacon wrote.[117] No derived
knowledge _until_ experiment and observation are concluded: so said Bacon,
and no one else. We