‘There is no new thing under the sun,’ says a proverb which is itself
perhaps only the rehabilitation of some antediluvian precept to the
same effect; and nothing so powerfully argues in favour of the truth
of the statement as a little pamphlet written by the eccentric though
clever Marquis of Worcester, and printed in London by J. Grismond
in 1663. It is entitled, ‘A Century of the Names and Scantlings of
such Inventions as at present I can call to mind to have tried and
perfected, which, my former Notes being lost, I have, at the instance
of a powerful friend, endeavoured now, in the year 1655, to set these
down in such a way as may sufficiently instruct me to put any of them
in Practice.’ Who the ‘powerful friend’ may have been it is impossible
to say. The published catalogue was, however, dedicated to Charles II.
by His Majesty’s ‘passionately devoted, or otherwise disinterested,
subject and servant,’ the Marquis.
This dedication is followed by a quaintly worded address to the
two Houses of Parliament, craving patronage for the author’s
investigations, thanking the Lords and Commons for past favours,
ruefully stating that the inventor had already spent ten thousand
pounds on his experiments, and promising to prosecute his researches
by the aid of one Casper Kaltoff, who for five-and-thirty years had
been employed under him. The Marquis, in stating his merits, is not too
modest, for he belauds his inventions and his disinterestedness to the
skies, and in well-chosen words suggests that if the government refuse
him its patronage, the government, and not he, will suffer. Then, after
the custom of the age, he subscribes himself, ‘Your most passionately
bent fellow-subject in His Majesty’s service, compatriot for the
publick good and advantage, and a most humble servant to all and every
of you,