I have just met with a passage in the _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_ of Sir Thomas
Browne, wherein this invention is foreshadowed in terms more remarkable and
significant, if less imaginative and beautiful, than that from _The
Spectator_, to which public attention has already been directed, and which,
I conceive, must unquestionably have been written, with this particular
example of the "received tenets and commonly presumed truths" of the
learned physician's day, distinctly present to the mind of Addison. The
passage referred to is as follows:
"There is another conceit of better notice, and _whispered thorow the
world_ with some attention; credulous and vulgar auditors readily
believing it, and more judicious and distinctive heads not altogether
rejecting it. The conceit is excellent, and, if the effect would
follow, somewhat divine: whereby we might communicate like spirits, and
confer on earth with Menippus in the moon. And this is pretended from
the sympathy of two needles touched with the same loadstone, and placed
in the centre of two abecedary circles, or rings with letters described
round about them, one friend keeping one, and another the other, and
agreeing upon the hour wherein they will communicate. For then, _saith
tradition_, at what distance of place soever, when one needle shall be
removed unto any letter, the other, by a wonderful sympathy, will move
unto the same."--Book II. chap. ii, 4to., 1669, p. 77.
Thus it is that "coming events cast their shadows before:" and, in the
present case, one is curious to learn how far back the _shadow_ may be
traced. By whom has this _conceit_ been _whispered thorow the world_? and
in what musty tomes is that _tradition_ concealed, which speaks concerning
it? Kircher's _Catena Magnetica_ might haply tell us something in reply to
these inquiries.
In conformity with an often repeated suggestion to the correspondents of
"N. & Q.," to the simple signature of my _habitat_, alone hitherto adopted
by me, I now subjoin my name.