Читать книгу Swedenborg: Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church онлайн | страница 17

Writing again to Benzelius, August, 1712, he repeats his confidence in his new method of finding the longitude, which Dr. Halley admitted to ​him orally was the only good method that had been proposed. "But," he adds, "as I have not met with great encouragement here in England among this civil and proud people, I have laid it aside for some other place. When I tell them that I have some project about longitude, they treat it as an impossibility; and so I do not wish to discuss it here. . . . As my speculations made me for a time not so sociable as is serviceable and useful for me, and as my spirits are somewhat exhausted, I have taken refuge for a short time in the study of poetry, that I might be somewhat recreated by it.^[1] I intend to gain a little reputation by this study on some occasion or other during this year, and I hope I may have advanced in it as much as may be expected from me; but time and others will perhaps judge of this. Still after a time I intend to take up mathematics again, although at present I am doing nothing in them; and if I am encouraged, I intend to make more discoveries in them than any one else in the present age. But without encouragement this would be sheer trouble, and it would be like non profecturis litora ​tubus arare—ploughing the ground with stubborn steers. . . . Within three or four months, I hope with God's help to be in France; for I greatly desire to understand its fashionable and useful language. I hope by that time to have, or to find there, letters from you to some of your learned correspondents. . . . Your great kindness and your favor, of which I have had so many proofs, make me believe that your advice and your letters will induce my father to be so favorable toward me as to send me the funds which are necessary for a young man, and which will infuse into me new spirit for the prosecution of my studies. Believe me, I desire and strive to be an honor to my father's house and yours, much more strongly than you yourself can wish and endeavor. . . . I would have bought the microscope if the price had not been so much higher than I could venture to pay before receiving your orders. This microscope was one which Mr. Marshall showed to me especially; it is quite new, of his own invention, and shows the motion in fishes very vividly. There was a glass with a candle placed under it, which made the thing itself, and the object, much brighter; so that any one could see the ​blood in the fishes flowing swiftly, like small rivulets; for it flowed in that way, and as rapidly. At a watchmaker's I saw a curiosity which I cannot forbear mentioning. It was a clock which was still, without any motion. On the top of it was a candle, and when this was lighted, the clock began to go and to keep its true time; but as soon as the candle was blown out, the motion ceased, and so on. . . . He told me that nobody had as yet found out how it could be set in motion by the candle. Please remember me kindly to sister Anna, my dear sister Hedvig, and also to brother Ericus Benzel, the little one, about whose state of health I always desire to hear."