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12 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
part, which treats of iron and steel, that they have trans
lated it, and inserted it entire in their collection. *
This Royal Academy, on its first establishment, could
not fail to associate among its members a man, who
already held so distinguished a rank among the members
of other learned societies.
I have hitherto only spoken of one part of the works
of Swedenborg: and as those which follow are of a quite
different nature, it becomes necessary that we should yet
dwell a little longer on these first. They are so many
incontestible proofs of a universal erudition, which
attached itself in preference to objects which require
deep reflection and profound knowledge. None can
reproach him with having wished to shine in borrowed
plumes, passing off as his own the labours of others,
dressed out in a new form and decorated with some new
turns of expression. It must be acknowledged, on the
contrary, that without ever taking up the ideas of others,
he always followed his own, and often makes remarks
and applications which are not to be found in any pre
ceding author. Nor was he at all of the same class as
the generality of universal geniuses, who, for the most
part, are content with merely skimming over the surfaces
of things. He applied the whole force of his mind to
penetrate into the most hidden things, to connect together
the scattered links of the great chain of universal being,
and to trace up everything, in an order agreeable to its
The value of this work of our author’s did not fail, also,
to obtain notice in England. In the translation of Cramer’s
Elements of the Art of Assaying Metals, by Dr. Cromwell
Mortimer, Secretary to the Royal Society, it is mentioned by
the translator in the following terms : " For the sake of such as
understand Latin, we must not pass by that magnificent and
laborious work of Emanuel Swedenborgius, entitled, Principia
Rerum Naturalium, &c. Dresdæ et Lipsiæ, 1734, in three tomes,
in folio in the second and third tomes of which he has given the
best accounts, not only of the methods and newest improvements
in metallic works in all places beyond the seas, but also of those
in England and our colonies in America, with draughts of the
furnaces and instruments employed. It is to be wished we had
extracts of this work in English." P. 13, 2nd Ed. Lond. 1764.
[Editors.]
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