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50 [Doc. 5.
GENERAL BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.
-
The above was written with his own hand by His Ex
cellency, Count Höpken,28 Feb. 9, 1784, after he had read
Robsahm’s Life of Swedenborg, and he desired this to be ap
pended to it.
54. Statement explanatory of § 36, taken likewise from
the Minutes of the Exegetic - Philanthropic Society in Stock
holm. *
“Read before the Society, March 28, 1789.
By request; this furnishes reliable information on an oc
currence which took place in Mr. Assessor Swedenborg’s
younger years.
“While Polhem , the Councillor of Commerce, by a gra
cious order from the late King Charles XII, was engaged in
building the Trollhätta lock near Carlsgraf, there lived with
him as a pupil in mathematics,t Assessor Swedenborg. The
Assessor conceived a violent passion for Polhem’s second
daughter, Emerentia,29 who was afterwards married to Rücker
sköld,30 the Councillor in the Court of Appeals. But as
she was only thirteen or fourteen years of age,31 she could
not be persuaded to enter into an engagement; whereupon
her father, who loved Swedenborg very much, gave him a
written claim upon her in the future, in the hope that when
older she would become more yielding, and this contract her
father obliged her to sign. She fretted, however, about it so
much every day that her brother, Chamberlain Gabriel Pol
hem,32 was moved with compassion, and purloined the con
tract from Swedenborg, whose only comfort consisted in daily
perusing it, and who therefore quickly missed his treasure.
His sorrow at his loss was so evident, that her father in
sisted on knowing the cause; when by an exercise of his author
ity he was willing to have his lost document restored to him .
* This statement, in the Extracts from the Minutes of the Exegetic
Philanthropic Society, follows immediately after our n. 53.
+ This is a mistake ; for Swedenborg was not with Polhem in the capa
city of a pupil in mathematics, but as an assistant - engineer. Moreover,
it was Swedenborg who furnished the necessary mathematics, in order to
bring Polhem’s mechanical and physical experiments before the public;
which was done by Swedenborg in his “ Dædalus Hyperboreus,” which was
published in the years 1716 to 1718.
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