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218 [Doc. 43.
SWEDENBORG’S CORRESPONDENCE.
а .
66
>
are very clever. Isaac Newton’s " Series, Fluxions, and
Differentials, with an Enumeration of the Lines of the third
,
order ”, which is a book about a finger in thickness, and expensive,
costing twelve shillings. The same author on “ Arithmetical Com
position for the Use of the University at Cambridge,” 1707.
Ditton’s " Institution of Fluxions." There are also eminent
English poets, that are well worth reading for the sake of their
imagination alone, such as Dryden, Spencer, Waller, Milton,
Cowley, Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,
Oldham, Benham, Philip, Smith, and others.
With regard to Wastovius147 I shall ask Bishop More about
him ; but he has been out of town for some time on visitation.
I hope you will not be displeased at my having called him
superstitious, for this can no more detract from his usefulness
in ecclesiastical matters, than if I had called Virgil a heathen.
This proposition, however, cannot, I think, be controverted:
“ All Catholics are worshipers of saints and of the pope, and
all worshipers of saints are superstitious.” Religion cannot
diminish the fame of any one in historical matters. If a
precious little copper coin of my brother’s should be rashly called
by any one a little rusty bit of copper, none of its intrinsic
value is thereby lost, perhaps its value is even increased.
I offer my best thanks to Prof. Elfvius54 for communicating
to me his observation of the eclipse. I must beg you to
procure for the Library a brass quadrant, after the model
now in use, which will not cost too much to have imported
into Sweden ; for, heretofore, all the instruments have been
made of iron, and only the circle has been made of brass.
Wooden sextants, it is true, are large, but observations
made by them are not so reliable as those made with a brass
instrument about one third the size. I am also engaged upon
a method for a quadrant, by which observations may be made
without trigonometrical calculations. Flamsteed’s56 largest
instrument stands in a crypt
, which is open only in the line
of the meridian ; it is fastened to a stone wedge, and nothing
but its tube is movable. The sweep of the instrument is
almost 130 [degrees], and it commands the whole of the arc
from the horizon to the pole. The division is a mixture of
the method employed by Hooke, Tycho, and others; it is divided
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