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232 SWEDENBORG’S CORRESPONDENCE. [ Doc. 46.
proportions, motion, times, and all the properties which they
ought to possess, are deduced. Moreover, all those things
which I have in analysis and astronomy, require each its own
place and its own time. O how I wish, my beloved friend
and brother, that I could submit all these to your own eyes,
and to those of Prof. Elfvius.54 But as I cannot show you
the actual machines, I will at least, in a short time, forward
you the drawings, with which I am daily occupied.
I have now time also to bring my poetical efforts
into order. They are only a kind of fables, like those of
Ovid, under cover of which those events are treated which have
happened in Europe within the last fourteen or fifteen years;
so that in this manner I am allowed to sport with serious things,
and to play with the heroes and the great men of our country.
But, meanwhile, I am affected with a certain sense of shame,
when I reflect that I have said so much about my plans and
ideas, and have not yet exhibited anything: my journey and its
inconveniences have been the cause of this.
I have now a very great desire to return home to Sweden,
and to take in hand all Polhammar’g14 inventions, make
drawings, and furnish descriptions of them, and also to
test them by physics, mechanics, hydrostatics, and hydraulics,
and likewise by the algebraic calculus; I should prefer to publish
them in Sweden, rather than in any other place ; and in this
manner to make a beginning among us of a Society for
Learning and Science, for which we have such an excellent
foundation in Polhammar’s inventions. I wish mine could
serve the same purpose.
As to my Method forfinding the Longitude, it is also contained
on small scraps of paper. I gave only a few outlines and
points of it in Paris, so that those who wished to see it, and
to understand how it operated, could acquire some knowledge
of it. But as I had no observations by which I could confirm
it, I thought I would let it rest, until I had worked it out
fully, and had confirmed it by observations; lest I might
lose all my trouble, as well as any reward I might expect
from it. I am afraid I might bring forth blind whelps (timeo
ut cæcos parerem catulos), if I produced it before its proper
time.
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