With the exception of the preliminary matter and the Instructions to binder, the pagination is the same as in the edition of 1628, the pages in the body of the work being reprinted word for word; though with exceptions.

For example, p. 18 in Ed. 1633 is one line shorter than in Ed. 1628. The etched plates are entirely different. It has been thought from the pagination being alike that these two editions were really the same with different plates, titles, and preliminary matter. But they are really different. The spacing of the words, letters and lines is different throughout, and there are different misprints. The watermarks of the paper also differ.

IV. (THE BERLIN "FACSIMILE" FOLIO OF 1892.) This is a photozincograph reproduction of the London folio of 1600. It lacks the ink emendations on pages 11, 22, 47, &c., found in the original, and is wanting also in some of the asterisks in the margins.

V. (THE AMERICAN TRANSLATION OF 1893.) Frontispiece portrait _p. i.

title_ WILLIAM GILBERT OF COLCHESTER, physician of London, on the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies, and on the great magnet the earth. A new Physiology, demonstrated with many arguments and experiments. A translation by P. Fleury Mottelay, ... New York: John Wiley & Sons, 53 East Tenth Street 1893. _p. ii_ bears imprint of Ferris Bros.

_Printers_, 326 Pearl Street, New York. _p. iii._ reduced reproduction of title of 1600 edition _verso_ the Gilbert arms _p. v._ Translator's Preface _p. ix._ Biographical Memoir _p. xxxi._ Contents _p. xxxvii._ Address of Edward Wright _p. xlvii._ Author's Preface.

_p. liii._ Explanation of some terms. pp. 1-358 text of the work. p. 359 reduced reproduction of title of 1628 edition. p. 360 _ditto_ of 1633 edition. p. 361 _ditto_ of Gilbert's _De Mundo Nostro_ of 1651. pp. 363 to 368 General Index. Pages _xxx_, _xlvi_, _lii_, and 362 are blanks. There are no signatures. Octavo. Diagrams reduced from woodcuts of the folio of 1600. Some copies bear on title the imprint London: Bernard Quaritch, 15 Piccadilly.

{1} [Illustration]

NOTES ON THE _DE MAGNETE_ OF DR. WILLIAM GILBERT.

During the work of revising and editing the English translation of _De Magnete_, many points came up for discussion, requiring critical consideration, and the examination of the writings of contemporary or earlier authorities. Discrepancies between the texts of the three known editions--the London folio of 1600, and the two Stettin quartos of 1628 and 1633 respectively--demanded investigation. Passages relating to astrology, to pharmacy, to alchemy, to geography, and to navigation, required to be referred to persons acquainted with the early literature of those branches.

Phrases of non-classical Latin, presenting some obscurity, needed explanation by scholars of mediaeval writings. Descriptions of magnetical experiments needed to be interpreted by persons whose knowledge of magnetism enabled them to infer the correct meaning to be assigned to the words in the text. In this wise a large amount of miscellaneous criticism has been brought to bear, and forms the basis for the following notes. To make them available to all students of Gilbert, the references are given to page and line both of the Latin folio of 1600 and of the English edition of 1900. S. P. T.

[1] _THE GLOSSARY:_

Gilbert's glossary is practically an apology for the introduction into the Latin language of certain new words, such as the nouns _terrella_, _versorium_, and _verticitas_, and the adjectival noun _magneticum_, which either did not exist in classical Latin or had not the technical meaning which he now assigns to them. His _terrella_, or [Greek: mikroge], as he explains in detail on p. 13, is a little magnetic model of the earth, but in the glossary he simply defines it as _magnes globosus_. Neither _terrella_ nor _versorium_ appears in any Latin dictionary. No older writer had used either word, though Peter Peregrinus (_De Magnete_, Augsburg, 1558) had described experiments with globular loadstones, and pivotted magnetic needles suitable for use in a compass had been known for nearly three centuries. Yet the pivotted needle was not denominated _versorium_.

Blondo (_De Ventis_, Venice, 1546) does not use the term. Norman (_The Newe Attractiue_, London, 1581) speaks of the "needle or compasse," and of the "wyre." Barlowe (_The Navigators Supply_, London, 1597) speaks of {2} the "flie," or the "wier." The term _versorium_ (literally, the _turn-about_) is Gilbert's own invention. It was at once adopted into the science, and appears in the treatises of Cabeus, _Philosophia Magnetica_ (Ferrara, 1629), and of Kircher, _Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica_ (Coloniae, 1643), and other writers of the seventeenth century. Curiously enough, its adoption to denote the pivotted magnetic needle led to the growth of an erroneous suggestion that the mariners' compass was known to the ancients because of the occurrence in the writings of Plautus of the term _versoriam_, or _vorsoriam_. This appears twice as the accusative case of a feminine noun _versoria_, or _vorsoria_, which was used to denote part of the gear of a ship used in tacking-about. Forcellini defines _versoria_ as "funiculus quo extremus veli angulus religatur"; while _versoriam capere_ is equivalent to "reverti," or (metaphorically) "sententiam mutare." The two passages in Plautus are:

EUT. Si huc item properes, ut istuc properas, facias rectius, Huc secundus ventus nunc est; cape modo vorsoriam; Hic Favonius serenu'st, istic Auster imbricus: Hic facit tranquillitatem, iste omnes fluctus conciet.

(in _Mercat._ Act. V., sc. 2.)

CHARM. Stasime, fac te propere celerem recipe te ad dominum domum; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cape vorsoriam Recipe te ad herum.

(in _Trinum._ Act. IV., sc. 3.)

The word _magneticum_ is also of Gilbert's own coinage, as a noun; as an adjective it had been certainly used before, at least in its English form, _magneticall_, which appears on the title-page of William Borough's _Discourse of the Variation of the Compasse_ (London, 1596). Gilbert does not use anywhere the noun _magnetismus_, _magnetism_. The first use of that noun occurs in William Barlowe's _Magneticall Aduertisements_ (1616), in the _Epistle Dedicatorie_, wherein, when speaking of Dr. Gilbert, he says "vnto whom I communicated what I had obserued of my selfe, and what I had built vpon his foundation of the _Magnetisme_ of the earth." Gilbert speaks of the _virtus magnetica_, or _vis magnetica_; indeed, he has a rich vocabulary of terms, using, beside _virtus_ and _vis_, _vires_, _robur_, _potestas_, _potentia_, _efficientia_, and _vigor_ for that which we should now call _magnetism_ or _the magnetic forces_. Nor does he use the verb _magnetisare_, or its participle, _magnetisatus_: he speaks of _ferrum tactum_, or of _ferrum excitatum a magnete_. In spite of certain obscurities which occur in places in his work, he certainly shows a nice appreciation of words and their use, and a knowledge of style. One finds occasionally direct quotations from, and overt references to, the classic authors, as in the references to Plato and Aristotle on page 1, and in the passage from the Georgics of Vergil on p. 21. But here and there one finds other traces of unmistakable scholarship, as in the reference to goat's wool on p. 35, or in the use, on p. 210, of the word _perplacet_, which occurs in the letter of Cicero _ad Atticum_, or in that of _commonstrabit_, occurring on p. 203, and found only in Cicero, Terence and Plautus; whilst the phrase on p. 3, in which Gilbert rallies the smatterers on having lost both their oil and their pains, has a delightfully classical echo. {3} The term _orbis virtutis_, defined by Gilbert in the glossary, and illustrated by the cuts on pages 76, 77, and 96, might be effectively translated by _sphere of influence_, or _orbit within which there is sensible attraction_. It has been preferred, however, to translate it literally as the _orbe of virtue_, or _orbe of magnetick virtue_. This choice has been determined by the desire to adopt such an English phrase as Gilbert would himself have used had he been writing English. T. Hood, writing in 1592 in his book _The Vse of both the Globes_, in using the word _orbe_, says that the word _globe_ signifies a solid body, while a _sphere_ is hollow, like two "dishes joyned by the brimme"; "The Latines properly call _Orbis_ an Orbe"; "Moreouer the word _Sphaera_ signifieth that instrument made of brasen hoopes (wee call it commonly a ringed Sphere) wherewith the Astronomers deliuer unto the nouices of that Science the vnderstanding of things which they imagine in the heauen." Further, Dr. Marke Ridley in his _Treatise of Magneticall Bodies and Motions_ (1613), has a chapter (XIIII) "Of the distance and Orbe of the Magnets vertue," throughout which the term Orbe is retained. Sir Thomas Browne also writes of "the orb of their activities."

The word _Coitio_, used by Gilbert for the mutual force between magnet and iron, has been retained in its English form, _coition_. Gilbert evidently adopted this term after much thought. The Newtonian conception of action and reaction being necessarily equal had not dawned upon the mediaeval philosophers. The term _attraction_ had been used in a limited sense to connote an action in which a force was conceived of as being exerted on one side only. Diogenes of Apollonia, Alexander Aphrodiseus, Democritus, and others, conceived the magnet to draw at the iron without the iron in any way contributing to that action. Saint Basil specially affirms that the magnet is not drawn by iron. On the other hand, Albertus Magnus had conceived the idea that the iron sought the magnet by a one-sided effort in which the magnet took no part. Gilbert had the wit to discern that the action was mutual, and to mark the new conception he adopted the new term, and defined it as it stands in his glossary. It is "a concourse or concordancy of both," and to emphasize his meaning he adds, "not as if there were an [Greek: helktike dunamis] but a [Greek: sundrome]" not a tractile power, but a running together. The adjective [Greek: helktike] is obviously related to the verb [Greek: helko], I draw: but its meaning puzzled the subsequent editors of the text, for in the two Stettin editions of 1628 and 1633, the phrase appears in the respective forms of [Greek: heletike dunamis] and [Greek: helkustike dunamis]. In Creech's English version of Lucretius (edition of 1722, p. 72a, in the footnote) is the commentary "Galen, disputing against Epicurus, uses the term [Greek: helkein], which seems likewise too violent." It may be noted that the same verb occurs in the passage from the _Io_ of Plato quoted below. The term [Greek: sundrome] applied by Gilbert to explain his term _Coitio_ is used by Diodorus for the mutual onset of two hostile forces.

A picturesque sentence from Sir Thomas Browne's _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_ (London, 1650, p. 51) sets the matter succinctly forth. "If in two skiffs of cork, a Loadstone and Steel be placed within the orb of their activities, the one doth not move the other standing still, but both hoist sayle and steer unto each other; so that if the Loadstone attract, the Steel hath also its attraction; for in this action the Alliency is reciprocall, which jointly felt, they mutually approach and run into each others arms." {4} The page and line references given in these notes are in all cases first to the Latin edition of 1600, and secondly to the English edition of 1900.

[2] PAGE 1, LINE 28. Page 1, line 28. _Plato in Ione._--The passage in the _Io_ of Plato is in chap. v. Socrates addressing the poet Io tells him that his facility in reciting Homer is not really an art: [Greek: theia de dunamis, he se kinei hosper en tei lithoi, hen Euripides men Magnetin onomasen, hoi de polloi Herakleian. kai gar aute he lithos ou monon autous tous daktulious agei tous siderous, alla kai dunamin entithesi tois daktuliois, ost au dunasthai tautou touto poiein, hoper he lithos, allous agein daktulious, host' enioth' hormathos makros panu siderion kai daktulion ex allelon ertetai pasi de toutois ex ekeines tes lithou he dunamis anertetai.] The idea is that as the loadstone in attracting an iron ring will make it into a magnet, which can in turn act magnetically on another ring, and this on yet another, so the inspiration of the Muse is transferred to the poet, who in turn hands on the inspiration through the reciter to the listener. After further expanding the same idea of the transference of influence, Socrates again mentions the magnet (chap. vii.): [Greek: Oisth' oun hoti outos estin ho theates ton daktulion ho eschatos, hon ego elegon hupo tes Herakleiotidos lithou ap' allelon ten dunamin lambanein, ho de mesos su ho rhapsodos kai hupokrites, ho de protos autos ho poietes? ho de theos dia panton touton helkei ten psuchen hopoi an bouletai ton anthropon, k.t.l.] (Edition Didot of 1856, vol. i., p. 391; or Stephanus, p. 533 D).

There is another reference in Plato to the magnet, namely, in the _Timaeus_ (p. 240, vol. ii., Edit. citat.). See the Note to p. 61.

The reference by Euripides to the magnet occurs in the lost play of Oeneus, in a fragment preserved by Suidas. See _Fragmenta Euripidis_ (Ed. Didot, 1846, p. 757, or Nauck's edition, No. 567).

[Greek: hos Euripides en Oinei; tas broton gnomas skopon, hoste Magnetis lithos ten doxan helkei kai methistesin palin.]

[3] PAGE 1, LINE 28. Page 1, line 29. The brief passage from Aristotle's _De Anima_ referring to Thales is quoted by Gilbert himself at the bottom of p. 11.

[4] PAGE 2, LINE 1. Page 1, line 29. The edition of 1628 inserts commas between Theophrastus and Lesbius, and between Julius and Solinus, as though these were four persons instead of two.

[5] PAGE 2, LINE 8. Page 2, line 5. _si allio magnes illitus fuerit, aut si adamas fuerit_. An excellent version of this myth is to be found in Julius Solinus, _Polyhistor, De Memorabilibus_, chap. lxiv., of which the English version of 1587, by A. Golding, runs thus: "The Diamonde will not suffer the Lodestone to drawe yron unto him: or if y^e Lodestone haue alreadie drawne a peece of yron to it, the Diamond snatcheth and pulleth away as hys bootye whatsoever the Lodestone hath taken hold of." Saint Augustine repeats the diamond myth in his _De Civitate Dei_, lib. xxi. Baptista Porta says (p. 211 of the English version of 1658): "It is a common Opinion amongst Sea-men, That Onyons and Garlick are at odds with the Loadstone: and Steers-men, and such as tend the Mariners Card are forbid to eat Onyons or Garlick, lest they make the Index of the Poles drunk. But when I tried all these things, found them to be false: for not onely breathing and belching upon the Loadstone after eating of Garlick, did not stop its vertues: but when it was all anoynted over with the juice of Garlick, it did perform its office as well as if it had never been touched with it: and I could observe almost not the least difference, lest I should make void the endeavours of the Ancients. {5} And again, When I enquired of Marines, whether it were so, that they were forbid to eat Onyons and Garlick for that reason; they said, they were old Wives fables, and things ridiculous; and that Sea-men would sooner lose their lives, then abstain from eating Onyons and Garlick."

The fables respecting the antipathy of garlick and of the diamond to the operation of the magnet, although already discredited by Ruellius and by Porta, died hard. In spite of the exposure and denunciations of Gilbert--compare p. 32--these tales were oft repeated during the succeeding century. In the appendix to Sir Hugh Plat's _Jewel House of Art and Nature_, in the edition of 1653, by D. B. Gent, it is stated there (p.

218): "The Loadstone which ... hath an admirable vertue not onely to draw Iron to it self, but also to make any Iron upon which it is rubbed to draw iron also, it is written notwithstanding, that being rubbed with the juyce of Garlick, it loseth that vertue, and cannot then draw iron, as likewise if a Diamond be layed close unto it."

Pliny wrote of the alleged antipathy between diamond and goat's blood. The passage as quoted from the English version of Pliny's _Natural Historie of the World_, translated by Philemon Holland (London, 1601, p. 610, chap, iv.), runs: "But I would gladly know whose invention this might be to soake the Diamond in Goats bloud, whose head devised it first, or rather by what chance was it found out and knowne? What conjecture should lead a man to make an experiment of such a singular and admirable secret, especially in a goat, the filthiest beast ... in the whole world? Certes I must ascribe both this invention and all such like to the might and beneficence together of the divine powers: neither are we to argue and reason how and why Nature hath done this or that? Sufficient is it that her will was so, and thus she would have it."

[6] PAGE 2, LINE 22. Page 2, line 22. _Machometis sacellum._ Gilbert credits Matthiolus (the well-known herbalist and commentator on Dioscorides) with producing the fable as to Mahomet's coffin being suspended in the air by a magnet. Sir Richard Burton, in his famous pilgrimage to El Mednah in 1855, effectually disposed of this myth. The reputed sarcophagus rests simply on bricks on the floor. But it had long been known that aerial suspension, even of the lightest iron object, in the air, without contact above or below, was impossible by any magnetic agency.

In Barlowe's _Magneticall Aduertisements_ (London, 1616, p. 45) is the following: "As for the Turkes _Mahomet_, hanging in the ayer with his yron chest it is a most grosse untruth, and utterly impossible it is for any thing to hange in the ayer by any _magneticall_ power, but that either it must touch the stone it selfe, or else some intermediate body, that hindreth it from comming to the stone (like as before I haue shewed) or else some stay below to keepe it from ascending, as some small wier that may scantly bee seene or perceived."

[7] PAGE 2, LINE 26. Page 2, line 26. _Arsinoes templum._--The account in Pliny of the magnetic suspension of the statue of Arsinoe in the temple built by Chinocrates is given as follows in the English version (London, 1601) of Philemon Holland (p. 515): "And here I cannot chuse but acquaint you with the singular invention of that great architect and master deviser, of Alexandria in aegypt _Dinocrates_, who began to make the arched roufe of the temple of _Arsinoe_ all of Magnet or this Loadstone, to the end, that within that temple the statue of the said princesse made of yron, might seeme to hang in the aire by nothing. But prevented he was by death {6} before hee could finish his worke, like as king _Ptolomaee_ also, who ordained that temple to be built in the honour of the said _Arsinoe_ his sister."

There are a number of similar myths in Ausonius, Claudian, and Cassiodorus, and in the writings of later ecclesiastical historians, such as Rusinus and Prosper Aquitanus. The very meagre accounts they have left, and the scattered references to the reputed magical powers of the loadstone, suggest that there existed amongst the primitive religions of mankind a _magnet-worship_, of which these records are traces.

[8] PAGE 2, LINE 37. Page 2, line 41. _Brasevolus_ [or _Brasavola_].--The list of authorities here cited consists mostly of well-known mediaeval writers on _materia medica_ or on minerals: the last on the list, _Hannibal Rosetius Calaber_, has not been identified.

The following are the references in the order named by Gilbert:

Antonio Musa Brasavola. _Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum_, Section 447 (Lugdun., 1537).

Joannes Baptista Montanus. _Metaphrasis summaria eorum quae ad medicamentorum doctrina attinet_ (Augustae Rheticae, 1551).

Amatus Lusitanus. _Amati Lusitani in Dioscoridis Anazarbei de materia medica libros quinque_ (Venet., 1557, p. 507).

Oribasius. _Oribasii Sardiani ad Eunapium libri 4 quibus ... facultates simplicium ... continentur_ (Venet., 1558).

Aetius Amidenus. _Aetii Amideni Librorum medicinalium ... libri octo nunc primum in lucem editi_ (Greek text, Aldine edition, Venet., 1534). A Latin edition appeared in Basel, 1535. See also his _tetrabiblos ex veteribus medicinae_ (Basil., 1542).

Avicenna (Ibn Sina). _Canona Medicinae_ (Venice, 1486), liber ii., cap. 474.

Serapio Mauritanus (Yuhanna Ibn Sarapion). In hoc volumine continentur ...

_Ioan. Sarapionis Arabis de Simplicibus Medicinis opus praeclarum et ingens ..._ (edited by Brunfels, Argentorati, 1531, p. 260).

Hali Abbas ('Ali Ibn Al 'Abb[=a]s). _Liber totius medicinae necessaria c[=o]tinens ... quem Haly filius Abbas edidit ... et a Stephano ex arabica lingua reductus_ (Lugd., 1523, p. 176 _verso_).

Santes de Ardoniis (or Ardoynis). _Incipit liber de venenis quem magister santes de ardoynis ... edere cepit venetiis die octauo nou[=e]bris_, 1424 (Venet., 1492).

Petrus Apponensis (or Petrus de Abano). The loadstone is referred to in two works by this author.

(1) _Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum: et precipue medicorum clarissimi viri Petri de Abano Patauini feliciter incipit_ (Venet., 1496, p. 72, _verso_, Quaestio LI.).

(2) _Tractatus de Venenis_ (Roma, 1490, cap. xi.).

Marcellus (called Marcellus Empiricus). _De Medicamentis_, in the volume _Medici antiqui omnes_ (Venet., 1547, p. 89).

Arnaldus (Arnaldus de Villa Nova). _Incipit Tractatus de virtutibus herbarum_ (Venet., 1499). See also _Arnaldi Villanovani Opera omnia_ (Basil., 1585).

Marbodeus Gallus. _Marbodei Galli poetae vetustissimi de lapidibus pretiosis Enchiridion_ (Friburgi, 1530 [1531], p. 41).