THE

LIFE

OF

Dr. Robert Hooke.

Understanding that it would be acceptable to several learned and ingenious persons to have some public account given of the life, studies, and employments of so knowing and diligent an inquirer into nature as Dr. Robert Hooke is generally allowed to have been—and who was one of the greatest promoters of experimental natural knowledge, as well as one of the ornaments of the last century (so fruitful of great genii)—I could not well refuse the task. Knowing my own insufficiency for such an attempt, I could hardly undertake it, being conscious that it required a person much better qualified with natural and acquired abilities to perform it with satisfaction, especially in so judicious and precise an age, which is more ready to find faults than pardon mistakes. Besides, my desire has always been not to expose myself to censure when I might live quietly, studiis ignobilis otii original: "studiis ignobilis otii" — a phrase from Virgil, meaning "devoted to the pursuits of an obscure leisure.". But the following papers of Dr. Hooke having been put into my hands to be published, I was, in some manner, obliged to appear in print. I hope the candid reader will obligingly pardon what mistakes they may observe in the following account of his life. In this, I profess the utmost sincerity, the greatest part of my vouchers being taken either from his own memorials or from the journals of the Royal Society.

Had Dr. Hooke prosecuted a design which I find he once proposed to himself, my present undertaking would have been as vain as it is needless, for in a small pocket-diary of his I found these words written:

Saturday, April the 10th, 1697. I began this day to write the history of my own life, wherein I will comprise as many remarkable passages as I can now remember or collect out of such memorials as I have kept in writing, or are in the registers of the Royal Society; together with all my inventions, experiments, discoveries, discourses, etc., which I have made, the time when, the manner how, and means by which, with the success and effect of them, together with the state of my health, my employments and studies, my good or bad fortune, my friends and enemies, etc.—all which shall be the truth of matters of fact, so far as I can be informed by my memorials or my own memory, which rule I resolve not to transgress.