Remarks upon two late ingenious discourses.... By Dr. Henry More.[242] London, 1676, 8vo.
In 1673 and 1675, Matthew Hale,[243] then Chief Justice, published two tracts, an "Essay touching Gravitation," and "Difficiles Nugae" on the Torricellian experiment. Here are the answers by the learned and voluminous Henry More. The whole would be useful to any one engaged in research about ante-Newtonian notions of gravitation.
Observations touching the principles of natural motions; and especially touching rarefaction and condensation.... By the author of _Difficiles Nugae_. London, 1677, 8vo.
This is another tract of Chief Justice Hale, published the year after his death. The reader will remember that _motion_, in old philosophy, meant any change from state to state: what we now describe as _motion_ was _local motion_. This is a very philosophical book, about _flux_ and _materia prima_, _virtus activa_ and _essentialis_, and other fundamentals. I think Stephen Hales, the author of the "Vegetable Statics," has the writings of the Chief Justice sometimes attributed to him, which is very puny justice indeed.[244] Matthew Hale died in 1676, and from his devotion to science it probably arose that his famous _Pleas of the Crown_[245] and other law works did not appear until after his death. One of his {124} contemporaries was the astronomer Thomas Street, whose _Caroline Tables_[246] were several times printed: another contemporary was his brother judge, Sir Thomas Street.[247] But of the astronomer absolutely nothing is known: it is very unlikely that he and the judge were the same person, but there is not a bit of positive evidence either for or against, so far as can be ascertained. Halley[248]--no less a person--published two editions of the _Caroline Tables_, no doubt after the death of the author: strange indeed that neither Halley nor any one else should leave evidence that Street was born or died.
Matthew Hale gave rise to an instance of the lengths a lawyer will go when before a jury who cannot detect him. Sir Samuel Shepherd,[249] the Attorney General, in opening Hone's[250] first trial, calls him "one who was the most learned man that ever adorned the Bench, the most even man that ever blessed domestic life, the _most eminent man that ever advanced the progress of science_, and one of the [very moderate] best and most purely religious men that ever lived."
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