Page:History of the Royal Society.djvu/239

 nothing else but vain and ridiculous Knight-Errantry. Yet we may avoid that Extreme, and still leave room to consider the singular and irregular Effects, and to imitate the unexpected and monstrous Excesses, which Nature does sometimes practise in her Works. The first may be only compared to the Fables of Amadis, and the Seven Champions; the other to the teal Histories of Alexander, Hannibal, Scipio, or Cæsar: in which though many of their Actions, may at first surprize us; yet there is nothing that exceeds the Truth of Life, and that may not serve for our Instruction, or Imitation.

If this Way of general receiving all credible Accounts of Natural, and Artificial Productions, shall seem expos'd to overmuch Hazard and Uncertainty: that Danger, is remov'd by the Royal Society's reducing such Matters of Hear-say and Information, into real and impartial Trials, performed by their own Hands: Of the Exactness, Variation and accurate Repetition of their Experiments, I have already discours'd: I will now go on to lay down in short Compass those Parts of the visible World, about which they have chiefly bestow'd their Pains.

The first Kind that I shall mention, is of Experiments about Fire, and Flame, of these many were made in order to the Examination of a Theory propounded to them, that there is no such thing, as an elementary Fire of the Peripatetics; nor fiery Atoms of the Epicureans: but that Fire is only the Act of the Dissolution of heated sulphureous Bodies, by the Air as a Menstruum, much after the same manner as Aqua Fortis, or other sharp Menstruums do work on