ke your further
prosecution of it; which I exceedingly rejoice to find has been so
successful, that you give us hopes of your further thoughts upon that,
and those other subjects which you mention. You may haply call to
remembrance a passage of the Jesuit Honorati Fabri, who speaking of
perspectives, observes, that an object looked on through a small hole
appears magnified; from whence he suggests, the casting of two plates
neatly perforated, and fitted to look through, preferable to glasses,
whose refractions injure the sight. Though I begin to advance in years
(being now on the other side of forty), yet the continuance of the
perfect use of my senses (for which I bless Almighty God) has rendered
me the less solicitous about those artificial aids; which yet I foresee
I must shortly apply myself to, and therefore you can receive but
slender hints from me which will be worthy your acceptance upon that
argument; only, I well remember, that besides Tiberius of old (whom you
seem to instance in), Joseph Scaliger affirms the same happened both to
his father Julius and himself, in their younger years. And sometimes,
methinks, I myself have fancied to have discerned things in a very dark
place, when the curtains about my bed have been drawn, as my hands,
fingers, the sheet, and bedclothes; but since my too intent poring upon
a famous eclipse of the sun, about twelve years since, at which time I
could as familiarly have stared with open eyes upon the glorious planet
in its full lustre, as now upon a glow-worm (comparatively speaking), I
have not only lost the acuteness of sight, but much impaired the vigour
of it for such purposes as it then served me. But besides that, I have
treated mine eyes very ill near these twenty years, during all which
time I have rarely put them together, or composed them to sleep, before
one at night, and sometimes much later: that I may in some sort redeem
my losses by day, in which I am continually importuned with visits from
my neighbours and acquaintance, or taken up by other impertinencies of
my life in this place. I am plainly ashamed to tell you this,
considering how little I have improved myself by it; but I have rarely
been in bed before twelve o'clock as I said, in the space of twenty
years; and yet I read the least print, even in a jolting coach, without
other assistance, save that I now and then used to rub my shut eye-lids
over with a spirit of wine well rectified, in which I distil a few