[1] The translator thinks, as he has not translated that Discourse, it will not be amiss to insert here the Author’s sentiment on this subject. In the Essay or Discourse referred to, after reciting the arguments that have been used to prove the invention came from China, and the claims that have been made on the behalf of a variety of people, to their being the inventors; he gives it as his opinion, that Bertoldus Schuvart, a German Franciscan friar, and an eminent chemist, was the man who invented it, or at least was the person who, brought the invention to perfection.

[2] This is the same John Locke, of whose writings, as also of those of Rapin, Sidney, and Bishop Hoadly, the late David Hume, in his History of Great Britain, gives the following description: “Compositions of the most despicable kind both for style and matter, which have been extolled, and propagated, and read; as if they had equalled the most celebrated remains of antiquity.”

Vid. vol. viii. pag. 323, of the last edition of Hume’s History of Great Britain, published in 1778.