Mais elles s'approchent de nostre Tropique, de deux cens cinquante lieues plus qu'elles ne font de l'autre Tropique. Ce mot de Prestre Jean signifie grand Seigneur, et n'est pas Prestre comme plusieurs pense, il a este tousiours Chrestien, mais souuent Schismatique: maintenant il est Catholique, et reconnaist le Pape pour Souuerain Pontife. I'ay veu quelqu'vn des ses Euesques, estant en Hierusalem, auec lequel i'ay confere souuent par le moyen de nostre trucheman: il estoit d'vn port graue et serieux, succiur (_sic_) en son parler, mais subtil a merueilles en tout ce qu'il disoit. Il prenoit grand plaisir au recit que je luy faisais de nos belles ceremonies, et de la grauite de nos Prelats en leurs habits Pontificaux, et autres choses que je laisse pour dire, que l'Ethiopien est ioyoux et gaillard, ne ressemblant en rien a la salete du Tartare, ny a l'affreux regard du miserable Arabe, mais ils sont fins et cauteleux, et ne se fient en personne, soupconneux a merueilles, et fort devotieux, ils ne sont du tout noirs comme l'on croit, i'entens parler de ceux qui ne sont pas sous la ligne Equinoxiale, ny trop proches {73} d'icelle, car ceux qui sont dessous sont les Mores que nous voyons."[105] It will be observed that the author speaks of his conversation with an Ethiopian bishop, about that bishop's sovereign. Something must have passed between the two which satisfied the writer that the bishop acknowledged his own sovereign under some title answering to Prester John. {74} CONCERNING A TRACT BY FIENUS. De Cometa anni 1618 dissertationes Thomae Fieni[106] et Liberti Fromondi[107] ... Equidem Thomae Fieni epistolica quaestio, An verum sit Coelum moveri et Terram quiescere? London, 1670, 8vo. This tract of Fienus against the motion of the earth is a reprint of one published in 1619.[108] I have given an account of it as a good summary of arguments of the time, in the _Companion to the Almanac_ for 1836. {75} ON SNELL'S WORK. Willebrordi Snellii. R. F. Cyclometricus. Leyden, 1621, 4to. This is a celebrated work on the approximative quadrature, which, having the suspicious word _cyclometricus_, must be noticed here for distinction.[109] ON BACON'S NOVUM ORGANUM. 1620. In this year, Francis Bacon[110] published his _Novum Organum_,[111] which was long held in England--but not until the last century--to be the work which taught Newton and all his successors how to philosophize. That Newton never mentions Bacon, nor alludes in any way to his works, passed for nothing. Here and there a paradoxer ventured not to find all this teaching in Bacon, but he was pronounced blind. In our day it begins to be seen that, great as Bacon was, and great as his book really is, he is not the philosophical father of modern discovery.