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." {125} ON THE DISCOVERY OF ANTIMONY. Basil Valentine his triumphant Chariot of Antimony, with annotations of Theodore Kirkringius, M.D. With the true book of the learned Synesius, a Greek abbot, taken out of the Emperour's library, concerning the Philosopher's Stone. London, 1678, 8vo.[251] There are said to be three Hamburg editions of the collected works of Valentine, who discovered the common antimony, and is said to have given the name _antimoine_, in a curious way. Finding that the pigs of his convent throve upon it, he gave it to his brethren, who died of it.[252] The impulse given to chemistry by R. Boyle[253] seems to have brought out a vast number of translations, as in the following tract: ON ALCHEMY.