871 <r> Some hold the heavens, &c.] Causa quare Coelum non cadit (secundem Empedoclem) est velocitas sui motus. [ The reason the sky does not fall is (according to Empedocles) the speed it is moving at] -- Comment. in L. 2. Aristot. de Coelo. 877 <s> Plato believ'd, &c.] Plato Solem & Lunam caeteris Planetis inferiores esse putavit. [Plato believed that the Sun and Moon were lower than the other planets]-- G. Gunnin in Cosmog. L. 1. p. 11. 881 <t> The learned Scaliger, &c.] Copernicus in Libris Revolutionem, deinde Reinholdus, post etiam Stadius Mathematici nobiles perspicuis Demonstrationibus docuerunt, solis Apsida Terris esse propiorem, quam Ptolemaei aetate duodecem partibus, i. e. uno & triginta terrae semidiameteris. [Copernicus in his Book of Revolutions, and afterwards Reinholdus, very cleverly showed by mathematical means that the perihelion of the earth was (become) nearer in the twelve centuries since Ptolemy, that is, thirty-one times the radius of the earth.] -- Jo. Bod. Met. Hist. p. 455. 895 <u> Cardan believ'd, &c.] Putat Cardanus, ab extrema Cauda Halices seu Majoris Ursae omne magnum Imperium pendere.[Cardanus believed that the fate of every great empire depended on the end of the tail of the Thumb or Great Bear] -- Idem p. 325. 913 <w> Than th' old Chaldean, &c.] Chaldaei jactant se quadringinta septuaginta Annorum millia in periclitandis, experiundisque Puerorum Animis possuisse.[The Chaldeans alleged that they were forty or seventy thousand years in experiments to possess the souls of boys] -- Cicero 975 <x> Like Money, &c.] Druidae pecuniam mutuo accipiebant in posteriore vita reddituri. [The Druids accepted money from one another to be repaid in the next life] -- Patricius. Tom.2 p.9. 1001 <y> That paltry story, &c.] There was a notorious ideot (that is here described by the name and character of Whachum) who counterfeited a second part of Hudibras, as untowardly as Captain Po, who could not write himself, and yet made a shift to stand on the pillory for forging other men's hands, as his fellow Whachum no doubt deserved; in whose abominable doggerel this story of Hudibras and a French mountebank at Brentford fair is as properly described.