His "Century of Inventions" is the mere syllabus or outline of a proposed larger work, for he concludes with the statement of his--"meaning to leave to posterity a book, wherein under each of these heads the means to put in execution and visible trial all and every of these inventions, with the shape and form of all things belonging to them, shall be printed by brassplates,"--the usual substitute at that time for copperplates. It is most unfortunate that he did not live to complete his projected publication. But in common candour let it not be forgotten that, the promise thus placed before us was published in 1663, not long before the devastating plague, which almost depopulated the metropolis in 1665, and the terrible conflagration of 1666, which laid waste the city of London; and that it was in the midst of the accumulated calamities thus inflicted on society, that his health appears to have suddenly given way; aged, harassed, disappointed, and dismayed, he was prematurely called to his long rest on the 3rd of April, 1667; but whether he died at Vauxhall, at the family town mansion, Worcester House, in the Strand, or at some other place is unknown; so little was he understood or esteemed for his intellectual capacity at the period of the Restoration. As though it were not a sufficient infliction to be ruined, dishonoured, oppressed, and neglected while living, it would almost appear that events conspired to lessen, if possible, the lustre of his memory by the dark shades of apocryphal history; which ascribed the invention of the steam-engine to the pretended fact of the Marquis while in imprisonment, having seen a pot lid blown off by the expanding steam; made out against him a false case of political forgery; and, worse than all, scandalously forged a letter in Paris to make it appear that in 1641 the Marquis borrowed his idea of the steam engine from Salomon De Caus, during a visit to the Bicêtre, at Paris. The fact that this same De Caus died at Paris, and was buried in the Church of La Trinité, in February, 1626;[2] shows how requisite it is for rogues to remember historical dates. [2] See _Worcesteriana_, 8vo. 1866, page 257. On the 3rd of June, in 1663, the Parliament passed an Act securing to the Marquis of Worcester the full benefit and profit of his "Water-commanding Engine," for the term of ninety-nine years. And in the same year he printed his memorable "Century," in the Dedication of which he alludes to the above Act, as one by which he feels "sufficiently rewarded."