He was utterly beggared; what was he to do? It seems to have occurred to him to turn his mechanical ingenuity to account, the Pretender's monetary consideration being insufficient for the purpose intended. This high-minded nobleman in the same year wrote his remarkable "Century of Inventions," although it was not printed until eight years afterwards. The title-page declared its production to have been "at the instance of a powerful friend," who was, as we have reason to think, no other than Colonel Christopher Coppley, or Copley, who had served in the Parliamentary army of the North, under the command of General Fairfax; for agreements were drawn up between them to secure a participation in any benefits arising from introducing the steam engine, or water-commanding engine, as it was then called. It is not to the historic page, but to the calm unobtrusive volumes of scientific record, that we must turn to be enlightened with respect to the mental and mechanical achievements of the Marquis of Worcester; and we must at the same time not overlook the fact, that many branches of science were, in his day, but just emerging from that thraldom of empiricism, which had for centuries clouded every department of philosophical research. The Marquis of Worcester was so essentially a scientific, and not a literary man, that Horace Walpole acted most inconsistently in classing him among his _Royal and Noble Authors_. That brilliant cynic, however, had a purpose to serve, and although he found in the Marquis a vein of pursuit of which he was totally ignorant, he presumed to criticise the "Century," and to question its author's veracity; a charge which, if established, even in a minor degree, would serve a political purpose, by proving the Marquis to be unreliable in other respects, and thus weakening his authority in religion and politics. But the dilettante Walpole, a connoisseur in paintings and works of _vertu_, was, in matters of science, more ignorant of the Marquis of Worcester's worth, than was the equally satirical Voltaire of Shakspeare's genius. Hume, the historian, attracted by the sparkling wit of Walpole, adopted without examination, his plausible criticism, unconscious of its superficiality and absolute untruthfulness in every respect.