accusing Oldenburg of "trafficking in intelligence," and Oldenburg retaliating with the better-founded assertion that Hooke's "pendulum watches" could never be got to go; while Huygens, who might well disdain to wrangle over so small a prize, stood aloof, and let the controversy rage. Hooke's priority, as regards the principle, is unquestionable; but it is equally unquestionable that the modification introduced by Huygens first brought the improved timepieces into general use. That modification was nothing more than the coiling into a spiral of a spring which, in Hooke's design, had remained straight. So fine is the line drawn between failure and success.
The history of this invention is, in brief, the history of Hooke's life. He was a man whose brilliant qualities were neutralized one by the other. His extraordinary ingenuity was marred by his equally extraordinary versatility. His thoughts pursued each other in a rapid succession of vivid and original suggestions; but they found no halting-place on the way. He received them with rapture, but they wearied him if they staid too long. He welcomed all, but made none his friend. He wanted that laborious passion of perfection, apart from which the progeny of invention is but a sterile brood. His mind was like a telescope without clock-work, which shows the moving host of heaven, but can not fix or observe any individual star. Thus, his discoveries and investigations were usually abandoned or postponed when on the point of completion. It was not until some other inquirer, less discursive or more discreet, added the finishing touches still wanting, that he became sensible of the full value of what he had neglected, and, with loud vociferations, stood on the highway of learning, crying "Stop thief!" to the whole scientific world. Nor was his manner of conducting these controversies happier than his choice of occasions for them. His tone in argument was at all times dictatorial, and under excitement it was apt to become shrill. By his arrogance, he exasperated his adversaries; by his irritability, he prejudiced his cause. Thus, when (as not unfrequently happened) he was in the right, he roused animosity; when he was in the wrong, he incurred discredit.
But we anticipate our narrative. The foundation of the Royal Society opened to him the road to fortune and fame. Having raised his reputation by an able paper on "Capillary Attraction," his name was placed on the first list of Fellows, and on November 12, 1662, he was unanimously elected Curator of Experiments, "with the thanks of the Society ordered to Mr. Boyle for dispensing with him for their use." He had at this time entered on his twenty-ninth year, and had within him a spirit of fire, not indeed "grossly," but most inadequately "clad" in the corporeal "dimension" of his species. Pepys, who knew him well and rated him high, notes in his "Diary" that "Mr. Hooke is the most, and promises the least, of any man in the world that ever I saw." His personal appearance, indeed, was to the last degree deplorable. His figure was crooked, his limbs shrunken and emaciated, his aspect
