The FIRST ESSAY.
IT could not be expected that an assertion of London's being bigger than Paris and Rouen, or than Paris and Rome put together, and bigger than any City of the World, should scape uncontradicted[1]; and 'tis also expected, that I (if continuing in the[2] same persuasion) should make some reply to those contradictions. In order whereunto,
I begin with the ingenious Authour of the [3]Republiq des Lettres[4], who saith that Rey in Persia is far bigger than
- ↑ The fact that the Two Essays were published in French and that an "extract" of them appeared in the Philosophical Transactions may have contributed something, perhaps, to the attention which they attracted on the continent; their subject, however, doubtless had more to do with it. Pierre Bayle reviewed them in his Nouvelles de la République des Lettres for October, 1686 (p. 1144 ff., also in his Oeuvres diverses, pp. 661—662), and the Leipzig Acta eruditorum for October, 1687, summarized his review in connection with its notice of Petty's Further Assertion. Bayle concludes, "On attend quelques autres Pieces considerables de M. le Chevalier Petty, qui apparemment se verra critiqué bientôt par quelque Savant de Paris." It seems that Bayle's conjecture must have been verified, for the 3rd November Justel communicated to the Royal Society that there was an answer published in France to Petty's essay on the comparison between London and Paris, and in the same month Petty was told by the King that his Essays were answering in France, and by several others that the mightiest hammers there were battering his poor anvil. Birch, iv. 500, Fitzmaurice, 285. I have found no trace of these replies, nor anything to indicate that they ever came into Petty's hands. (See "The Eighth Objection" in the Treatise of Ireland, post). Bayle's criticism, on the contrary, doubtless reached Petty in November, as the previous number of the Nouvelles, September, 1686, was received at the Royal Society 27 October, 1686. Birch, iv. 498.
- ↑ 1686, 'that'.
- ↑ 1686, 'the Nouvelles de la République.'
- ↑ Bayle, commenting on Petty's assertion that London was the largest city in the world, asks, "Mais que seroit-ce en comparaison de Rey, si tout ce que les Historiens de Perse en disent étoit véritable?" He then refers to his review of
