ROBISON.

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I,old Worcester’s machine at Vauxhall, and yetbe neither an imitator nor a plagiary. Many ofLord Worcester’s contemporaries were alive atthe period when Savery got his patent; some ofthem were members of the Royal Society at thelime he exhibited his model, and described itsconstruction and action in their apartment, amongothers, the celebrated Dr. Hooke. It is impro-bable, therefore, that Lord Worcester’s machine,whatever was its construction, could have beenunknown or forgotten by many of the emi-nent persons then composing that body; andparticularly by Dr. Hooke. The doctor's memorywas not one of the least retentive, and hishabits of mind, certainly, were not those which,at any period of his long life, would have per-mitted him to see the merit of a machine ofthis importance arrogated by a person who hadno claim to it; and the more so, as the doctorhimself is said to have hinted at the constructionof a steam-engine so early as 1678 : * and finally,it is equally improbable, that others were not tobe found, whose testimony would have beenbrought against Savery at the legal hearing of

•“After the death of Dr. Robison, says the author ofa memoir of J)r. Hooke in the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia,‘ there was a list of Dr. Hooke’s inventions found among thepiofessor’s papers, which contained the following memoran-dum:’—‘16/8, proposed a steam-engine on Newcomen’sprinciple.’ It would have been interesting to have ascer-tained whether this memorandum was made by Dr. Robisonbefore or after his having written the excellent account of thesteam-engine in his supplementary articles to the third edi-tion of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The project was eitherunknown to the professor, at the period of writing the articlealluded to, or it was rejected on account of its questionableaccuracy. In the edition of that account lately published,pn his “ Mechanical Philosophy,” 18J3,) no notice whateveris taken of Hooke’s idea.” Stuart, Des. Hist, of Steam-engine,p. 21.3d edit. 1825.

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