* * * * *
Charles seems to have been a very disagreeable personage during James's
life. There is nothing dutiful in his demeanour.
* * * * *
I think the spirit of the court and nobility of Edward III. and Richard II.
was less gross than that in the time of Henry VIII.; for in this latter
period the chivalry had evaporated, and the whole coarseness was left by
itself. Chaucer represents a very high and romantic style of society
amongst the gentry.
_June_ 29. 1833.
HYPOTHESIS.--SUFFICTION.--THEORY.--LYELL'S GEOLOGY.--GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
--GERARD DOUW's "SCHOOLMASTER" AND TITIAN'S "VENUS."--SIR J. SCARLETT.
It seems to me a great delusion to call or suppose the imagination of a
subtle fluid, or molecules penetrable with the same, a legitimate
hypothesis. It is a mere _suffiction_. Newton took the fact of bodies
falling to the centre, and upon that built up a legitimate hypothesis. It
was a subposition of something certain. But Descartes' vortices were not an
hypothesis; they rested on no fact at all; and yet they did, in a clumsy
way, explain the motions of the heavenly bodies. But your subtle fluid is
pure gratuitous assumption; and for what use? It explains nothing.
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