In confidence, therefore, that your ignorance has not made you an enemy
to knowledge, I offer you the honour of introducing to the notice of the
publick, an adept, who, having long laboured for the benefit of mankind,
is not willing, like too many of his predecessors, to conceal his
secrets in the grave.
Many have signalized themselves by melting their estates in crucibles. I
was born to no fortune, and therefore had only my mind and body to
devote to knowledge, and the gratitude of posterity will attest, that
neither mind nor body have been spared. I have sat whole weeks without
sleep by the side of an athanor, to watch the moment of projection; I
have made the first experiment in nineteen diving engines of new
construction; I have fallen eleven times speechless under the shock of
electricity; I have twice dislocated my limbs, and once fractured my
skull, in essaying to fly[l]; and four times endangered my life by
submitting to the transfusion of blood.
In the first period of my studies, I exerted the powers of my body more
than those of my mind, and was not without hopes that fame might be
purchased by a few broken bones without the toil of thinking; but having
been shattered by some violent experiments, and constrained to confine
myself to my books, I passed six-and-thirty years in searching the
treasures of ancient wisdom, but am at last amply recompensed for all my
perseverance.
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