Omniana/Volume 1/Steam Engines

by Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

12. Steam Engines.

Silvester II. (who is commonly called pope Silvester, being the most notorious of the name,) made clocks and organs which were worked by steam. The old historian explains intelligibly to us what he did not understand himself: fecit arte mechanica orologium, et organa hydraulica, ubi, mirum in modum, per aquæ calefactæ violentiam, implet ventus emergens concavitem barbiti, et permulti foratiles tractus æreæ fistulæ modulatos clamores emittunt.

Prideaux (an older author than the biographer of Mahomet, but resembling him in blind and brutal bigotry) classes Silvester among the Egyptian magicians, by no means the worst of the orders into which he has distributed the popes.

Yepes, t. 5. ff. 255. Vincentius Belvacensis, c. 24. c. 98, quoted, and the continuator of Bede c. 2. c 14.