EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
to bring my poetical efforts into order. They are only a kind of fables, like those of Ovid, under cover of which those events are treated which have happened in Europe within the last fourteen or fifteen years; so that in this manner I am allowed to sport with serious things, and to play with the heroes and the great men of our country. But meanwhile I am affected with a certain sense of shame when I reflect that I have said so much about my plans and ideas, and have not yet exhibited anything: my journey and its inconveniences have been the cause of this. I have now a great desire to return home to Sweden and to take in hand all Polheimer's inventions, make drawings, and furnish descriptions of them; and also to test them by physics, mechanics, hydrostatics, and hydraulics, and likewise by algebraic calculus. I should prefer to publish them in Sweden rather than in any other place, and in this manner to make a beginning among us of a Society for Learning and Science, for which we have such an excellent foundation in Polheimer's inventions. I wish mine could serve the same purpose. . . . A thousand remembrances to my sister Anna. I hope she is not alarmed at the
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