GILBERT, or GILBERT, WILLIAM, an eminent physician and experimental philosopher, was born at Colchester in 1540, and became famous in consequence of his discovery of several of the properties of the loadstone. He was a strenuous advocate for the inductive mode in philosophical
1 Garcia de Resende, who was brought up at the court of King Emmanuel, seems decisive on this point. In his Miscellanea, a most curious poem illustrative of customs and occurrences of which he had been witness, he says, speaking of the pomps and pleasures of his master's court,—
| E vimos singularmente | E feitas por Gil Vicente. | Com mais graça e mais doutrina; |
| Fazer representações, | Elle foi que inventou | Posto que Joam del Encina |
| D'estilo mal novas invenções, | Isto cá, e o usou | O Pastoril começou. |
i.e., "We also saw singularly curious representations, in style right eloquent, and quite new inventions, by Gil Vicente. He it was that introduced the dramatic pastoral here, using it with more grace and more skill than Juan de la Encina, who, however, commenced it."
2 To write in Spanish was a fashion of the time easily accounted for; hence it is not surprising that Gil Vicente should have often adopted it when writing for the court. Two of the three wives of Emmanuel the Great were princesses of Castile, and the third was sister of the Emperor Charles V. The wife of John III. was also a Castilian.
3 The Bull for the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal was sent to John III. by Pope Clement VII., and is dated "Anno Incarnationis Dominice 1531."
matters, and was the first who proposed the theory of the great central magnet in the earth, afterwards applied by Halley to the explanation of the variation and dipping of the needle in the mariner's compass. Gilbert died in 1603.