This William Sanderson, the patron of Mollineux, Hood, and Hues, was a rich and liberal London merchant, who had married a niece of Raleigh. He contributed largely to Sir Walter's first reconnoitring expedition in 1584 under Amidas and Barlow, and was afterwards a liberal adventurer and supporter of Raleigh in all his colonial schemes. He was fond of the science of geography, and contributed largely to the preparation and publication of the globes of Mollineux, and the Descriptions of them by Hood and Hues in 1592 and 1594. He was also a good friend of all Raleigh's friends, and acted as Sir Walter's fiscal agent in regard to the Wine monopoly. On being called upon for a settlement of the large amount due, as Raleigh supposed, after his imprisonment in the Tower, Sanderson denied his indebtedness, was sued, cast into the debtors' jail, and died in poverty. His son published severe comments against Raleigh.

Robert Hues, who was an intimate friend and associate of Hariot, was born at Hertford in 1554. He became a poor scholar at Brazen nose, and was afterwards at St Mary's Hall with Hariot. He took his degree of A.B.in 1579. He is said to have been a good Greek scholar, and after leaving the University travelled and became an eminent geographer and mathematician. He attracted the attention, probably through Raleigh, of that noble patron of learning Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, who took him into his service, made him one of his scientific companions while in the Tower, supported him partly at Sion, intrusted him to instruct his children, and finally sent him to Oxford as tutor at Christ Church of his eldest surviving son, Algernon Percy, who on the death of his father on gunpowder treason day 1632, became the 10th Earl of Northumberland. Hues died at Oxford the 24th of May, 1632, and was buried in the cathedral of Christ Church, according to the inscription on his monument. He is mentioned by Chapman in his translation of Homer's Works [ 1616 ] as ' another right learned, honest, and entirely loved friend of mine.' See infra, p. 183.

In 1595 Hariot was mentioned as a distinguished man of science in his Seaman's Secrets by Captain John Davis the navigator, a friend and partner of Raleigh.

On the eleventh of July 1596 Hariot under peculiar circumstances wrote a long and confidential letter to Sir Robert Cecil, Chief Secretary of State, in the interests of Raleigh's Guiana projects. The letter is here given in full, as it shows better than anything else the close and confidential relations existing between Sir Walter and Hariot at that time. Raleigh had returned from Guiana, his first El Dorado expedition, in August 1595, and had in the mean time employed such energy and enterprise that within about five months he had fitted out and dispatched his second El Dorado fleet under his friend Captain Keymis. This second expedition returned to Plymouth in June 1596, a few days after Raleigh had gone with Essex and Howard of Effingham on that world-renowned expedition against Cadiz. Sir Walter appears to have left his affairs in the hands of his ever faithful Hariot, and hence this sensible and timely letter in the absence of his patron. There appears to have been no complaint against Keymis; but the master of his ship, Samuel Mace, seems to have been less discreet. The letter tells its own story, and gives a vivid picture of the intelligent earnestness of Sir Walter respecting Guiana, and at the same time the earnest intelligence of Hariot during Raleigh's absence in Spain.

It has been denied that Raleigh really expected to find the El Dorado in either his first expedition of 1595 or last in 1617, but this letter goes to show that both he and Hariot had firm faith in the scheme. Indeed in a German book of travels just published, entitled ' Aus den Llanos. Schildenung einer naturwisscn-schaftlichen Reise nach Venezuela, Von Carl Sachs, Leipzig, 1879,' the writer states that the export of gold from Spanish Guiana in 1875 was 79,496 ounces. He says that the richest mine, that of Callao, has of late years returned as much as 500 per centum. After briefly narrating the expeditions of Raleigh, which had been preceded by various Spanish expeditions, he adds: 'Now at this day, after nearly three centuries, the riches sought for have been actually found In the very country where these unfortunate efforts were made.' Hariot's letter is as follows:

LETTER OF THOMAS HARIOT TO MR. SECRETARY

SIR ROBERT CECIL.

From the original holograph in the Cecil Papers at Hatfield, vol. xliii, At first printed in Edward Edward's Life of Raleigh, vol. ii, page 420.

Right Honourable Sir,

These are to let you understand that whereas, according to your Honor's direction, I have been framing of a Charte out of some such of Sir Walter's notes and writings, which he hath left behind him,-his principal Charte being carried with him, -if it may please you, I do thinke most fit that the discovery of Captain Kemish be added, in his due place, before I finish it. It is of importance, and all Chartes which had that coast before be very imperfecte, as in many thinges elce. And that of Sir Walter's, although it were better in that parte then any other, yet it was don but by intelligence from the Indians, and this voyadge was specially for the discovery of the same; which is, as I find, well and sufficiently performed. And because the secrecy of these matters doth much importe her Majesty and this State, I pray let me be so bould as to crave that the dispatch of the plotting and describing be don only by me for you, according to the order of trust that Sir Walter left with me, before his departure, in that behalf, and as he hath usually don heretofore. If your Honor have any notes from Sir Thomas Baskerville, if it may please you to make me acquaynted with them, that which they will manifest of other particularytyes then that before Sir Walter hath described shall also be set downe.

Although Captain Kemish be not come home rich, yet he hath don the speciall thing which he was injoined to do, as the discovery of the coast betwixt the river of Amasones and Orinico, where are many goodly harbors for the greatest ships her Majesty hath and any nomber; wher there are great rivers, and more then probability of great good to be don by them for Guiana, as by any other way or to other rich contryes borderinge upon it. As also, the discovery of the mouth of Orinico it self,-a good harbor and free passage for ingresse and egresse of most of the ordinary ships of England, above 3 hundred miles into the contry. Insomuch that Berreo wondred much of our mens comming up so far; so that it seemeth they know not of that passage. Nether could they, or can possibly, find it from Trinidado; from whence usually they have made their discoveryes. But if it be don by them the shortest way, it must be done out of Spayne. Now, if it shall please her Majesty to undertake the enterprise, or permitte it in her subjectes, by her order, countenance, and authority, for the supplanting of those that are now gotten thither, I thinke it of great importance to keepe that which is don as secretly as we may, lest the Spaniardes learne to know those harbors and entrances, and worke to prevent us.

And because I understand that the master of the ship with Captain Kemish is somewhat carelesse of this, by geving and selling copyes of his travelles and plottes of discoveryes, I thought it my dutye to remember it unto your wisdome, that some order might be taken for the prevention of such inconveniences as may thereby follow : by geving authority to some Justice, or the Mayor, to call him before them, and to take all his writinges and chartes or papers that concerne this discovery, or any elce, in other mens handes, that he hath sold or conveyed them into ; and to send them sealed to your Honor, as also to take bond for his further secrecy on that behalf. And the like order to be taken by those others, as we shall further informe your Honor of, that have any such plots, which yet, for myne owne parte, I know not of; or any other order, by sending for him up or otherwise, as to your wisdome shall seeme best.

Concerning the Eldorado which hath been shewed your Honor out of the Spanish booke of Acosta, which you had from Wright, and I have scene, when I shall have that favour as but to speake with you I shall shew you that it is not ours-that we meane-there being three. Nether doth he say, or meane, that Amazones river and Orinoco is all one,-as some, I feare, do averre to your Honor ; as by good profe out of that booke alone I can make manifest; and by other meanes besides then this discovery, I can put it out of all dout.

To be breef, I am at your Honor's comandement in love and duty farther than I can sodeynly expresse for haste. I will wayte upon you at Court, or here at London, about any of these matters or any others, at any time, if I might have but that favour as to heare so much. I dare not presume of my selfe, for some former respectes. My fidelity hath never been impeached, and I take that order that it never shall. I make no application. And I beseech your Honor to pardon my boldness, because of haste. My meaning is allwayes good. And so I most humbly take my leave. This Sunday, 11th of July 1596.

Your Honor's most ready at commandement in all services I may,

THO. HARRIOTE.

addressed:

To the right honorable Sir ROBERT CICILL, Knight Principall Secretary to Her Majesty, these.

Endorsed: 11 July, 1596. Mr Harriott to my Master.

The vigilant Secretary lost no time in acting upon Hariot's suggestions. On the 31st of July Sir George Trenchard and Sir Ralph Horsey wrote to Cecil from Dorchester in reply to his instructions, that they had seized the charts and books of the ' India Voyage' [to Guiana] from one Samuel Mace and William Downe, which they would send up to the Secretary if desired. They were desired, and accordingly sent them by post on the 10th of August. A few days later Raleigh returned to Plymouth with the first glorious news of the success of the English fleet at Cadiz ; which news completely turned the heads of the people of England one way, and those of the Queen and the hungry politicians the other. Poor Mace, to whom Raleigh was much attached, was restored to his confidence. To Raleigh more than to any one man this triumph over Spain was justly due, but in the pitiful squabbles that followed in the apportionment of the honors and the spoils Sir Walter used to aver that his sole gain in this great national enterprise from beginning to end was but a lame leg. He might have added that the business had gained for him the envy, malice and all uncharitableness of those in high places. In worldly wealth he was now comparatively poor, and his fortunes were broken, though the Queen at times, only at times, smiled on him.

At what precise time Hariot, who never deserted Raleigh, became acquainted with Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, with whose honored name, next to that of Sir Walter's, his must ever be associated, does not as yet appear. It is known, however, that there was an intimacy between Raleigh and Percy as early as 1586, when Sir Walter presented Percy with a coat of mail on his going over to Flanders, and soon after a bedstead made of cedar from Virginia ; while the Earl about the same time gave to Sir Walter a ' stroe coloured velvet saddle.' From this time to the day of Raleigh's triumph on the scaffold there exists plenty of evidence of their continued intimacy.

When therefore the Earl and Raleigh were finally caged together in the Tower for life in 1606 their friendship was of more than twenty years' standing. From this we infer that Hariot also knew Percy almost from the time of his joining Raleigh; but the earliest mention of his name in connection with that of the Earl which we have met with is this of 1596, in the Earl's pay-rolls, still preserved at Sion, and described in the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission of Historical Manuscripts, page 227, 'To Mr. Herytt for a book of the Turk's pictures, 7s.' It appears from the same rolls that from Michaelmas 1597 to 1610, if not earlier and later, an annual pension of 80 (not 120, or 150, 300, as variously stated) was paid to Hariot by the Earl. This pension was probably continued as long as Hariot lived; and besides there are not wanting many marks of the Earl's liberality, friendship, and love for his companion and pensioner, who was long known as ' Hariot of Sion on Thames,' as expressed on his monument. In the Earl's accounts for 1608 there is this entry, ' Payment for repairing and finishing Mr Heriotts house at Sion.'

At what time exactly Hariot took up his residence at Sion the Earl's new seat (purchased of James in 1604) is not known, but probably soon after the Earl was sent to the Tower in 1606. There is preserved a Letter from Sir William Lower addressed to Hariot at Sion dated the 3Oth of September 1607, and other letters or papers exist showing his continued residence there until near the time of his death in 1621. Wood and many subsequent writers to the present time have confused Sion near Isleworth with Sion College in London. They are totally distinct. Hariot had nothing to do with Sion College, which was not founded until 1630, nine years after his death. The error arose out of the coincidence of Torporley's taking chambers at Sion College on retiring from his clerical profession, and dying there in April 1632, leaving his mathematical books and manuscripts to the College Library. He had been appointed by Hariot to look over, arrange, and ' pen out the doctrine ' of his mathematical writings. Torporley's abstracts of Hariot's papers are still preserved in Sion College Library.

What the Earl of Northumberland did for Hariot is, as the world goes, ascribed to patronage ; what Hariot did for the Earl cannot be measured by money or houses, but may be summed up in four words, alike honorable to both, ' they were long friends.' To this day the debt of gratitude from the philosopher to the nobleman is fairly balanced by the similar debt of the nobleman to the philosopher. Hariot's Will, given on pages 193-203, tells the rest of the story of this noble friendship.

It is manifest, however, from many considerations that the noble Earl took a lively and almost officious interest in the public honor and character of his friend, for Hariot appears to have been as careless of his own scientific reputation as his contemporary Shakspeare is said to have been of his literary eminence.

On the other hand, Hariot's interest in the Earl's affairs and family at Sion redound greatly to his credit. He was both an eminent scholar and a remarkable teacher. Earnest students flocked to him for higher education from all parts of the country. Besides the private scientific and professional instruction that from the first he gave to Raleigh, his captains and sea officers, he seems to have had under his scientific tuition and mathematical guidance many young men who afterwards became celebrated; among whom may be mentioned Robert Sidney, the brother of Sir Philip, afterwards Lord Lisle of Penshurst; Thomas Aylesburyof Windsor, afterwards Sir Thomas, the great-grandfather of two queens of England; the late Lord Harrington; Sir William Protheroe and Sir William Lower of South Wales; Nathaniel Torporley of Shropshire; Sir Ferdinando Gorges of Devonshire; Captain Keymis; Captain Whiddon, and many others. Cordial and affectionate letters of most of these men to their venerated master are still preserved.

At Sion were the groves of Hariot's academy.

Yet he with Warner and Hues was constantly passing by the Thames between Sion and the Tower, some three or four hours by oar and tide. They were all three pensioners, or in the pay, of the Earl, though the last two were on a very different footing from that of Hariot as to emoluments and responsible position. They were, however, companions of both the Earl and Sir Walter, and, if tradition is to be believed, they were sometimes joined by Ben Jonson, Dr Burrill, Rev. Gilbert Hawthorne, Hugh Broughton, the poet Hoskins and perhaps others.

The Earl had a large family to be educated, and there is reason to believe that in his absence from Sion Hariot was intrusted for many years with the confidential supervision of some of the Earl's personal affairs at Sion, including the education of his children. How he identified himself with the noble family of his patron may be inferred from these extracts from a letter to Hariot, dated July 19, 1611, of William Lower, one of his loving disciples. Cecil had been fishing out some new evidence of Percy's treason from a discharged servant, and was pressing cruelly upon the prisoner. Lower writes :

I have here [in South Wales] much otium and therefore I may cast awaye some of it in vaine pursuites, chusing always rather to doe some thinge worth nothing then nothing att all. How farre I had proceeded in this, I ment now to have given you an account, but that the reporte of the unfortunate Erles relapse into calamitie makes me beleeve that you are enough troubled both with his misfortunes and my ladys troubles; and so a discourse of this nature would be unseasonable. [And concludes the letter with] But at this time this much is to much. I am sorrie to heare of the new troubles ther, and pray for a good issue of them especiallie for my ladys sake and her five litle ones. [The Countess of Northumberland here referred to was the mother of Sir William Lower's wife, who was Penelope Perrot, daughter of Sir John Perrot, who married Lady Dorothy Devereux, sister of Essex, and for her second husband Henry Percy the gth Earl of Northumberland. Lower died in 1615.]

This responsible trust gave Hariot a good house and home of his own at Sion, with independence and an observatory. He had a library in his own house, and seems to have been the Earl's librarian and book selector or purchaser for the library of Sion House, as well as for the use of the Earl in the Tower. The Earl was a great book-collector, as appears by his payrolls. Books were carried from Sion to the Tower and back again, probably not only for the Earl's own use, but for Raleigh's in his History of the World. Many of these books, it is understood, are still preserved at Petworth, then and subsequently one of the Earl's seats, but now occupied by the Earl of Leconsfield.

To look back a little. Before either Raleigh or Henry Percy was shut up in the Tower, we find one of Hariot's earliest and ablest mathematical disciples, Nathaniel Torporley, a learned clergyman, writing in high praise of him in his now rare mathematical book in Latin, entitled,' Diclides Coelometricx,' or Universal Gates of Astronomy, containing all the materials for calculation of the whole art in the moderate space of two tables, on a new general and very easy system. By Nathaniel Torporley, of Shropshire, in his philosophical retreat, printed in 1602. The exact title is as follows:

Diclides Coelometric / Seu / Valv Astronomic / vniversales / Omnia artis totius numera Psephophoretica in sat modicis / finibus duarum Tabularum Methodo noua, generali,/ & facilima continentes./ Authore Nathale Torporlaeo Salopiensi / in secessu Philotheoro. / Londini / Excudebat Felix Kingston. 1602. / 4.

In the long preface Torporley, who had entered St Mary's Hall the year Hariot graduated, and who during his travels abroad had served two years as private secretary or amanuensis to Francis Vieta, the great French Mathematician, but who had since become a disciple of the greater English Mathematician, thus admiringly speaks of his new master, Thomas Hariot:

Neque enim, per Authorum cunctationem & affectatam ob-scuritatem, fieri potuit, vt in prima huius Artis promulgatione, eidem alicui & inventionis laudem, te erudiendi mercedem deferremus; sed dimicamibus illis, neque de minoribus prmijs quam de imperio Mathematico certantibus; mussantibus vero alijs, & arrectis animis expectantibus, Quis pecori imperitet, quern tot armenta sequantur; non defuit Angl & suus Agonista (ornatifimum dico, et in omni eruditionis varietate principemvirum Thomam Hariotum, homine natu ad Artes illustrandas, &, quod illi palmariu erit prstantissimu, ad nubes philofophicas, in quibus multa iam secula caligauit mundus, indubitata; veritatis splendore difcutiendas) qui vetaret, tarn folidz laudis spolia ad exteros Integra deuolui. Ille enim (etiamdum in pharetra conclufa, qu pupilla viuacis auicular terebraret, sagitta) ipsam totius Artiseius metam egregia methodo collimauit; expedita vero facilitate patefactam, inter alios amicorum, & mihi quoque tradidit; multisq vitro citroq, iaftatis Qustionibus, ingenia nostra in abysso huius Artis exercendi causam prbuit.

Of Mr Torporley we shall have more to say further on, as he is particularly mentioned in Hariot's will. Meanwhile here is an attempt at a translation of his peculiar Latin in the above extract:

For indeed by the delays and affected obscurity of authors, it was impossible, that in the first promulgation of the art, we should give the praise of invention and the credit of teaching, to the same individual ; but while they were quarrelling & contending for no less a prize than the empire of Mathematics, whilst others were muttering, and waiting with excited minds to see Who should rule the flock, whom so many herds should follow, our own champion has not been wanting to England. I mean Thomas Hariot, a most distinguished man, and one excelling in all branches of learning : a man born to illustrate Science, and, what was his principal distinction, to clear away by the splendour of undoubted truth those philosophical clouds in which the world had been involved for so many centuries : who did not allow the trophies of substantial praise to be wholly carried abroad toother nations. For he (while the arrow, which was to hit the bull's-eye, was yet in the quiver) defined by an admirable method the limits of all that science ; and showed it to me, amongst others of his friends, explained in an expeditious and simple manner ; and by proposing various problems to us, enabled us to exercise our ingenuity in the profundities of this science.

But time and space beckon. On the 24th of March 1603, set 'that bright occidental Star,' and ' that mock Sun' fr the north took by succession its place. To Raleigh the change was the setting of a great hope, for to Queen Elizabeth he owed his fortunes, and was proud of the debt. To Raleigh more than to any other one man, notwithstanding his many faults, the Queen owed the brilliancy of her Court, the efficacy and terror of her navy, the enterprise and intelligent energy of her people, to say nothing of the adventurous spirit of colonization which he awoke in his efforts in Western Planting. The glory of his achievements today is the glory alike of England and English America. King James let no man down so far as he did Raleigh. Perhaps it was because there was no one left of Elizabeth's Court who could fall so far.

On three trumped up charges which never were, and never could be sustained with due form of law, Raleigh was with small delay thrown into the Tower. Several other noblemen and less eminent persons were sent there also. The Asiatic plague was raging in the City. A moral pestilence of equal virulence at the same time infested the Court. The State prisoners must be tried openly, though already secretly condemned. The Judges of his ' dread Majesty' dared not venture to the Tower as usual for the trials, forgetting apparently that its precincts were just as unhealthy for the great prisoners of State as for them, who were liable any day on the miffs of majesty to change places.

So it was determined that the' traitors' should be carted down to Winchester for trial. A cold wet November seven-days' journey through mud and slush was the miserable dodge to carry out this scheme of darkness which neither Coke nor Popham would have dared to perpetrate in the broad light of London. It was, as all the world knows, a mock trial. The prisoners Raleigh, Cobham, Gray, and Markham were condemned and sentenced to death as traitors, and Raleigh, for the grim sport of the royal Nimrod, was made to witness a mock execution of his fellow-convicts, but being in due course all respited by a warrant which the Governorof Winchester Castle had carried three days in his pocket, were carted back to the Tower, where, not pardoned, their sentences not commuted, but simply deferred, they were tortured with a living death hanging over them, like the sword of Damocles depending on royal caprice.

Here Raleigh dragged out his long imprisonment, and (as tersely & truly expressed by his son) was, after thirteen years, beheaded for opposing the very thing he was condemned and sentenced for favouring. The whole story is a bundle of inconsistencies, like that of Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland, committed to the Tower in 1606, and his fifteen years' imprisonment. The stories of these two celebrated men are inseparably connected with that of Hariot. But it is not our purpose to trace either Raleigh's or Percy's progress through these long and dreary years any further than is necessary to illustrate the life of Hariot, who was the light of the outer world to them both. Incarcerated and watched as they were, Hariot was the ears, the eyes, and the hands of these two noble captives.

The depth and variety of Hariot's intellectual and scientific resources, his honesty of purpose, his fidelity of character, his eminent scholarship, his unswerving integrity, and his command of tongue, rendered him alike invulnerable to politicians and to royal minions. He was with Raleigh at Winchester and in the Tower, off and on, as required, from 1604 to 1618, except during the last voyage to Guiana. He was at the same time a pensioner, a companion, and confidential factotum of his old friend the Earl of Northumberland both in the Tower and at Sion for fifteen years. Watched as these two prisoners were, ensnared, entrapped, and entangled for new evidence against them, it was necessary for Hariot to pursue a delicate and cautious course, to eschew politics, statecraft and treason, and to devote himself to pure science (almost the only pure commodity that was then a safeguard) metaphysics, natural philosophy, mathematics, history, and literature. He was their jackal, their book of reference, their guide, their teacher, and their friend.

Raleigh found himself in December 1603, lodged in the Tower, innocent, as is now generally admitted, of the charges against him, but legally attainted of high treason. All his worldly effects therefore escheated to the Crown. The King out of pure cowardice (for he dared not carry out the sentence of the Court) waived the horrid parts of the sentence-too horrid even to be quoted here-and commuted it to execution by the block. He also waived the immediate forfeitureof property acquired under Elizabeth's reign, and even allowed Raleigh to complete the entail of certain estates to his wife and son.

The Governor of the Tower and his Lieutenant were at first officially kind and friendly, extending many privileges to win his confidence. If there had been any treason in Sir Walter they would most certainly have wormed it out of him, for his eyes at first were not fully open. He still believed in the honour and fidelity of his mock friends at Court.

When no more satisfactory evidence of his guilt could be smuggled out of him, or his companions, in support of the unjust verdict, they began, in 1605, to abridge his privileges and darken his lights. At first his friends and visitors were cut down to a fixed number. There is a list among the Burleigh papers in the British Museum by which it appears that Lady Raleigh, her maid, and her son might visit Sir Walter. For this they took a house on Tower Hill near the old fortress, where they lived six years, or as long as this privilege lasted.

Then Sir Walter was to be allowed two men servants and a boy, who were to remain within the Tower. Besides these he was permitted to see on occasion, Mr Hawthorne, a clergyman ; Dr Turner, his physician } Mr Johns, his surgeon ; Mr Sherbery, his solicitor ; his bailiff at Sherburne ; and his old friend, Thomas Hariot, with no official designation.

It needs no ears under the walls of the Tower to tell us what were the duties of this learned and trusted friend, who had been Sir Walter's confidential factor for a quarter of a century in all his most important enterprises. Hariot, it will be perceived, was the only one named, in this house-list, without an assigned profession. Fortunately there is still preserved a ' hoggeshead of papers' in Hariot's handwriting, ill-assorted and hitherto unsifted, which partially reveal the secrets of this prison-house, and show Hariot here, there, and everywhere, mixed up with all the studies, toils, experiments, books, and literary ventures of our honored traitor.

So passed, with tantalizing uncertainty, the year 1605, with many fears for the future and some hopes; but 1606 brought into the Tower Sir Walter's old friend Henry Percy, another 'traitor.' With him, at first, there was considerable liberality on the part of the officials (all paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and perform their ' magic.' Hariot was the master of both in these occult sciences. The ' furnace ' and the ' still' were at first Raleigh's chief amusement and study. Assaying and transfusing metals, distilling simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes, with exercises in chemistry and alchemy, were the studies of both Raleigh and the Earl. But soon the policy of the Court changed. The prisoners had less liberty and saw less of each other, and so the stills were pulled down, and the gardens given up. Raleigh was more closely watched, and entrapped. Then there was fencing and defencing, for nothing could stand against the King's persistent rancor, and Cecil's dissimulation. From time to time Sir Walter's titles, his offices, his Elizabethan monopolies and his appointments were all taken from him. All his emoluments were wanted for hungry favourites ; and finally the Sherburne estate which he had been permitted to entail on his son went by no higher law than the king's, ' I mon hae it for Carr.'

During all these anxious months Hariot was Sir Walter's close-mouthed and trusted Mercury, a silent messenger who floated frequently by the tide on the Thames between the Tower and his residence at Sion, a pensioner of, and one of Percy's staff of wise men, but really Raleigh's strong right hand. He adroitly and faithfully served two masters, preserving his own independence and self reliance, and not losing the confidence of either.

From the trial at Winchester to the final transfer of Sherburne, a period of some five years, every step against Raleigh was taken through the high Courts of Justice. That the cannie monarch was capable of all this moral wrong and legal crookedness need not surprise any one who has investigated his antecedents and proclivities, but that he on coming to England should have developed that masterly power of warping great minds and bending the English Courts of Justice to his purposes, and even crunching its strong old oaken Bench and Bar into his own royal privy pocket, does surprise one. The secret of this unenglish strength, however, has been attributed partly to his Bur-leigh help.

When Raleigh found the cords thus tightening round him, he offered sundry concessions and services for life and liberty. He would carry out his schemes for enriching the king and the kingdom by conquering and exploring Guiana; he would accept exile in Holland; or emigrate to Virginia, and help to build up a new English empire in the West; but all in vain. It was feared that his unexpired and dormant patent might interfere with the King's own Virginia charter. So Raleigh and Hariot worked on, but relieved the tedium by ever changing study. Every year or two, as long as he could command through himself or friends the resources, Raleigh sent privately a reconnoitring and intelligence ship to Guiana, to keep that pet enterprise alive. In this delicate matter Hariot was Sir Walter's geographer and assayer, while Hariot's old college friend, Keymis, was his factor or shipping agent.

Then come Raleigh's Essays and smaller writing with his hopeful correspondence with the Queen and Prince Henry. Lady Raleigh's privileges, after six years, ceased in 1611; probably about the time that Cecil was for some unaccountable reason prospecting actively for new evidence against both Sir Walter and Percy. The years 1610 and 1611 were anxious times for them both; but they were bright days for Hariot, with his invention of the telescope and his discoveries. Whether in the Tower, administering new scientific delicacies and delights to the prisoners; or at Sion, unlocking the secrets of the starry firmament by night, in his observatory; or floating between Sion and the Tower by day on the broad bosom of the Thames, prying into the optical secrets of lenses, and inventing his perspective trunks by which he could bring distant objects near, Hariot in foggy England of the north was working out almost the same brilliant series of discoveries that Galileo was making in Italy. To this day, with our undated and indefinite material, even with the new and much more precise evidence now for the first time herewith produced, it is difficult to decide which of them first invented the telescope, or first by actual observation with that marvellous instrument confirmed the truth of the Copernican System by revealing the spots on the Sun, the orbit of Mars, the horns of Venus, the satellites of Jupiter, the mountains in the Moon, the elliptical orbits of comets, etc. It is manifest, however, that they were both working in the same groove and at the same time.

Hariot was undoubtedly as great a mathematician and astronomer as Galileo. In 1607 at Ilfracombe and in South Wales, he had taken by hand and Jacob's staff, the old patriarchal method, valuable observations of the comet of that year, and compared notes with his astronomical pupil William Lower, and afterwards with Kepler. This comet, now known as Halley's, ought perhaps to have been named Hariot's, for it confirmed his notions that the motions of the planets were not perfect circles and afforded probably the germ of his reasoning out the elliptical orbits of comets, especially afterhis friend and correspondent [see infra, pages 178-180] Kepler's book de Motibus Stella Atartis came out in 1609, and he had invented and improved his telescope or perspective ' truncke' or cylinder in 1609-10.

It is not positively stated that Hariot held direct correspondence with Galileo in 1609 and 1610 or even later, but the evidence is strong that he was promptly kept informedof what was going on in Italy in astronomical and mathematical discovery, as well as in Germany and elsewhere. That he was using a ' perspective truncke ' or telescope as early as the winter of 1609-10, and that his ' servaunte ' Christopher Tooke (or as Lower in 1611 familiarly called him' Kitt') made lenses for him and fitted them into his 'trunckcs' for sale by himself, is known. From this circumstance,and from the fact that he disposed of many ' trunckes ' by his will, and left a considerable stock of them to Tooke, it is manifest that he manufactured and traded in telescopes from 1609 to 1621. With his invention of the telescope then it required no correspondence with Galileo to induce him to rake the heavens and sweep our planetary system for new astronomical discoveries. To an astronomer of his activity and mathematical acumen these discoveries followed as a matter of course. Like Galileo he may have borrowed from the Dutch (or quite as likely they of him) the idea that by a combination of lenses it was possible to bring distant objects near, but that he worked out the idea independently of Galileo admits hardly of a doubt. But he seems to have been less ambitious than Galileo to claim priority in either the invention or the discoveries that immediately followed. In this connection the following hitherto unpublished letter will be read with interest:

LETTER OF SIR WILLIAM LOWER in South Wales to

THOMAS HARIOT at Sion 21 June 1610.

Printed from the holograph original in the British Museum

I gaue your letter a double welcome, both because it came from you and contained newes of that strange nature ; although that wch I craued, you haue deserved till another time. Me thinkes my diligent Galileus hath done more in his three fold discouerie then Magellane in openinge the streightes to the South sea or the dutch men that weare eaten by beares in Noua Zembla. I am sure with more ease and saftie to him selfe and more pleasure to mee. I am so affected with this newes as I wish sommer were past that I mighte obserue these phenomenes also, in the moone I had formerlie observed a strange spotted-nesse al ouer, but had no conceite that anie parte therof mighte be shadowes; since I haue obserued three degrees in the darke partes, of wch the lighter sorte hath some resemblance of shadinesse but that they grow shorter or longer I cannot yet pceaue. ther are three starres in Orion below the three in his girdle so neere togeather as they appeared vnto me alwayes like a longe starre, insomuch as aboute 4 yeares since I was a writing you newes out of Cornwall of a view a strange phenomenon but asking some that had better eyes then my selfe they told me, they were three starres lying close togeather in a right line, thes starres with my cylinder this last winter I often observed, and it was longe er I beleued that I saw them, they appearinge through the Cylinder so farre and distinctlie asunder that without I can not yet disseuer. the discouerie of thes made me then obserue the 7 starres also in, # [Taurus], wch before I alwayes rather beleued to be, 7. then euer could nomber them, through my Cylinder I saw thes also plainelie and far asunder, and more then, 7. to, but because I was prejugd with that number, I beleved not myne eyes nor was carefull to obserue how manie; the next winter now that you have opened mine eyes you shall heare much fr me of this argument, of the third and greatest (that I confesse pleased me most) I have least to say, sauing that just at the instance that I receaved your letters wee Traventane Philosophers were a consideringe of Kepler's* reasons [*pag. 106. Noua Stella Serpentarii] by wch he indeauors to ouerthrow Nolanus and Gilberts opinions concerninge the immensitie of the Spheare of the starres and. that opinion particularlie of Nolanus by wch he affirmed that the eye beinge placed in anie parte of the Univers the apparence would be still all one as vnto us here. When I was a sayinge that although Kepler had sayd somethinge to moste that mighte be vrged for that opinion of Nolanus, yet of one principall thinge hee had not thought; for although it may be true that to the ey placed in anie starre of, # [Cancer], the starres in Capricorne will vanish, yet he hath not therfore so soundlie concluded (as he thinkes) that therfore towards that parte of the world ther wilbe a voidnesse or thin scattering of little starres wheras els round about ther will appeare huge starres close thruste togeather: for sayd I (hauinge heard you say often as much) what is in that huge space betweene the starres and Saturne, ther remaine euer fixed infinite nombers wch may supplie the apparence to the eye that shalbe placed in # [Cancer], wch by reason of ther lesser magnitudes doe flie our sighte what is aboute # [Saturn], # [Jupiter], # [Mars], etc. ther moue other planets also wch appeare not. just as I was a saying this comes your letter, wch when I had redd, loe, qd I, what I spoke probablie experience hath made good ; so that we both with wonder and delighte fell a consideringe your letter, we are here so on fire with thes thinges that I must renew my request and your promise to send mee of all sortes of thes Cylinders. my man shal deliuer you monie for anie charge requisite, and contente your man for his paines and skill. Send me so manie as you thinke needfull vnto thes obseruations, and in requitall, I will send you store of observations. Send me also one of Galileus bookes if anie yet be come ouer and you can get them. Concerning my doubte in Kepler, you see what it is to bee so far fro you. What troubled me a month you satisfyed in a minute. I have supplied verie fitlie my wante of a spheare, in the desolution of a hogshead, for the hopes therof haue framed me a verie fine one. I pray also at your leasure answere the other pointes of my last letter concerning Vieta, Kepler and your selfe. I have nothinge to presence you in counter, but gratitude with a will in act to be vsefull vnto you and a power in proxima potentia ; wch I will not leaue also till I haue broughte ad actum. If you in the meane time can further it, tell wher in I may doe you seruice, and see how wholie you shall dispose of me.

Your most assured and louing friend Tra'uenti the longest day of, 1610. Willm Lower. ~ Addressed: To his espesial good frind Mr. Thomas Hariot

Seal of Arms, (B. M. Add. 6789.) at Sion neere London.

[Tra'venti or Trafenty, near Lower Court, is eight or nine miles south-west of Caermarthen, near the confluence of the rivers Taf and Cywyn.]

The writer is fortunately able to throw some light upon these letters of Lower to Hariot. In the Monatlicbe Correspondenz Vol. 8, 1803, published by F. X. von Zach at Gotha, pages 47-56, is a most interesting fragment of an original letter inEnglish toHariot. Dr Zach says that he found this letter at Petworth in 1784, and it being without date or signature he confidently assigned its authorship to the Earl of Northumberland, and guessed the date to have been prior to 1619. In his many notes he is in raptures over his discovery, and deplores the misfortune of its breaking off in the most interesting place just as the Earl was about to announce the discovery of the elliptical orbit of the comet of 1607, as reasoned out of Hariot's observations and the writings of Kepler. This famous letter has been used or copied in many places, particularly in Ersch and Gru-ber's Algemeine Encyklopadie under Hariot.

The mystery is now solved by giving here the letter in full. It is even more important than Dr Zach with all his enthusiasm supposed. It is not, however, from the pen of Northumberland, though none the less interesting on that account. The letter is in the well-known handwriting of Lower, of Tra'venti, on Mount Martin, near Llanfihangel, in South Wales, to his dearly loved friend and master Hariot at Sion, and is dated the 6th of February, 1610. The letter fills two sheets of foolscap paper. The first sheet of four pages Dr Zach found at Petworth, and it is to be hoped that it still exists there. The other sheet of four pages is preserved in the British Museum (Add. 6789). How long these two sheets have been separated it is difficult to tell, but probably from Hariot's day, that is, for more than two centuries and a half. The two fragments are now brought together and printed for the first time complete, the first half from Dr Zach's text, and the latter half copied verbatim direct from the original autograph manuscript, Brit. Mus. Add. 6789.

LETTER FROM SIR WILLIAM LOWER MATHEMATICIAN

AND ASTRONOMER TO THOMAS HARIOT AT SION

FEBRUARY 6, 1610.

I have receeved the perspective Cylinder that you promised me and am sorrie that my man gave you not more warning, that I might have had also the 2 or 3 more that you mentioned to chuse for me. Hence forward he shall have order to attend you better and to defray the charge of this and others, that he forgot to pay the worke man. According as you wished I have observed the Mone in all his changes. In the new I discover manifestlie the earthshine, a little before the Dichotomic, that spot which reprefents unto me the Man in the Moone (but without a head) is first to be feene. a little after neare the brimme of the gibbous parts towards the upper corner appeare luminous parts like starres much brighter then the rest and the whole brimme along, lookes like unto the Description of Coasts in the dutch bookes of voyages, in the full she appeares like a tarte that my Cooke made me the last Weeke. here a vaine of bright stuffe, and there of darke, and so consufedlie al over. I muft confesse I can see none of this without my cylinder. Yet an ingenious younge man that accompanies me here often, and loves you, and these studies much, sees manie of these things even without the helpe of the instrument, but with it sees them most plainielie. I meane the younge Mr. Protherbe.

Kepler I read diligentlie. but therein I find what it is to be so far from you. For as himfelf, he hath almoft put me out of my wits, his Aequanes, his sections of excentricities, librations in the diameters of Epicycles, revolutions in ellipses, have fo thoroughlie seased upon my imagination as I do not onlie ever dreame of them, but oftentimes awake lose my selfe, and power of thinkinge with to much wantinge to it. not of his caufes for I cannot phansie those magnetical natures, but aboute his theorie which me thinks (although I cannot yet overmafter manie of his particulars) he eftablifheth soundlie and as you say overthrowes the circular Aftronomie.

Do you not here startle, to see every day some of your inventions taken from you ; for I remember long since you told me as much, that the motions of the planets were not perfect circles. So you taught me the curious way to observe weight in Water, and within a while after Ghetaldi comes out with it in print, a little before Vieta prevented [anticipated] you of the gharland of the greate Invention of Algebra, al these were your deues and manie others that I could mention ; and yet to great reservednesse had robd you of these glories, but although the inventions be greate, the first and last I meane, yet when I survei your storehouse, I see they are the smallest things and such as in comparison of manie others are of smal or no value. Onlie let this remember you, that it is possible by to much procrastination to be prevented in the honor of some of your rarest inventions and speculations. Let your Countrie and frinds injoye the comforts they would have in the true and greate honor you would purchase your selfe by publishing some of your choise workes, but you know best what you have to doe. Onlie I, because I wish you all good, with this, and sometimes the more longinglie, because in one of your letters you gave me some kind of hope therof.

But againe to Kepler I have read him twice over cursoridlie. I read him now with Calculation. Some times I find a difference of minutes, sometimes false prints, and sometimes an utter confufion in his accounts, these difficulties are so manie, and often as here againe I want your conference, for I know an hower with you, would advance my studies more than a yeare heare, to give you a taft of some of thes difficulties that you may judge of my capacitie, I will send you onlie this one [upon the Locum Martis out of Kepler's Astronomy, de motibus Stella: Martis, etc. Prag, 1609, folio Ch. xxvi, page 137.] For this theorie I am much in love with these particulars;

1 his permutation of the medial to the apparent motions, for it is more rational that all dimensions as of Eccentricities, apogacies, etc.. . . should depend rather of the habitude to the sun, then to the imaginarie circle of orbis annuus.

2 His elliptical iter planetarum. for me thinks it shiews a Way to the folving of the unknown walks of comets. For ai his Ellipfis in the Earths motion is more a circle [here endeth Dr Zacb's fragment, and here beginneth the continuation from tie original in the Britith Museum] and in Mars is more longe and in some of the other planets may be longer againe so in thos commets that are appeard fixed the ellipsis may be neere a right line.

3. His phansie of ecliptica media or his via regia of the sun, vnto wch the walke of al the other planets is obliqj more or lesse; even the ecliptica uera under wch the earth walkes his yeares journie; by wch he solues handsomelie the mutation of the starres latitudes. Indeed I am much delighted with his booke, but he is so tough in rnanie places as I cannot bite him. I pray write me some instructions in your next, how I may deale with him to ouermaster him for I am readie to take paines, te modo jura dantem indigeo, dictatorem exposco. But in his booke I am much out of loue with thes particulars. I. First his manie and intolerable atechnies, whence deriue thos manie and vncertaine assayes of calculation. 2. His finding fault with Vieta for mending the like things in Ptol: Cop..... but se the justice Vieta speakes sleightlie of Copernicus a greater then Atlas. Kepler speakes as slightlie of Vieta, a greater then Appollonius whom Kepler everie wher admires. For whosoever can doe the things that Kepler cannot doe, shalbe to him great Appollonius. But enough of Kepler let me once againe intreate your counsel how to read him with best profit, for I am wholie possessed with Astronomical speculations and desires. For your declaration of Vieta's appendicle it is so full and plaine, as you haue aboundantlie satisfyed my desire, for wch I yield you the thankes I ought, onlie in a word tell me whether by it he can solue Copernicus, 5 cap: of his 5. booke. The last of Vieta's probleames you leaue to speake of because (you say) I had a better of you, wch was more vniuersal and more easilie demonstrated, and findeth the point, E. as wel out of the plaine of the triangle giuen, as in the plaine. I pray here helpe my memorie or vnderstand-inge, for although I haue bethought my selfe vsq ad insaniam, I cannot remember or conceaue what proposition you meane. If I haue had such a one of you, tel me what one it is and by what tokens I may know it ; If I haue not had, then let me now haue it, for you know how much I loue your things and of all wayes of teaching for richnesse and fullnesse for stuffe and forme, yours vnto me are incomparablie most satisfactorie. If your leasure giue you leaue imparte also unto me somewhat els of your riches in this argument.

Let me intreate you to advise and direct this bearer Mr. Vaughan wher and how to prouide himselfe of a fit sphere ; that by the contemplation of that our imaginations here may be releued in manie speculations that perplexe our vnderstandings with diagrammed in plano. He hath monie to prouide doe you but tell him wher the are to be had and what manner of sphere (I meant with what and how manie circles) wilbe most vsefull for vs to thes studies. After all this I must needs tell you my sorrowes. God that gaue him, hath taken from me my onlie sun, by continual and strange fits of Epelepsie or Apoloxie, when in apparence, as he was most pleasant and goodlie, he was most healthie, but amongst other things, I haue learnt of you to setle and submit my desires to the will of god ; onlie my wife with more greife beares this affliction, yet now againe she begins to be comforted. Let me heare fro you and according to your leasure and frindshippe haue directions in the course of studie I am in. Aboue al things take care of your health, keepe correspondence with Kepler and wherinsoeuer you can haue vse of me, require it with all libertie. Soe I rest ever,

Your assured and true friend to be vsed in

all things that you please.

Willm Lowr.

Tra'vent on Mount Martin [in South Wales.] 6 February, 1610.

Let me not make my selfe more able then ther is cause. I can not order the calculation by the construction you sent me of Vieta's 3. probleme, to find the distances of C. & D. & B. from the Apegen or the proportion of ia. to ac. the eccentricitie. I tooke Copernicus, 3. observations in the, 6. chap, of his, 5. booke, therfore helpe here once againe.

Addressed: To his especiall good friend

Mr. THO : HARRYOT at Sion neere London.

About this time, it is understood, Raleigh took up seriously and earnestly the great literary work of his life, The History of the World. It must have been brewing in his mind for years, for in his preface he expressed the fears he had entertained 'that the darkness of age and death would have overtaken him long before the performance.' The work, according to Camden, was published in April 1614, just before the meeting of Parliament. It appeared anonymously, and for obvious reasons was not entered at Stationers' Hall. James is said to have had his conscience so pricked by certain passages which everywhere pervade the work on the power, conduct and responsibility of princes, that strenuous efforts were made in January 1615 to call in and suppress it, but the king might as well have attempted to call back a departed spirit by Act of Parliament as to call in that ' History of the World' by royal proclamation. The Book was in type and in the hands of the people of England. It could therefore no more be suppressed at that day by princely power than could manifest destiny itself. The second edition of 1621 was the first with Raleigh's name.

This grand work, which in almost everychapter shows the masterly hand of Raleigh himself, needs no comment here. It is however no disparagement of the book (but the contrary) to say that in the collection, arrangement and condensation of its materials; that in unlocking the muniment room of antiquity and perusing the chief authors of the Greek and Latin classics from Heroditus to Livy and Eusebius, covering a period of near four thousand years, he must have had at cheerful beck powerful and competent aid. To collect, read, collate, note down, and digest these vast and scattered treasures into reasonable and presentable shape for the master mind, required not a bevy of poets and parsons, but one masterly scholar of scientific, analytic, mathematical, philosophical and religious training. Such a man was Hariot.

We read of Gibbon's twenty years' fag and toil on the materials of the History of the Roman Empire alone, and at a time when there were many aids not existing in Raleigh's day. Gibbon personally ransacked the libraries of Europe. Raleigh had scarcely four years to cover the four most ancient empires and a much longer period, and was himself confined to Tower Hill. But he had at command a Hariot, a sort of winged Mercury, who was neither entowered nor hide-bound with conceit or ignorance. He was a marvellously good Greek and Latin scholar, who wrote Latin with almost as much ease as English. One has but to read the vast number of notes, citations and particular references in the History of the World to see the height, depth, and perfect modelling of the structure.

Raleigh was unquestionably the designer, the architect and the finisher of his History of the World. To him is due the honor and credit of the work. But who was the builder ? The answer manifestly is Thomas Hariot of Sion on Thames, learned, patient, self-forgetting, painstaking, long-waiting, devoted Hariot. Many writers have claimed to be, or have been named as, Sir Walter's assistants and polishers. Ben Jonson, Rev. Dr Burhill, John Hoskins the poet, and others have each had their advocates,but without sufficient evidence. It may well be questioned if any one of them possessed either the ability, the time, the access to the Tower, or the opportunity to perform such herculean labors of love. These claims are apparently all based on pure conjecture, or unrectified gossip, as shown by Mr Bolton Corney in his razorly reply to Mr Isaac D'israeli. But Thomas Hariot, on the contrary, possessed abundantly what they all lacked, the necessary credentials. For proof of this assertion the doubter, as well as the lover of confirmed historical accuracy, is referred to the Hariot papers still preserved partly at Petworth and partly in the British Museum.

The Hariot manuscripts, of which there are thousands of folio pages all in his own handwriting, seem to be still in the same confused state in which he left them. He directed that the 'waste' should be weeded out of his mathematical papers and destroyed. But this duty seems, fortunately for us, to have been neglected by his executors, and hence among this 'waste' one has even now no great difficulty in recognizing in the well-known Latin handwriting of the' magician,' many jottings in chronology, geography and science, and many abstracts and citations of the classics, that in their time must have played parts in the History of the World. The Will now first produced lets in a flood of light on the history of these valued papers, and dispels a great deal of the heaps of foreign pretension, domestic assertion, and mixed charlatanism that have since 1784 beclouded the memories of both Raleigh and Hariot. It is true that on a hint in the previous century from Camden of a will by the great mathematician, many conjectures were afloat from the days of Pell, Collins, Wallis and Wood, but it has not been possible until now for one, with due knowledge of the main events in the lives of these two men, each equally great in his own sphere, to satisfactorily clear away any considerable portion of the misconception and misstatements of biographers and historians concerning them and their achievements. The dawn however is coming, when these new materials now first printed by the Hercules Club, but not worked up, may attract the attention of some historian competent to give them a thorough scientific scrutiny and 'pen their doctrine.'

It is not our purpose here to dwell upon Raleigh's masterpiece. From the preface of the History of the World, which opens with 'the boundless ambition of mortal man,' to the epilogue which closes up the work with the glorious triumph of Death, the whole book is replete with lessons of wisdom and warning. No one can rise from its perusal without perceiving that the modern author has made himself by apt illustration an accomplished actor in ancient history, while the ancient characters are made in their vera effigies to strut on modern stages. His pictures of great actions and great men, noble deeds and nobler princes, are drawn with such masterly perspective of truth, that they serve for all time ; while his portraiture of tyrants, villains, and dishonorable characters are no less lifelike and human. One marvels not therefore that King James, whose political creed was that the people are bound to princes by iron, and princes to the people by cobwebs, should see in Raleigh's portraiture of the upright kings no likeness to himself, but had no difficulty in recognizing in the deformed greatness and selfish virtues of the old monarchs qualities suggestive of himself and his favorites. This grand history, extending from the creation over the four great monarchies of the world, near four thousand years, closes with the final triumph of Emilius Paullus in these memorable and oft-repeated words from the first edition of 1614.

Kings and Princes have alwayes laid before them, the actions, but not the ends, of those great Ones which precededthem. They are alwayes transported with the glorie of the one, but they never minde the miserie of the other, till they finde the experience themselves. They neglect the advice of God, while they enioy life, or hope it; but they follow the counsell of Death, upon his first approach. It is he that puts into man all the wisdome of the world, without speaking a word ; which God with all the words of His Law, promises, or threats, doth not infuse. Death which hateth and destroyeth man, is beleeved ; God, which hath made him and loves him, is alwayes deferred. I have considered, saith Solomon, all the workes that are under the Sunne, and behold, all is vanitie and vexation of spirit: but who beleeves it, till Death tells it us. It was Death, which opening the conscience of Charles the fift, made him enjoyne his sonne Philip to restore Navarre ; and King Francis the First of France, to command that justice should be done upon the murderers of the Protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, which till then he neglected. It is therefore Death alone that can suddenly make man know himselfe. He tells the proud and insolent, that they are but Abjects, and humbles them at the instant ; makes them crie, complaine, and repent; yea, even to hate their forepassed happinesse. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked begger, which hath interest in nothing, but in the grauell that filles his mouth. He holds a glasse before the eyes of the most beautifull, and makes them see therein their deformitie and rottennesse; and they acknowledge it.

O eloquent, just and mightie Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast perswaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou onely hast cast out of the world and despised : thou hast drawne together all the farre stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition, of man, and covered it all over with those two narrow words : Hic jacet.

With this outburst of true eloquence the historian of the world laid down his pen in 1614. Four short years later the same historian himself, wickedly sacrificed by his hispaniolized monarch, laid down his life on the scaffold, with an apotheosis scarcely less eloquent. No death recorded in ancient or modern history is more grand or instructive than that of Sir Walter Raleigh, in many respects the greatest man of his age.

On the execution being granted in the King's Bench Court, on the afternoon of the 28th of October 1618, he asked for a little time for pre- paration, but his request was refused, Bacon having already in his pocket the death warrant duly signed by the King before the meeting of the Court! Sir Walter then asked for paper, pen and ink; and when he came to die that he might be permitted to speak at his farewell. To these last requests he appears to have received no reply, but was with indecent haste hustled off to the Gate House for execution early the next morning, the 29th of October, Lord Mayor's day, when it was expected that the crowd would go cityward. However, there was a crowd, and probably in consequence he was not prohibited from speaking. He had prepared himself, and is said to have consulted a 'Noteof Remembrance' which he held in his hand while speaking. It is possible, nay, probable that this very same Note still survives in 'paper-saving' Hariot's 'waste,' for a precious little waif, all crumpled and soiled, just such a ' Noteof Remembrance,' it is believed, as Raleigh held in his hand and consulted during that ever memorable speech, has comedown to us, and is now preserved among the Hariot papers in the British Museum. It has been recently recognized and identified by Mr Stevens, who has placed it, with other newly discovered documents respecting our philosopher, at the disposition of the Hercules Club. It is thought to possess internal evidence of having been drawn out before the speech, and is not therefore Hariot's jottings of remembrance after it. But positive proof is wanting.

It is beyond all doubt, however, in the well-known handwriting of Hariot, and is presumed to be the ' note of remembrance' for the speech, made in the Gate House, probably from dictation, during the night before the execution. It appears as if hurriedly penned with a blunt quill, and is on a narrow strip of thin foolscap paper such as Hariot used. It is about twelve inches long and nearly four inches wide, about one-third of the lower part of the paper being blank. There is no heading, date, or anything else on the paper. It is rather difficult to read, but every word, letter and point have been made out, and the whole Note is here given, line for line, and verbatim, the heading and press-mark only being added :

[SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S ' NOTE OR REMEMBRANCE '

for his speech on the Scaffold Oct. 29 1618.]

Two fits of an agew.

Thankes to god.

of calling god to witness.

note

That He Speake iustly & truely.

I.) Concerning his loyalty to ye

King. French Agent,

& Comission fro ye french King.

2.) of Slanderous fpeeches touching

his majty. a french man.

Sr L. Stukely.

3.) Sr L. Stukely. My lo: Carewe.

4.) SrL. Stukely. My lo: of Danchaster.

5.) Sr L. St: S' Edward Perham.

6.) Sr L. St. A letter on london hyway l0000li.

7.) Mine of Guiana.

8.) Came back by constreynt.

9.) My L. of Arundell.

10.) Company ufed ill in ye Voyadge.

11. Spotting of his face & counterfeiting sicknes.

12 The E. of Eflex.

Lastly, he deiired ye company to ioyne with him in prayer. &c.

[Brit. MM. Add. MSS. 6789.]

Every paragraph of the speech is noted, but not quite in the order of the speech as variously reported by those who witnessed the execution and heard it. Circumstances occurred after Sir Walter began to speak, which may have caused the slight change in the order as here set down. This argues in favor of its being a note prepared beforehand. If so It must have been written shortly before the speech, because the order for the execution was not given in the King's Bench Court till the afternoon of the 28th, and the execution was fixed for early the next morning.

There is a little confusion of the tenses, but this is not strange considering that the note was penned by a third person. The last two lines, below the number 12, may have been added by Hariot afterwards, as they are in the past tense and third person, and are separated from the rest of the note by a dash. This point is not numbered. It is possible that thefirst five lines were also added subsequently, as they are not numbered, and are placed near the top of the paper, as if interpolated, but they are in the same handwriting, and apparently were written with the same pen and ink.

At all events, whether written by Hariot before or after the deed, it is a precious contemporary document, and is another proof, if any more be needed, of the genuineness of the reported dying speech, and, consequently, that the famous 'Spanish papers' recently reproduced are forgeries and false. It requires no great stretch of the imagination with this little messenger in hand to believe that the ingenious teacher and friend of his youth, and for nearly two score years the constant companion of his manhood, passed that dreadful night with Sir Walter in the Gate House at Westminster, and after ' dear Bess' had taken her leave at midnight, penned out this note of remembrance for his friend's morning guidance, that nothing should be forgotten in case the ague returned, which he feared even more than death.

A little more than a month after the execution of his friend, Hariot is found in his observatory at Sion taking observations of the comet of December 1618. His valuable observations are preserved among his mathematical papers. During the eleven years following his primitive observations of the ' Hariot' comet of 1607, first at Ilfracombeand later at Kidwely, great advances had been made in the science of astronomy, chiefly in consequence of the invention of the telescope, and the discoveries by means of it. No mathematician in Europe was probably further advanced in this science than Hariot.

What particular discoveries belonged to him and what to Galileo, Kepler and other contemporaries, it is very difficult to determine, since it is now positively known that from 1609 or 1610 Hariot was a manufacturer and dealer in lenses, or perspective glasses, as well as in perspective trunks or telescopes; and that he was in correspondence with Kepler, and probably with Galileo. He was easily the chief of astronomers in England, and is known to have possessed the earliest books of Galileo and to have sent them to his disciples, Lower and Protheroe, in Wales. Respecting this comet of 1618, he was in correspondence with Alien and Standish of Oxford and other scholars at home and abroad.

In 'Certain Elegant Poems, Written By Dr. [Richard] Corbel, Bishop of Norwich. R. Cotes for Andrew Crooke, 1647, 16- The mirth-loving Bishop, in 'A Letter sent from Doclor Corbetto MaJler [Sir Thomas] Ailebury, Decem. 9. 1618' [on the Comet of that year] is the following allusion to Hariot:

Burton to Gunter Cants, and Burton heares From Gunter, and th' Exchange both tongue & eares By carriage : thus doth mired Guy complaine, His Waggon on their letters beares Charles Waine, Charles Waine, to which they fay the tayle will reach And at this diftance they both heare, and teach. Now for the peace of God and men, advise (Thou that haft wherewithall to make us wise) Thine owne rich ftudies, and deepe Harriots mine, In which there is no drosse, but all refine, O tell us what to trust to, lest we wax All stiffe and tupid with his paralex ; Say, shall the old Philofophy be true ? Or doth he ride above the Moone think you ? etc.

After the departure of the ' Blazing Starr' of December 1618, very little is known of Hariot, except that he lived at Sion while his patron the Earl was still in the Tower, where he was probably frequently visited by his man of science. The following letter, dated the 19th of January 1619, to him at Sion from Sir Thomas Aylesbury is interesting as showing the great interest taken in his old master by his ' loytering scholar.' Many other letters of this stamp, breathing love and ardent friendship, are found among the Hariot papers, from Sir William Lower, Sir John Protheroe, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Dr Turner, and Sir Thomas Aylesbury. Here is a sample:

Sr, Though I have bene yet soe little a while att New Mar-kett, that I have not any thing of moment to ympart; yet I thinke it not amisse to write a bare salutacons, and let yo know, that in theise wearie journeys I am often times comforted wth the remembraunce of yor kind love and paynes bestowed on yor loytering scholar, whose little credit in the way of learning is all-waits underpropped wt the name of soe worthie a Maister.

The Comet being spent, the talke of it still runnes current here; The Kings ma before mycumming spake w' one of Cambridge called Olarentia, (a name able to beget beleefe of some extraordinarie qualities) but what satisfaction he gave, I cannot yet learne; here are papers out of Spayne about it, yea and fro Roome, wc I will endevor to gett, and meane yt yo shall partake of the newes as tyme serves.

Cura ut valeas et me ames, who am ever trulie and unfaynedlyr yors att Commaund. THO: AYLESBURIE.

Newmarkett. 19, Jan. 1618/1619

Addressed: To my right woorthie frend Mr. THOMAS HARRIOT

att Syon, theise, fro Newmarkett.

Between 1615 and 1620 there are evidences of Hariot's failing health. He was greatly troubled with a cancerous ulcer on the lip. How early this began is not apparent. In 1610 his friend Lower cautions him to be careful of his health. There is in the British Museum among the Hariot papers the drafts of three beautiful letters in Latin written from Sion in 1615 and 1616 to a friend of distinction, name not mentioned, who had been recently appointed to some medical office at court, in which he describes himself and his disease.

These letters show great resignation and Christian fortitude. He seemed to be getting better in 1616, and expressed himself as somewhat hopeful. The progress of the cancer and other troubles cannot now probably be traced, but he is found in the summer of 1621 lodging with his old friend Thomas Buckner, in Threadneedle Street, near the Royal Exchange, in the parish of St Christopher. Buckner had been one of Raleigh's ' First Colonie ' to Virginia in 1585 with Hariot, and Hariot, now in 1621, had come up from Sion probably for medical advice near the hospital. On the 2gth of June he made or executed his Will, and died three days after at Buckner's, on the and of July 1621. He was buried the next day, according to the wish expressed in his will, in the old parish church of St Christopher in Threadneedle Street.

Sifte viator, leviter preme, Iacet hic juxta, Quod mortale fuit, C. V. THOM HARRIOTT. Hic fuit Doftiffimus ille Harriotus de Syon ad Flumen Thamefin, Patria & educatione Oxonienfis, QVM omnes fcientias Caluit, Qui in omnibus excelluit, Mathematicis, Philofophicis, Theologicis. Veritatis indagator ftudiofiffimus, Dei Trini-uniui cultor piiffimus, Sexagenarius, aut eo circiter, Mortalitati valedixit, Non vit, Anno Christi M.DC.XXI. Iulii 2.

Shortly after there was erected to his memory in the chancel, at the expense, it is understood, of his noble friend the Earl of Northumberland, a fine marble monument, bearing the above neat and appropriate inscription.

St Christopher's, a very old church, with its records (still preserved) extending back in an almost unbroken series to 1488, passed through many vicissitudes before itwas finally swallowed up by the leviathan of the world's commerce. The site of it is now occupied by the south-west cornerof the Bank of England on Princes Street, to the left of the entrance, nearly opposite the Mansion House. The church was restored and redecorated the year of Hariot's death, and again twelve years later, but was burnt in the great fire of 1666. Hariot's monument perished with it, but the inscription had been preserved by Stow. The church was rebuilt on the same foundation by Sir Christopher Wren in 1680.

About a century ago the church, with the whole parish of St Christopher (called then St Christopher-le-stocks because near the stocks standing at the east end of Cheapside), together with a large portion of two other parishes, St Margaret's and St Bartholomew's, was purchased by the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street for the site of the new Bank of England. Thus one great bank of this modern metropolis covers a large part of three parishes of old London.

The whole area of the Bank, however, was not given up to mammon, though still here men most do congregate, and worshippers most do worship. One small consecrated spot, enough perhaps to leaven and memorize the whole site, was respected, and not built over. It was the churchyard of St Christopher. This ' God's acre' the architect and the governors have dedicated to Beauty, Art, and Nature. The little ' Garden of the Bank of England,' the loveliest spot in all London at this day, measuring about twenty-four by thirty-two yards, was just a hundred years ago the little churchyard of St Christopher, where still repose the bones of THOMAS HARIOT.

Virginia, which once comprehended the present United States from South to North, has been called the monument to Sir Walter Raleigh. So the Bank of England, built round the churchyard of St Christopher, may be called the monument to Thomas Hariot.

The present year, 1879, is just three centuries since Hariot went forth, a youth of twenty, from the University of Oxford. We have briefly told his story. England is all the richer for his life, and the world itself acknowledges the wealth of his science and the worth of his philosophy. The Bank of England is built round his bones, but it cannot cover his memory.

Stay, traveller, tread lightly ; Near this spot lies what was mortal of that most celebrated man THOMAS HARRIOT. He was the very learned Harriot of Sion on Thames ; by birth and education an Oxonian, Who cultivated all the sciences, and excelled in all, In Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Theology. A most studious investigator of truth, A most pious worshipper of the Triune God, At the age of sixty, or thereabouts, He bade farewell to mortality, not to life, July 2d A.D. 1621.

He lived, died, and was forgotten in the parish of St Christopher. Henceforward, whenever Englishmen and Americans, merchants and scholars, rich and poor, men of genius and men of money, enter this little' Garden,' let them read there in English what Henry Percy originally set up in Latin, the above inscription.

An impression has gone abroad, traceable chiefly to Aubrey and to Anthony Wood, that Hariot was unsound in religious principles and matters of belief; that he was, in fact, not only a Deist himself, but that he exerted a baleful influence over Raleigh and his History as well as over the Earl of Northumberland. Not to misstate this utterly unfounded imputation, the very words of Wood, as first printed in his Athen in 1691, and never since modified, are here given in full: ' But notwithstanding his great skill in mathematics, he had strange thoughts of the scripture, and always undervalued the old story of the creation of the world, and could never believe that trite position, Ex nihilo nihil fit. He made a Philosophical Theology, wherein he cast off the OLD TESTAMENT, so that consequently the New would have no foundation. He wasaDeist, and his doctrine he did impart to the said Count [the Earl] and to Sir Walt. Raleigh when he was compiling the History of the World, and would controvert the matter with eminent divines of those times; who therefore having no good opinion of him, did look on the manner of his death as a judgment upon him for those matters, and for nullifying the scripture.'

It is needless to say that in all our investigations into the life, actions, and character of this eminent philosopher and Christian, from the time when, as a young man in 1585, he took delight in reading the Bible to the Indians of Virginia, down to the time that he made his remarkable will in 1621, not one word has been found in cor-roboration of these statements; but, on the contrary, many passages have appeared to contradict and disprove them. Let any one notice the numerous citations of the various books of the Bible in Raleigh's History, and he will surely fail to discover any evidence of Raleigh's being a Deist, or that Hariot had taught him to undervalue the scripture.

It is not necessary here to say more in this connection than to quote the following passage from one of the Latin letters in 1616 referred to above by Hariot to the eminent physician who had just received a high medical appointment at Court, describing himself and his terrible affliction [a cancer on the lip]. The passage is given in English, but the original Latin may be seen in the British Museum (Add. 6789). It seems to have been written on purpose to refute such slanders. He writes :

Think of me as your sincere friend. Your interests are involved as well as mine. My recovery will be your triumph, but through the Almighty who is the Author of all good things. As I have now and then said, I believe these three points. I believe in God Almighty; I believe that Medicine was ordained by him ; I trust the Physician as his minister. My faith is sure, my hope firm. I wait however with patience for everything in its own time according to His Providence. We must act earnestly, fight boldly, but in His name, and we shall conquer. Sic transit gloria mundi, omnia transibunt, nos ibimus, ibitis, ibunt. So passes away the glory of this world, all things shall pass away, we shall pass away, you will pass away, they will pass away.

There is unfortunately no portrait known of Hariot, and we can form no idea of his personal appearance; but, fortunately, the drafts of the three Latin letters to his eminent friend at Court, alluded to above, fully describe his terrible disease and other bodily infirmities in 1615 and 1616, and give us some notion of himself and his personal habits. His regular physician was Dr Turner, and his apothecary Mr May-orne, both employed also by Sir Walter.

Dr Alexander Read, in his ' Chirurgicall Lectures of Tumors and Vlcers Delivered in the Chirurgeans Hall, 1632-34. London. 1638,' 4, says in Treatise 2, Lecture 26, page 307:

Cancerous ulcers also feize upon this part [lips]. This grief haftened the end of that famous Mathematician, Mr. Hariot, with whom I was acquainted but a fhorttime before his death : whom at one time, together with Mr. Hughes, who wrote of the Globes, Mr. Warner, and Mr. Torperley, the Noble Earl of Northumberland, the favourer of all good learning, and Mecnas of learned men, maintained while he was in the Tower for their worth and various literature

A great deal of misconception has hitherto prevailed respecting Hariot's great printed work on Algebra. His reputation as a mathematician has been permitted to hinge chiefly upon it, very much to his disadvantage. A brief bibliographical statement of facts will probably present the matter in a new light. But first let the book be described as it lies before us and has been described by many others since the days of Professor Wallis, nearly two hundred years ago. The Title is as follows : 'Artis Analytic / Praxis / Ad quationes Algebraicas nou, expedit, & generali / methodo, resoluendas : / Tractatus/ E posthumis THOM HARRIOTI Philosophi ac Mathematici ce- / leberrimi sche-diasmatis summ fide & diligentia / descriptus:/ Et/Illvstrissimo Domino/Dom. HenricoPercio,/ Northvmbri Comiti,/Qui hc prim, sub Patronatus & Munificenti su auspicjss / ad proprios vsus elucubrata, in communem Mathematicorum / vtilitatem, denu reuisenda, describenda, & publicanda / mandauit, meritissimi Honoris erg / Nuncupatus. / Londini / Apud Robertvm Barker, Typographum / Regium : Et Hred. Io. Billii. /Anno 1631. / Title, reverse blank; Prefatio 4 pages; Text 180 pages, and Errata 1 page (Bbb) followed by a blank page, folio. A very handsomely printed book. In the British Museum, 529 m 8, is Charles the First's copy in old calf, gilt edges, with the royal arms on the sides. In the Preface the editors (Aylesbury and Prothero aided by Warner)say:

Artis Analytic, cuius caufa hc agitur, port eruditum illud Grcorum fculum antiquitat iamdi & incult iacentis, rcftitutionem Francifcus Viete, Gallus, vir clariflimus, & ob infignem in fcientijs Mathematicis peritiam, Gallic gentis decus, primus fingulari confilio & intentato ante hc conamine aggreffus eft; atque ingenuam hanc animi fui intentionem per varios tractatus, quos in argumenti huius elaboratione eleganter & acut confcripfit, pofteris teftatem rcliquit. Dm ver ille veteris Analytices reftitutionem, quam fibi propofuit, feri molitus eft, non tm eam reftitutam, qum proprijs inuentionibus actam & exornatam, tanquam nouam & fuam, nobis tradidifle videtur. Quod generali conceptu enuntiatum paulo fufius explicandum eft; vt, oftenfo eo quod primm Vieta in inftituto fuo promouendo actum eft, quid pofte ab authore noftro doctifiimo Thom Harrioto, qui ilium certamine ifto Analytico fequntus eft, praeftitum fit, melis innotefcere possit. [Which done into English is substantially as follows]

Francis Vieta, a Frenchman, a most distinguished man, and on account of his remarkable skill in Mathematical Science the honour of the French nation, first of all with singular genius and with industry hitherto unattempted undertook the restoration of the analytic art, of which subject we are here treating, which after the learned age of the Greeks for a long time had become antiquated and remained uncultivated : and by various treatises which he eloquently and ingeniously wrote in the working out of this line of argument, left a record to posterity of this noble design of his mind. But while he seriously laboured at the restoration of the old Analysis, which he had proposed to himself, he seems not so much to have transmitted to us a restoration of that science, as a new and original method, worked out and illustrated by his own discoveries. This, having been enunciated in general terms, must be explained a little more at length ; so that having shown what was first effected by Vieta in promoting his design, it may be more clear, what was afterwards performed by our very learned author Thomas Harriot, who followed him in these analytical investigations.

And at the end of the volume, on page 180, is the following explanatory note :

AD MATHIMATICIS STUDIOSOS.

'Ex omnibus Thoma Harrioti fcriptis Mathematicis,qud opus hoc Analyticum primum in publicum emiflum fit, haud inconfulto factum eft. Nam, qum reliqua eius opera, multiplici inuentorum nouitate excellentia, eodem omnino quo tractatus ifte (Logiftices fpeciofs exemplis omnimodis totus compofitus) ftilo Logiftico, hactens inufitato, confcripta fint, e cert ratione fit, vt prodromus hic tractatus, vltra proprium ipfius inftimabilem vfum, reliquis Harrioti fcriptis, de quorum editione iam ferio cogitatur, pro neceffario preparamento fiue introductorio opportun inferuire poffit. De qu quidem acceffori operis huius vtilitate rerum Mathematicarum ftudiofos paucis his prmonuiffe operprecium efle duximus.' [Which being interpreted reads as follows in English]

TO STUDENTS OF MATHEMATICS.

It is not without good reason that, of all Thomas Harriot's Mathematical writings, this on Analysis has been published first. For whereas all his remaining works, remarkable for their manifold novelties of discovery, are written precisely in the same, hitherto unusual, logical style as this treatise (which consists entirely of varied specimens of beautiful reasoning); this was certainly done that this preliminary treatise, besides its own inestimable utility, might suitably serve as a necessary preparation or introduction to the study of Harriot's remaining works, the publication of which is now under serious consideration. Of this accessory use of this treatise we have thought it worth while to remind mathematical students in these brief remarks.

From this it appears that Hariot's system of Analytics or Algebra was based on that of his friend and correspondent Francois Vieta, as Vieta's was avowedly based on that of the ancients. There appears to have been no attempt whatever on the part of the Englishman to appropriate the honors of the Frenchman, as many foreign writers have charged. Full credit was given by Hariot and his friends to the distinguished French mathematician.

But Hariot's modifications, improvements, and simplifications were so distinct and marked that from the first, and long before publication, they were called among his students and correspondents ' Hariot's Method,' meaning thereby only Hariot's peculiarities, without reference to the great merits of Vieta's restoration, modification, adaptation, and improvement of the old analyses from the times of the Greeks.

Vieta's' Canon Mathematicus' was published at Paris in 1579, and was reissued in London with a new title in 1589 as his ' Opera Mathematica.' But this work does not contain the Algebra. That was first published in 1591 under the following title :

'Francisci Viet/InArtem Analyticam/Isagoge/Seorfim excuffa ab Opere reftitut Mathematic/Analyfeos, seu, Algebraic nou. / Tvronis,/ Apud Iametivm Mettayer Typographium Regium. / Anno 1591.' / folio. A Supplement appeared in 1593. Seven years later there came out under the auspices of Ghetaldi, a young Italian nobleman of mathematical tastes, who had been studying in Paris, the following :-' De Nvmerosa Potestatvm / Ad Exegefum / Resolvtione. / Ex Opere reftitut Mathematic Analyfeos, / feu, Algebr nou / Francisci Viet. / Parisiis, / Excudebat David le Clerc. / 1600.' / folio. On the last page of this book is an interesting letter from Marino Ghetaldi to his preceptor Michele Coignetto, dated at Paris the I5th of February 1600.

These three thin folio volumes of great rarity are models of typographic beauty. They manifestly served as the model for printing Hariot's Algebra in 1631. The set here described (the three bound in one volume), Prince Henry's own copies, bearing his arms and the Prince of Wales' feathers, is preserved in the British Museum, press-marked 530, m. 10.

Thus Vieta's method appears to have been given to the world in three instalments between 1591 and 1600, while the author himself died in 1603. It was probably in reference to one or both of these works that Lower gently reproached Hariot for having allowed himself to be anticipated in the public announcement of his discoveries in Algebra by Vieta. It has already been seen, on page 101 above, what Torperley, the friend of Vieta, wrote of his two masters in 1602, and also, on page 121, what Lower wrote to Hariot in 1610.

One is forced, therefore, to the conclusion that by 1600, if not some time before, Hariot had completed his method in Algebra, and distributed his well known problems to his admiring scholars. It has also been seen how, from 1603 to the day of his death, he was occupied in many other absorbing matters connected with Raleigh and Percy. Yet he may have felt, as Lower expressed it, that when he surveyed his storehouse of inventions this one of Algebra might seem in ' comparison of manie others smal or of no value.' The matter is introduced here mainly because certain foreign writers,rebutting Wallis's patriotic claims in behalf of Hariot, have not only accused Hariot of appropriating Vieta's rights, but they even describe the distinguished English mathematician as working on the ' Cartesian Method.' While the truth appears to be that Hariot's method in Algebra, though not published for more than thirty years after its invention, must date from a time when Descartes was scarcely four years old.

On the other hand, on looking into Descartes' great and original work on geometry, first published in 1637, six years after Hariot's Algebra first saw the light in print, one is not disposed to accuse the great philosopher of plagiarism because in working out his problems of great novelty in reference to geometrical curves he employed any systems of notation and calculation in algebra (Hariot's among the others) that happened to be before the world. The point or essence of Descartes' work was geometry and not algebra. Therefore, in climbing to his loft, he was perfectly justified in using the ladder which Hariot had left, as it was then in general use, and was only an incidental aid in his independent calculations, especially as the fame of his great mathematical brother was well established, and he had been already sixteen years in St Christopher's. Vieta therefore had manifestly no just reason to complain, and Descartes stands acquitted.