Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/319

Rh university to honour him with a public funeral, and many demonstrations of grief. On the tombstone already referred to, was engraved an astrolabe, surrounded by the following inscription:—

The most celebrated work of Holywood was a treatise on the Sphere, discussing in the first part the form, motion, and surface of the earth in the second those of the heavenly bodies, and, as was customary before the more full revival of philosophy, mingling his mathematics and astronomy with metaphysics and magic. Although the discoveries displayed in this work must be of great importance, it is impossible to give any account of their extent, as the manuscripts of the author seem to have lain dormant till the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century, when they were repeatedly published, with the comments and additions of able mathematicians, who mingled the discoveries of Holybush with those which had been made since his death. The earliest edition of this work appears to have been that published at Padua in 1475, entitled "Francisci Capuani expositio Sphaerae Joannis a Sacrobosco." In 1485 appeared "Sphsera cum Theoricis Purbachii et Disputationibus Johannis Regiomontani contra Cremonensium Deliramenta in Planetarum Theoricns," being a mixture of the discoveries of Holywood, with those of George Purbach, (so called from the name of a town in Germany, in which he was born,) and Regiomoritanus, whose real name was Muller, two celebrated astronomers and mathematicians of the 15th century. During the same year there appears to have been published a commentary on Holywood by Gichus Ascolanus, In 1507, appeared an edition for the use of the university of Paris, with a commentary, by John Bonatus. In 1547, an edition was published at Antwerp, with figures very respectably executed, and without the name of any commentator. Among his other commentators, were Morisanus, Clavius, Vinetus, and many others of high name, whom it were useless here to enumerate. Some late authors have said that Melancthon edited his Computus Ecclesiasticus; of this edition we have not observed a copy in any library or bibliography, but that great man wrote a preface to the Sphasra, prefixed to an edition published at Paris in 1550. Besides these two wcrks, Holybush wrote De Algorismo, and De Ratione Anni. Dempster also mentions a Breviarium Juris, which either has never existed, or is now lost. M'Kenzie mentions a Treatise de Algorismo, and on Ptolemy's Astrolabe, fragments of which existed in MS. in the Bodleian library. In the catalogue of that institution the former is mentioned, but not the latter.

HOME, HENRY, a lawyer and metaphysician, son of George Home of Kames, was born at his father's house in the county of Berwick, in the year 1696. The paternal estate of the family, which had once been considerable, was, at the period of the birth of the subject of this memoir, considerably burdened and reduced by the extravagance of his father, who appears to have pursued an easy hospitable system of living, unfortunately not compatible with a small income and a large family. With the means of acquiring a liberal education, good connexions, and the expectation of no permanent provision but the fruit of his own labours, the son was thrown upon the world, and the history of all ages has taught us, that among individuals so circumstanced, science has chosen her brightest ornaments, and nations have found their most industrious and powerful benefactors. In the earlier part of the last century, few of the country gentlemen of Scotland could afford to bestow on their children the ex-