Page:Edinburgh Review Volume 158.djvu/310

 THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

OCTOBER, 1883.

No. CCCXXIV.

Art. I. -


 * 1) Nicolaus Coppernicus. Von . Erster Band: Das Leben. Berlin: 1883.
 * 2) Nicolai Copernici Torunensis De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium Libri sex. Warsaw: 1854.
 * 3) Nicolaus Coppernicus aus Thorn über die Kreisbewegungen der Weltkörper. Uebersetzt und mit Anmerkungen von Dr. . Thorn: 1879.

The task which Dr. Prowe has successfully accomplished was one of no common difficulty. His undaunted industry and perseverance were heavily weighted by the lapse of time and the relentless progress of destruction. Since Nicholas Copernicus drew his last breath at Frauenburg, 340 years have gone by, not innocuously or in vain. Indeed, it seems as if an evil fate had from the first pursued the most authentic records of the life of that great man. The biographical narrative of his pupil Rheticus, written under his own eyes, and therefore absolutely trustworthy, perished, it might be said, at the birth ; one man alone is known to have read it, and his high estimate of its value serves but to quicken our regret at its disappearance. The loss was, in truth, an altogether irreparable one. No subsequent efforts have availed to supply or even to mitigate it. Of all those who stood near to Copernicus in his declining years, or were in a position to gather up the yet living traditions of his youth, not one except the young stranger from Wittenberg (and he in but fugitive fashion) took heed of the responsibilities towards unnumbered generations to come, which those facilities laid upon them. Yet the silence which covered his grave was not the silence of ignorance or indifference. Far and near, on the banks of the Tiber no less than on the banks of the Vistula, the name of the Prussian ecclesiastic was known and reverenced as that of the