Page:Scientific Monthly, volume 14.djvu/70

 quietly at mathematics until the cloud blew over. We hear no protest from him unless long afterwards to Kepler (translated) : For things are in such a pass with us, that still yet I may not freely philosophize. Still yet we stick in the mire. I hope the Good God will make an end to these things shortly. After which better things are to be expected. . . . 4 And when he came again to London towards 1600 he was a man well known to contemporary scientists. He is mentioned in Hues &quot;Globes&quot; (1593-4), in Davis &quot;Seamen s Secrets&quot; (1595), in Torporley s &quot;Di- clides Coelometricas&quot; (1602). He lived at Sion House, Percy s seat on the Thames near London, from some time shortly after 1604 until near his death in 1621. It was from there that he carried on his correspond ence with Kepler on optical subjects and a more familiar and interesting correspondence with various pupils such as Sir William Lower. His purely mathematical work was apparently completed before he went to Sion House. The years there were interrupted by constant attendance on Raleigh and Percy, both confined to the Tower. Such time as he could find he put upon astronomy, but a great deal went to the carrying of books to the Tower when the insatiable Raleigh was writing his History of the World, and to similar services for his caged masters. He was with Raleigh up to the end, and present by the scaffold at the execution. He did not survive by long his first patron and his most gallant friend. Marlowe and Raleigh both gone, the third of the trium virate passed away by a more cruel exit than either the dagger or the axe. He had suffered for a long time from cancer of the lips, and it came to a lingering end on July 2nd, 1621. He was buried in the churchyard at St. Christopher s, the spot since absorbed into the garden of the Bank of England. Marlowe, Raleigh, and Hariot none of the three lived to finish their work. It would not do to say that Hariot was as striking a figure as either of the others; but that does not take all of his tragedy away. He has not been quite fairly treated by posterity. The fault was largely with himself, for he published none of his own work. Most of his mathematics was, as has been said, thought out before 1604 and probably before the change of centuries. A reflection of his teachings is obtained from the letters from his pupils, such as in the passage from Sir William Lower in one dated February 6th, 1610: Kepler I read diligentlie, but therein I find what is to be so far from you. For as himself, he hath almost put me out of his wits. . . (I dream) not of his causes for I cannot phansie those magnetical natures, but aboute his theorie which me thinks ... he establisheth soundlie and as you say overthrowes the circular Astronomic. Do you not here startle, to see .every 4 &quot;Epistolac ad loanncm Kepplerum&quot; Hanschius (1618) p. 380.