Thomas Hariot, the Mathematician, the Philosopher and the ScholarStevens, Henry
Philosophy
Thomas Hariot, the Mathematician, the Philosopher and the Scholar
Stevens, Henry
Harriot, Thomas, 1560-1621; Hercules Club
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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