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
In conclusion, before laying down the pen with which has been exhumed
and set up on a new pedestal one of England’s worthiest of her many
forgotten Worthies, let the holder crave the indulgence of the reader
for the illogical, wordy and mixed style of this essay. He is perfectly
aware of these shortcomings, but puts in the plea that while groping in
the past as if blindfolded he has been decoyed on step by step by the
unexpected recovery of new materials after the others were in type, so
that as often as he had finished his labor of love new facts have
turned up which he had not the heart to reject. So he has incorporated
them one after another as best he could. The results are more
inartistic and crude than he could have wished, but he hesitates not on
that account to invite lovers of and believers in the Truth of History
to the banquet he has prepared.
A well-dined Reader is not likely, the writer thinks, to quarrel with
his dessert because he has to pick out, with some little patience, the
dainty meats of the nuts he has to arrange and crack for himself.
Repetition, and perhaps some contradiction, are acknowledged. But
meandering thoughts and ill-digested narratives, though tedious, are
not criminal. When these new materials have dried in the noon-day sun
for a year and a day, the writer then, or at the expiration of the
Horatian period, may bring them back to his anvil to be re-hammered.
May they then prove as true as they now seem new, is the wish of the
admirer of Thomas Hariot, the first historian of Virginia, the friend
of Sir Walter Raleigh, the companion of Henry Percy, and the Benefactor
of Mankind.
THE WILL of THOMAS HARIOT
Recorded in the Archdeaconry Court of London
IN THE NAME OF
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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