strong, but worn out by fatigue of mind and body, so as frequently to be reduced to a state of the utmost weakness. He was subject to attacks of hypochondria, and often molested by severe and dangerous illnesses, occasioned in great measure by his sleepless nights, the whole of which he frequently spent in astronomical observations. During upwards of forty-eight years of his life, he was tormented with acute rheumatic pains, suffering particularly on any change of weather. He found himself most free from these pains whilst residing in the country, of which consequently he became very fond: besides, he used to say that in the country he had greater freedom to read the book of Nature, which lay there open before him. His library was very small, but well chosen, and open to the use of the friends whom he loved to see assembled round him, and whom he was accustomed to receive in the most hospitable manner. He ate sparingly himself; but was particularly choice in the selection of his wines, which in the latter part of his life were regularly supplied out of the Grand Duke's cellars. This taste gave an additional stimulus to his agricultural pursuits, and many of his leisure hours were spent in the cultivation and superintendence of his vineyards. It should seem that he was considered a good judge of wine; for Viviani has preserved one of his receipts in a collection of miscellaneous experiments. In it he strongly recommends that for wine of the first quality, that juice only should be employed, which is pressed out by the mere weight of the heaped grapes, which would probably be that of the ripest fruit. The following letter, written in his 74th year, is dated," From my prison at Arcetri.-I am forced to avail myself of your assistance and fayour, agreeably to your obliging offers, in consequence of the excessive chill of the weather, and of old age, and from having drained out my grand stock of a hundred bottles, which I laid in two years ago; not to mention some minor particulars during the last two months, which I received from my Serene Master, the Most Eminent Lord Cardinal, their Highnesses the Princes, and the Most Excellent Duke of Guise, besides cleaning out two barrels of the wine of this country. Now, I beg that with all due diligence and industry, and with consideration, and taking counsel with the most refined palates, you will pro

101

vide me with two cases, that is to say, with forty flasks of different wines, the most exquisite that you can find: take no thought of the expense, because I stint myself so much in all other pleasures that I can afford to lay out something at the request of Bacchus, without giving offence to his two companions Ceres and Venus. You must be careful to leave out neither Scillo nor Carino (I believe they meant to call them Scylla and Charybdis), nor the country of my master, Archimedes of Syracuse, nor Greek wines, shall easily be able to satisfy, but not the nor clarets, &c. &c. The expense I infinite obligation."

just mean between avarice and profuIn his expenditure Galileo observed a sion: he spared no cost necessary for the ments, and spent large sums in charity success of his many and various experiand hospitality, and in assisting those in art or profession, many of whom he whom he discovered excellence in any maintained in his own house. His temper was easily ruffled, but still more easily pacified. He seldom conversed on mathematical or philosophical topics except among his intimate friends; and when such subjects were abruptly brought before him, as was often the case by the numberless visitors he was in the habit of receiving, he showed great readiness in turning the conversation into more popular channels, in such manner however that he often contrived to introduce something to satisfy the curiosity of the inquirers. His memory was uncommonly tenacious, and stored with a vast variety of old songs and stories, which he was in the constant habit of quoting and alluding to. His favourite Italian authorsgreat part of whose poems he was were Ariosto, Petrarca, and Berni, able to repeat. His excessive admiration of Ariosto determined the side which he took against Tasso in the virulent and unnecessary controversy which has divided Italy so long on the respective merits of these two great poets; and he was accustomed to reading Tasso after Ariosto was like tasting cucumbers after melons. When that quite a youth, he wrote a great number of critical remarks on Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, which one of his friends borrowed, and forgot to return. For a long time it was thought that the manuscript had perished, till the Abbé Serassi discovered it, whilst collecting materials for his Life of Tasso, pub

say

102

lished at Rome in 1785. Serassi being
a violent partizan of Tasso, but also un-
willing to lose the credit of the disco-
very, copied the manuscript, but without
any intention of publishing it, "till he
could find leisure for replying properly
to the sophistical and unfounded attacks
of a critic so celebrated on other ac-
counts." He announced his discovery
as having been made "in one of the
famous libraries at Rome," which vague
indication he with some reason consi-
dered insufficient to lead to a second
discovery. On Serassi's death his copy
was found, containing a reference to the
situation of the original; the criticisms
were published, and form the greatest
part of the last volume of the Milan
edition of Galileo's works. The manu-
script was imperfect at the time of this
second discovery, several leaves having
been torn out, it is not known by whom.
The opinion of the most judicious Ita-
lian critics appears to be, that it would
have been more for Galileo's credit if
these remarks had never been made pub-
lie: they are written in a spirit of flippant
violence, such as might not be extra-
ordinary in a common juvenile critic,
but which it is painful to notice from
the pen of Galileo. Two or three son-
nets are extant written by Galileo
himself, and in two instances he has not
scrupled to appropriate the conceits
of the poet he affected to under-
value.* It should be mentioned that
Galileo's matured taste rather receded
from the violence of his early prejudices,
for at a later period of his life he used
to shun comparing the two; and when
forced to give an opinion he said, "that
Tasso's appeared the finer poem, but
that Ariosto gave him the greater plea-
sure." Besides these sonnets, there is
extant a short burlesque poem written
by him, "In abuse of Gowns," when,
on his first becoming Professor at Pisa,
he found himself obliged by custom to
wear his professional habit in every com-
pany. It is written not without humour,
but does not bear comparison with
Berni, whom he imitated.

There are several detached subjects
treated of by Galileo, which may be
noticed in this place. A letter by him
containing the solution of a problem in
Chances is probably the earliest no-

Compare Son. ii. v. 8 & 9; and Son. iii. v. 2 & 3,

with Ger. Lib. c. iv. st. 76, and c. vii. st. 19.-The
author gladly owns his obligation for these remarks
to the kindness of Sig. Panizzi, Professor of Italian
in the University of London.

tice extant of the application of mathematics to that interesting subject: the correspondence between Pascal and Fermat, with which its history is generally made to begin, not having taken place till at least twelve years later. There can be little doubt after the clear account of Carlo Dati, that Galileo was the first to examine the curve called the Cycloid, described by a point in the rim of a wheel rolling on a straight line, which he recommended as a graceful form for the arch of a bridge at Pisa. He even divined that the area contained between it and its base is exactly three times that of the generating circle. He seems to have been unable to verify this guess by strict geometrical reasoning, for Viviani tells an odd story, that in order to satisfy his doubts he cut out several large cycloids of pasteboard, but finding the weight in every trial to be rather less than three times that of the circle, he suspected the proportion to be irrational, and that there was some error in his estimation; the inquiry he abandoned was afterwards resumed with success by his pupil Torricelli.*

The account which Lagalla gives of an experiment shown in his presence by Galileo, carries the observation of the phosphorescence of the Bologna stone at least as far back as 1612. Other writers mention the name of an alchymist, who according to them discovered it accidentally in 1603. Cesi, Lagalla, and one or two others, had passed the night at Galileo's house, with the intention of observing Venus and Saturn; but, the night being cloudy, the conversation turned on other matters, and especially on the nature of light,

on which Galileo took a small wooden box at daybreak before sunrise, and showed us some small stones in it, desiring us to observe that they were not in the least degree luminous. Having then exposed them for some time to the twilight, he shut the window again; and in the midst of the dark room showed us the stones, shining and glistening with a faint light, which we saw presently decay and become extinguished." In 1640, Liceti attempted to refer the effect of the earthshine upon moon to a similar phosphorescent quality of that luminary, to which Galileo, then aged 76, replied by a long and able letter, enforcing the true explanation he had formerly given.

the

Lettera di Timauro Antiate. Firenze, 1663. +De phænomenis in orbe Luna. Venetiis, 1612:

Although quite blind, and nearly deaf, the intellectual powers of Galileo remained to the end of his life; but he occasionally felt that he was overworking himself, and used to complain to his friend Micanzio that he found his head too busy for his body. "I cannot keep my restless brain from grinding on, although with great loss of time; for whatever idea comes into my head with respect to any novelty, drives out of it whatever I had been thinking of just before." He was busily engaged in considering the nature of the force of percussion, and Torricelli was employed in arranging his investigations for a continuation of the Dialogues on Motion,' when he was seized with an attack of fever and palpitation of the heart, which, after an illness of two months, put an end to his long, laborious, and useful life, on the 8th of January, 1642, just one year before his great successor Newton was born.

The malice of his enemies was scarcely allayed by his death. His right of making a will was disputed, as having died a prisoner to the Inquisition, as well as his right to burial in consecrated ground. These were at last conceded, but Urban anxiously interfered to prevent the design of erecting a monument to him in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence, for which a large sum had been subscribed. His body was accordingly buried in an obscure corner of the church, which for upwards of thirty years after his death was unmarked even by an inscription to his memory. It was not till a century later that the splendid monument was erected which now covers his and Viviani's remains. When their bodies were disinterred in 1737 for the purpose of being removed to their new restingplace, Capponi, the president of the Florentine Academy, in a spirit of spurious admiration, mutilated Galileo's body, by removing the thumb and forefinger of the right-hand, and one of the vertebræ of the back, which are still preserved in some of the Italian museums. The monument was put up at the expense of his biographer, Nelli, to whom Viviani's property descended, charged with the condition of erecting it. Nor was this the only public testimony which Viviani gave of his attachment. The medal which he struck in honour of Galileo has already been mentioned; he also, as soon as it was safe to do so, covered every side of the house in which he lived with laudatory inscriptions to the

103

same effect. A bust of Galileo was placed over the door, and two bas-reliefs on each side representing some of his principal discoveries. five other medals were struck in honour Not less than of him during his residence at Padua and Florence, which are all engraved in Venturi's Memoirs.

of Galileo extant, two of which, by There are several good portraits Titi and Subtermanns, are engraved in Nelli's Life of Galileo. by Subtermanns is in the Florentine Gallery, and an engraving from a copy Another of this is given by Venturi. There is also a very fine engraving from the original picture. An engraving from another original picture is in the frontispiece of the Padua edition of his works.

lowing passage to describe a portrait Salusbury seems in the folof Galileo painted by himself: "He did not contemn the other inferior arts, for carving; but his particular care was to he had a good hand in sculpture and paint well. By the pencil he described he exceeded art, in the other, nature. what his telescope discovered; in one Osorius, the eloquent bishop of Sylva, esteems one piece of Mendoza the wise Spanish minister's felicity, to have been this, that he was contemporary to Titian, and that by his hand he was drawn in a fair tablet. And Galilæus, lest he should great a progress in this curious art, that want the same good fortune, made so he became his own Buonarota; and because there was no other copy worthy of his pencil, drew himself." No other such a painting; and it appears more author makes the slightest allusion to likely that Salusbury should be mistaken than that so interesting a portrait should have been entirely lost sight of.

ing in 1821, when Venturi visited it,
Galileo's house at Arcetri was stand-
and found it in the same state in which
Galileo might be supposed to have left
it. It is situated nearly a mile from
Florence, on the south-eastern side, and
about a gun-shot to the north-west of
placed a suitable inscription over the
the convent of St. Matthew.
door of the house, which belonged in
1821 to a Signor Alimari.*

Nelli

appointed the expectations that had
Although Nelli's Life of Galileo dis-
been formed of it, it is impossible for
any admirer of Galileo not to feel the
greatest degree of gratitude towards

Venturi,

104

him, for the successful activity with which he rescued so many records of the illustrious philosopher from destruction. After Galileo's death, the principal part of his books, manuscripts, and instruments, were put into the charge of Viviani, who was himself at that time an object of great suspicion; most of them he thought it prudent to conceal, till the superstitious outcries against Galileo should be silenced. At Viviani's death, he left his library, containing a very complete collection of the works of all the mathematicians who had preceded him (and amongst them those of Galileo, Torricelli, and Castelli, all which were enriched with notes and additions by himself), to the hospital of St. Mary at Florence, where an extensive library already existed. The directors of the hospital sold this unique collection in 1781, when it became entirely dispersed. The manuscripts in Viviani's possession passed to his nephew, the Abbé Panzanini, together with the portraits of the chief personages of the Galilean school, Galileo's instruments, and, among other curiosities, the emerald ring which he wore as a member of the Lyncean Academy. A great number of these books and manuscripts were purchased at different times by Nelli, after the death of Panzanini, from his relations, who were ignorant or regardless of their value. One of his chief acquisitions was made by an extraordinary accident, related by Tozzetti with the following details, which we repeat, as they seem to authenticate the story :-"In the spring of 1739, the famous Doctor Lami went out according to his custom to breakfast with some of his friends at the inn of the Bridge, by the starting-place; and as he and Sig. Nelli were passing through the market, it occurred to them to buy some Bologna sausages from the pork-butcher, Cioci, who was supposed to excel in making them. They went into the shop, had their sausages cut off and rolled in paper, which Nelli put into his hat. On reaching the inn, and calling for a plate to put them in, Nelli observed that the paper in which they had been rolled was one of Galileo's letters. He cleaned it as well as he could with his napkin, and put it into his pocket without saying a word to Lami; and as soon as he returned into the city, and could get clear of him, he flew to the shop of Cioci, who told him that a servant whom he did not know brought him from time to time

similar letters, which he bought by weight
as waste paper. Nelli bought all that
remained, and on the servant's next
reappearance in a few days, he learned
the quarter whence they came, and
after some time succeeded at a small
expense in getting into his own posses-
sion an old corn-chest, containing all
that still remained of the precious trea-
sures which Viviani had concealed in it
ninety years before."*

The earliest biographical notice of
Galileo is that in the Obituary of
It
the Mercurio Italico, published at
Venice in 1647, by Vittorio Siri.
is very short, but contains an exact
enumeration of his principal works and
discoveries. Rossi, who wrote under
the name of Janus Nicius Erythræus,
introduced an account of Galileo in his
Pinacotheca Imaginum Illustrium, in
which the story of his illegitimacy first
made its appearance. In 1664, Salus-
bury published a life of Galileo in the
second volume of his Mathematical
Collections, the greater part of which
is a translation of Galileo's principal
works. Almost the whole edition of
the second volume of Salusbury's
book was burnt in the great fire of
London.

Chauffepić says that only one. copy is known to be extant in England: this is now in the well-known library of the Earl of Macclesfield, to whose kindness the author is much indebted for the use he has been allowed to make of this unique volume. A fragment of this second volume is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The translations in the preceding pages are mostly founded upon Salusbury's version. Salusbury's account, although that of an enthusiastic admirer of Galileo, is too prolix to be interesting: the general style of the performance may be guessed from the title of the first chapter- Of Man in general, and how he excelleth all the other Animals. After informing his readers that Galileo was born at Pisa, he proceeds :-" Italy is affirmed to have been the first that peopled the world after the universal deluge, being governed by Janus, Cameses, and Saturn, &c." His "Before others had description of Galileo's childhood is somewhat quaint. left making of dirt pyes, he was framing of diagrams; and whilst others were whipping of toppes, he was considering the cause of their motion." It is on the

Notizie sul Ingrandimento delle Scienze Fisiche. Firenze, 1780.