WHEN I YEARS AGO undertook among other enterprises to compile a sketch
of the life of THOMAS HARIOT the first historian of the new found land
of Virginia; and to trace the gradual geographical development of that
country out of the unlimited ‘Terra Florida’ of Juan Ponce de Leon,
through the French planting and the Spanish rooting out of the Huguenot
colony down to the successful foothold of the English in Wingandacoa
under Raleigh’s patent, I little suspected either the extent of the
research I was drifting into, or the success that awaited my
investigations.
The results however are contained in this little volume, which has
expanded day by day from the original limit of fifty to above two
hundred pages. From a concise bibliographical essay the work has grown
into a biography of a philosopher and man of science with extraordinary
surroundings, wherein the patient reader may trace the gradual
development of Virginia from the earliest time to 1585 ; I especially,’
says Strachey, I that which hath bene published by that true lover of
vertue and great learned professor of all arts and knowledges, Mr
Hariots, who lyved there in the tyme of the first colony, spake the
Indian language, searcht the country,’ etc ; Hariot’s nearly forty
years’ intimate connection with Sir Walter Raleigh; his long close
companionship with Henry Percy ; his correspondence with Kepler; his
participation in Raleigh’s `History of the World;’ his invention of the
telescope and his consequent astronomical discoveries ; his scientific
disciples ; his many friendships and no foeships ; his blameless life ;
his beautiful epitaph in St Christopher’s church, and his long slumber
in the ‘garden’ of the Bank of England.
The little book is now submitted with considerable diffidence, for in
endeavouring to extricate Hariot from the confusion of historical
‘facts’ into which he had fallen, and to place him in the position to
which he is entitled by his great merits, it is desirable to be clear,
explicit and logical. A decision of mankind of two centuries’ standing,
as expressed in many dictionaries and encyclopaedias, cannot be easily
reversed without good contemporary evidence. This I have endeavoured to
produce.
Referring to pages 191 and 192 the writer still craves the reader’s
indulgence for the apparently irrelevant matter introduced, as well as
for the inartistic grouping of the many detached materials, for reasons
there given.
It ought perhaps to be stated here that the book necessarily includes
notices, more or less elaborate, of very many of Hariot’s friends,
associates and contemporaries, while others, for want of space, are
mentioned little more than by name.
The lives of Raleigh, and Henry Percy of Northumberland, Prisoners in
the Tower, seem to be inseparable from that of their Fidus Achates, but
I have endeavoured to eliminate that of Hariot as far as possible
without derogation to his patrons. All the new documents mentioned have
their special value, but too much importance cannot be attached to the
recovery of Hariot’s Will, for it at once dispels a great deal of the
inference and conjecture that have so long beclouded his memory. It
throws the bright electric light of to-day over his eminently
scholarly, scientific and philosophical Life. By this and the other
authorities given it is hoped to add a new star to the joint
constellation of the honored Worthies of England and America.