_Addressed:_ To my right woorthie frend Mr. THOMAS HARRIOT
att Syon, theise, fro Newmarkett.
Between 1615 and 1620 there are evidences of Hariot’s failing health.
He was greatly troubled with a cancerous ulcer on the lip. How early
this began is not apparent. In 1610 his friend Lower cautions him to be
careful of his health. There is in the British Museum among the Hariot
papers the drafts of three beautiful letters in Latin written from Sion
in 1615 and 1616 to a friend of distinction, name not mentioned, who
had been recently appointed to some medical office at court, in which
he describes himself and his disease.
These letters show great resignation and Christian fortitude. He seemed
to be getting better in 1616, and expressed himself as somewhat
hopeful. The progress of the cancer and other troubles cannot now
probably be traced, but he is found in the summer of 1621 lodging with
his old friend Thomas Buckner, in Threadneedle Street, near the Royal
Exchange, in the parish of St Christopher. Buckner had been one of
Raleigh’s ‘First Colonie’ to Virginia in 1585 with Hariot, and Hariot,
now in 1621, had come up from Sion probably for medical advice near the
hospital. On the 2gth of June he made or executed his Will, and died
three days after at Buckner’s, on the and of July 1621. He was buried
the next day, according to the wish expressed in his will, in the old
parish church of St Christopher in Threadneedle Street.
Sifte viator, leviter preme,
Iacet hic juxta, Quod mortale fuit,
C. V.
THOMÆ HARRIOTT.
Hic fuit Doftiffimus ille Harriotus
de Syon ad Flumen Thamefin,
Patria & educatione
Oxonienfis,
QVM omnes fcientias Caluit,
Qui in omnibus excelluit,
Mathematicis, Philofophicis, Theologicis.
Veritatis indagator ftudiofiffimus,
Dei Trini-uniui cultor piiffimus,
Sexagenarius, aut eo circiter,
Mortalitati valedixit, Non vitæ,
Anno Christi M.DC.XXI. Iulii 2.
Shortly after there was erected to his memory in the chancel, at the
expense, it is understood, of his noble friend the Earl of
Northumberland, a fine marble monument, bearing the above neat and
appropriate inscription.
St Christopher’s, a very old church, with its records (still preserved)
extending back in an almost unbroken series to 1488, passed through
many vicissitudes before itwas finally swallowed up by the leviathan of
the world’s commerce. The site of it is now occupied by the south-west
cornerof the Bank of England on Princes Street, to the left of the
entrance, nearly opposite the Mansion House. The church was restored
and redecorated the year of Hariot’s death, and again twelve years
later, but was burnt in the great fire of 1666. Hariot’s monument
perished with it, but the inscription had been preserved by Stow. The
church was rebuilt on the same foundation by Sir Christopher Wren in
1680.
About a century ago the church, with the whole parish of St Christopher
(called then St Christopher-le-stocks because near the stocks standing
at the east end of Cheapside), together with a large portion of two
other parishes, St Margaret’s and St Bartholomew’s, was purchased by
the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street for the site of the new Bank of
England. Thus one great bank of this modern metropolis covers a large
part of three parishes of old London.
The whole area of the Bank, however, was not given up to mammon, though
still here men most do congregate, and worshippers most do worship. One
small consecrated spot, enough perhaps to leaven and memorize the whole
site, was respected, and not built over. It was the churchyard of St
Christopher. This ‘God’s acre’ the architect and the governors have
dedicated to Beauty, Art, and Nature. The little ‘Garden of the Bank of
England,’ the loveliest spot in all London at this day, measuring about
twenty-four by thirty-two yards, was just a hundred years ago the
little churchyard of St Christopher, where still repose the bones of
THOMAS HARIOT.
Virginia, which once comprehended the present United States from South
to North, has been called the monument to Sir Walter Raleigh. So the
Bank of England, built round the churchyard of St Christopher, may be
called the monument to Thomas Hariot.
The present year, 1879, is just three centuries since Hariot went
forth, a youth of twenty, from the University of Oxford. We have
briefly told his story. England is all the richer for his life, and the
world itself acknowledges the wealth of his science and the worth of
his philosophy. The Bank of England is built round his bones, but it
cannot cover his memory.
Stay, traveller, tread lightly ;
Near this spot lies what was mortal
of that most celebrated man
THOMAS HARRIOT.
He was the very learned Harriot
of Sion on Thames ;
by birth and education
an Oxonian, Who cultivated all the sciences,
and excelled in all,
In Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Theology.
A most studious investigator of truth, A most pious
worshipper of the Triune God,
At the age of sixty, or thereabouts,
He bade farewell to mortality, not to life,
July 2d A.D. 1621.
He lived, died, and was forgotten in the parish of St Christopher.
Henceforward, whenever Englishmen and Americans, merchants and
scholars, rich and poor, men of genius and men of money, enter this
little’ Garden,’ let them read there in English what Henry Percy
originally set up in Latin, the above inscription.
An impression has gone abroad, traceable chiefly to Aubrey and to
Anthony à Wood, that Hariot was unsound in religious principles and
matters of belief; that he was, in fact, not only a Deist himself, but
that he exerted a baleful influence over Raleigh and his History as
well as over the Earl of Northumberland. Not to misstate this utterly
unfounded imputation, the very words of Wood, as first printed in his
Athenæ in 1691, and never since modified, are here given in full: ‘But
notwithstanding his great skill in mathematics, he had strange thoughts
of the scripture, and always undervalued the old story of the creation
of the world, and could never believe that trite position, _Ex nihilo
nihil fit._ He made a _Philosophical Theology,_ wherein he cast off the
OLD TESTAMENT, so that consequently the New would have no foundation.
He wasaDeist, and his doctrine he did impart to the said Count [the
Earl] and to Sir Walt. Raleigh when he was compiling the _History of
the World,_ and would controvert the matter with eminent divines of
those times; who therefore having no good opinion of him, did look on
the manner of his death as a judgment upon him for those matters, and
for nullifying the scripture.’
It is needless to say that in all our investigations into the life,
actions, and character of this eminent philosopher and Christian, from
the time when, as a young man in 1585, he took delight in reading the
Bible to the Indians of Virginia, down to the time that he made his
remarkable will in 1621, not one word has been found in cor-roboration
of these statements; but, on the contrary, many passages have appeared
to contradict and disprove them. Let any one notice the numerous
citations of the various books of the Bible in Raleigh’s History, and
he will surely fail to discover any evidence of Raleigh’s being a
Deist, or that Hariot had taught him to undervalue the scripture.
It is not necessary here to say more in this connection than to quote
the following passage from one of the Latin letters in 1616 referred to
above by Hariot to the eminent physician who had just received a high
medical appointment at Court, describing himself and his terrible
affliction [a cancer on the lip]. The passage is given in English, but
the original Latin may be seen in the British Museum (Add. 6789). It
seems to have been written on purpose to refute such slanders. He
writes :
Think of me as your sincere friend. Your interests are involved as well
as mine. My recovery will be your triumph, but through the Almighty who
is the Author of all good things. As I have now and then said, I
believe these three points. I believe in God Almighty; I believe that
Medicine was ordained by him ; I trust the Physician as his minister.
My faith is sure, my hope firm. I wait however with patience for
everything in its own time according to His Providence. We must act
earnestly, fight boldly, but in His name, and we shall conquer. Sic
transit gloria mundi, omnia transibunt, nos ibimus, ibitis, ibunt. So
passes away the glory of this world, all things shall pass away, we
shall pass away, you will pass away, they will pass away.
There is unfortunately no portrait known of Hariot, and we can form no
idea of his personal appearance; but, fortunately, the drafts of the
three Latin letters to his eminent friend at Court, alluded to above,
fully describe his terrible disease and other bodily infirmities in
1615 and 1616, and give us some notion of himself and his personal
habits. His regular physician was Dr Turner, and his apothecary Mr
May-orne, both employed also by Sir Walter.
Dr Alexander Read, in his ‘Chirurgicall Lectures of Tumors and Vlcers
Delivered in the Chirurgeans Hall, 1632-34. London. 1638,’ 4°, says in
Treatise 2, Lecture 26, page 307:
Cancerous ulcers also feize upon this part [lips]. This grief haftened
the end of that famous Mathematician, Mr. Hariot, with whom I was
acquainted but a fhorttime before his death : whom at one time,
together with Mr. Hughes, who wrote of the Globes, Mr. Warner, and Mr.
Torperley, the Noble Earl of Northumberland, the favourer of all good
learning, and Mecænas of learned men, maintained while he was in the
Tower for their worth and various literature
A great deal of misconception has hitherto prevailed respecting
Hariot’s great printed work on Algebra. His reputation as a
mathematician has been permitted to hinge chiefly upon it, very much to
his disadvantage. A brief bibliographical statement of facts will
probably present the matter in a new light. But first let the book be
described as it lies before us and has been described by many others
since the days of Professor Wallis, nearly two hundred years ago. The
Title is as follows : ‘Artis Analyticæ / Praxis / Ad æquationes
Algebraicas nouæ, expeditæ, & generali / methodo, resoluendas :
/ Tractatus/ E posthumis THOMÆ HARRIOTI Philosophi ac Mathematici ce- /
leberrimi sche-diasmatis summæ fide & diligentia / descriptus:/
Et/Illvstrissimo Domino/Dom. HenricoPercio,/ Northvmbriæ Comiti,/Qui
hæc primò, sub Patronatus & Munificentiæ suæ auspicjss / ad proprios
vsus elucubrata, in communem Mathematicorum / vtilitatem, denuò
reuisenda, describenda, & publicanda / mandauit, meritissimi Honoris
ergò / Nuncupatus. / Londini / Apud Robertvm Barker, Typographum /
Regium : Et Hæred. Io. Billii. /Anno 1631. / _Title, reverse blank;_
Prefatio 4 pages; Text 180 pages, and Errata 1 page (Bbb) followed by a
blank page, folio. A very handsomely printed book. In the British
Museum, 529 m 8, is Charles the First’s copy in old calf, gilt edges,
with the royal arms on the sides. In the Preface the editors (Aylesbury
and Prothero aided by Warner)say:
Artis Analyticæ, cuius caufa hîc agitur, port eruditum illud Græcorum
fæculum antiquitatæ iamdiù & incultæ iacentis, rcftitutionem
_Francifcus Viete,_ Gallus, vir clariflimus, & ob infignem in fcientijs
Mathematicis peritiam, Gallicæ gentis decus, primus fingulari confilio
& intentato ante hâc conamine aggreffus eft; atque ingenuam hanc animi
fui intentionem per varios tractatus, quos in argumenti huius
elaboratione eleganter & acutè confcripfit, pofteris teftatem rcliquit.
Dùm verò ille veteris Analytices reftitutionem, quam fibi propofuit,
feriò molitus eft, non tàm eam reftitutam, quàm proprijs inuentionibus
actam & exornatam, tanquam nouam & fuam, nobis tradidifle videtur. Quod
generali conceptu enuntiatum paulo fufius explicandum eft; vt, oftenfo
eo quod primùm à _Vieta_ in inftituto fuo promouendo actum eft, quid
pofteà ab authore noftro doctifiimo _Thomâ Harrioto,_ qui ilium
certamine ifto Analytico fequntus eft, praeftitum fit, meliùs
innotefcere possit. [Which done into English is substantially as
follows]
Francis Vieta, a Frenchman, a most distinguished man, and on account of
his remarkable skill in Mathematical Science the honour of the French
nation, first of all with singular genius and with industry hitherto
unattempted undertook the restoration of the analytic art, of which
subject we are here treating, which after the learned age of the Greeks
for a long time had become antiquated and remained uncultivated : and
by various treatises which he eloquently and ingeniously wrote in the
working out of this line of argument, left a record to posterity of
this noble design of his mind. But while he seriously laboured at the
restoration of the old Analysis, which he had proposed to himself, he
seems not so much to have transmitted to us a restoration of that
science, as a new and original method, worked out and illustrated by
his own discoveries. This, having been enunciated in general terms,
must be explained a little more at length ; so that having shown what
was first effected by Vieta in promoting his design, it may be more
clear, what was afterwards performed by our very learned author Thomas
Harriot, who followed him in these analytical investigations.
And at the end of the volume, on page 180, is the following explanatory
note :