Flamsteed continues:—
'I heard no more of the Frenchman after this; but was told that, my letters being shown King Charles, he startled at the assertion of the fixed stars' places being false in the catalogue; said, with some vehemence, "He must have them anew observed, examined, and corrected, for the use of his seamen;" and further (when it was urged to him how necessary it was to have a good stock of observations taken for correcting the motions of the moon and planets), with the same earnestness, "he must have it done." And when he was asked Who could, or who should do it? "The person (says he) that informs you of them." Whereupon I was appointed to it, with the incompetent allowance aforementioned; but with assurances, at the same time, of such further additions as thereafter should be found requisite for carrying on the work.'
FLAMSTEED'S SEXTANT.
(From an engraving in the 'Historia Cœlestis.')
Thus, in his twenty-ninth year, John Flamsteed became the first Astronomer Royal. In many ways he was an ideal man for the post. In the twelve years which had passed since he left school he had accomplished an amazing amount of work. Despite his constant ill-health and severe sufferings, and the circumstance—which may be inferred from many expressions in his autobiographies—that he assisted his father in his business, he had made himself master, perhaps more thoroughly than any of his contemporaries, of the entire work of a practical astronomer as it was then understood. He was an indefatigable computer; the calculation of tables of the motions of the moon and planets, which should as faithfully as possible represent their observed positions, had had an especial attraction for him, and, as has been already mentioned, some years before his appointment he had drawn up a catalogue of stars, based upon the observations of Tycho Brahe. More than that, he had not been a merely theoretical worker, he had been a practical observer of very considerable skill, and, in the dearth of suitable instruments, had already made one or two for himself, and had contemplated the making of others. In his first letter to Sir Jonas Moore he asks for instruction as to the making of object-glasses for telescopes, for he was quite prepared to set about the task of making his own. In addition to his tireless industry, which neither illness nor suffering could abate, he was a man of singularly exact and business-like habits. The precision with which he preserves and records the dates of all letters received or sent is an illustration of this. On the other hand, he had the defects of his circumstances and character. His numerous autobiographical sketches betray him, not indeed as a conceited man, in the ordinary sense of the word, but as an exceedingly self-conscious one. Devout and high-principled he most assuredly was, but, on the other hand, he shows in almost every line he wrote that he was one who could not brook anything like criticism or opposition.
Such a man, however efficient, was little likely to be happy as the first incumbent of a new and important government post; but there was another circumstance which was destined to cause him greater unhappiness still.
If we believe, as surely we must, that not only the moral and the physical progress of mankind is watched over and controlled by God's good Providence, but its intellectual progress as well, then there can be no doubt that John Flamsteed was raised up at this particular time, not merely to found Greenwich Observatory, and to assist the solution of the problem of the longitude at sea, but also, and chiefly, to become the auxiliary to a far greater mind, the journeyman to a true master-builder. But for the founding of Greenwich Observatory, and for John Flamsteed's observations made therein, the working out of Newton's grand theory of gravitation must have been hindered, and its acceptance by the men of science of his time immensely delayed. We cannot regard as accidental the combination, so fortunate for us, of Newton, the great world-genius, to work out the problem, of Flamsteed, the painstaking observer, to supply him with the materials for his work, and of the newly-founded institution, Greenwich Observatory, where Flamsteed was able to gather those materials together. This is the true debt that we owe to Flamsteed, that, little as he understood the position in which he had been placed from the standpoint from which we see it to-day, yet, to the extent of his ability, and as far as he conceived it in accordance with his duty, he gave Newton such assistance as he could.