3. In comming out of the harbor, shaping his course directly North, about, 60, degrees, he found a stronge race of a tyde, set-ting dueEast and West, wc in probabilitie could be noe other thing, than the tyde comming from the West, and retourning from the East,
Among the manuscripts in the handwriting of Hariot in the British Museum (Add. 6789) are these samples of ingenious trifling. No evidence is forthcoming that he was ever a married man, but that he occasionally let himself down from pure mathematics and high philosophy and amused himself with anagrams is plain enough. Here are a few specimens on his own name.
ANAGRAMS ON THOMAS HARIOTUS
| Tu homo artis has | traho hosti mufa |
| Homo has vt artis | O trahit hos mufa |
| Homo hasta vtris | oh, os trahit mufa |
| vitus | oho trahit mifas |
| rutis | oho, trahis mutis |
| Humo astra hosti | oho, fum Charitas. |
If the pertingent Reader still craves more evidence of the extent of Hariot’s friendships, and the universality of his acquirements, let him read the following pithy, quaint, and beautiful tribute paid to him by blind Old Homer’s Chapman in 1616. It is found in the Preface to the Reader in the first complete edition of Homer’sworks translated by George Chapman, London [1616], fo.
No coference had with any one liuing in al the noueltiet I prefume I haue found. Only fome one or two places I haue fhewed to my worthy and moft learned friend, M. Harriots, for his cenfure how much mine owne weighed: whofe iudgement and knowledge in all kinds, I know to be incomparable, and bottomlefle ; yea, to be admired as much, as his moft blameles life, and the right facred expence of his time, is to be honoured and reuerenced. Which affirmation of his cleare vnmatchednefle in all manner of learning; I make in contempt of that naftie objection often thruft vpon me ; that he that will iudge, muft know more then he of whom he iudgeth ; for fo a man fhould know neither God nor himfelf. Another right learned, honeft, and entirely loued friend of mine, M. Robert Hews, I muft needs put into my confest conference touching Homer, though very little more than that I had with M. Harriots. Which two, I proteft, are all, and preferred to all.
It remains to say two words more about Baron Zach’s’ discovery’ of the Hariot papers at Petworth in 1784. This remarkable story has been told many times, in many books, and in many languages. It has found its way into many modern dictionaries and grave encyclopædias, but it always appears with an unsatisfactory and suspicious flavor. Dr Zach’s ‘discovery’ is found cropping up all over the continent, and everywhere is made paramount to Hariot’s papers, while Oxford is blamed for not giving the young German his dues!
It seems that Dr Zach, a young man, was in England with Count Bruhl, who had married the dowager Lady Egremont. He thus had easy access to the old Percy Library at Petworth, in Sussex, where was stored, as we have seen by Hariot’s will, the black trunk containing his mathematical writings as bequeathed to the 9th Earl of Northumberland. In 1785 Dr Zach announced with a truly scholastic flourish in Bode’s Berlin Ephemeris for 1788 his remarkable ‘discovery’ of the papers of Thomas Hariot previously known as an eminent Algebraist or Mathematician, but now elevated to the rank also of a first-class English Astronomer. The next year, 1786, is celebrated in the annals of English science from the circumstance of Oxford’s having accepted a proposition from Dr Zach to publish his account of Hariot and his writings. The Royal Academy of Brussels in 1788 printed in its Memoirs Dr Zach’s paper on the planet Uranus, with a long note relative to the discovery at Petworth.
The Berlin paper immediately upon publication was translated into English and extensively circulated in this country, conducing, it is suspected, more to the renown of Dr Zach than to that of Hariot. In 1793 Bode’s Jahrbuch gave from the pen of Dr Zach an account of the Comets of 1607 and 1618, with Hariot’s Observations thereon. But these observations were given with so many errors and misreadings, as shown by Professor Rigaud, that they were soon pronounced worthless, to the discredit of Hariot rather than of his eminent editor. But matters came to a crisis in 1794, nine years after the grand flourish of the first announcement at Berlin. Dr Zach sent to Oxford for publication his abstract of certain of the scientific papers, and the Earl of Egremont intrusted to the University Dr Zach’s selection of the original papers. Zach’s abstracts were merely sufficient to identify himself with the works of Hariot, but he had performed no real editorial labours, and had not ‘pen’d the doctrine’ contained in them. Here were years of useful work to be done which the University dreamed not of, so the whole matter was referred to Professors Robertson and Powell, who both reported adversely in 1798, or before. In 1799 all the Hariot papers were returned to Petworth.
In the mean time the full translation of Dr Zach’s account of his ‘discovery,’ with some curious additions, found its way into Dr Hutton’s Dictionary of Mathematics, under Hariot, 1796, 2 volumes in quarto. This publication gave an air of solemn record and history to the transactions, insomuch that Oxford began to be blamed for withholding from the press Dr Zach’s great work. Oxford preserved a becoming silence. In 1803 Dr Zach published at Gotha in his Monatliche Correspondenz a fragment of that remarkable letter from the Earl of Northumberland to Hariot (which letter we have shown to be Lower’s, see p. 120). This publication, together with the reprint of the original Berlin paper by Zach in the second edition of Hutton’s Dictionary in 1815 without alteration, seemed to bring the matter to a point. Oxford was obliged to rise and explain.