Sed plura de hujus stellae historia scribere non decrevi quia eximius vir Johannes Dee (quum in reliqua philosophia admirandus, tum harum scientiarum peritissimus, quem tanquam mihi parentem alterum mathematicum veneror, quippe qui in tenerrimâ meâ aetate plurima harum suavissimarum scientiarum semina menti meae inseruerit, alia a patre meo prius sata amicissime fidelissimeque nutriverit atque auxerit) hanc sibi tractandam assumpserit materiam quam.... Conatus igitur sum et assequutus variis problematibus demonstrative et practice exactissime parallaxin hujus phaenomeni et cujusvis etiam alterius concludere, licet Saturni Jovis et Martis parallaxeis adeo sint exiguae ut sensuum imbecillitate vix discerni possint. Si tamen ulla arte vere animadverti queant (hoc ausim dicere) aut his nostris sequentibus problematibus aut nullis penitus praeceptis geometricis inveniri posse—Si aequi bonique consuleris, majora (annuenti potentissimo) in posterum promitto, quibus (non probabilibus solummodo argumentis sed firmissimis apodixibus) demonstrabitur verissimam esse Copernici hactenus explosum de terrae motu paradoxum—1573.
To these Alae seu Scalae Mr. Digges hath annexed
Parallaticae commentationis praxeos nucleus quidam, Jo. Day—
writ by John Dee, a small treatise, Lond. 1573; and hath writ thus
Lectori Benevolo.
—Me autem isti meo opusculo annectere et in lucem simul emittere variae impulere causae—Ima ne charissimus mihi illius author debita suae inventionis privaretur laude: cum nonnulli fortassis si postea ederetur suspicari possint a meis methodis derivatum fuisse. Fateor equidem adeo late mea sese extendere fundamina ut tum istiusmodi tum plurimi etiam alii nuclei inde excerpi possint, etc.
[882]Pantometria, containing longimetria, planimetria, stereometria—was writ by Leonard Digges, esq., but published by his sonne Thomas Digges esqr. and dedicated to Sir Nicholas Bacon, knight, Lord Keeper, lately reviewed and augmented by the author, printed at London, 1591.
In the preface, thus:—
'But to leave things doone of antiquity long ago, my father, by his continuall painfull practises, assisted with demonstrations mathematicall, was able, and sundry times hath, by proportionall glasses duely situate in convenient angles, not onely discovered things farre off, read letters, numbred peeces of money with the very coyne and superscription thereof cast by some of his freends on purpose upon downes in open fields but also seven miles off declared what hath been doone at that instant in private places; he hath also at sundry times by the sunne fired powder and discharged ordinance halfe a mile and more distant—which things I am the bolder to report for that there are yet living diverse of these his doeings oculati testes, and many other matters far more strange and rare which I omit as impertinent to this place. But for invention of these conclusions I have heard him say nothing ever helped him so much as the exquisite knowledge he had, by continuall practise, attained in geometricall mensurations.'