JOHN DEE 239 



himself wrote two works on navigation). The East India Company 

 called upon him to improve the compass. Certain large landholders in 

 England who had mines extending under their boundary lines came to 

 him to settle their controversy. In 1582 Dee was urging the Queen to 

 improve the calendar, and two years later she and her ministers re- 

 quested him to make the necessary calculations. The Eoman Church 

 amended the calendar on the supposition that all that was done at the 

 council of Nice with regard to chronology was correct and proposed the 

 omission of ten days, but Dee's calculations led him to recommend the 

 omission of eleven days. He agreed, however, to compromise for the 

 sake of uniformity, providing the facts should be publicly announced. 

 The plans were approved by the lay members of the committee, Thomas 

 Digges, Henry Savile and Mr. Chambers, but opposed by the arch- 

 bishop and bishops on the ground chiefly that the project of reforming 

 the calendar emanated from the See of Eome. The reform was thus 

 delayed one hundred and seventy years, but Dee's able treatise was 

 preserved and was made use of when the change actually took place. 

 The original has passed through the hands of many eminent mathe- 

 maticians, and is now in the Ashmole collection at Oxford. 



This treatise on the calendar, the " Fruitful Preface " and the 

 memorial to Queen Mary in regard to a royal library are the most 

 significant of his seventy-nine works, many of which were never printed. 

 In the last-named Dee called the queen's attention to the fact that with 

 the destruction of the cloisters there was no longer any place of safety 

 for manuscripts, and that these were now being destroyed or scattered 

 broadcast. He set forth the loss this would be to history and science, 

 and proposed that a commission should be appointed to establish a royal 

 library — he himself undertaking to procure copies of famous manu- 

 scripts at the Vatican. Whether because of his youth or because of the 

 indifference of the Queen, he was not listened to, but in his own library 

 at Mortlake he collected 4,000 books, of which he tells us " 700 were 

 ancient manuscripts in Greek, Latin and Hebrew." 



John Dee early accepted the Copernican theory and was apparently 

 among the first to understand and give due weight to the writings of 

 Roger Bacon, to whom he refers as a " philosopher of this land native 

 (the floure of whose worthy fame, can never dye nor wither)." It was 

 to him doubtless that Dee owed his high valuation of experiment in 

 science. He begs of his readers to 



Esteeme one Drop of Truth (yea in Natural Philosophie) more worth, than 

 whole Libraries of Opinions undemonst rated or not answering to Nature's Law, 

 and your experience. . . . Words and arguments are no sensible certifying: Hor 

 the full and final frute of Sciences practisable. 



That many of the opinions held by Dee were not common among 

 even the learned of his countrymen is evident from the manner in which 

 he exhorts them in his writings. He too held out a hand to " divine 



