268 Mr. Rigaud on Harriot's Papers. 



papers. Zacb, when a young man, was in England with 

 Count de Bruhl, who married the dowager Lady Egremont, 

 and by this means he got access to the manuscripts at Pet- 

 worth. He found Harriot's papers there in 1784, and early 

 in 1786 he made a proposal to the University of Oxford to 

 prepare a portion of them for the press, if they would under- 

 take the expense of the publication. This was immediately 

 acceded to, and in April 1786, he wrote a long Latin letter on 

 what he intended that his first volume should contain. A life 

 of Harriot, written in imitation of Gassendi's lives of Purba- 

 chius, Regiomontanus, Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe, was 

 to make up the first part, and it was to be followed by some 

 original observations of the comets of 1607 and 1618. Upon 

 the receipt of this communication, an order was made, at the 

 .next meeting of the delegates of the press, for the printing to 

 be proceeded in as soon as the editor was ready. Nothing, 

 however, was done by him ; and after a lapse of eight years, he 

 sent, in May 1794, by Bishop Cleaver, then Principal of Brasen- 

 nose, not the work which he had promised, completed and ready 

 for the press, but a certain number of the original manuscripts, 

 without any of the apparatus which he was to have drawn up 

 for them. In the intermediate time he had printed an ac- 

 count of the papers in the Astronomical Ephemeris of the 

 Royal Society of Berlin for 1788, which was translated into 

 English, and circulated in this country. It was probably 

 drawn up from loose memoranda : it is easy to understand 

 that the pleasure of his discovery might have led him to over- 

 rate what he had found ; but such a feeling will not account 

 for the very erroneous statement of facts which he gave, and 

 which may be attributed to an imperfect recollection of the 

 particulars which he intended to describe. He likewise printed, 

 in Supplement I. to Bode's Jahrbuch (1793), an account of 

 the observations of the comets of 1607 and 1618. This was 

 probably what he had intended for a part of his first volume ; 

 and if so, it not only marks the time when he had abandoned 

 his original intention, but gives us such a specimen of his 

 work as diminishes the regret which might be felt for his not 

 having gone on with it. 



To return, however, to 1794. The delegates of the press 



