114 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1936 



He continues, after a line now lost which might have read, "The 

 heavens also with dread portents teemed" : 



As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, 

 Disasters in the sun, and the moist star, 

 Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands 

 Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. 

 And even the like precurse of fierce events. 

 As harbingers preceding still the fates 

 And prologue to the omen coming on. 

 Have heaven and earth together demonstrated 

 Unto our climatures and countrymen. 



In many other passages, Shakespeare distills the quintescence of 

 beauty from old astronomical beliefs which now are obsolete. None 

 of these references is more beautiful than those relating to Py- 

 thagoras' music of the spheres. One is found in the Merchant of 

 Venice where Lorenzo says: 



How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank; 



Here will we sit and let the sounds of music 



Creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night 



Become the touches of sweet harmony. 



Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven 



Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. 



There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, 



But in his motion like an angel sings, 



Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins; 



Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 



But while this muddy vesture of decay 



Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. 



In order to appreciate more truly the status of astronomy in 

 Shakespeare's time, let us take a general bird's-eye view of the ad- 

 vance of that science up to the present. 



The progress of astronomy suggests four epochs. In the first 

 epoch the observer's eye was unaided by optical apparatus, accurate 

 clocks were unavailable, communication of results was slow and 

 costly, and records could only be multiplied by hand copying. The 

 human intellect, though doubtless quite as keen then as now, had but 

 rough and feeble observations to work upon. Hence, from the lack 

 of observational groundwork the theory of astronomy was encum- 

 bered until a few centuries ago with a maze of spheres, cycles, and 

 epicycles, and the pseudo-science of astrology stood on an equal or 

 superior plane with true astronomy in public estimation. This first 

 astronomical epoch began as the outgrowth of astrology in the dim 

 past, and only merged into the second or epoch of the telescope, during 

 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of our era. Among its greatest 

 names stand Euclid, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, and Kegio- 

 montanus. 



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