the LiveniioJi of the Telescope. 11 



vindicate the honesty of my reference, I cannot refrain from 

 attempting also some answer to Dr. Moll's challenge " to 

 point out the passage in Borel's book, in which either Boreel 

 or John the optician exhibit the least intention of throwing 

 Galileo's discoveries into the shade." The charge I made was 

 against the author; I have no quarrel with the ambassador, 

 unless so far as he might be concerned in getting up the book 

 in question; and I have Dr. Moll's own authority for stating 

 that it was written " pi'obably at his request, and certainly with 

 his assistance". It is not indeed easy to convey the same im- 

 pression by detached extracts, which is produced by the tone 

 of the whole volume; but a few passages may be especially no- 

 ticed. The eighth chapter contains the following remarks : 

 " Some contend that it (the telescope) was known to Bacon the 

 Englishman : some to Baptista Porta, who seems to have said 

 something on the subject, but obscurely. — But the opinion of 

 the majority has been in favour of Drebbel, Galileo, and Me- 

 tius ; and they themselves do not blush to claim it, although it 

 may be made clear to every one by public documents that they 

 had recourse to an artist of Middleburg, or borrowed it from 

 him in some way." This charge is repeated with more parti- 

 cularity against Galileo in the next chapter: "Among this 

 crowd of inventors first appeal's Galileo, isoho attributed the in- 

 vention to himself, and to this hour has been puffed as the real 

 inventor, and has exalted himself by his own praises, as ap- 

 pears by his petition to the States of the Republic of Holland," 

 Borel chooses to disprove this supposed claim by quoting the 

 Mercuric of Vittorio Siri, who relates how Galileo redisco- 

 vered the instrument on hearing that such a thing had been 

 done in Holland. A more candid writer would have re- 

 ferred to one of Galileo's own statements, such as that in the 

 Saggiatore, where he mentions " 1' Ollandese primo inventore 

 del telescopio ", or he might have given precisely the same 

 account which he has adopted from Siri, out of^Galileo's 

 Nuncius Sydcreus. He there says, " A rumour reached me 

 about ten months ago, that a perspective had been worked by 

 a Belgian, by help of which objects, though at a great distance 

 from the eye of the observer, appear as distinctly as if near : 

 and of this certainly admirable contrivance some experiments 

 were noised about, which some believed, others denied. The 

 same thing after a few days was confirmed to me in a letter 

 h-oni Paris by James Badovere, a French gentleman, which 

 at length occasioned that I set myself intently to examine the 

 reason of the thing, and to contrive the means of inventing a 

 similar instrument., in which I soon succeeded by help of the 

 theory of refractions," &,c. Borel had this ))assagc before 

 him; for he has incautiously |)rinled it in another part of his 



C'J 



