GALILEO AND THE OPTIC TUBE 209 



His failure brings no reproach ; it cannot dim his glory. 

 He did a work which, in sheer variety and quantity as well as 

 decisive effect upon the thoughts of men, has never been sur- 

 passed, and has been equalled but once or twice in the history 

 of the race. His industry was incredible. It is said that many 

 of his manuscripts were burned or lost. The complete edition 

 of his extant works fills seventeen solid volumes. That day 

 had no stenographers nor typing machines ; sixteen hundred 

 of his letters upon scientific subjects have been preserved. He 

 made his own telescopes, ground and polished his lenses with his 

 own hands. He was one of the inventors of the thermometer. 

 If he did not invent the microscope, at least he perfected it 

 and made it practical. In Florence they have a museum 

 wherein they proudly preserve the endless variety of instru- 

 ments which he devised and made. 



As an inventive genius you may put him beside Archimedes, 

 as an experimental investigator beside Faraday. He was a wit, 

 a poet, and a musician, a critic of art and letters and a great 

 stylist as well. *He had such a myriad mind as Democritus, 

 Eratosthenes, Leonardo, Thomas Young. Persecution, im- 

 prisonment, poverty, a blind and pitiful old age, accentuated 

 it may be by the fright, if not the actual fact, of torture at the 

 rack, were his reward. The Powers of the Dark could crush 

 him in his helpless age ; but not the fruits of his splendid mind. 

 He died miserably, but his work survives. In some sense, the 

 conception of a world machine is his creation. 



With a deeper meaning than when Kepler penned the line, 

 the years have written for his epitaph : 



VICISTT, GALILEO ! 



