X PREFACE. 



Robert Recorde may be considered as the founder of 

 analytical science in England. The author of the 

 first English work on algebra (1557) has not, how- 

 ever, as might have been expected, produced a mere 

 elementary compilation, but a work that ranks, for 

 originality and depth, with the ablest foreign contem- 

 porary productions on the same subject. What is 

 rather inexplicable, this book by Recorde appears an 

 oasis in a century deficient in this science, and no 

 Englishman is known to have pursued the study of 

 algebra to an equal extent before the time of Harriot. 

 With the exception of a trifling essay by Thomas 

 Digges in the Stratioticos, and a few memoranda in a 

 MS. of Blagrave's in Lambeth Palace*, we scarcely 

 know of anything connected with this branch of 

 science that is worthy of notice, and even these in- 

 clude only the simplest elementary principles. 



It is somewhat remarkable that this dearth of ana- 

 lytical science was not the result of a prejudice in 

 favour of the geometry of the ancients. We have, 

 it is true, an elaborate edition of Euclid by Dee and 

 Billingsley, but with this the taste for geometry ap- 

 pears to have expired. We do not find that Harriot 

 and the contemporary English analysts were fettered 

 by a prejudice in favour of the old geometry, such as 

 for a length of time pervaded the writers of the con- 

 tinent; although, indeed, it appears from Harriot's 



* This is No. 280, which is classed anonymously in the printed 

 catalogue. Blagrave has given in this volume the well-known al- 

 gebraic question relating to the cocks of a cistern, besides several 

 astronomical notes. It appears that Blagrave studied under John 

 Field, whom we have mentioned above. 



