LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 51 



the impairing of my credit amongst you was the cause of the 

 differring of it so long, contrary to., I will riot say, your pro- 

 mise, but my expectation. Wherein I accounted myself not 

 a little wronged, yet not by you, but by some other, by whose 

 means I had been so much discredited amongst you of that 

 excellent society ; whose good opinion of me I have ever yet 

 esteemed, and so shall esteem ever while I live, as one of my 

 greatest worldly comforts. 



Now for your reasons why you fear your transcripts wdll 

 not answer mine expectation : first because it appears plainly 

 to be only a mere translation which I supposed to be a para- 

 phrase : I termed it so by reason of the clauses here and 

 there inserted more than the text, and for illustration of the 

 text, which is the property of a paraphrase ; and I thought I 

 might the boldlier so term it because Scaliger had likewise 

 termed it before me, namely, in his Tract, de Emend. Temp., 

 pag. 370, calling both the author Paraphrasten Arabem, and 

 the translation itself, Paraphrasin. As for the words you 

 transcribed out of the end of the preface of All Souls 5 MS., to 

 satisfy my demand concerning the author and antiquity of 

 it : the antiquity of the Arabique was no part of my demand 

 or doubt : as having seen the same long since, not only in the 

 forealleged place of Scaliger, but before in Christman's Ap- 

 pendix to Alfrugan, pag. 471, out of a MS. of the Palatine 

 Library : neither yet the antiquity of the first Latin transla- 

 tion out of the Arabique : which, out of the same place, and 

 also otherwise, is sufficiently known to have been procured 

 by the Emperor Frederick the Second, sirnamed Siculus : 

 but my demand was concerning the antiquity of your own 

 particular copy of that translation. Nevertheless you have 

 done well that you have transcribed those words touching the 

 Arabic, and thank you for it. 



Concerning the second cause of your fear, namely the 

 clause that Mr. Dr. Bainbridge gave you to understand I did 

 especially aim at : neither did I ever tell him so much, nor 

 any man else, neither is it true : neither doth that paraphras- 

 tical insertion, being either wholly or partly omitted in other 

 MSS. or printed copies, make much either for or against the 

 goodness of your own. But the clause which I did indeed 

 especially aim at, and in regard whereof chiefly I did and do 

 term your old Latin translation of the Almagest a paraphrase, 

 is that immediately following those words cited by me in the 

 top of the 32nd page of my Astronomy epistle, a circulo ad 

 circulum [antequam demonstraret] , have both your tran- 

 scripts : but as I have read it heretofore, because I could 

 make no sense of the other, and thereupon made an annota- 



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