GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 51 



original draft, the latter having altered the draft 

 and supplemented it with important additions. 



The body of the Dialogue which I suspect that 

 many persons who consider themselves competent 

 to give an opinion on the Galileo case have not so 

 much as even seen is divided into four portions, each 

 being supposed to be one day's dialogue. The inter- 

 locutors are Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio. Great 

 offence was taken at the role attributed to this last- 

 named personage the true doctrine put into the 

 mouth of a simpleton ! It has been said that Pope 

 Urban VIII. considered it as an insult directed 

 against himself, because, in conversation with Galileo, 

 he had used some of the very arguments employed 

 by Simplicio. This, however, may have happened 

 without the author intending thereby to offer any 

 personal affront to His Holiness ; some character was 

 bound to appear on the anti-Copernican side, and 

 it was inevitable that the arguments that Galileo 

 had heard, whether from ignorant or enlightened 

 antagonists, should be put into the mouth of such 

 character. The name Simplicio is of course not 

 meant as a compliment ; moreover, he is made to 

 say some very unwise things, and is occasionally 

 treated with a sort of polite contempt by the scientific 

 and mathematical Salviati ; and yet he is not at 

 all a simpleton in our sense of the word, he is 

 a devoted follower of Aristotle, whom he constantly 

 quotes, and is in fact a type probably exag- 

 gerated of the school of the Peripatetics, as they 



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