358 GIORDANO BRUNO 



mate of Sidney at Shrewsbury, but proceeded to Jesus College, 

 Cambridge, while Sidney went to Christ Church at Oxford ; after- 

 wards they were constant friends at Court. When Sidney went to 

 Heidelberg in 1577, the Queen would not allow the handsome 

 Greville to accompany him, nor would she let either go with Drake 

 to the West Indies in 1585, and Greville was kept at home from 

 Leicester's Expedition to the Low Countries, in which poor Sidney 

 met with a heroic death (Oct. 17, 1586). In a letter of 1586, 

 Greville describes Sidney as " that prince of gentlemen " : writing 

 to Douglas after Sidney's death, he says that the name of Sidney's 

 friendship has carried him above his own worth. The epitaph 

 Greville wrote for himself is familiar, but will bear repetition : 

 " Fulke Greville, Servant to Queen Elizabeth, Councillor to King 

 James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney. Trophaeum Peccati" 



4. To p. 35. Vautrollier and Bruno. Vautrollier traded in 

 Scotland as early as 1580 as a bookseller: he had already enjoyed 

 the patronage of King James, and was even encouraged to return 

 with a printing press, which he did in 1584. Thereafter he pub- 

 lished in both London and Edinburgh till 1587. On the other 

 hand some of Bruno's works were printed in 1585, so that the 

 theory of Vautrollier's flight to Scotland owing to his being the 

 printer of Bruno's works, falls through. The business in London 

 was carried on during his absence by his wife, and the " troubles " 

 out of which Mr. Randolph helped him were quite unconnected with 

 Bruno, and may have arisen from his printing of John Knox's 

 History of the Reformation in Scotland, which Archbishop Whitgift 

 suppressed. The letter to Mr. Randolph is in L'Espine's Treatise 

 of Apostasy, 1587 (Vautrollier: London). 



5. To p. 51. Mordentius. Fabrizio Mordente of Salerno was a 

 mathematician of the sixteenth century, of whom only two works 

 are known to have existed, one published in 1597, the other 

 written in conjunction with his brother Caspar in 1591. He was 

 the inventor of an eight-point compasses of which Bruno writes in 

 the second of the Mordentius dialogues, and on which he bestows 

 apparently extravagant praise. The peculiarity of the invention, 

 as far as one can discover, consisted in the introduction of four 

 " runners," two on either limb of the compasses, and secured by 

 screws ; but there seems to have been no gradation of the compasses, 

 and it is difficult to perceive any great value in the novelty, without 



