STARS NAMED AFTER KINGS 77 



the valiant deliverer of Eastern Europe from the 

 Turkish power, got a similar honour done him by 

 Hevelius in the then invented constellation called 

 Sobieski's Shield. Galileo felt himself under such 

 obligations to the ducal house of Tuscany that he 

 named the four moons of Jupiter, which he discovered, 

 the Medicean Stars, a name they long continued to 

 bear. The honour of a place in the heavens was 

 great. It was also much sought after, so much so 

 that Galileo was told " he would do a thing just and 

 proper in itself, and at the same time render himself 

 rich and powerful for ever," if he " named the next 

 star which he should discover after the name of the 

 great star of France, as well as the most brilliant of 

 all the world," Henry of Navarre. Fortunately, in this 

 respect at least, he had not the chance, otherwise we 

 might have had the starry heavens peopled with the 

 princely nonentities of earth. Royer, in 1679, did a 

 similar honour to Louis xiv., by forming a constella- 

 tion, called The Sceptre, for that monarch's glory ; 

 Messier, after the astronomer of that name, was 

 another recently invented constellation on which 

 Boscovich made the lines 



" Sidera, non Messes, Messerius iste tuetur ; 

 Certe erat ille suo dignus inesse polo." 



But no one would have expected a man of science so 

 famous as Edmund Halley, to invent a constellation in 

 honour of Charles II., The Oak, in memory of his 

 escape after Worcester, or that Flamsteed would have 

 placed so rotten a thing as the " Heart of Charles II." 

 among the stars. 1 



1 Lalande, i. 283, 284. 



