NOTES. CV 



work." This is also the opinion of the Archiv-Director Voigt at Konigsberg ; 

 because in a letter which George Donner, Canon of Ermland, wrote to the 

 Duke of Prussia after the death of Copernicus, it is said, that " the estimable 

 and worthy Doctor Nicolaus Koppernick sent forth his work, like the sweet 

 Bont? of the swan, a short time before his departure from this life of sorrows." 

 According to the ordinarily received opinion (Westphal, Nikolaus Kopernikus, 

 1822, S. 73 and 82), the work was begun in 1507, and in 1530 was already 

 So far completed that only a few corrections were subsequently added. The 

 publication was hastened by a letter from Cardinal Schonberg, written from 

 Home iu 1536. The cardinal wishes to have the manuscript copied and sent 

 to him by Theodor von Reden. * Copernicus himself, in his dedication to 

 Pope Paul III. says, that the performance of the work has lingered on into 

 the " quartum novennium." If we remember how much time was required 

 for printing a work of 400 pages, and that the great man died in May 1543-, 

 we may presume that the dedication was not written in the last named year ; 

 which, reckoning backwards 36 years, would not give us a later but an earlier 

 year than 1507. Herr Voigt doubts whether the aqueduct and hydraulic 

 works at Erauenburg, generally ascribed to Copernicus, were really executed 

 according to his designs. He finds that so late as 1571, a contract wa 

 concluded between the Chapter and the " skilful Master Valentine Zendel at 

 Breslau," to bring the water to Frauenburg, from the mill-ponds to the 

 houses of the Canons. Nothing is said of any previous water-works, and 

 therefore the existing ones cannot have been commenced until 28 years after 

 the death of Copernicus. 



C 463 ) p. 305. Delambre, Histoire de 1'Astronomie moderne, T. i. p. 140. 



(^ p. 304. " Neque enim necesse est, eas hypotheses esse veras, imo ne 

 verisimiles quidem, sed sufficit hoc unum, si calculum observationibus con- 

 gruentem exhibeant," says the preface of Osiander. " The bishop of Culm, 

 Tidemann Gise, a native of Dantzig, who had for years urged Copernicus to 

 publish his work, at last received the manuscript, with permission to have it 

 printed at his free pleasure. He sent it first to Rhseticus, Professor at Wit- 

 tenberg, who had recently been living for a long time with his teacher at 

 Fraueuburg. Rhseticus regarded Nuremberg as the most suitable place for 

 the publication, and entrusted the superintendence of the printing to the 

 Professor Schoner and Andreas Osiander" (Gassendi, Vita Copernici, p. 319). 

 The eulogium pronounced on the work at the close of the preface would 

 Buffice to shew, without the express testimony of Gasseudi, that the preface 

 was by another hand. Also on the title of the first edition (that of Nureia- 



