48 LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 



he doth attain it; and consequently the vernal true must 

 needs be sooner, and the autumnal true later than the appear- 

 ing : say I, he that cannot conceive the necessity hereof 

 \vithout a diagramme, is a verier dunce than myself, and not 

 far from that itching morbo demonstrandi that some have 

 complained of before me. In a word, I hold it as absurd to 

 require diagrammes where they are needless, as not to put 

 them where is need. And if there be any that will not look 

 upon my writings for want of diagrammes, they may look 

 beside them, and they will for me. 



Further to acquaint you with my studies, I have within 

 this twelvemonth, since my last being at Oxford, scribled out 

 three inchoate and imperfect treatises of astronomy : the first, 

 of the obliquity of the zodiak in our age, which repulsing 

 the insensible inobservable parallaxe, and the imaginary re- 

 gular refraction obtruded by Tycho, I find with Regiomon- 

 tanus and the Landgrave, to be 23 degrees at the most : the 

 second, of the sun's apparent anomaly and eccentricity, 

 which I have by many observations confirmed to be accord- 

 ing as I before supposed, 18^ days, and 333^, whereof the 

 radius is 100,000 ; with the greatest prosthaphaeresis, igr. 54 

 str. 42 sec. : the third is of the place of the Sun's Apogaeum ; 

 for the reversing whereof to the ^Estine Solstice and begin- 

 ning of Cancir, I have with much labour found out above 

 fifty good observations of Waters, the Landgraves, Byrgius 

 his, and Tycho's own last Bohemicks. But speed these as] 

 they may, with diagrammes or without, I am resolved against! 

 the bringing in of the Gregorian year and calendar into our I 

 country, to oppose my great Period or Annus Magnus ; and, 

 with God's help, to maintain against whatsoever Jesuit or 

 Papist ; and in regard of the contempt and disgrace that hath 

 been offered my poor self and it, to stand for a reward of my 

 pains in finding or restoring of it. But haste breaks off this 

 idle talk. I was even chiding ripe with my neighbour mi- 

 nister for keeping your letter so long in his hand. I know 

 not whether he doubted me to be the man to whom it was 

 meant, because you endorsed it to Alkerton in Buckingham- 

 shire. Indeed my direct way to Alkerton from London, 

 whence I came upon Friday was sennenet, the llth of July, 

 which day your letter bears date, is to Ailesbury, and so all 

 along through Buckinghamshire ; but Alkerton, my native 

 soil and dwelling-place, is in the utmost skirt of Oxfordshire 

 northward, as I have heretofore, although not demonstrated, 

 yet declared without a diagramme in mine Astronomical 

 Epistle, a copy whereof I remember I gave you. And from 

 thence at this time, I thank God, in health, I take leave of 



