SEQUEL TO COPERNICUS. 403 



received with favour by many persons, even before 

 its general publication (p). We have already seen 

 the enthusiasm with which Rheticus, who was Co- 

 pernicus's pupil in the latter years of his life, speaks 

 of him. " Thus," says he, " God has given to my 

 excellent preceptor a reign without end; which 

 may He vouchsafe to guide, govern, and increase, 

 to the restoration of astronomical truth. Amen." 



Of the immediate converts of the Copernican 

 system, who adopted it before the controversy on 

 the subject had attracted attention, I shall only 

 add Msestlin, and his pupil, Kepler. Maestlin pub- 

 lished in 1588 an Epitome Astronomic^, in which 

 the immobility of the earth is asserted; but in 1596 

 he edited Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum, 

 and the Narratio of Rheticus; and in an epistle 

 of his own, which he inserts, he defends the Coper- 

 nican system by those physical reasonings which 

 we shall shortly have to mention, as the usual 

 arguments in this dispute. Kepler himself, in the 

 outset of the work just named, says, " When I was 

 at Tiibigen, attending to Michael Msestlin, being 

 disturbed by the manifold inconveniences of the 

 usual opinion concerning the world, I was so de- 

 lighted with Copernicus, of whom he made great 

 mention in his lectures, that I not only defended 

 his opinions in our disputations of the candidates, 

 but wrote a thesis concerning the First Motion 

 which is produced by the revolution of the earth." 

 This must have been in- 1590. 



D \> 2 



