75 



SECTION IV. 



CORRESPONDENCE FROM 1831 TO 1836. 



To Sir J. Herschel. 



5 Upper Gower Street, Oct. 16, 1832. 



MY DEAR SIR JOHN, I have just duly received your Cata- 1832. 

 logue, which must in course of things be the first paper ordered 

 for press, after those already so disposed of. I shall be very 

 much obliged to you for all you have offered on the Catalogue, 

 the Comet, and the Herscheliana. The crumbs which fall 

 from a rich man's table are good astronomically, whatever they 

 may be gastronomically. 



Have you got, or do you know anything of, Bouillaud's 

 or Bullialdi's Astronomia PTiilolaica ? There is a copy in the 

 British Museum which wants the Prolegomena, which is the 

 very part I want. The matter has reference to Yieta's Har- 

 monicon Celeste, which has been supposed to be lost, and which 

 I have a faint hope might be recovered. Bouillaud is reported 

 to say that somebody stole it from Mersenne, and certainly 

 Vossius quotes words to that effect from the Prolegomena. But 

 my good friend M. Hachette assures me that this is a mistake, 

 and that Bouillaud, in his unpublished MS. at Paris, says that 

 he himself lent Vieta's MSS. to Leopold, Duke of Tuscany. If 

 this be true, some library at Florence may yet contain it. I am 

 the more inclined to hope this, as Schootten, in the Preface 

 to Vieta, gives as his reason for omitting the Harmonicon 

 Celeste, not that no copy was to be had, but that the only one 

 he could get appeared imperfect. Neither Montucla, Delambre, 

 nor Kastner is to be trusted implicitly at least with regard to 

 Yieta. Neither of them was aware of the fact that Yieta 

 during his life published a collection of his works, or rather I 

 should say that the first publication of his works was in the form 

 of a collection, and that they did not appear severally, but were 



