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best biography which we possess of this eminent man in our own language is that which forms a part of the Library of Useful Knowledge, supposed, and I believe generally admitted, to have been written by the late Mr. Drinkwater Bethune. His account, where it concerns the subject of the present inquiry, has been criticised with the asperity, petulance, and flippancy, which might be expected from a writer in the Dublin Review. The critic alluded to is reported to be the Rev. Peter Cooper, curate to the Papal usurper of the title of Archbishop of Dublin, and the volume in which the criticism appears is that for 1838, No. IX.
Galileo, whatever might be the circumstances, was condemned by the Inquisition for his Copernicism; and his condemnation, and consequent abjuration, are given at length, and, I believe, with perfect accuracy, by Mr. D. B., in the thirteenth chapter of his biography, pp. 55-64. The original documents, as I have been informed by a very competent friend, not having the work in my own possession, are to be seen in Venturi's Memorie e Lettere di Galileo Galilei, Modena, tom. ii. pp. 170-176.
