nomy and physics. He was indeed often obliged to employ the hand of another;[1] but his mind worked on with undiminished vigour, even though he was no longer able to commit to paper himself the ideas that continually occupied him.
On 2nd September he received a visit from his sovereign, who came to console and encourage him in his pitiable situation.[2] A few months later an unknown young man, of striking appearance from his handsome face and the unmistakable evidences which genius always exhibits, knocked at the door of the solitary villa at Arcetri: it was Milton, then twenty-nine years of age, who, travelling in Italy, sought out the old man of world-wide fame to testify his veneration.[3]
In December of the same year Galileo became permanently quite blind, and informed Diodati of his calamity on 2nd January, 1638, in the following words:—
"In reply to your very acceptable letter of 20th November, I inform you, in reference to your inquiries about my health, that I am somewhat stronger than I have been of late, but alas! revered sir, Galileo, your devoted friend and servant, has been for a month totally and incurably blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which by my remarkable observations and clear demonstrations I have enlarged a hundred, nay, a thousand fold beyond the limits universally accepted by the learned men of all previous ages, are now shrivelled up for me into such narrow compass that it only extends to the space occupied by my person."[4]
Up to the time when Galileo entirely lost his sight, ab-
- ↑ Op. vii. p. 193.
- ↑ Op. x. pp. 231, 232.
- ↑ . . . "Here I found and called upon the celebrated Galileo, now become old and a prisoner of the Inquisition," says Milton. Unfortunately we know nothing more of this interesting meeting. (Comp. Reumont, p. 405.)
- ↑ Op. vii. p. 207. See on Galileo's total blindness, "Sull'epoca vera e la durata della cecità del Galileo," Nota del Angelo Secchi: (Estratta dal Giornale Arcadico, Tomo liv nuova serie); and "Sull' nella epoca della completa cecità del Galileo," Risposta di Paolo Volpicelli al chiaris e R. P. A. Secchi, Roma, 1868.
