It is very pleasant, as Milton says, to
It is also pleasant to know the astronomy of his ‘Paradise Lost,’ and to linger over the delightful and harmonious utterances associated with the sublimest of sciences, expressed in the melodious language of England’s greatest epic poet.
[1] Chambers’s Handbook of Astronomy.
[2] Brewster’s Martyrs of Science.
[3] The transit occurred on a Sunday, and the ‘business of the highest importance’ to which Horrox alludes was his clerical duties.
[4] A fresco by the late Mr. Ford Maddox-Brown, depicting Crabtree observing the transit of Venus, adorns the interior of the Manchester Town Hall.
[5] William Crabtree died on August 1, 1644, aged 34 years.
[6] The constellation Virgo.
[7] Life of Galileo (Library of Useful Knowledge).
[8] Miss Clerke’s System of the Stars.
[9] Miss Clerke’s System of the Stars.
[10] Miss Clerke’s System of the Stars.
[11] Ibid.
[12] An expression in Book VIII. 148-49 would seem to indicate that this was inaccurate, but the lines
are an allusion to the planets Jupiter and Saturn, whose satellites had been recently discovered.
[13] Mr. E. W. Maunder, in Knowledge, March 1894.
[14] Though not a celestial body, it is considered desirable to describe the Earth as a member of the solar system.