Chisholm of Cromlix, who survived him. By her he had five sons and five daughters.
In 1588 he was chosen by the presbytery of Edinburgh one of its commissioners to the General Assembly.
On the 17th of October 1593 a convention of delegates was held at Edinburgh at which a committee was appointed to follow the king and lay before him in a personal interview certain instructions relating to the punishment of the rebellious Popish earls and the safety of the church. This committee consisted of six members, two barons, two ministers and two burgesses—the two barons selected being John Napier of Merchiston and James Maxwell of Calderwood. The delegates found the king at Jedburgh, and the mission, which was a dangerous one, was successfully accomplished. Shortly afterwards another convention was held at Edinburgh, and it was resolved that the delegates sent to Jedburgh should again meet the king at Linlithgow and repeat their former instructions. This was done accordingly, the number of members of the committee being, however, doubled. These interviews took place in October 1593, and on the 29th of the following January Napier wrote to the king the letter which forms the dedication of the Plaine Discovery.
The full title of this first work of Napier’s is given below.[1] It was written in English instead of Latin in order that “hereby the simple of this Iland may be instructed”; and the author apologizes for the language and his own mode of expression in the following sentences:—
“Whatsoever therfore through hast, is here rudely and in base language set downe, I doubt not to be pardoned thereof by all good men, who, considering the necessitie of this time, will esteem it more meete to make hast to prevent the rising againe of Antichristian darknes within this Iland, then to prolong the time in painting of language”; and “I graunt indeede, and am sure, that in the style of wordes and utterance of language, we shall greatlie differ, for therein I do judge my selfe inferiour to all men: so that scarcely in these high matters could I with long deliberation finde wordes to expresse my minde.”[2]
Napier’s Plaine Discovery is a serious and laborious work, to which he had devoted years of care and thought. In one sense it may be said to stand to theological literature in Scotland in something of the same position as that occupied by the Canon Mirificus with respect to the scientific literature, for it is the first published original work relating to theological interpretation, and is quite without a predecessor in its own field. Napier lived in the very midst of fiercely contending religious factions; there was but little theological teaching of any kind, and the work related to what were then the leading political and religious questions of the day.
After the publication of the Plaine Discovery, Napier seems to have occupied himself with the invention of secret instruments of war, for in the Bacon collection at Lambeth Palace there is a document, dated the 7th of. June 1596 and signed by Napier, giving a list of his inventions for the defence of the country against the anticipated invasion by Philip of Spain. The document is entitled “Secrett Inventionis, proffitabill and necessary in theis dayes for defence of this Iland, and withstanding of strangers, enemies of God’s truth and religion,”[3] and the inventions consist of (1) a mirror for burning the enemies’ ships at any distance, (2) a piece of artillery destroying everything round an arc of a circle, and (3) a round metal chariot, so constructed that its occupants could move it rapidly and easily, while firing out through small holes in it. It has been asserted (by Sir Thomas Urquhart) that the piece of artillery was actually tried upon a plain in Scotland with complete success, a number of sheep and cattle being destroyed.
In 1614 appeared the work which in the history of British science can be placed as second only to Newton’s Principia. The full title is as follows: Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis descriptio, Ejusque usus, in utraque Trigonometria; ut etiam in omni Logistica Mathematica, Amplissimi, Facillimi, & expeditissimi explicatio. Authore ac Inventore Ioanne Nepero, Barone Merchistonii, &c., Scoto. Edinburgi, ex officinâ Andreae Hart Bibliopolae, CIↃ.DC.XIV. This is printed on an ornamental title-page. The work is a small-sized quarto, containing fifty-seven pages of explanatory matter and ninety pages of tables.
The nature of logarithms is explained by reference to the motion of points in a straight line, and the principle upon which they are based is that of the correspondence of a geometrical and an arithmetical series of numbers. The table gives the logarithms of sines for every minute to seven figures. This work contains the first announcement of logarithms to the world, the first table of logarithms and the first use of the name logarithm, which was invented by Napier.
In 1617 Napier published his Rabdologia,[4] a duodecimo of one hundred and fifty-four pages; there is prefixed to it as preface a dedicatory epistle to the high chancellor of Scotland. The method which Napier terms “Rabdologia” consists in the use of certain numerating rods for the performance of multiplications and divisions. These rods, which were commonly called “Napier’s bones,” will be described further on. The second method, which he calls the “Promptuarium Multiplicationis” on account of its being the most expeditious of all for the performance of multiplications, involves the use of a number of lamellae or little plates of metal disposed in a box. In an appendix of forty-one pages he gives his third method, “local arithmetic,” which is performed on a chess-board, and depends, in principle, on the expression of numbers in the scale of radix 2. In the Rabdologia he gives the chronological order of his inventions. He speaks of the canon of logarithms as “a me longo tempore elaboratum.” The other three methods he devised for the sake of those who would prefer to work with natural numbers; and he mentions that the promptuary was his latest invention. In the preface to the appendix containing the local arithmetic he states that, while devoting all his leisure to the invention of these abbreviations of calculation, and to examining by what methods the toil of calculation might be removed, in addition to the logarithms, rabdologia and promptuary, he had hit upon a certain tabular arithmetic, whereby the more troublesome operations of common arithmetic are performed on an abacus or chess-board, and which may be regarded as an amusement
- ↑ A Plaine Discovery of the whole Revelation of Saint Iohn: set downe in two treatises: The one searching and proving the true interpretation thereof: The other applying the same paraphrastically and historically to the text. Set foorth by John Napier L. of Marchistoun younger. Whereunto are annexed certaine Oracles of Sibylla, agreeing with the Revelation and other places of Scripture. Edinburgh, printed by Robert Walde-grave, printer to the King’s Majestie, 1593. Cum privilegio Regali.
- ↑ A Dutch translation was published at Middelburg in 1600 and a second edition in 1607. The work was translated into French by George Thomson, a naturalized Scotsman residing in La Rochelle, and published by him at that town in 1602, under the title Ouverture de tous les secrets de l’Apocalypse. . . . Par Jean Napeir (c. a. d.) Nonpareil, Sieur de Merchiston, reveue par lui-mesme, et mise en François par Georges Thomson, Escossois. Subsequent editions were published in 1603, 1605 and 1607. German translations were published at Gera in 1611 and at Frankfort in 1605 and 1627. The second edition in English appeared at Edinburgh in 1611, and in the preface to it Napier states he intended to have published an edition in Latin soon after the original publication in 1593, but that, as the work had now been made public by the French and Dutch translations, besides the English editions, and as he was “advertised that our papistical adversaries wer to write larglie against the said editions that are alreadie set out,” he defers the Latin edition “till having first seene the adversaries objections, I may insert in the Latin edition an apologie of that which is rightly done, and an amends of whatsoever is amisse.” No criticism on the work was published, and there was no Latin edition. A third edition appeared at Edinburgh in 1645. Corresponding to the first two Edinburgh editions, copies were issued bearing the London imprint and dates 1594 and 1611.
- ↑ A facsimile of this document is given by Mark Napier in his Memoirs of John Napier (1834), p. 248.
- ↑ Rabdologiae, seu Numerationis per virgulas Libri duo: Cum Appendice de expeditissimo Multiplicationis promptuario. Quibus accessit & Arithmeticae Localis Liber unus. Authore & Inventore Ioanne Nepero, Barone Merchistonii, &c., Scoto. Edinburgi, Excudebat Andreas Hart (1617). Foreign editions were published in Italian at Verona in 1623, in Latin at Leiden in 1626 and 1628, and in Dutch at Gouda in 1626. In 1623 Ursinus published Rhabdologia Neperiana at Berlin, and the rods or bones were described in several other works.
