to his virtues and piety.’ ‘We have observed in him not only literary distinction, but also the love of religion and all the good qualities worthy of the papal favor.’
Galileo was again at the very summit of prosperity. He thought it safe, on his return to Florence, to write a reply to an Italian advocate, Ingoli, in which he defends the Copernican theory. In the first place he shows that he formerly defended it because of its inherent probability. He proves that he had not defended an idea improbable or unreasonable in itself. Again he desires to show the Protestant Copernicans in Germany that the heliocentric doctrine had not been rejected in Italy from ignorance of its great probability, but from reverence for Holy Scripture, zeal for religion and our holy faith.
Il Saggiatore had been well received. Why might he not go further under the favor of the Pope? All reports from Rome were favorable. And indeed he had heard (December, 1625) that the Pope had listened to several passages from this last pamphlet and had highly approved them. If he had gone so far, why then might he not go still farther? On the surface of affairs there was no apparent reason. Up to this time Galileo had preserved the forms fully. He professed not to hold Copernican doctrines. Not holding them, how could his writings be taken as teaching or defending them? The Pope, his friend, had not disapproved his previous writings. Galileo misinterpreted this as a sign of his toleration of the doctrines. It is now apparent that the Pope's whole course was consistent. He desired to give Galileo every liberty, but was sternly set against any teachings that would diminish the authority of the Church. From first to last he was unconvinced of the scientific truth of the Copernican opinion. He had personally befriended and honored Galileo. He looked for a grateful acknowledgment in return. Galileo had been denounced by his enemies, but they were overawed, and would certainly take up no quarrel in which he was not flagrantly disobedient to the prohibition of 1616. Il Saggiatore had been a brilliant success. He now set about arranging another work—the Dialogues on the two principal systems of the World—parts of which had been in hand for some years.
This is the place to record Galileo's share in the invention of the microscope. While he was in Rome (1624) a complicated microscope was shown to him that had been invented by Drebbel, a Dutchman. Galileo simplified and greatly improved it. His relation to the invention of the telescope and of the microscope is the same. The first ideas came from others; Galileo put them into practical forms. The real inventor of the microscope is not Drebbel, but Zacharias Jansen, a spectacle maker of Middleburg who made the first instruments in the last years of the sixteenth century, before the telescope was invented, therefore.
