the valiant deliverer of Eastern Europe from the Turkish power, got a similar honour done him by Hevelius in the then invented constellation called Sobieski's Shield. Galileo felt himself under such obligations to the ducal house of Tuscany that he named the four moons of Jupiter, which he discovered, the Medicean Stars, a name they long continued to bear. The honour of a place in the heavens was great. It was also much sought after, so much so that Galileo was told "he would do a thing just and proper in itself, and at the same time render himself rich and powerful for ever," if he "named the next star which he should discover after the name of the great star of France, as well as the most brilliant of all the world," Henry of Navarre. Fortunately, in this respect at least, he had not the chance, otherwise we might have had the starry heavens peopled with the princely nonentities of earth. Royer, in 1679, did a similar honour to Louis XIV., by forming a constellation, called The Sceptre, for that monarch's glory; Messier, after the astronomer of that name, was another recently invented constellation on which Boscovich made the lines—
"Sidera, non Messes, Messerius iste tuetur;
Certe erat ille suo dignus inesse polo."
But no one would have expected a man of science so famous as Edmund Halley, to invent a constellation in honour of Charles II., The Oak, in memory of his escape after Worcester, or that Flamsteed would have placed so rotten a thing as the "Heart of Charles II." among the stars.[1]
- ↑ Lalande, i. 283, 284.
