nt; but I am
quite sure that, in the fit of elephant-worship under which the story was
first told, it was told as I have first stated it.] {59}

GIORDANO BRUNO AND HIS PARADOXES.

[Jordani Bruni Nolani de Monade, Numero et Figura ... item de
Innumerabilibus, Immenso, et Infigurabili ... Frankfort, 1591, 8vo.[65]

I cannot imagine how I came to omit a writer whom I have known so many
years, unless the following story will explain it. The officer reproved the
boatswain for perpetual swearing; the boatswain answered that he heard the
officers swear. "Only in an emergency," said the officer. "That's just it,"
replied the other; "a boatswain's life is a life of 'mergency." Giordano
Bruno was all paradox; and my mind was not alive to his paradoxes, just as
my ears might have become dead to the boatswain's oaths. He was, as has
been said, a vorticist before Descartes,[66] an optimist before Leibnitz, a
Copernican before Galileo. It would be easy to collect a hundred strange
opinions of his. He was born about 1550, and was roasted alive at Rome,
February 17, 1600, for the maintenance and defence of the holy Church, and
the rights and liberties of the same. These last words are from the writ of
our own good James I, under which Leggatt[67] was roasted at Smithfield, in
March 1612; and if I had a copy of the instrument under which Wightman[68]
was roasted at Lichfield, a month afterwards, I daresay I should {60} find
something quite as edifying. I extract an account which I gave of Bruno in
the _Comp. Alm._ for 1855:

"He was first a Dominican priest, then a Calvinist; and was roasted alive
at Rome, in 1600, for as many heresies of opinion, religious and
philosophical, as ever lit one fire. Some defenders of the papal cause have
at least worded their accusations so to be understood as imputing to him
villainous actions. But it is positively certain that his death was due to
opinions alone, and that retractation, even after sentence, would have
saved him. There exists a remarkable letter, written from Rome on the very
day of the murder, by Scioppius[69] (the celebrated scholar, a waspish
convert from Lutheranism, known by his hatred to Protestants and Jesuits)
to Rittershusius,[70] a well-known Lutheran writer on civil and canon law,
whose works are in the index of prohibited books. This letter has been
reprinted by Libri (vol. iv. p. 407). The writer informs his friend (whom
he wished to convince that even a Luthera