Since 1784, from time to time, several other writers have partly
repeated Wood's estimate and added several new facts, as will be shown
further on. But it has been reserved for the Hercules Club, now just
three hundred years after Hariot left the University, to bring to light
new and important contemporary evidence, sufficient, it is believed, to
considerably modify our general estimate of Hariot's life and character,
and to raise him from the second rank of mathematicians to which
Montucla coolly relegated him nearly a century ago to the pre-eminence
of being one of the foremost scholars of his age, not alone of England
but of the world. Had he been walled around by church bigotry like his
friend and contemporary Galileo he would unquestionably by the
originality and brilliancy of his observations and discoveries have
rivalled, or perhaps have shared that philosopher's victories in
science. At all events it is believed that the new matter is sufficient
to reopen the courts of criticism and revision in which some of the
decisions respecting the use of perspective glasses, the invention of
the telescope, the discoveries of the spots on the sun, the satellites
of Jupiter and the horns of Venus may be reconsidered and perhaps
reversed. It is believed that in logical analysis, in philosophy, and in
many other departments of science few in his day were his equals, while
in pure mathematics none was his superior.

Thomas Hariot was born at Oxford, or as Anthony à Wood with more than
his usual quaint-ness expresses it, ' tumbled out of his mother's womb
into the lap of the Oxonian muses in 1560.' He was a ' bateler or
commoner of St Mary's hall.' He ' took the degree of bachelor of arts in
1579, and in the latter end of that year did compleat it by
determination in Schoolstreet.' Nothing of his boyhood, or of his
family, except a few hints in his will, has come to light.