Note on the First English Euclid.
By George Bruce Halsted, Tutor in Princeton College, late Fellow of Johns Hopkins University.
Some interesting questions may now be answered authoritatively, since it is discovered that Princeton possesses, and has possessed for nearly a century, perhaps longer, the identical volume from which the first translation of Euclid into English was made three hundred years ago by Sir Henry Billingsley.
The first translation of Euclid into Latin was made from the Arabic by Adolard of Bath (1130). It is related that he travelled in the East and Spain, where he obtained MSS. From the fact that this version was spread abroad on the Continent with a commentary by Campanus of Novara, it soon began to be attributed to Campanus. It was published at Venice in 1482, and was the first printed edition of Euclid. From this or its reprints (1491 and 1516) it has always been taught that the first version into our language was made; see for example the Introduction to Pott's Euclid, Cambridge, 1845, which states, "to Henry Billingsley, a citizen of London, is due the merit of making the first English translation of Euclid's Elements of Geometry. It was made chiefly from the Latin of Campanus, and was published in 1570."
There was some dispute as to the extent to which Greek was studied in England at that period, but De Morgan, by a comparison of the Greek of Gregory's Edition with the Latin of Adelard-Campanus and the English of Billingsley, arrives at the belief, in 1837, that this English translation was either made from the Greek or corrected by the Greek.
As the preface was written by the celebrated Dr. John Dee, De Morgan supposed that perhaps he might have furnished the requisite knowledge of Greek.
There seems to be a tendency to doubt Sir Henry Billingsley's erudition, for no reason that I can discover except that he was wealthy and became Lord Mayor of London in 1591.
