On the 10th of August 1675, the foun dation of the Royal observatory at Green wich was laid : and, during the building of it, Mr. Flamsteed's temporary obser vatory was in the queen's house, where he made his observations of the appulses of the moon and planets to the fixed stars, and wrote his "Doctrine of the Sphere," which was afterwards published by Sir Jonas, in his " System of Mathematics." About the year 1684, he was presented to the living of Burslow in Surry, which he held as long as he lived. Mr. Flam steed was equally respected by the great men his contemporaries, and by those who have succeeded since his death. Dr. Wot ton, in his " Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning," styles our author one of the most accurate observers of the pla nets and stars, and says he calculated ta bles of the eclipses of the several satel lites, which proved very useful to the astronomers ; and Mr. Molyneux, in his " Dioptrica Nova," gives him a high cha racter : and in the admonition to the read er, prefixed to the work, observes, that the geometrical method of calculating a ray's progress is quite new, and never be fore published ; and for the first hint of it, says he, I must acknowledge myself obliged to my worthy friend Mr. Flam steed.
He wrote several small tracts, and had many papers inserted in the " Philoso phical Transactions," viz. several in al most every volume : and from the fourth to the twenty-ninth, too numerous to be mentioned in this place particularly.
But his great work, and that which con tained the main operations of his life, was the " Historia Ccelestis Britannica." pub lished in 1725, in three large folio vo lumes ; the first of which contains the ob servations of Mr. William Gascoigne, the first inventor of the method of measuring angles in a telescope by means of screws, and the first who applied telescopical sights to astronomical instruments, taken at Middleton, near Leeds in Yorkshire, between the years 1638 and 1643; ex tracted from his letters by Mr. Crabtree, with some of Mr. Crabtree's observations about the same time ; and also those of Mr. Flamsteed himself, made at Derby, between the years 1670 and 1675; be sides a multitude of curious observations, and necessary tables, to be used with them, made at the Royal Observatory, be tween the years 1675 and 1689. The se cond volume contains his observations, made with a mural arch of near 7 feet ra dius, and 140 degrees on the limb of the meridional zenith, distances of the fixed stars, sun, moon, and planets, with their transits over the meridian ; also observa tions of the diameters of the sun and moon, with their eclipses, and those of Jupiter's satellites, and variations of the compass from 1689 to 1719, with tables showing how to render the calculation of the places of the stars and planets easy and expeditious; to which are added, the moon's place at her oppositions, quadra tures, &c.; also the planets' places,derived
from the observations. The third volume contains a catalogue of the right ascen sions, polar distances, longitudes,and mag nitudes of near 3,000 fixed stars, with the corresponding variations of the same : to this volume is prefixed a large preface, containing an account of all the astrono mical observations made before his time, with a description of the instruments em ployed, as- also of his own observations and instruments, with a new Latin ver sion of Ptolemy's " Catalogue of 1026 fixed stars," and Ulegh-beig's " Places" annexed on the Latin page, with the cor rections; a small catalogue of the Arabs: Tycho Brake's of about 780 fixed stars; the Landgrave of Hesse's of 386 ; Helve tius's of 1534 ; and a catalogue of some of the southern fixed stars, not visible in our hemisphere, calculated from the ob servations made by Dr. Halley at St. He lena. adapted to the year 1726.
This work he prepared in a great mea sure for the press, with much care and accuracy ; but through a natural weak ness of constitution, and the decline of age, he died of a strangury before he'had finished it, December the 19th, 1719, at 73 years of age, leaving the care of finish ing and publishing his work to his friend Mr. Hodgson. A less perfect edition of the Historia Ccelestia had before been published without his consent, viz. kn.
1712, in one volome folio containing his observations to the year 1705.
Thus then, as Dr. Keil observed, our author, for more than forty years, watch ed the motions of the stars, and has given us innumerable observations of the sun, moon, and planets, which he made with very large instruments, accurately divid ed, and fitted with telescopic sights ; whence we may rely much more on the observations he has made than on those of. formers astronomers, who made their observations with the naked eye, and without the like assistance of telescopes.