Note 608 — Chapter XXV
Reading edition
Harriott’s book is a thin folio of 180 pages, with very little besides examples; for his principles are shortly and obscurely laid down. Whoever is the author of the preface to this work cannot be said to have suppressed or extenuated the merits of Vieta, or to have claimed anything for Harriott but what he is allowed to have deserved. Montucla justly observes, that Harriott very rarely makes an equation equal to zero, by bringing all the quantities to one side of the equation.