close of his life that
Bradley should succeed him as Astronomer Royal at Greenwich; a desire
which was fulfilled in rather melancholy fashion, for Halley died without
any assurance that his wish would be gratified. But Bradley got no
astronomical teaching at Oxford either from Halley or others. The art of
astronomical observation he learnt from his maternal uncle, the Rev. James
Pound, Rector of Wansted, in Essex. He is the man to whom we owe Bradley's
training and the great discoveries which came out of it. He was, I am glad
to say, an Oxford man too; very much an Oxford man; for he seems to have
spent some thirteen years there migrating from one Hall to another. His
record indeed was such as good tutors of colleges frown upon; for it was
seven years before he managed to take a degree at all; and he could not
settle to anything. After ten years at Oxford he thought he would try
medicine; after three years more he gave it up and went out in 1700 as
chaplain to the East Indies. But he seems to have been a thoroughly
lovable man, for news was brought of him four years later that he had a
mind to come home, but was dissuaded by the Governor saying that "if Dr.
Pound goes, I and the rest of the Company will not stay behind." Soon
afterwards the settlement was attacked in an insurrection, and Pound was
one of the few who escaped with his life, losing however all the property
he had gradually acquired. He returned to England in 1706, and was
presented to the living of Wansted; married twice, and ended his days in
peace and fair prosperity in 1724. Such are briefly the facts about
Bradley's uncle, James Pound; but the most important of all remains to be
told--that somehow or other he had learnt to make first-rate astronomical
observations, how or when is not recorded; but in 1719 he was already so
skilled that Sir Isaac Newton made him a present of fifty guineas for some
observations; and repeated the gift in the following year; and even three
years before this we find Halley writing to ask for certain observations
from Mr. Pound.

[Sidenote: Bradley worked with him.]

With this excellent man Bradley used frequently to stay. To his nephew he
seems to have been more like a father than an uncle. When his nephew had
smallpox in 1717, he nursed him through it; and he supplemented from his
own pocket the scanty allowance which was all that Bradley's own father
could afford. But what concerns us most is that he fostered, if he did n