1The Marquis La Place.—See SystÊme du Monde, p. 336.

2Sir Isaac Newton told Mr. Conduit, that he had often heard his mother say that when he was born he was so little that they might have put him into a quart mug.

3In Leicestershire, and about three miles south-east of Woolsthorpe.

4“I remember once,” says Dr. Stukely, “when I was deputy to Dr. Hailey, secretary at the Royal Society, Sir Isaac talked of these kind of instruments. That he observed the chief inconvenience in them was, that the hole through which the water is transmitted being necessarily very small, was subject to be furred up by impurities in the water, as those made with sand will wear bigger, which at length causes an inequality in time.”—Stukely’s Letter to Dr. Mead.—Turnor’s Collections, p. 177.

5Mr. Clark informed Dr. Stukely that the walls of the room in which Sir Isaac lodged were covered with charcoal drawings of birds, beasts, men, ships, and mathematical figures, all of which were very well designed.

6“One of his uncles,” says M. Biot, “having one day found him under a hedge with a book in his hand and entirely absorbed in meditation, took it from him, and found that he was occupied in the solution of a mathematical problem. Struck with finding so serious and so active a disposition at so early an age, he urged his mother no longer to thwart him, and to send him back to Grantham to continue his studies.” I have omitted this anecdote in the text, as I cannot find it in Turner’s Collections, from which M. Biot derived his details of Newton’s infancy, nor in any other work.

7Pemberton’s View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy. Pref.

8PeregregiÆ vir indolis ac insignis peritiÆ.—Epist ad. Lect.

9See Newton’s Letter to the AbbÉ Conti, dated February 26, 1715–16, in the Additamenta Comm. Epistolici.

10Newtoni Opera, tom. iv. p. 205, Letter to Oldenburg.

11M. Biot, in his Life of Newton, has stated that Newton was preceded in the invention of the reflecting telescope by Gregory, but probably without knowing it. It is quite certain, however, that Newton was acquainted with Gregory’s invention, as appears from the following avowal of it. “When I first applied myself to try the effects of reflection, Mr. Gregory’s Optica Promota (printed in the year 1663) having fallen into my hands, where there is an instrument described with a hole in the midst of the object-glass, to transmit the light to an eye-glass placed behind it, I had thence an occasion of considering that sort of construction, and found their disadvantages so great, that I saw it necessary before I attempted any thing in the practice to alter the design of them, and place the eye-glass at the side of the tube rather than at the middle.”—Letter to Oldenburg, May 4th, 1672.

12Letter to Oldenburg, February 10, 1671.

13This gentleman was the author of a paper in the Philosophical Transactions, entitled “Optical Assertions concerning the Rainbow.” How such a paper could be published by so learned a body seems in the present day utterly incomprehensible. The dials which Linus erected at Liege, and which were the originals of those formerly in the Priory Gardens in London, are noticed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1703. In one of them the hours were distinguished by touch.

14Newton speaks with singular positiveness on this subject. “For I know,” says he, “that Mr. Lucas’s observations cannot hold where the refracting angle of the prism is full 60°, and the day is clear, and the full length of the colours is measured, and the breadth of the image answers to the sun’s diameter; and seeing I am well assured of the truth and exactness of my own observations, I shall be unwilling to be diverted by any other experiments from having a fair end made of this in the first place.” On the supposition that his prism was one of very low dispersive power, Mr. Lucas might, with perfect truth, have used the very same language towards Newton.

15Letter to Oldenburg in 1672, containing his first reply to Huygens.

16In an experiment made by Newton, he had occasion to counteract the refraction of a prism of glass by another prism of water; and had he completed the experiment, and studied the result of it, he could not have failed to observe a quantity of uncorrected colour, which would have led him to the discovery of the different dispersive powers of bodies. But in order to increase the refractive power of the water, he mixed with it a little sugar of lead, the high dispersive power of which seems to have rendered the dispersive power of the water equal to that of the glass, and thus to have corrected the uncompensated colour of the glass prism.

17See the article Optics in the Edinburgh EncyclopÆdia, vol xv. p. 479, note.

18“This result was obtained,” as Newton says, “by an assistant whose eyes were more critical than mine, and who, by right lines drawn across the spectrum, noted the confines of the colours. And this operation being divers times repeated both on the same and on several papers, I found that the observations agreed well enough with one another.”—Optics, Part II. Book III.

19Optics, Book ii. Prop. iv.

20In the same paragraph, when speaking of black bodies becoming hot, and burning sooner than others, he says that their “effect may proceed partly from the multitude of refractions in a little room and partly from the easy commotion of so very small corpuscles.”—Optics, Part iii. Prop. vii. p. 235.

21See page 354.

22When Newton speaks of bodies losing their reflecting power from their thinness he means the reflecting power of their second surfaces, as is evident from the reason he assigns.—See Optics, Part iii. Prop. xiii. p. 257.

23Edinburgh Journal of Science, No. 1. p. 108.

24See the Phil. Trans. 1829, Part I. p. 189.

25Idem.

26Phil. Trans. 1819, p. 11.

27If this view of the matter be just, we should expect that the specific gravity of the black would exceed that of the yellow phosphorus.

28Since the two preceding chapters were written, I have had occasion to confirm and extend the views which they contain by many new experiments.

29Physico-Mathesis de Lumine coloribus et iride aliisque annexis. Bonon. 1665.

30This doctrine is thus announced. 1. That the same rays of light falling upon the same point of an object will turn into all sorts of colours by the various inclination of the object. 2. That colours begin to appear when two pulses of light are blended so well and so near together that the sense takes them for one.

31This effect is so great, that at the distance of four inches from the point of divergence, the angular inflexion of the red rays of the first fringe is 12' 6, while at the distance of about twenty feet, it is only 3' 55.

32See the twenty-ninth query at the end of his Optics, where the sides of a ray are compared with the poles of a magnet.

33The English edition was reprinted at London in 1714, 1721, and 1730, and the Latin one at London in 1706, 1719, 1721, 1728, at Lausanne in 1740, and at Padua in 1773.

34When James I. went to Copenhagen in 1590, to conclude his marriage with the Princess Anne of Denmark, he spent eight days under the roof of Tycho at Uraniburg. As a token of his gratitude, he composed a set of Latin verses in honour of the astronomer, and left him a magnificent present at his departure. He gave him also his royal license for the publication of his works in England, and accompanied it with the following complimentary letter:—

“Nor am I acquainted with these things on the relation of others, or from a mere perusal of your works, but I have seen them with my own eyes, and heard them with my own ears, in your residence at Uraniburg, during the various learned and agreeable conversations which I there held with you, which even now affect my mind to such a degree, that it is difficult to decide whether I recollect them with greater pleasure or admiration.”

35The cube, the sphere, the tetrahedron, the octohedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron.

36Simon Marius, mathematician to the Marquis of Brandenburg, assures us that he discovered the satellites of Jupiter in November, 1609.

37It is distinctly stated in the sentence of the Inquisition, that Galileo’s enemies had charged him with having abjured his opinions in 1616, and affirmed that he had been punished by the Inquisition. In order to refute these calumnies, Galileo applied to Cardinal Bellarmine for a certificate to prove that he neither abjured his opinions nor suffered any punishment for them; but that the doctrine of the motion of the earth and the stability of the sun was only denounced to him as contrary to Scripture, and as one which could not be defended or maintained. Cardinal Bellarmine drew up such a certificate in his own handwriting.

38TheoricÆ Medicearum planetarum ex causis physicis deductÆ. Flor. 1666, 4to.

39M. Delambre maintains that these views of Borelli are only those of Kepler slightly modified. Newton and Huygens have attached to them a greater value. The last of these philosophers remarks, “Refert Plutarchus, fuisse jam olim qui putaret ideo manere lunam in orbe suo, quod vis recedendi a terra, ob motum circularem, inhiberetur pari vi gravitatis, qua ad terram accedere conaretur. Idemque Ævo nostro, non de luna tantum sed et planetis ceteris statuit Alphonsus Borellus, ut nempe primariis eorum gravitas esset solem versus; lunis vero ad terram, Jovem ac Saturnum quos comitantur.”—Huygen, Cosmotheor, lib. ii.; Opera, t. ii. p. 720.

40Hist. de l’Astronomie aux Dix-huitieme SiÈcle, p. 9.

41“But for the duplicate proportion, I gathered it from Kepler’s theorem about twenty years ago.”—Newton’s Letter to Halley, July 14, 1686.

42Whiston asserts that this cause was supposed by Newton to be something analogous to the vortices of Descartes.—See Whiston’s Memoirs of himself, p. 231.

43Waller’s Life of Hooke, p. 22.

44Ibid.

45July 27, 1686, Biog. Brit. p. 2662.

46Commercium Epistolicum, No. 7.

47This Scholium is added to Prop. iv. lib. i. coroll. 6.

48In writing to Flamstead, Newton requests from him the long diameters of the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, that he “may see how the sesquialteral proportion fills the heavens.”

49Whiston’s Memoirs of his own Life.

50“Dr. Reid states, that James Gregory, Professor of Philosophy at St. Andrew’s, printed a thesis at Edinburgh in 1690, containing twenty-five positions, of which twenty-two were a compend of Newton’s Principia.”

51Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 322. Cotes states in his preface to the second edition of the Principia, that copies of the first edition could only be obtained at an immense price.

52Preface to Desaguliers’s Experimental Philosophy. Dr. Desaguliers states that he was told this anecdote several times by Sir Isaac Newton himself.

53The Life of John Locke, p. 209–215, Lond. 1829.

54Principia, lib. i. prop. i.

55Ib. lib. i. prop. xi.

56“On peut regarder Fermat,” says Lagrange, “comme le premier inventeur des nouveaux calculs;” and Laplace observes, “Il paraitque Fermat le veritable inventeur du calcul differentiel, l’ait envisagÉ comme un cas particulier de celui des differences,” &c.

57Art. Mathematics, in the Edinburgh EncyclopÆdia, volume xiii. p. 365.

58These facts are mentioned in Newton’s letter to Oldenburgh, October 24, 1676.

59Dr. Pemberton informs us that he had prevailed upon Sir Isaac to publish this treatise during his lifetime, and that he had for this purpose examined all the calculations and prepared part of the figures. But as the latter part of the treatise had never been finished, Sir Isaac was about to let him have other papers to supply what was wanting, when his death put a stop to the plan.—Preface to Pemberton’s View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy.

60Isaci Newtoni Opera quÆ extant omnia, vol. i. p. 388–519.

61“Acutissimis qui toto orbe florent Mathematicis.”

62Henry Oldenburg, whose name is so intimately associated with the history of Newton’s discoveries, was born at Bremen, and was consul from that town to London during the usurpation of Cromwell. Having lost his office, and being compelled to seek the means of subsistence, he became tutor to an English nobleman, whom he accompanied to Oxford in 1656. During his residence in that city he became acquainted with the philosophers who established the Royal Society, and upon the death of William Crown, the first secretary, he was appointed in 1663, joint secretary along with Mr. Wilkins. He kept up an extensive correspondence with the philosophers of all nations, and he was the author of several papers in the Philosophical Transactions, and of some works which have not acquired much celebrity. He died at Charlton, near Greenwich, in August, 1677.

63These words in brackets are in the second edition, but not in the first.

64As this passage is of essential importance in this controversy, we shall give it in the original. “Pro differentiis igitur Leibnitianis D. Newtonus adhibet, semperque adhibuit, fluxiones, quÆ sunt quam proxime ut fluentium augmenta, Æqualibus temporis particulis quam minimis genita; iisque tam in suis Principiis NaturÆ Mathematicis, tum in aliis postea editis, eleganter est usus; quem admodum et Honoratus Fabrius in sua Synopsi Geometrica, motuumque progressus CavallerianÆ methodo substituit.”

65Homine docto, sed novo, et parum perito rerum ante actarum cognitare.

66VanÆ et injustÆ vociferationes.

67Letter to Count Bothman in Des Maizeaux’s Recueil de diverses pieces, tom. ii. p. 44, 45.

68See Des Maizeaux, tom. ii. p. 116.

69Written in November or December, 1715.

70This is the Recensio Commercii Epistolici, or review of it, which was first published in the Phil. Trans. 1715.

71M. Biot remarks, that the animosity of Newton was not calmed by the death of Leibnitz, for he had no sooner heard of it than he caused to be printed two manuscript letters of Leibnitz, written in the preceding year, accompanying them with a very bitter refutation (en les accompagnant d’un refutation tres-amere). Who that reads this sentence does not believe that the bitter refutation was written after Leibnitz’s death? The animosity could not be shown by the simple publication of the letters. It could reside only in the bitterness of the refutation. The implied charge is untrue; the bitter refutation was written before Leibnitz’s death, and consequently he showed no animosity over the grave of his rival; and in our opinion none even before his death.

72M. Biot states that Sir Isaac Newton caused this edition of the Commercium Epistolicum to be printed; that Sir Isaac placed at the head of it a partial abstract of the collection; and that this abstract appeared to have been written by himself. These groundless charges may be placed, without any refutation, beside the assertion of Montucla, that Newton wrote the notes (les notes) on the Commercium Epistolicum; and the equally incorrect statement of La Croix, that Newton added to it notes (des notes), with his own hand. We should not have noticed the charges of M. Biot, had he not adduced them as proofs of Newton’s animosity to Leibnitz after his death. See Mr. Herschel’s History of Mathematics in the Edinburgh EncyclopÆdia, vol. xiii. p. 368, note.

73See Burnet’s History of his own Times, vol. i. p. 697. Lond. 1724.

74The other candidates were Sir Robert Sawyer and Mr. Finch, and the votes stood thus.

75This M. Colin was probably a young bachelor of arts whom Newton seems afterward to have employed in some of his calculations. These bachelors were distinguished by the title of Dominus, and it was usual to translate this word and to call them Sir. In a letter from Newton to Flamstead, dated Cambridge, June 29th, 1695, is the following passage: “I want not your calculations, but your observations only, for besides myself and my servant, Sir Collins (whom I can employ for a little money, which I value not) tells me that he can calculate an eclipse and work truly.”

76They are thus dated in Horsley’s edition of Newton’s Works, the fourth letter having an earlier date than the third.

77See Newtoni Opera, tom. iv. p. 480, and Wallasii Opera, 1693, tom. ii. p. 391–396.

78Optics, part iv. obs. 13.

79For these letters I have been indebted to the kindness of Lord Braybrooke.

80These three letters have been published by Lord Braybrooke in the Life and Correspondence of Mr. Pepys.

81This anxiety will be understood from the fact that, by an order of council dated January 28th, 1674–5, Mr. Newton was excused from making the usual payments of one shilling per week, “on account of his low circumstances, as he represented.”

82The system of Hobbes was at this time very prevalent. According to Dr. Bentley, “the taverns and coffee-houses, nay, Westminster Hall and the very churches, were full of it;” and he was convinced from personal observation, that “not one English infidel in a hundred was other than a Hobbist.”—Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 31.

83The draft of this letter is endorsed “J.L. to I. Newton.”

84Dr. Gregory concludes his account of this manuscript, which he has kindly permitted me to read, in the following words:—“I do not know whether it is true, as stated by Huygens, ‘Newtonum incidisse in Phrenitim;’ but I think every gentleman who examines this manuscript will be of opinion that he must have thoroughly recovered from his phrenitis before he wrote either the Commentary on the Opinions of the Ancients, or the Sketch of his own Theological and Philosophical Opinions which it contains.”

85This paragraph is as follows:—“Deum esse ens summe perfectum concedunt omnes. Entis autem summe perfecti Idea est ut sit substantia, una, simplex, indivisibilis, viva et vivifica, ubique semper necessario existens, summe intelligens omnia, libere volens bona, voluntate efficiens possibilia, effectibus nobilioribus similitudinem propriam quantum fieri potest communicans, omnia in se continens tanquam eorum principium et locus, omnia per presentiam substantialem cernens et regens, et cum rebus omnibus, secundum leges accuratas ut naturÆ totius fundamentum et causa constanter co-operans, nisi ubi aliter agere bonum est.”

86The following extract, characteristic of Flamstead’s manner, is from a letter to Newton dated January 6, 1698–9.

“Upon hearing occasionally that you had sent a letter to Dr. Wallis about the parallax of the fixed stars to be printed, and that you had mentioned me therein with respect to the theory of the moon, I was concerned to be publicly brought upon the state about what, perhaps, will never be fitted for the public, and thereby the world put into an expectation of what perhaps they are never likely to have. I do not love to be printed upon every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things, or to be thought by your own people to be trifling away my time when I should be about the king’s business.” On the first of the above passages in italics Flamstead has the following memorandum:—“When Mr. Halley boasts ’tis done, and given to him as a secret, tells the Society so and foreigners.” In the second passage in italics, Mr. Flamstead refers, in a note, to Mr. Colson’s letter to him, in which he seems to have represented practical astronomy as trifling. Mr. Flamstead adds, “Was Mr. Newton a trifler when he read mathematics for a salary at Cambridge: surely, then, astronomy is of some good use, though his place be more beneficial.” For these extracts from the original manuscript in the collection of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, I have been indebted to the kindness of Professor Rigaud of Oxford.

87See page 215, note.

88The candidates in 1701 were as follows:

89The banquet which was on this occasion given in the college hall to the royal visiter seems to have cost about 1000l., and the university was obliged to borrow 500l., to defray the expense of it.—Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 143, 144.

90The candidates in 1705 were as follows:

91Journals of the House of Commons, vol. xvii. p. 677, 716.

92Whiston’s “Longitude Discovered.” Lond 1738.

93This anecdote concerning the Chronological manuscript is not correctly given in the Biographia Britannica, and in some of the other lives of Newton. I have followed implicitly Newton’s own account of it in the Phil. Trans. 1725, vol. xxxiii. No. 389, p. 315.

94M. Biot has supposed that this abstract was an imperfect edition of Newton’s work on Chronology.

95Father Souciet was supposed by Halley and others to have been the author of these observations, but there is no doubt that they were written by M. Freret.

96It is stated in the Biogr. Britannica, Art. Newton, that the copy of the French translation was not accompanied with the refutation. Though the reverse of this is not distinctly stated by Sir Isaac himself, yet it may be inferred from his observations.

97Vol. xxxiii. No. 389, p. 315.

98According to Whiston, Sir Isaac wrote out eighteen copies of this chapter with his own hand, differing little from one another.—Whiston’s Life, p. 39.

99This work is the first article in the fifth volume of Dr. Hersley’s edition of Newton’s works. The next article in the volume is entitled, “A Short Chronicle from a MS., the property of the Reverend Dr. Ekins, Dean of Carlisle;” which is nothing more than the abstract of the Chronology already printed in the same volume. We cannot even conjecture the reasons for publishing it, especially as it is less perfect than the abstract, two or three dates being wanting.

100See vol. xxxiv. p. 205, and vol. xxxv. p. 296.

101See an excellent view of this chronological controversy in an able note by M. Daunou, attached to Biot’s Life of Newton in the Biog. Universelle, tom. xxxi. p. 180.

102This letter is published without any date in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1755, vol. xxv. p. 3. It bears internal evidence of being genuine.

103His Historical Account of two notable Corruptions of the Scriptures. 50 pp quarto.

104The editor supplied the beginning down to the 13th page, where he mentions in a note that “thus far is not Sir Isaac’s.”

105M. Biot has well remarked that there is absolutely nothing in the writings of Newton to justify, or even to authorize, the idea that he was an Antitrinitarian. This passage is strangely omitted in the English translation of Biot’s Life of Newton. We do not know upon what authority Dr. Thomson states, in his History of the Royal Society, that Newton “did not believe in the Trinity,” and that Dr. Horsley considered Newton’s papers unfit for publication, because they contained proofs of his hostility to that doctrine.

106Whiston’s Memoirs of his own Life, p. 178, 249, 250. Edit. 1753.

107Dr. Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 31.

108Dated December 10th, 1692. This letter is endorsed, in Bentley’s hand, “Mr. Newton’s answer to some queries sent by me after I had preached my two last sermons.”—Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 34, note.

109Dated Jan. 17th, 1692–3.

110“These things,” says he, “follow from my Princip. Math. lib. i. prop. 33, 34, 35, 36.”

111Dated February 11th, 1693.

112The originals of these four letters to Bentley “were given by Dr. Richard Bentley to Cumberland, his nephew, and executor, while a student at Trinity College, and were printed by him in a separate pamphlet in 1756. This publication was reviewed by Dr. Samuel Johnson in the Literary Magazine, vol. i. p. 89. See Johnson’s Works, vol. ii. p. 328. The original letters are preserved in Trinity College, to which society they were given by Cumberland a short time before his death.”—Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 33, note.

113Mr. Herschel, in his Treatise on Light, § 553, has maintained that Newton’s Doctrine of Reflection is accordant with the idea that the attractive force extends beyond the repulsive or reflecting force. In the query above referred to, Sir Isaac, in the most distinct manner, places the sphere of the reflecting force without that of the attractive one.

114In a tract annexed to his Appeal to all that doubt or disbelieve the truths of the Gospel. See Gent. Mag. 1782, vol. iii. p. 227, 239.

It is stated in a letter of Mr. Law’s, quoted in this magazine, that Charles I. was a diligent reader and admirer of Jacob Behmen; that he sent a well-qualified person from England to Goerlitz, in Upper Lusatia, to acquire the German language, and to collect every anecdote he could meet with there relative to this great alchymist.

115In a letter to Dr. Halley, dated June 20th, 1686, Sir Isaac refers to this paper, and observes, that it is only to be looked upon as one of his guesses that he did not rely upon.

116See page 273.

117See Newtoni Opera, by Horsley, vol. iv. p. 375–382.

118Sir Isaac does not seem to have afterward described this construction.

119See Edinburgh Transactions, vol. ix. p. 433, and the Edinburgh Journal of Science, July, 1829, No. I. New Series, p. 108.

120Art. Accidental Colours in the Edinburgh EncyclopÆdia.

121See Phil. Trans. 1722, vol. xxxiii. p. 57.

122This conversation, originally copied from Mr. Conduit’s handwriting, is given in the Appendix, No. iii. p. 320.

123These were the three children of his half-brother Smith, the three children of his half-sister Pilkington, and the two daughters of his half-sister Barton, all of whom survived Sir Isaac. New Anecdotes of Sir Isaac Newton, by J.H., a Gentleman of his Mother’s Family. See Annual Register, 1776, vol. xix. p. 25 of Characters. The author of this paper was James Hutton, Esq. of Pimlico.

124Turnor’s Collections, &c. p. 158. See Appendix, p. 316.

125This valuable faculty characterizes all his writings, whether theological, chymical, or mathematical; but it is peculiarly displayed in his treatise on Universal Arithmetic, and in his Optical Lectures.

126De Magnete, p. 42, 52, 169, and Pref. p. 30.

127The following passages from Leonardo da Vinci are very striking:

“Theory is the general, and practice the soldiers.

“Experiment is the interpreter of the artifices of nature. It never deceives us; it is our judgment itself which sometimes deceives us, because we expect from it effects which are contrary to experiment. We must consult experiment by varying the circumstances till we have deduced from it general laws; for it is it which furnishes true laws.

“In the study of the sciences which depend on mathematics, those who do not consult nature, but authors, are not the children of nature; they are only her grandchildren. Nature alone is the master of true genius.

“In treating any particular subject, I would first of all make some experiments, because my design is first to refer to experiment, and then to demonstrate why bodies are constrained to act in such a manner. This is the method which we ought to follow in investigating the phenomena of nature. It is very true that nature begins by reasoning and ends with experiment; but it matters not, we must take the opposite course; as I have said, we must begin by experiment, and endeavour by its means to discover general principles.” Thus, says Venturi, spoke Leonard a century before Bacon, and thus, we add, did Leonard tell philosophers all that they required for the proper investigation of general laws. See Essai sur les oeuvrages physico-mathematiques de Leonard de Vinci, par J.B. Venturi. Paris, 1799, p. 32, 33, &c. See also Carlo Amoretti’s Memorie storiche su la vita gli studi e le Opere de Lionardo da Vinci. Milano, 1804.

128Mr. Hearne, in a memorandum dated April 4th, 1726, states, that a great quarrel happened between Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Halley. If this is true, the difference is likely to have originated in Halley’s impiety.

129Professor Rigaud of Oxford heard this anecdote from Dr. Maskelyne.

130“He was very kind to all the Ayscoughs. To one he gave 800l., to another 200l., and to a third 100l., and many other sums; and other engagements did he enter into also for them. He was the ready assistant of all who were any way related to him,—to their children and grandchildren.”—Annual Register, 1776, vol. xix. p. 25. Sir Isaac gave some donations to the chapel and parish of Colsterworth. Hearne says “that he promised to become a benefactor to the Royal Society, but failed.”

131The following anecdote of Sir Isaac’s absence has been published, but I cannot vouch for its authenticity. His intimate friend Dr. Stukely, who had been deputy to Dr. Halley as secretary to the Royal Society, was one day shown into Sir Isaac’s dining-room, where his dinner had been for some time served up. Dr. Stukely waited for a considerable time, and getting impatient, he removed the cover from a chicken, which he ate, replacing the bones under the cover. In a short time Sir Isaac entered the room, and after the usual compliments sat down to his dinner, but on taking off the cover, and seeing nothing but bones, he remarked, “How absent we philosophers are. I really thought that I had not dined.”

132Epistolary Correspondence, vol. i. p. 180, sec. 77.

133MS. Memoranda in the Bodleian Library.

134Turnor’s Collections, p. 176.

135The anecdote of the falling apple is mentioned neither by Dr. Stukely nor by Mr. Conduit, and as I have not been able to find any authority for it whatever, I did not feel myself at liberty to use it.

136In the Monthly Review for August, 1829, p. 593, it is stated, that the correspondence between Newton and Flamstead, from 1680 to 1698, exists in the Sloane collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Professor Rigaud, however, has had the kindness to inquire into the accuracy of this statement, and he has ascertained that these letters are merely copies, which Dr. Birch had made from the originals at Oxford.

137See page 288, note.

138This entail was executed in 1724, a year or two before Sir Richard’s death.—D.B.

139See p. 291.