"I have bethought myself about Sir Isaac's life as much as I possibly can. About six weeks in the spring and six in the fall, the fire in the elaboratory scarcely went out, which was well furnished with chemical materials, as bodies, receivers, heads, crucibles, which were made very little use of, the crucibles excepted in which he fused his metals. He would sometimes, though but very seldom, look into an old mouldy book which lay in his elaboratory, I think it was titled Agricola de Metallis, the transmuting of metals being his chief design, for which purpose antimony was a great ingredient. Near his elaboratory was his garden, which was kept in order by a gardener. I scarcely ever saw him do anything, as pruning, &c. at it himself. When he has sometimes taken a turn or two, he has made a sudden stand, turn'd himself about, ran up the stairs like another Archimedes with an evρηkа, fall to write on his desk standing, without giving himself the leisure to draw a chair to sit down on. At some seldom times, when he designed to dine in the hall, would turn to the left hand and go out into the street, when making a stop when he found his mistake, would hastily turn back, and then sometimes, instead of going into the hall, would return to his chamber again. When he read in the schools he usually staid about half an hour; he commonly returned in a fourth part of that time or less. Mr. Laughton, who was then the library-keeper of Trinity College, resorted much to his chamber. His telescope, which at that time, as near as I could guess, was near five feet long, he placed at the head of the stairs going down into the garden, pointing towards the east. What observations he might make I know not, but several of his observations about comets and the planets may be found scattered here and there in a book entitled

when he had no auditors

1

'The Elements of Astronomy,' by Dr. David Gregory. He would with great acuteness answer a question, but would very seldom start one. Dr. Boerhaave (I think it is) Prof. Lugd., in some of his writings, speaking of Sir Is., that man,' says he, comprehends as much as all mankind besides.' In his chamber he walked so very much that you might have thought him to be educated at Athens among the Aristotelian sect. His brick furnaces, pro re natâ, he made and altered himself without troubling a bricklayer. He very seldom sat by the fire in his chamber, excepting that long frosty winter,2 which made him creep to it against his will. I can't say I ever saw him wear a night gown, but his wearing-clothes that he put off at night-' at night,' do I say, yea, rather towards the morning-he put on again at his rising. He never slept in the day time that I ever perceived; I believe he grudged the short time he spent in eating and sleeping. ̓Ανέχου καὶ ἀπέχου may well and truly be said of him: he always thinking with Bishop Sanderson, temperance to be the best physic. In a morning he seemed to be as much refreshed with his few hours sleep as though he had taken a whole night's rest. He kept neither dog nor cat in his chamber, which made well for the old woman his bedmaker, she faring much the better for it, for on a morning she has sometimes found both dinner and supper scarcely tasted of, which the old woman has very pleasantly and mumpingly gone away with. As for his private prayers, I can say nothing of them; I am apt to believe his

3

1 Leyden Professor.

2 1683-1684, when the frost began early in December, and lasted unbroken till February.

3 This disposes of the story of Diamond.

intense studies deprived him of the better part. His behaviour was mild and meek, without anger, peevishness or passion, so free from that, that you might take him for a Stoic. I have seen a small paste-board box in his study set against the open window, and no less, as one might suppose, than 1000 guineas in it crowded edgeways; whether this was suspicion or carelessness I cannot say; perhaps to try the fidelity of those about him. In winter time he was a lover of apples, and sometimes at a night would eat a small roasted quince. His thoughts were his books; though he had a large study, he seldom consulted with them. When he was about thirty years of age his grey hair was very comely, and his smiling countenance made him so much the more graceful. He was very charitable; few went empty-handed from him. Mr. Pilkinton, who lived at Market Overton, died in a mean condition, though formerly he had a plentiful estate, whose widow, with five or six children, Sir Is. maintained several years together. He commonly gave his poor relations-for no family so rich but there is some poor among them-when they applied themselves to him no less than five guineas, as they themselves have told me. He has given the porters many a shilling, not for letting him in at the gates at unreasonable hours, for that he abhorred, I never knowing him out of his chamber at such times. No way litigious, not given to law or vexatious suits, taking patience to be the best law, and a good conscience the best divinity."

We have to thank simple Humphrey Newton for invaluable help in forming some notion of what manner of man his great namesake was in common eyes. I know no perfecter picture

P

of the pure philosopher, living all for thought. It seems to me that the idea called up by Humphrey Newton's reminiscences helps us to understand the one point, on which there is a conflict about Newton,-what is called his impatience of controversy and horror of oppositionthat feeling which seems to me the key to all the passages of his life in any way open to question, as his disputes with Leibnitz on the exact dates and relations of their respective steps to discovery in the one's method of fluxions, and the other's differential calculus, and Flamsteed's quarrel with him about the publication of his Greenwich observations. I cannot but think that in all this there was neither jealousy nor suspicion. It seems rather the impatience of a thinker at being called away, when absorbed in his thought, to explain and defend, answer ignorant objections and assert claims. All personal matter must have seemed so small to that high-reaching mind, concentrated upon thoughts so impersonal, so difficult to reach, and so hard to keep in the mental grasp. And yet this profoundly abstracted thinker was the man chosen by his brother graduates as the representative of the University, in the excep