LIFE OF

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

CHAPTER I.

His Birth and Parentage. His Early Education. Is sent to Grantham School. His Attachment to Mechanical Pursuits in his youth. His Windmill; his Water Clock; his self-moving Carriage. His SunDials. Preparations for the University. Enters Trinity College, Cambridge. His propensity for Mathematics. His Geometrical Studies. Purchases a Prism. Employed to revise Dr. Barrow's Op.. tica Lectures. Takes his Degrees. Is appointed a Fellow of Trinity College. Succeeds Dr. Barrow in the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics.

THE name of this celebrated philosopher has by general consent been placed at the head of those great men who have been acknowledged as the ornaments of their species. The character of Newton cannot be delineated and discussed like that of ordinary men ; its unity is so beautiful, that the biographer must dwell upon it with delight, and the inquiry by what means he attained an undisputed superiority over his fellow-creatures, must be both interesting and useful. It has been asserted that all men are born equal in talents, and that the difference which exists amongst them is the effect of education; but this is disproved

by the observation of every parent and teacher, a decided inequality in capacity, for receiving instruction being distinctly exhibited by children even in infancy. Newton was endowed with talents of the highest order, but those who are less eminently gifted may study his life with advantage, and derive instruction from every part of his career. With a power of intellect almost divine he demonstrated the motion of the planets, the orbits of the comets, and the causes of the tides of the ocean: he investigated with complete success the proportions of light and colours, which no man before had even suspected; he was the diligent, sagacious, faithful interpreter of Nature, antiquity, and Scripture; his philosophy tended to exalt the glory of the Creator, and he exhibited in his manners the purity and simplicity of the doctrines of the Gospel. He was a firm believer in Christianity, not as men in general believe, by coldly assenting to the truth of doctrines, merely because they have been early inculcated by parents and preceptors. He was deeply learned in history and chronology, and he applied the unrivalled powers of his mighty intellect to the complete examination of a subject compared with which all others sink into insignificance; the result was a clear conviction of the truth of re· vealed religion, which is demonstrated in all his works, and which was still more effectually shown in his life and conduct. Those who consider the character of an individual so highly renowned will duly appreciate the value of his testimony. His biography, therefore, cannot fail to excite a general in terest.

Sir Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, a hamlet in the parish of Colsterworth, in Lincolnshire, about six miles south of Grantham, on the 25th day of December (old style) 1642, and was baptized at Colsterworth on the 1st day of January 1642-3. His father, Mr. Isaac Newton, died at the early age of

Sir

thirty-six, only a few months after his marriage to Harriet Ayscough, daughter of James Ayscough of Market Overton in Rutlandshire. The consequence was, that the mother of the interesting subject of these pages was left in a state of pregnancy, and appears, from the grief occasioned by the death of her husband, to have given birth to her first and posthumous child. The helpless infant thus ushered into the world was of such an extremely diminutive, and seemed of so delicate a frame, that two women who were hurried off to Lady Pakenham's at North Witham, to procure some medicine for the purpose of strengthening the puling infant, declared that they did not expect to find him in life on their return. Isaac in after life has repeatedly asserted 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, and did not expect that he could live." But an all-wise Providence had otherwise decreed, and that feeble body which appeared scarcely qualified to contain its immortal mind, was destined to shoot forth and enjoy a vigorous maturity, and to survive the threescore years and ten allotted as the term of human existence. The property of Woolsthorpe, in the manor-house of which this remarkable birth took place, has been in the possession of the family of Newton for more than a hundred years. This family came originally from Newton in Lancashire, but, before purchasing the estate of Woolsthorpe, had settled at Westby in Lincolnshire. The manor-house is situated in a beautiful little valley, celebrated for its copious wells of excellent spring water, on the west side of the river Witham, which takes its rise in the vicinity, and commands a remarkably pleasing prospect to the east towards Colsterworth. The paternal property of Woolsthorpe was worth no more than £30 a-year; but Mrs. Newton was proprietor

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of another small estate at Sewstern, in Leicestershire, and only three miles distant from Woolsthorpe which raised the yearly value of their property to nearly £80; and being a woman of an active disposition, it is probable that the cultivation of the small farm on which she resided somewhat increased the limited income upon which she had to support herself and her favourite child, as well as to provide for his education.

Mrs. Newton continned to nurture and watch over her tender charge for three years, with the most exemplary parental solicitude; but at the end of that period, in consequence of her marriage to the Reverend Barnabas Smith, rector of North Witham, she removed to the parsonage, and Isaac was left under the care of his maternal grandmother. At an early age he was sent to two day schools at Skillington and Stoke, where he acquired the little learning usually afforded at these seminaries; but upon reaching his twelfth year he went to the public school at Grantham, conducted by Mr. Stokes, and was at the house of Mr. Clark, an apothecary in that town. At this time he was a thoughtless boy, very inattentive to his lessons, and much attached to boyish amusements, and consequently very low in the school, and presented little hopes of his future success. boy, however, who happened to be above him in the class, having one day given him a severe kick upon his stomach, from which he suffered great pain, Isaac's mode of revenge was peculiar; from his little size, and delicate constitution, he was unable to punish his antagonist in the usual method, by giving him a good beating; but he laboured incessantly at his studies, and gave up his amusements, till he got above him in the school; and from that period he rose by degrees, till he was the head boy. From the industrious habits of application which this trifling incident had led him to form, the peculiar character of mind of the future philosopher was speedily displayed.—

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During the hours of play, when his companions were occupied with these amusements, his attention was taken up with mechanical contrivances, either in imitation of something which he had previously observed, or in the execution of some original conception of his own. To enable him to do so, he embraced every opportunity of providing himself with little saws, hatchets, hammers, and all sorts of tools, which, by constant practice, he soon acquired the art of using with a workmanlike dexterity. The principal pieces of mechanism which he thus constructed at this early age were a windmill, a water-clock, and a carriage put in motion by the person who sat in it. When a windmill was in the course of erection in the neighbourhood of Grantham, on the road to Gunnerly, young Newton frequently attended and anxiously watched the operations of the workmen, and attained such a complete knowledge of the machinery, that in a short time he completed a working model of it, to the great surprise and admiration of every person who beheld it. The young mechanist frequently placed this model on the top of Mr. Clarke's house, in which he lodged, where it was put in motion by the action of the wind upon its sails; but not content with this exact representation of the original machine, he conceived the idea of driving it by animal power; and for this purpose he entrapped a mouse, which he called the miller; and this little animal, by acting on a sort of tread-wheel, gave motion to the machine.According to some accounts, the mouse was made to advance by having a string tied to its tail; while others allege that the power of the diminutive agent was instigated by its fruitless attempts to reach a small piece of toasted cheese placed above the wheel.

His water-clock was formed out of a box, which, with great earnestness, he had solicited from the brother of his landlady, without giving any notice of his intentions. It was about four feet high, and of pro