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books and clothes down in on those occasions. There were some years ago two or three hundred books in it of his father-in-law, Mr. Smith, which Sir Isaac gave to Dr. Newton of our town."*

When the house was repaired in 1798, a tablet of white marble was put up by Mr. Turnor in the room where Sir Isaac was born, with the following inscription:

"Sir Isaac Newton, son of John Newton, Lord of the manor of Woolsthorpe, was born in this room on the 25th December, 1642."

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in nign,

God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.

The following lines have been written upon the house:

Here Newton dawned, here lofty wisdom woke,
And to a wondering world divinely spoke.

If Tully glowed, when Phædrus' steps he trode,
Or fancy formed Philosophy a god;

If sages still for Homer's birth contend

The Sons of Science at this dome must bend,

All hail the shrine! All hail the natal day,

Cam boasts his noon,-This Cot his morning ray.

The house is now occupied by a person of the name of John Wollerton. It still contains the two dials made by Newton, but the styles of both are wanting. The celebrated apple-tree, the fall of one of the apples of which is said to have turned the attention of Newton to the subject of gravity, was destroyed by wind about four years ago; but Mr. Turnor has preserved it in the form of a chair.†

The chambers which Sir Isaac inhabited at Cambridge are known by tradition. They are the apart ments next to the great gate of Trinity College, and it is believed that they then communicated by a staircase with the observatory in the Great Tower,

*Turnor's Collections, p. 176.

†The 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.

-an observatory which was furnished by the contributions of Newton, Cotes, and others. His telescope, represented in fig. 1, page 41, is preserved in the library of the Royal Society of London, and his globe, his universal ring-dial, quadrant, compass, and a reflecting telescope said to have belonged to him, in the library of Trinity College. There is also in the same collection a long and curled lock of his silver white hair. The door of his bookcase is in the Museum of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The manuscripts, letters, and other papers of Newton have been preserved in different collections. His correspondence with Cotes relative to the second edition of the Principia, and amounting to between sixty and a hundred letters, a considerable portion of the manuscript of that work, and two or three letters to Dr. Keill on the Leibnitzian controversy, are preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Newton's letters to Flamstead, about thirty, four in number, are deposited in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.* Several letters of New, ton, and, we believe, the original specimen which he drew up of the Principia, exist among the papers of Mr. William Jones (the father of Sir William Jones), which are preserved at Shirburn Castle, in the library of Lord Macclesfield. But the great mass of New、 ton's papers came into the possession of the Portsmouth family through his niece, Lady Lymington, and have been safely preserved by that noble family. There is reason to believe that they contain nothing which could be peculiarly interesting to science; but as the correspondence of Newton with contemporary philosophers must throw considerable light on his personal history, we trust that it will ere long be given to the public.

* In 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. Pro fessor 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.

APPENDIX.

No. I.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE FAMILY OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

In the year 1705, Sir Isaac gave into the Herald's Office an elaborate pedigree, stating upon oath that he had reason to believe that John Newton of Westby, in the county of Lincoln, was his great-grandfather's father, and that this was the same John Newton who was buried in Basingthorpe church, on the 22d December, 1563. This John Newton had four sons, John, Thomas, Richard, and William Newton of Gunnerly, the last of whom was great-grandfather to Sir John Newton, Bart., of Hather. Sir Isaac considered himself as descended from the eldest of these, he having, by tradition from his kindred ever since he can remember, reckoned himself next of kin (among the Newtons) to Sir John Newton's family.

The pedigree, founded upon these and other con siderations, was accompanied by a certificate from Sir John Newton, of Thorpe, Bart., who states that he had heard his father speak of Sir Isaac Newton as of his relation and kinsman, and that he himself believed that Sir Isaac was descended from John Newton, son to John Newton of Westby, but knoweth not in what particular manner.

The pedigree of Sir Isaac, as entered at the Her. ald's Office, does not seem to have been satisfactory either to himself or to his successors, as it could not

be traced with certainty beyond his grandfather; and it will be seen from the following interesting correspondence, that upon making further researches, he had found some reason to believe that he was of Scotch extraction,

Extract of a Letter from the Reverend Dr. Reid of Glasgow to Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh, dated 14th March, 1784.

"I send you on the other page an anecdote respecting Sir Isaac Newton, which I do not remember whether I ever happened to mention to you in conversation. If his descent be not clearly ascertained (as I think it is not in the books I have seen), might it not be worth while to inquire if evidence can be found to confirm the account which he is said to have given of himself. Sheriff Cross was very zealous about it when death put a stop to his inquiries.

"When I lived in old Aberdeen above twenty years ago, I happened to be conversing over a pipe of tobacco with a gentleman of that country, who had been lately at Edinburgh, He told me that he had been often in company with Mr. Hepburn of Keith, with whom I had the honour of some acquaintance. He said that, speaking of Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Hepburn mentioned an anecdote, which he had from Mr. James Gregory, professor of mathematics at Edinburgh, which was to this purpose:

"Mr. Gregory, being at London for some time after he resigned the mathematical chair, was often with Sir Isaac Newton. One day Sir Isaac said to him, 'Gregory, I believe you don't know that I am connected with Scotland.-Pray how, Sir Isaac?' said Gregory. Sir Isaac said he was told that his grandfather was a gentleman of East Lothian; that he came to London with King James at his acces sion to the crown of England, and there spent his

fortune, as many more did at that time, by which his son (Sir Isaac's father) was reduced to mean circumstances. To this Gregory bluntly replied, 'Newton a gentleman of East Lothian, I never heard of a gentleman of East Lothian of that name.' Upon this Sir Isaac said, 'that being very young when his father died, he had it only by tradition, and it might be a mistake;' and immediately turned the conversation to another subject.

"I confess I suspected that the gentleman who was my author had given some colouring to this story, and therefore I never mentioned it for a good many years.

"After I removed to Glasgow, I came to be very intimately acquainted with Mr. Cross, then sheriff of Lanark, and one day at his own house mentioned this story, without naming my author, of whom I expressed some diffidence.

"The sheriff immediately took it up as a matter worth being inquired into. He said he was well acquainted with Mr. Hepburn of Keith (who was then alive), and that he would write him to know whether he ever heard Mr. Gregory say that he had such a conversation with Sir Isaac Newton. He said he knew that Mr. Keith, the ambassador, was also intimate with Mr. Gregory, and that he would write him to the same purpose.

"Some time after, Mr. Cross told me that he had answers from both the gentlemen above mentioned, and that both remembered to have heard Mr. Gregory mention the conversation between him and Sir Isaac Newton, to the purpose above narrated, and at the same time acknowledged that they had made no further inquiry about the matter.

"Mr. Cross, however, continued the inquiry, and a short time before his death told me that all he had learned was, that there is, or was lately, a baro. net's family of the name of Newton in West Lothian or Mid Lothian (I have forgot which): that there is

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