is exact enough to determine the longitude within two or three degrees, but not within a degree.

"4. A fourth is Mr. Ditton's project, and this is rather for keeping an account of the longitude at sea than for finding it, if at any time it should be lost, as it may easily be in cloudy weather. How far this is practicable, and with what charge, they that are skilled in sea affairs are best able to judge. In sailing by this method, whenever they are to pass over very deep seas, they must sail due east or west; they must first sail into the latitude of the next place to which they are going beyond it, and then keep due east or west till they come at that place. In the first three ways there must be a watch regulated by a spring, and rectified every visible sunrise and sunset, to tell the hour of the day or night. In the fourth way such a watch is not necessary. In the first way there must be two watches, this and the other above mentioned. In any of the first three ways, it may be of some service to find the longitude within a degree, and of much more service to find it within forty minutes, or half a degree if it may, and the success may deserve rewards accordingly. In the fourth way, it is easier to enable seamen to know their distance and bearing from the shore 40, 60, or 80 miles off, than to cross the seas; and some part of the reward may be given when the first is performed on the coast of Great Britain for the safety of ships coming home; and the rest when seamen shall be enabled to sail to an assigned remote harbour without losing their longitude if it may be."

The committee brought up their report on the 11th June, and recommended that a bill should be introduced into parliament for the purpose of rewarding inventions or discoveries connected with the determination of the longitude. The bill passed the House of Commons on the 3d July, and was agreed to by the Lords on the 8th of the same month.*

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

In giving an account of this transaction,* Mr. Whiston states, that nobody understood Sir Isaac's paper, and that after sitting down he obstinately kept silence, though he was much pressed to explain himself more distinctly. At last, seeing that the scheme was likely to be rejected, Whiston ventured to say that Sir Isaac did not wish to explain more through fear of compromising himself, but that he really approved of the plan. Sir Isaac, he goes on to say, repeated word for word what Whiston had said. This is the part of Mr. Newton's conduct which M. Biot has described as puerile, and "tending to confirm the fact of the aberration of his intellect in 1693." Before we can admit such a censure we must be satisfied with the correctness of Whiston's statement. Newton's paper is perfectly intelligible, and we may easily understand how he might have approved of Mr. Ditton's plan as ingenious and practicable under particular circumstances, though he did not think it of that paramount importance which would have authorized the House of Commons to distinguish it by a parliamentary reward. The conflict between public duty and a disposition to promote the interests of Mr. Whiston and Mr. Ditton was no doubt the cause of that embarrass. ment of manner which the former of these mathematicians has so unkindly brought before the public.

* Whiston's "Longitude Discovered." Lond 1738.

U 2

CHAPTER XV.

Respect in which Newton was held at the Court of George I.-The Princess of Wales delighted with his Conversation-Leibnitz eneavours to prejudice the Princess against Sir Isaac and Locke-Controversy occasioned by his Conduct-The Princess obtains a Manuscript Abstract of his System of Chronology-The Abbé Conti is, at her request, allowed to take a Copy of it on the promise of Secresy-He prints it surreptitiously in French, accompanied with a Refutation by M. Freret -Sir Isaac's Defence of his System-Father Souciet attacks it-and is answered by Dr. Halley-Sir Isaac's larger Work on Chronology published after his Death-Opinions respecting it-Sir Isaac's Paper on the Form of the most ancient Year.

On the accession of George I. to the British throne in 1714, Sir Isaac Newton became an object of interest at court. His high situation under government, his splendid reputation, his spotless character, and, above all, his unaffected piety attracted the attention of the Princess of Wales, afterward queen-consort to George II. This lady, who possessed a highly cultivated mind, derived the greatest pleasure from conversing with Newton and corresponding with Leibnitz. In all her difficulties, she received from Sir Isaac that information and assistance which she had elsewhere sought in vain, and she was often heard to declare in public that she thought herself fortunate in living at a time which enabled her to enjoy the conversation of so great a genius. But while Newton was thus esteemed by the house of Hanover, Leibnitz, his great rival, endeavoured to weaken and undermine his influence. In his correspondence with the princess, he represented the Newtonian philosophy, not only as physically false, but as injurious to the interests of religion. He asserted that natural religion was rapidly declining in England, and he supported this position by referring to the works of Locke, and to

the beautiful and pious sentiments contained in the 28th query at the end of the Optics. He represented the principles of these great men as precisely the same with those of the materialists, and thus endeavoured to degrade the character of English philosophers.

These attacks of Leibnitz became subjects of conversation at court, and when they reached the ear of the king, his majesty expressed his expectation that Sir Isaac Newton would draw up a reply. He accordingly entered the lists on the mathematical part of the controversy, and left the philosophical part of it to Dr. Clarke, who was a full match for the German philosopher. The correspondence which thus took place was carefully perused by the princess, and from the estimation in which Sir Isaac continued to be held, we may infer that the views of the English philosopher were not very remote from her own.

When Sir Isaac was one day conversing with her royal highness on some points of ancient history, he was led to mention to her, and to explain, a new system of chronology which he composed during his residence at Cambridge, where he was in the habit, as he himself expresses it, "of refreshing himself with history and chronology when he was weary with other studies." The princess was so much pleased with his ingenious system, that she subsequently, in the year 1718, sent a message by the Abbé Conti to Sir Isaac, requesting him to speak with her, and she, on this occasion, requested a copy of the interesting work which contained his system of chronology. Sir Isaac informed her that it existed merely in separate papers, which were not only in a state of confusion, but which contained a very imperfect view of the subject, and he promised, in a few days, to draw up an abstract of it for her own private use, and on the condition that it should not be communicated to any other person. Some time after the

princess received the manuscript, she requested that the Abbé Conti might be allowed to have a copy of it. Sir Isaac granted this request, and the Abbé was informed that he received a copy of the manuscript with Sir Isaac's leave, and at the princess's request, and that it was to be kept secret. The manuscript which was thus rashly put into the hands of a foreigner was entitled "A Short Chronicle from the First Memory of Things in Europe to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great." It consists of

about twenty-four quarto printed pages,† with an introduction of four pages, in which Sir Isaac states that he "does not pretend to be exact to a year, that there may be errors of five or ten years, and sometimes twenty, but not much above."

The Abbé Conti kept his promise of secrecy during his residence in England, but he no sooner reached Paris than he communicated it to M. Freret, a learned antiquarian, who not only translated it, but drew up observations upon it for the purpose of refuting some of its principal results. Sir Isaac was unacquainted with this transaction till he was informed of it by the French bookseller, M. Cavalier, who requested his leave to publish it, and charged one of his friends in London to procure Sir Isaac's answer, which was as follows:

"I remember that I wrote a Chronological index for a particular friend, on condition that it should not be communicated. As I have not seen the manuscript which you have under my name, I know not whether it be the same. That which I wrote was not at all done with design to publish it. I intend not to meddle with that which hath been given you

* This 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.

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