SIR ISAAC NEWTON AND HIS CONTEM-
PORARIES.

From the Edinburgh Review.

We cannot, however, help observing as somewhat singular, that in Newton's own university, where his name is, not unjustly, idolized, and his works have long furnished 1. Historical Essay on the first Publication the established studies of the place-where, of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia. By Ste- moreover, there exist valuable materials and phen Peter Rigaud, M. A., F. R. S, F. R. a multitude of local traditions and associations A. S., Hon. Mem. R. I. A., Savilian Pro--and where there have not been wanting a fessor of Astronomy. 8vo. Oxford: 1838. succession of men, since his death, possessed 2. Correspondence of Scientific Men of the of the highest qualifications for the task, not Seventeenth Century; including Letters of one should have been found to pay this tribute Barrow, Flamstead, Wallis, and Newton. to his memory. In Trinity College we are Printed from the Originals in the collec- shown the rooms he occupied-the study tion of the Right Hon. the Earl of Mac- within whose narrow precincts he was able to clesfield. Two volumes. 8vo. Oxford: weigh the planets in a balance-the chamber which he darkened in order to unravel the texture of light. Its library boasts, besides minor relics, the possession of the whole of his correspondence, never yet published, relative to the second edition of the Principia,' together with much of the original MS. of that most important revision of his great work. In the possession of a Professor of that university is preserved the contemporary journal of A. de la Pryme, which throws light on some of the most interesting points in Newton's personal history; and, in the immediate vicinity, the collection of Lord Braybroke contains the correspondence of Newton, Pepys, and Millington.

1841.

THE want of a life of Newton, on a scale and of a character commensurate with the dignity and importance of the subject, cannot but be regarded as a reproach to our national literature. For a century after his death there were no other accounts of his life and pursuits than those supplied by the Eloge of Fontenelle, and the few details given by the friend of his later years, Dr. Pemberton, in his Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Discoveries.' Not to mention similar articles in the 'Biographia Britannica,' and other collections, in our times, it was left to an eminent foreign philosopher, M. Biot, to give the first detailed life of Newton in the Biographie Universelle. This was followed, in 1831, by the small volume of Sir David Brewster in the Family Library;' which, written professedly for popular perusal, and well adapted as it is to its special purpose, may fairly be said not to be designed as a standard production of scientific biography-especially since the author himself long ago held out a promise of producing a more complete and enlarged work, which, we cannot doubt, will be every way worthy both of the illustrious subject of the narrative, and of the distinguished reputation of the writer.f

* Hist. de l'Acad. des Sciences, 1727.

These last two sources of information have, indeed, been made use of by Sir David Brewster; as also the large collection of Newton's papers which passed into the possession of the Portsmouth family, through his niece, Lady Lymington. But there is much still remaining to be elicited from these and other sources, promising a rich return to the diligent and judicious inquirer; and matter of the greatest interest to all who pursue the subject of scientific history.

Meanwhile, it gives us much pleasure to state, that the attention of several eminent persons has been more closely than heretofore directed to the details of our scientific history † We have reason to know, that Sir David Brew-in general, and more especially of the eventster's intention to publish an enlarged, or rather ful period of which Newton formed the entirely new, history of the life and discoveries of brightest ornament. Without here adverting Newton, was owing to his having been furnished, particularly to the more extended philosophical subsequently to the appearance of the above-men-histories with which our literature has of late tioned volume, with a large stock of additional manuscript materials, of very great interest and impor- years been enriched, we may allude, as a tance, both personally and philosophically, and em- striking instance-of which our readers will bracing, probably, almost all the existing unpublished hardly need to be reminded*—to the curious documents required for such a purpose, and to the details brought to light by the labors of Mr. new views thence arising, joined with others resulting from further researches and reflections of various Baily in editing the Memoirs of Flamstead,' kinds; moreover, that the work has, for some time, a few years since;† in which was published been ready for the Press. Why it has not been given

to the world, we have some difficulty in conjec-information, cannot find a publisher for such a work turing; for surely the literary enterprise of Britain as we have, on good grounds, described.

has not sunk to so low an ebb that an eminent writer and philosopher, endowed with the requisite attainments, and possessing much new and valuable

*See No. CXXVI. of this Journal.

his correspondence with Newton, from the brought forward (as might be expected) much MSS. in the library of Corpus Christi College, new light is thrown on points hitherto doubtOxford; and much more of very peculiar ful or obscure, and numerous mistakes and interest, not merely in a scientific point of inaccuracies in former accounts have been view. It will not, probably, have been for- pointed out. gotten what a singular tale of jealousies and animosities those Memoirs disclosed; of disputes and contentions, from which it might have been imagined, by the dwellers in a grosser atmosphere, the calm regions of the observatory would have been exempt ;-the 'animis cœlestibus ira,' the outbreak of the 'odium philosophicum.' Nor can it fail to be remembered with what singular warmth the spirit of those disputes was revived among ourselves, and how fiercely the controversy raged anew, as if it had been a personal affair of the present day.

The sources of information of which Mr. Rigaud has availed himself in illustrating the history of the Principia, are chiefly the numerous original letters and papers of Newton in the archives of the Royal Society-entries in the minute-books of its Council-and notices in the journals of its proceedings. Besides these, he had access to certain MS. papers of Dr. Gregory, one of the earliest students and teachers of the Newtonian system, in the possession of his descendants; and he derived additional documents from the same collection which form the contents of the other work before us.

This large and miscellaneous collection of letters on scientific subjects, extending over the period from 1616 to 1742, was originally formed by John Collins, a mathematician of some note, who himself bore a conspicuous share in the correspondence, and was a very remarkable person. Without any very high or original philosophical preten

sphere of life, he yet maintained an almost universal communication with men of science, and was generally referred to as a central source of information by all those engaged in scientific pursuits, both at home. and abroad. How he obtained so much of the remains of a preceding generation, does not distinctly appear; but the letters of

Without pretensions to such racy records, or such exciting attractions, much has been since brought before the public well calculated to draw attention to the scientific history of that period; but, perhaps, nothing more valuable of the kind than those illustrations which have been the fruit of that spirit of indefatigable research, on all points connected with the history of science, which so eminently characterized the late Professor sions, and apparently in but a subordinate Rigaud. To such inquiries a considerable portion of his life was devoted; and besides a number of detached elucidations of the biography and labors of individuals distinguished in those pursuits, which have appeared in different journals and collections, his more important productions, the Memoir and Miscellaneous Works of the Astronomer-Royal, Bradley,' with a Supplement on the MS. his own time, (comprising a great number Remains of Harriott,' were the precursors of the volumes now before us;-namely, the dissertation on the history of the first publication of the Principia, which has been hitherto involved in obscurity and inaccuracy; and the collection of the correspondence of the scientific men of that age. In the latter task he had proceeded nearly to the completion of the first volume, when he was unhappily interrupted by a somewhat sudden death. The materials, however, were mostly in a state of preparation, and the duties of editor were continued by his son, whom he had lived to see fulfil his hopes in attaining the highest academical distinctions. All these works have been published at the expense of the University, and at its press, in a very creditable manner. We must, however, notice one great defect-the total want of an index, or even a table of contents.

These volumes furnish an ample and invaluable collection of materials for illustrating any life of Newton that may be given to the world. In the course of what they have

beyond his own very extensive correspondence,) must have required no small diligence and widely spread connexions to collect.

With a defective education, (as he mentions,*) he appears, after some vicissitudes in early life, to have followed the profession of an accountant. He acted in that capacity to the Excise till the office was abolished in 1670; and, in 1672, he speaks of his being employed in the Council of Plantations;" but, as there was a prospect of his not continuing there, he set up a stationer's shop, and became a publisher of mathematical books. From some incidental expressions, it would seem likely that he was employed by different individuals and bodies as a sort of agent to procure books and information on science, both domestic and foreign. However this may have been, the extent, variety, and accuracy of his knowledge of every work and investigation, published or carried on throughout Europe, is remarkably evinced in

*Letters, vol. ii. p. 481.

Royal Society; but he mostly quotes them merely in an abridged form. Other portions have been inserted in the Biographia Britannica, and in the notes to the General Dictionary,' by Bernard, Birch, and Lockman, though in many instances in a partial and inaccurate manner. But the larger portion was never before published. The present volumes embrace the whole collection, with some few omissions, the reasons for which are stated and are generally obvious.

his numerous letters, to most of which is an- to settle the dispute about the discovery of nexed, as a P.S., a catalogue raisonée of new Fluxions, in 1712. Much use has also been philosophical productions, often accompanied made of them by Birch in his history of the with acute critiques, and not unfrequently including original mathematical investigations of considerable merit. He seems, in a word, to have been one of that valuable species of minds, sometimes met with, gifted with an extraordinary faculty of collecting and retaining the most multifarious information-who seem to know, as if by intuition, every thing which is going on, and are never at a loss for a fact, a name, a date; and who become invaluable sources of reference, under the popular and expressive appellation of 'walking cyclopedias. Such was John Col-ments of philosophers, and the task of editing lins, who occupies so conspicuous a place in these memorials, besides being the individual to whom we are mainly indebted for their preservation.

The office of chronicler of the achieve

their remains, could not have been undertaken by an individual more capable of doing justice to it than the late Savilian Professor -as had, indeed, been evinced in his former On his death, this valuable collection pass- labors of the same kind. His discharge of ed into the possession of his friend and cor- the duty of editor has been by no means conrespondent, William Jones-father to Sir fined to the mere exactness in presenting the William Jones-who, having been mathe- materials-though this was a matter demandmatical tutor to the son of the Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, for this and other services was appointed his secretary, and one of the deputy tellers of the Exchequer. He wrote on several mathematical subjects, became a fellow and V.P. of the Royal Society; and on his death, in 1749, he bequeathed the whole of Collins's collection and his own, together with an extensive mathematical library, to his former pupil, George, second Earl of Macclesfield, P.R.S., himself an active cultivator, as well as patron, of science.

Dr. Hutton, with a want of accuracy but too common in his Dictionary, states that the collection was dispersed at Jones's death; and Nicholls, still more unaccountably, says that it was kept together till 1801, and then sold by auction. The whole, however, is carefully preserved in the library at Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire, and was by the late Earl (chiefly, it is believed, at the suggestion of Professor Rigaud) placed at the disposal of the delegates of the University Press, for publication, in 1836.

Besides the epistolary correspondence, this collection includes a few other documents, especially certain autograph memoranda of Newton, together with a MS. outline of the chief propositions in the Principia, which is, however, only a copy of that which he drew up for the Royal Society, the original of which is in their records.

Some portion of these various remains have formerly been printed, on different occasions. They furnished materials for the Commercium Epistolicum, drawn up by a committee of the Royal Society, with a view

ing some attention, from the inaccuracies in many of those extracts already before the public;-but he has throughout been careful to add every requisite illustration of persons, books, and circumstances referred to, which are often necessary for rendering the text intelligible. It is curious and often amusing to observe how, in his hands, circumstances apparently insignificant are brought together from the most remote sources to bear on some question of personal biography, or of the progress of discovery-how from a memorandumbook, a tombstone, a parish register, a postmark, testimony in point is ingeniously extorted.

Such accurate research is, in fact, by no means superfluous with respect to several points of scientific history of the period under review. Of some slighter incidents, accounts of a very apocryphal character have been currently received: while, on other topics of graver interest, much misapprehension has prevailed. To many, perhaps, the settlement of these questions may appear of little moment. Yet we are disposed to think that, at the present time, a more exact survey of the history of the progress of science, especially in its more striking phases, is likely to be better appreciated than, perhaps, it would have been a few years since; and that there exists an increasing sense of the value of correct information, and a close scrutiny of original authorities: in a word, of studying any history accurately, which is worth studying at all.

It is not our intention, however, to weary our readers with going into critical minutiæ.

Our object will be best answered by collect- | losophers, but little evidence of scientific reing into a summary narrative the leading par- search had displayed itself in England till ticulars now so fully elucidated, referring to the age of Francis Bacon and his contemone of the main events of the scientific history poraries-Harriott, who, besides bringing of the world; and those readers who may be algebra into its modern form, was perhaps more curious, we refer to Mr. Rigaud's vol- the first English follower of Galileo, in the umes, to judge of the extent of the new infor- cultivation of astronomy; Gilbert, who made mation, or correction of the old accounts now advances in magnetism and electricity; Naintroduced, as well as of the elaborate nature pier, Briggs, and others, who combined to of the evidence adduced. furnish the mathematical means and instruments of physical investigation.

The points to which we refer are by no means always the mere dry details of dates and technicalities; they involve much which is eminently instructive to those who delight to contemplate the character of genius under all diversities of circumstances and appearances; and the peculiarities of those gifted minds which, in their varied forms of intelligence, afford in themselves so profoundly interesting a problem in the study of human nature. But whether in this point of view, or whether in respect to the direct influence which the master-minds of science, even in its most remote abstractions, have exercised on the advance, both intellectual and physical, of mankind, few will fail to attach some interest to the familiar details which bring before us more vividly the actual condition of science and its cultivators in other times, in all the characteristic distinctness of outline as they then actually existed. And the period to which our observations refer, was, beyond dispute, one of the most remarkable in the Such advances had begun to stir up the intellectual development of the human race. spirit of investigation, as well as to point The discovery of the system of universal out the main directions, at least, in which gravitation, when carefully considered, must, it was to be pursued; and to astronomical we think, be regarded, as it were, the turn-observation on the one hand, and the iming-point of the great revolution which human provement of mathematical methods on the knowledge has undergone in modern times. other, the attention of those who felt the As it directly opened the way for all our in- promptings of a taste and a vocation for the sight into the grander features and phenomena pursuits of science, was now more diligently of the system of the world, so did it indirectly directed, in the hope, more or less present to suggest and encourage the application of that them all, of at least doing something towards free and unfettered examination of all other penetrating the great secret of the mechanclasses of physical phenomena, by the aid of ism of the heavens. But the state of things the same great maxims of inductive investi- in England in the beginning of the sevengation, and those universal analogies and teenth century was by no means favorable principles of uniformity, the existence of to scientific pursuits; and towards the midwhich is the sole security of induction, and dle of it, the great commotion, which conthe main evidence of order, arrangement, and vulsed the frame of civil society, threatened design, throughout the material creation. the extinction of science altogether. Yet, But we must not allow ourselves to be led into any speculations on the consequences of discovery, when we ought rather to be tracing its history and the progressive stages by which it was brought about.

Copernicus had pointed out that the apparently complex motions of the planets could be most simply represented by a system of orbits about the sun. Kepler had gone further to determine the elliptic form of their orbits, which alone would agree with the accurate determination of their motions; and had discovered in those motions these remarkable relations-an uniform description, not of arcs, but of areas—and the proportionality of the squares of the times to the cubes of the distances. Galileo had divested the laws of mechanics of the mysticism in which the Peripatetic system had involved them, and thus prepared the way for the novel doctrine, that the same laws of motion would apply to the celestial bodies as to those on the earth; while, by the invention of the telescope, he had enabled us to trace with accuracy the actual motions and appearances of the planets.

Notwithstanding the early suggestion of physical views, startling to the age from their boldness and novelty, by Roger Bacon, and the knowledge which had begun to spread of the discoveries of the great continental phi

under circumstances so unpropitious, it is instructive to contemplate the picture presented to us, of a small band of philosophers struggling against every disadvantage, pursu ing their researches in seclusion, obscurity, and neglect of whose characters and pursuits some striking illustrations are supplied in the collections before us, and who were among the foremost to prepare the way for the advances soon after to be made.