Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/398

 appeared at Geneva. The ‘Principia’ was translated into English by Motte in 1729, and a second edition of Motte's translation, revised by W. Davis, was printed in 1803. Various editions of particular sections have appeared. The one chiefly used at Cambridge is that of book i. sections i–iii., by Percival Frost, 1854; 4to edition, 1883. There are numerous works illustrating and commenting on the ‘Principia.’ Brougham and Routh published an ‘Analytical View’ in 1855. Dr. Glaisher's bicentenary address (Cambridge Chronicle, 20 April, 1888) has been often referred to above, and is specially important as containing Professor Adams's view on various points.

The ‘Optics’ first appeared in English in 1704, with the two tracts ‘Enumeratio Linearum tertii Ordinis’ and ‘Tractatus de Quadratura Curvarum.’ It was translated into Latin in 1706 by Samuel Clarke. A second English edition without the tracts appeared in 1718; a third in 1721; and a fourth, ‘corrected by the author's own hand, and left before his death with the bookseller,’ in 1730.

The ‘Optical Lectures read in the Publick Schools of the University of Cambridge, Anno Domini, 1669,’ were first printed in English in 1728, and in Latin in 1729. The tract ‘Enumeratio’ closely resembled the famous ‘De Analysi per Æquationes,’ which was first published in 1711, and was edited by William Jones. Newton's method of fluxions appeared in an English translation made by John Colson from an unpublished Latin manuscript under the title, ‘Method of Fluxions and Infinite Series,’ in 1736 [cf. ]. This was translated into French by M. de Buffon in 1740. The more important of the works written in connection with the dispute with Leibnitz have been already quoted. Biot and Lefort's edition of the ‘Commercium Epistolicum’ of 1856 contains additional information. The ‘Arithmetica Universalis’ first appeared in 1707, edited by Whiston.

The personal reminiscences of Newton are not very numerous. He was not above the middle size. According to Conduitt, ‘he had a very lively and piercing eye, a comely and gracious aspect, with a fine head of hair as white as silver.’ Bishop Atterbury, however, does not altogether agree with this. ‘Indeed,’ he says, ‘in the whole air of his face and make there was nothing of that penetrating sagacity which appears in his compositions.’ ‘He never wore spectacles,’ says Hearne, ‘and never lost more than one tooth to the day of his death.’ In money matters he was very generous and charitable. In manners his appearance was usually untidy and slovenly. There are many stories of his extreme absence of mind when occupied with his work. In character he was most modest. ‘I do not know what I may appear to the world’ were his words shortly before his death, ‘but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me’ (, Anecdotes, quoting Chevalier Ramsay, p. 54). Bishop Burnet speaks of him as the ‘whitest soul’ he ever knew. At the same time, as Locke points out, he was a little too apt to raise in himself suspicions where there was no ground for them. In the controversies with Hooke, Flamsteed, and Leibnitz, he does not appear as a generous opponent; he was himself transparently honest, and anything in an adversary which appeared to him like duplicity or unfair dealing aroused his fiercest anger. De Morgan, who has taken a severer view of his actions in these controversies than his other biographers, says that ‘it is enough that Newton is the greatest philosopher, and one of the best of men: we cannot find in his character an acquired failing. All his errors are to be traced to a disposition which seems to have been born with him. … Admitting them to the fullest extent, he remains an object of unqualified wonder, and all but unqualified respect.’

An estimate of his genius is impossible. ‘Sibi gratulentur mortales tale tantumque extitisse Humani generis Decus’ are the words on his monument at Westminster, while on Roubiliac's statue in Trinity College chapel the inscription is ‘Newton qui genus humanum ingenio superavit.’ All who have written of him use words of the highest admiration. On a tablet in the room in which Newton was born at Woolsthorpe manor-house is inscribed the celebrated epitaph written by Pope: Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, ‘Let Newton be,’ and all was light. Laplace speaks of the causes ‘which will always assure to the “Principia” a pre-eminence above all the other productions of the human intellect.’ Voltaire, who was present at Newton's funeral, and was profoundly impressed by the just honours paid to his memory by ‘the chief men of the nation,’ always spoke of the philosopher with reverence—‘if all the geniuses of the universe assembled, he should lead the band’ (, Letters from an English Traveller, 1802, i. 98–108). ‘In Isaac Newton,’ wrote Macaulay in his ‘History’ (i. 195), ‘two