Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/401

 chronological order; they are all in English: 1. ‘Institutio Mathematica.’ Decimal tables of natural sines, tangents, and secants, and of logarithms; solution of plane and spherical triangles; with applications to astronomy, dialling, and navigation, 1654. 2. ‘Astronomia Britannica,’ so called because decimals are used and the calculations are made for the meridian of London. In two books, dedicated to the Earl of Warwick, who was an admiral of the fleet, 1657. This and the foregoing work were printed by William Leybourn [q. v.] 3. ‘Help to Calculation,’ 1657. 4. ‘Sixteenpence in the Pound,’ an interest table, 1657. 5. ‘Trigonometria Britannica,’ in two books, one of them from the Latin of Henry Gellibrand, 1658. 6. ‘Chiliades centum Logarithmorum,’ 1659. 7. ‘Geometrical Trigonometry,’ 1659. 8. ‘Mathematical Elements,’ three parts, 1660. 9. ‘A Perpetual Diary or Almanac,’ 1662. 10. ‘Description of Use of Carpenter's Rule,’ 1667. 11. ‘Ephemerides of Interest and Rate of Money at 6 per cent.’ 1667. 12. ‘Chiliades centum Logarithmorum et Tabula partium Proportionalium,’ 1667. 13. ‘The Scale of Interest: or the Use of Decimal Fractions and Table of Logarithms,’ composed and published for the use of an English mathematical and grammar school to be set up at Ross in Herefordshire, 1668. This book contains two dedications, one to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of London and Hereford, the other to Lord Scudamore and other property owners about Ross. His views on grammar-school education are expounded in a preface of thirty-six pages. 14. ‘School Pastime for Young Children,’ dedicated to Thomas Foley, 1669, contains a preface of eighteen pages on the education of infants. 15. ‘Art of Practical Gauging,’ 1669. 16. ‘Introduction to the Art of Logic,’ 1671, dedicated to Henry Milberne. 17. ‘Introduction to the Art of Rhetoric,’ 1671. 18. ‘The Art of Natural Arithmetic,’ 1671. 19. ‘The English Academy, or a brief Introduction to the Seven Liberal Arts,’ 1677. 20. ‘Introduction to Geography,’ 1678. 21. ‘Cosmography,’ 1679. 22. ‘Introduction to Astronomy.’

A portrait of Newton is prefixed to his ‘Mathematical Elements.’

[Works; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 1190; Granger's Biog. Hist. 1779, iii. 297; Chalmers's Biog. Dict.] 

NEWTON, JOHN (1725–1807), divine and friend of the poet Cowper, born in London on 24 July 1725 (O.S.), was son of a commander in the merchant service engaged in the Mediterranean trade. His mother, who gave him some religious training, died of consumption 11 July 1732. Thereupon his father married again, and the child was sent to school at Stratford, Essex, where he learned some Latin. When he was eleven (1736) he went to sea with his father, and made six voyages with him before 1742. In that year the elder Newton retired from the service, and subsequently becoming governor of York Fort, under the Hudson's Bay Company, was drowned there in 1751. Meanwhile the son, after returning from a voyage to Venice about 1743, was impressed on board H.M.S. Harwich, and, although made a midshipman through his father's influence, he soon deserted. When recaptured he was degraded to the rank of a common seaman (1745), and at his own request exchanged off Madeira into a slaver, which took him to the coast of Sierra Leone. He became subsequently servant to a slave-trader on one of the Plantane islands, and suffered brutal persecution. By another master he was treated more humanely, and was given some share in the business. Early in 1748 he was rescued at a place called Kittam by the captain of a vessel whom his father had asked to look out for him.

During his wandering life he had lost all sense of religion, and afterwards accused himself of degrading debauchery. But the dangers of the homeward voyage, when Newton was set to steer the ship through a storm, suddenly awakened in him strong religious feeling. To the end of his days he kept the anniversary of his ‘conversion,’ 10 (21st N.S.) March 1748, as a day of humiliation and thanksgiving for his ‘great deliverance.’ On settling again in England, he was offered by a Liverpool friend of his father, Mr. Manesty, the command of one of his slave vessels. He preferred, however, to go as mate first (1748–9). On 12 Feb. 1750 he was married at Chatham to Mary Catlett, the daughter of a distant relative, with whom he had been in love since 1742, when he was only seventeen, and the girl no more than fourteen. Three voyages followed his marriage, but in 1754, owing to ill-health, he relinquished his connection with the sea. During his adventurous career as a sailor he succeeded in educating himself. Even while in Africa he had mastered the first six books of Euclid, drawing the figures on the sand. Subsequently he taught himself Latin, reading Virgil, Terence, Livy, and Erasmus, and learning Horace by heart. At the same time he studied the Bible with increasing devotion; and adopted, under the instruction of a friend at St. Kitts (Captain Clunie), Cal-