Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 6.djvu/432

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i. In a most natural whirling of rotation. — [MS. erased.]

ii. Since Adam — gloriously against an apple. — [MS. erased.]

iii. To the then unploughed stars — [MS. erased.]

I. ["Neither Pemberton nor Whiston, who received from Newton himself the history of his first Ideas of Gravity, records the story of the fa;ling apple. It was mentioned, however, to Voltaire by Catherine Barton (afterwards Mrs. Conduit), Newton's niece. We saw the apple tree in 1814. … The tree was so much decayed that it was taken down in 1820" (Memoirs, etc., of Sir Isaac Newton, by Sir David Brewster, 1855, i. 27, note 1). Voltaire tells the story thus (Éléments de la Philosophie de Newton, Partie III. chap, iii.): "Un jour, en l'année 1666 [1665], Newton, retiré à la campagne, et voyant tomber des fruits d'un arbre, à ce que m'a conté sa nièce (Madame Conduit), se laissa aller à une méditation profonde sur la cause qui entraine ainsi tous les corps dans une ligne qui, si elle était prolongée, passerait à peu près par le centre de la terre." — Œuvres Complètes, 1837, v. 727.]