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The Life of Isaac Newton
As this is the only Life
of Sir Isaac Newton on any considerable scale that has yet appeared, I have
experienced great difficulty in preparing it for the public. The materials
collected by preceding biographers were extremely scanty; the particulars of
his early life, and even the historical details of his discoveries, have been
less perfectly preserved than those of his illustrious predecessors; and it is
not creditable to his disciples that they have allowed a whole century to
elapse without any suitable record of the life and labours of a master who
united every claim to their affection and gratitude.
In drawing up this
volume, I have obtained much assistance from the account of Sir Isaac Newton in
the Biographia Britannica; from the letters to Oldenburg, and other papers in
Bishop Horsley's edition of his works; from Turnor's Collections for the
History of the Town and Soke of Grantham; from M. Biot's excellent Life of
Newton in the Biographie Universelle; and from Lord King's Life and Correspondence
of Locke.
Although these works contain much important information
respecting the Life of Newton, yet I have been so fortunate as to obtain many
new materials of considerable value.
To Professor Whewell, of
Cambridge, I owe very great obligations for much valuable information.
Professor Rigaud, of Oxford, to whose kindness I have on many other occasions
been indebted, supplied me with several important facts, and with extracts
from the diary of Hearne in the Bodleian Library, and from the original
correspondence between Newton and Flamstead, which the president of Corpus
Christi College had for this purpose committed to his care; and Dr. J. C.
Gregory, of Edinburgh, the descendant of the illustrious inventor of the reflecting telescope, allowed
me to use his unpublished account of an autograph manuscript of Sir Isaac
Newton, which was found among the papers of David Gregory, Savilian Professor
of Astronomy at Oxford, and which throws some light on the history of the Principia.
I have been indebted to many other friends for the communication of books and
facts, but especially to Sir William Hamilton, Bart., whose liberality in
promoting literary inquiry is not limited to the circle of his friends.
D. B.
Allerly, June 1st, 1831.
The Ode Dedicated to Newton by Edmund
Halley
Lo, for your gaze, the pattern of
the skies!
What balance of the mass, what
reckonings
Divine! Here ponder too the Laws
which God,
Framing the universe, set not aside
But made the fixed foundations of
his work.
The inmost places of the heavens,
now gained,
Break into view, nor longer hidden
is
The force that turns the farthest
orb. The sun
Exalted on his throne bids all
things tend
Toward him by inclination and descent,
Nor suffers that the courses of the
stars
Be straight, as through the
boundless void they move,
But with himself as centre speeds
them on
in motionless ellipses. Now we know
The sharply veering ways of comets,
once
A source of dread, nor longer do we
quail
Beneath appearances of bearded
stars.
At last we learn wherefore the
silver moon
Once seemed to travel with unequal
steps,
As if she scorned to suit her pace
to numbers
Till now made clear to no
astronomer;
Why, though the Seasons go and then
return,
The Hours move ever forward on their
way;
Explained too are the forces of the
deep,
How roaming Cynthia bestirs the
tides,
Whereby the surf, deserting now the
kelp
Along the shore, exposes shoals of
sand
Suspected by the sailors, now in
turn
Driving its billows high upon the
beach.
Matters that vexed the minds of
ancient seers,
And for our learned doctors often
led
To loud and vain contention, now are
seen
Dispelled at last by science. Those
on whom
Delusion cast its gloomy pall of
doubt,
Upborne now on the wings that genius lends,
May penetrate the mansions of the
gods
And scale the heights of heaven. 0
mortal men,
Arise! And, casting of your earthly
cares,
Learn ye the potency of heaven-born
mind,
Its thought and life far from the herd withdrawn!
The man who through the tables of
the laws
Once banished theft and murder, who
suppressed
Adultery and crimes of broken faith,
And put the roving peoples into
cities
Girt round with walls, was founder
of the state,
While he who blessed the race with
Ceres' gift,
Who pressed from grapes an anodyne
to care,
Or showed how on the tissue made
from reeds
Growing beside the Nile one may
inscribe
Symbols of sound and so present the
voice
For sight to grasp, did lighten
human lot,
Offsetting thus the miseries of life
With some felicity. But now, behold,
Admitted to the banquets of the
gods,
We contemplate the polities of
heaven;
And spelling out the secrets of the
earth,
Discern the changeless order of the
world
And all the aeons of its history.
Then ye who now on heavenly nectar
fare
Come celebrate with me in song the
name
Of Newton, to the Muses dear; for he
Unlocked the hidden treasuries of
Truth:
So richly through his mind had
Phoebus cast
The radiance of his own divinity.
Nearer the gods no mortal may
approach.
TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS MAN ISAAC NEWTON AND THIS HIS WORK
DONE IN FIELDS OF THE MATHEMATICS
AND PHYSICS
A SIGNAL DISTINCTION OF OUR TIME AND
RACE
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