merely states, that a Scotchman had informed him that Newton had become disordered in mind, in consequence of having lost by fire his chemical laboratory and some papers. The first of these losses is, we apprehend, quite unknown to English biography. We are, therefore, inclined to ascribe it to that exaggeration to which all reports, when related at a distance from the place of their origin, are liable. Huygens it appears, mentioned the rumour in a letter to Leibnitz, who in his reply, (June 23, 1694) says, "I am very happy that I received information of the cure of Mr. Newton at the same time that I first heard of his illness."

The attempt is still more futile to support the imputation of an entire loss of understanding, from the MS. written by Mr. Abraham de la Pryne, dated Cambridge, Feb. 3, 1692, in which, after mentioning the circumstance of the papers being set fire to, he says, But when Mr. Newton came from chapel, and had seen what was done, every one thought he would have run mad, he was so troubled thereat, that he was not himself for a month after.'Translation, p. 28.

If there ever were instances in which the witnesses disproved the very thing they were brought for the purpose of proving, this is one. The comments of Biot are ostensibly serious; but they are not less inconsistent with his own admissions, than they are contrary to the actual facts we shall bring forward.

He says, (p. 35) since the fatal aberration of his intellect, in 1693, he (Newton) gave to the world only three really new scientific productions-and one of these is the scale of temperatures; sufficient in itself to nullify his allegation.

Biot shortly imputes puerile conduct to Newton, in respect to the Bill of Longitude; and we are again reminded of the aberration of his intellect, though it might have been merely the effect of excessive shynesss, produced by the retired and meditative habits of his life; for to judge from a letter of Newton, written some time before the "disastrous epoch," in which he points out the conduct to be pursued by a young traveller, it would appear that he was very ignorant of the habits of society.'

But surely shyness and ignorance of the mere manners of the world, prove no decline of intellectual power in a person who was always remarkable for modest diffidence, and who never was supposed to be particularly acquainted with the world at any period of his life. A little more reflection perhaps would have induced Biot to come to the conclusion we are anxious to lead to: he certainly supplies us with suggestions for his own refutation.

We have read again and again Newton's letters to Dr. Bentley, which we mentioned at the commencement of our article. Now these very letters, which are in every line worthy of him who wrote the "Principia," and which have in them many specimens of the most philosophical and original reasoning, were written between Dec. 10th, 1692, and Feb. 11th, 1693. Our readers will see that at

this period, according to Biot, he was too unsound in mind for such correspondence!

In the Sloane collection of MSS. preserved at the British Museum, there exists the correspondence between Newton and Flamstead, from 1680 to 1698, chiefly relating to astronomy. We will give two letters, written near the “disastrous epoch." We miss the symptoms which the sagacious Frenchman would pretend to perceive.

'SIR,-Since my return hither I have been comparing your observations with my theory, and now I have satisfied myself that by both together, the moon's theory may be reduced to a good degree of exactness, perhaps to the exactness of two or three minutes. I forbore writing to you a few days, till I had considered your observations, that I might be able to acquaint you what further observations are requisite. And besides these fifty, which you tell me you have ready calculated, and those I have already, your observations of this winter will be very material; and therefore I am very glad you have ordered your servant to calculate them. There are requisite also your observations for the last six or seven years made in the months of March, June, September, and December, when the moon's perigee or apogee is in the syzygies or quadratures, or within five or six degrees of those cardinal points, and the moon in the quadrutures or opposition, and in an eclipse of the sun. When the moon in these cases is in the quadratures, or opposition, it will be requisite to have two observations, one a few hours before the quadrature, or opposition, and the other a few hours after, there being a day between the observations. If in the lunation of this present month, you can get two or three observations about the first quadrature, pray will you endeavour to get as many opposite to them, about the last quadrature. For observations opposite to one another, when the moon's apogee is in the octants, are of great moment. By such a set of observations, I believe I could set right the moon's theory this winter; only it would be requisite to have about fifty of them, such as I should select, set right by the new places of the fixt stars. The observations in March, June, September, and December above-mentioned, will not be many. I thank you heartily for your receipt. At present I beg your observations of Jupiter and Saturn. And what you send by the penny post, direct for Mr. William Martin, a Cambridge carrier, at the Bull in Bishopgate Street, and order it to be delivered there before two of the clock on Monday, least he be gone, for he goes every Monday at two o'clock from London towards Cambridge.

Cambridge, Oct. 7, 1694.

I am, yours to serve you,

To Mr. Flamstead.

Is. NEWTON.'

'October 24, 1694.

I return my hearty thanks to you for the communications in your last, and particularly for your table of refractions near the horizon. The reason of the different refractions near the horizon, I take to be the dif

Mr. Flamstead observes in the margin of this letter, that, September 1st, 1694, Mr. Newton came to see him, and that he imparted to Mr. Newton his Lunar observations, which occasioned this letter.-Dr. Birch's MS. Note.

ferent heat of the air in the lower region. For when the air is rarified by heat it refracts less, when condensed by cold it refracts more. And this difference must be most sensible, as the rays run along in the lower region of the air for a great many miles together, because 'tis this region only which is rarified and condensed by heat and cold. The middle and upper regions of the air being always cold. I am of opinion also, that the refraction in all greater altitudes is varied a little by the different weight of the air, discovered by the baroscope. For when the air is heavier, and by consequence denser, it must refract something more than when 'tis lighter and rarer. I would wish, therefore, that in all your observations, where the refraction is to be allowed for, you would set down the height of the baroscope and the heat of the air, that the variation of the refraction by the weight and heat of the air may be hereafter allowed for, when the proportion of the variation by those causes shall be known. A day or two before I left London I dined with Mr. Halby, and had much discourse with him about the moon. I told him of the parallactic equation, amounting to about 8' or 9', or at most 10' of another equation, which is greatest in the octants of the moon's apogee, and might there amount 6' or 7', though I had not yet computed any thing about it. He replied, that he believed there might be also an equation depending upon the moon's nodes. To which I answered, that there was such an equation, but so little as to be almost inconsiderable. But what kind of equation this was I did not tell him, and I believe he does not know it, because it is too little to be easily found out by observations, or by any other way than the theory of gravity.'

"

The whole is too long for extraction, but there is in every subsequent sentence no less evidence of the distinctness of his views, of his freedom from vain phantasies,' and of the definiteness of every one of his purposes.

We have endeavoured, on a perusal of the subsequent five years of this correspondence, to trace the origin and progress of that infirmity, which the Universelle' biographer so repeatedly, and confidently, affirms to have come upon Newton in 1692; but whether we take up those of an earlier or a later period, we are constrained to acknowledge that there is method in them. A fool, says Locke, deduces wrong conclusions from right premises; but a madman will draw right conclusions even from wrong premises. We do not see either that the basis of facts in these epistles is incorrect, or that the inferences drawn from the phenomena are silly. And what is more, we do not perceive any important difference between those written from 1680 to 1691, (when Newton is graciously allowed to have been in sound mind,) and the compositions of the six later years.

Many of Newton's contemporaries, though men of reputed acuteness in their day, overlooked the falling off in his talents, which we even now cannot discover.

In 1696, the Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, that great patron of the learned, "wrote him a letter to Cambridge, acquainting him he had prevailed with the King to make him Warden of the Mint, in which post he did signal service in the great re-coinage at that time."

These are the honest words of Mr. Conduit, in his letter to Fontenelle, as preserved by Nichols and by Turnor.

Newton obtained the office of Master of the Mint in 1699, in which he continued till his death. In this capacity he drew up an official report on the Coinage, which, besides a luminous and comprehensive account of the existing currency, contains many novel applications of principles in natural philosophy to the subject before him. We may say, that we have lately discovered this document, for, though printed in certain collections of papers, which are to be found in all great English libraries, it is so obscure as not to be in any collection of his works, nor even mentioned by those who have professed to give lists of his entire writings. His biographers have all failed to notice it; it has escaped even M. Biot.

Upon the choice of a new Parliament, in 1701, Newton was re-elected member for the University of Cambridge. He was elected president of the Royal Society in 1703, and continued so above twenty-three years, to his death, being the first who was president so long, and was never discontinued.

As a decisive proof that Newton's mind was not in the state Biot represents it to have been, we will quote the very curious conversation between Newton and Mr. Conduit, who makes his narrative in the first person.

Newton's Conversation with Conduit.

"I was on Sunday night the 7th of March, 1724-5, at Kensington, with Sir Isaac Newton, in his lodgings, just after he was come out of a fit of the gout, which he had in both his feet, for the first time, in the 83d year of his age; he was better after it, and his head clearer and his memory stronger than I had known them for some time. He then repeated to me, by way of discourse, very distinctly, though rather in answer to my queries than in one continued narration, what he had often hinted before, viz., that it was his conjecture (he would affirm nothing) that there was a sort of revolution in the heavenly bodies; that the vapours and light emitted by the sun, which had their sediment, as water and other matter, had gathered themselves by degrees into a body, and attracted more matter from the planets, and at last made a secondary planet, (viz., one of those that go round another planet), and then, by gathering to them and attracting more matter, became a primary planet; and then, by increasing still, became a comet, which, after certain revolutions, by becoming nearer and nearer to the sun, had all its volatile parts condensed, and became a matter fit to recruit and replenish the sun, (which must waste by the constant heat and light it emitted,) as a faggot would this fire, if put into it; (we were sitting by a wood fire,) and that that would probably be the effect of the comet of 1680, sooner or later; for, by the observations made upon it, it appeared before it came near the sun, with a tail only two or three degrees long, but by the heat it contracted in going so near the sun, it seemed to have a tail of thirty or forty degrees when it went from it; that he could not say when this comet would drop into the sun; it perhaps might have five or six revolutions more first; but, whenever it did, it would so much

increase the heat of the sun, that this earth would be burnt, and no animals in it could live. That he took the three phenomena seen by Hipparchus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler's disciples, to have been of this kind; for he could not otherwise account for an extraordinary light, as those were, appearing all at once amongst the fixed stars, (all which he took to be suns enlightening other planets, as our sun does ours,) as big as Mercury or Venus seems to us; and gradually diminishing for sixteen months, and then sinking into nothing. He seemed to doubt whether there were not intelligent beings superior to us, who superintended these revolutions of the heavenly bodies, by direction of the Supreme Being. He appeared also to be very clearly of opinion that all arts, as letters, ships, printing, needle, &c., were discovered within the memory of history, which could not have happened if the world had been eternal; and that there were evident marks of ruin upon it, which could be effected by a flood only. When I asked him how this earth could have been repeopled if ever it had undergone the same it was threatened with hereafter by the comet of 1680? he answered, that required the power of a Creator. He said he took all the planets to be composed of the same matter with this earth, viz., earth, water, stones, &c., but variously concocted. I asked him why he would not publish his conjectures as conjectures, and instanced that Kepler had communicated his; and, though he had not gone near so far as Kepler, yet Kepler's guesses were so just and happy, that they had been proved and demonstrated by him? His answer was, I do not deal in conjectures. But upon my talking to him of the four observations that had been made of the comet of 1680 at 574 years distance, and asking him the particular times, he opened his Principia, which laid upon the table, and showed me there the particular periods, viz., 1st, Julium Sidus, in the time of Justinian, în 1106, in 1680; and I observing, he said then of that comet, "Incidet in corpus solis;" and in the next paragraph, adds, "stellæ fixe refici passant:" told him I thought he owned then what we had been talking about, viz., that the comet would drop into the sun, and consequently the sun would be recruited too;* and asked him why he would not own as clearly what he thought of the sun as well as the fixed stars? He said that concerned us more; and laughing, added, that he had said enough for people to know his meaning."

Mr. Conduit adds,

"To the last, he had all his senses and faculties strong, vigorous, and lively; and he continued writing and studying many hours every day to the time of his last illness."-Turnor's History of Grantham, p. 166.

All this is in a work of unquestionable authority, and in one which M. Biot professes to trust, and affects to refer to, as the sanction of many of his details! We do not see by what critical casuistry he can be justified in repeating the baseless and degrading fabrications to his countrymen, which we have exposed. But far higher blame belongs to the real introducer of the libel amongst Englishmen. We will not believe, until we have demonstrative evidence of it, that such men as Sir James Mackintosh, Dr. Maltby, Mr. Hallam, and others, whose names we see on the cover of every

* See Queries subjoined to Newton's Optics.