THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW. NO. XLVI. FOR AUGUST, 1855. ART. I.—Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and no he be the first of mathematicians, though we should listen with a feeling of possibility of conviction to those who maintain the affirmative. We cannot pronounce him superior to all men in the sagacity which guides the observer of-we mean rather deducer from-natural phenomena, though we should be curious to see what name any six competent jurors would unanimously return before his. But we know that, in the union of the two powers, the world has never seen whose case remoteness of circumstances creates great difficulty of comparison. NOTHING is more difficult than to settle who is the most illustrious, the most to be admired, in any walk of human greatness. Those who would brain us- -if they could but imagine us to have any brains-for hinting that it may be a question whether Shakspere a man comparable to him, unless it be one in be the first of poets, would perhaps have been Homerites a century ago. In these disputes there is more than matter of opinion, Far be it from us to say that if Newton or of taste, or of period: there is also mat- had been Canopolis, a Sicilian Greek, he ter of quantity, question of how much, with- would have surpassed Archimedes; or that out any possibility of bringing the thing to if Archimedes had been Professor Firstrede, trial by scale. This element of difficulty is of Trinity College, Cambridge, he would have well illustrated by an exception. Among in- been below Newton. The Syracusan is, quirers into what our ignorance calls the laws among the ancients, the counterpart of the of nature, an undisputed pre-eminence is Englishman among the moderns. Archigiven to ISAAC NEWTON, as well by the popu- medes is perhaps the first among the geolar voice, as by the deliberate suffrage of his meters: and he stands alone in ancient peers. The right to this supremacy is almost physics. He gave a new geometry-the name demonstrable. It would be difficult to award was afterwards applied to the infinitesimal the palm to the swiftest, except by set trial, calculus-out of which he or a successor with one starting-place and one goal; nor would soon have evolved an infinitesimal could we easily determine the strongest calculus, if algebra had been known in the among the strong, if the weights they lifted West. He founded the sciences of statics were of miscellaneous material and bulk. and hydrostatics, and we cannot learn that But if we saw one of the swiftest among the any hint of application of geometry to runners keep ahead of nearly all his com- physics had previously been given. No rades, with one of the heaviest of the weights Cavalieri, no Fermat, no Wallis, went beupon his shoulders, we should certainly place fore him in geometry: there was not even a him above all his rivals, whether in activity chance of a contemporary Leibnitz. alone, or in strength alone. Though Achil- cannot decide between Archimedes and les were the swifter, and Hercules the Newton: the two form a class by themselves stronger, a good second to both would be into which no third name can be admitted; placed above either. This is a statement of and the characteristic of that class is the Newton's case. We cannot say whether or union, in most unusual quantity, of two We some allowance for the other side; and gone, when of a certain note, are entitled to In reverend bishops note some small defects; ton were distinguished only by great skill in mechanical contrivance. No tradition, no remaining record, imputes any very early progress either in mathematics or general learning, beyond what is seen in thousands of clever boys in any one year of the world. That he was taken from farming occupations, and sent back to school, because he loved We have more reasons than one for desiring study, is told to us in general terms; but that it should have been so, and not other- what study we are not told. We have alwise. Sir D. Brewster is the first biographer ways been of opinion that the diversion who has had unrestricted access to the Ports- of Newton's flow of reason into its proper mouth papers: he has been allowed to have channel was the work of the University and this collection in his own possession. Had its discipline. He was placed at Trinity the first life written upon knowledge of these College as a subsizar in his nineteenth year. papers taken that view of Newton's social We have no proof, but rather the contrary, conduct which stern justice to others requires, that he had then opened Euclid. That he a condonation of all the previous offences of was caught solving a problem under a hedge biographers would have followed. There is recorded: perhaps a knotty question of was not full information: the fault lay with wheelwork. He bought a Euclid at Camthose who suppressed the truth; and so forth. bridge, and threw it aside as a trifling book, And every great man who has left no horde because the conclusions were so evident: he of papers would have had a seal of approval betook himself to Descartes, and afterwards placed upon all his biographies: for, you see, lamented that he had not given proper Newton was exposed by the publication of attention to Euclid. All this is written, and the Portsmouth papers, that is easily under- Sir David is bound to give it; but what stood; but A B left no papers, therefore no Newton has written, belies it. We put such exposure can take place, &c., &c. We, faith in the Principia, which is the work of who hold that there is and long has been, am- an inordinate Eucleidian, constantly attemptple means of proving the injustice with which ing to clothe in the forms of ancient geomeNewton and his contemporaries once and try methods of proceeding which would again treated all who did not bow to the idol, more easily have been presented by help of should have been loath to see the garrison algebra. Shall we ever be told that Bacon which our opponents have placed in the con- complained of the baldness of his own style, tested forts march out with the honours of and wished he had obtained command over war, under a convention made on distant metaphor? Shall we learn that Cobbett ground, and on a newly-discovered basis of lamented his constant flow of Gallicism and treaty. Again, there is a convenient conti-west-end slang, and regretted that his Engnuity in the first disclosure of these documents lish had not been more Saxon? If we do, coming from an advocate: the discussion we shall have three very good stories inwhich they excite will be better understood stead of one. We may presume, as not when the defender of Newton is the first to have recourse to Newton's own papers. : unlikely, that Newton, untrained in any science, threw away his Euclid at first, as Of Newton's birth, of his father's death very evident: no one need be Newton and the subsequent marriage of his mother, to feel the obvious premise, or to draw the we need say nothing. He was not born unwise conclusion. But it would belong to with a title, though he was the son of the his tutor to make him know better and lord of a very little manor, a yeoman's plot Newton was made, as we shall see, to know of land with a baronial name. But the better accordingly. Our reader must not knighthood clings strongly to his memory. imagine that deep philosophy and high Sir David (and on looking back, we see discovery were discernible in the young that the Doctor did just the same) seldom subsizar. He was, as to what had come neglects it. When the schoolboy received a out, a clever and somewhat self-willed lad, kick from a school-fellow, it was 'Sir Isaac' rather late at school, with his heart in the who fought him in the churchyard, and it keeping of a young lady who lived in was Sir Isaac' who rubbed his antagonist's the house where he had boarded, and vice nose against the wall in sign of victory. versa, more than commonly ingenious in Should we survive Sir David, we shall the construction of models, with a good Brewster him; we hold that those who are notion of a comet as a thing which might be |