THE ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF NEWT OX. 793 



who, during Hooke's lifetime had never sat at the council-table of the 

 Royal Society, was, only a few months after his decease, elected both 

 to that position and the still higher one of President, on the same day, 

 November 30, 1703. 



Not much now remains to be said. Hooke's growing infirmities 

 of mind and body condemned him to isolation ; and isolation is the 

 chosen ally of eccentricity. Repeated disappointments had aggravated 

 the inherent moroseness of his disposition ; increasing ill health soured 

 his naturally irritable temper ; and the death, in 1687, of his niece, 

 Mrs. Grace Hooke probably the only person in the world for whom 

 he entertained a sincere attachment broke the last link uniting him 

 to every-day humanity. Still he pursued his investigations with a fe- 

 verish energy that age and sickness seemed rather to stimulate than to 

 quell. His jealousy of piratical appropriation increased, with advanc- 

 ing years, almost to a mania ; he enveloped his researches in a mysteri- 

 ous reserve ; and many of the discoveries which he professed to have 

 made, descended with him into the grave. Among these were a means 

 of finding the longitude at sea, and a secret for perfecting all kinds of 

 optical instruments. It might be conjectured, from the small size of 

 some telescopes used by him, that this latter invention approached that 

 of achromatism (made by Dollond in the middle of the following cen- 

 tury) ; but, on the other hand, we find him laying it down as an axiom 

 that increased power could only be obtained by increased focal length; 

 and he is even said to have entertained as a possibility the construction 

 of an instrument ten thousand feet long, which should bring into view 

 the inhabitants of the moon ! We can not, indeed, take his own word 

 for his performances. He was probably not deliberately untruthful ; 

 but he was sanguine as well as vain, and apt to discourse largely of 

 results, toward which imagination pointed, but which reason had not 

 yet grasped. The Royal Society, at any rate, so far believed his pro- 

 fessions as to make him, in 1696, a grant for the purpose of complet- 

 ing his researches and recording his discoveries. The remaining years 

 of his life and his failing physical powers were dedicated, with almost 

 insane zeal, to the task of raising an adequate monument to his experi- 

 mental genius. Disease was powerless to divert him from his purpose; 

 fatigue never seemed to approach him. Day after day, and night after 

 night, he meditated, experimented, invented. For several years before 

 his death, he was said never to have undressed or gone to bed. His 

 limbs swelled, his brain reeled, his very eyesight failed ; but still he 

 worked, and wrote, and dreamed of immortality. At length a sum- 

 mons came which he was powerless to resist. He died on March 3, 

 1703, unloved, unlamented, and, at least in his own apprehension, un- 

 recognized. He died, as he had lived, haunted by unfulfilled hopes, 

 and deluded with abortive projects. In the midst of voluntary desti- 

 tution, he had cherished a magnificent design for the endowment of 

 the Royal Society. But he left no testamentary disposition of his 



