^50 



NOTES AND QtTERIES. 



[2nd s. No C5., Mar. 28. '57. 



KEWTOn's nephew, the KEV. B. smith ; THE 

 NEW ATALANTIS ; LOKD HALIFAX AND MBS. C. 

 BAKTON. 



(2"d S. Hi. 41.) 

 As Newton immortalises even a scamp of a 

 nephew, the immortality may as well be as decided 

 .18 possible. I find from the source already men- 

 tioned, that B. Smith kept bis head above water 

 by his wit and his conversation. There is a song 

 preserved in the handwriting of his friend the 

 prebend, who represents Smith as the author of 

 it. A friend of mine heard one verse at least, 

 when a child, in a very different part of England : 

 it may be that some of your readers may be able 

 to dispute the prebend's assertion ; if not, the 

 verses must stand, until further showing, as made 

 by the poet of Newton's family. It is as follows, 

 omitting the choral line after the first verse : 

 " Orpheus and Eurydice, 

 " Young Orpheus tickled his harp so well, 

 With a twinkum twaiikum twang, 

 That he gained his Eurydice out of hell, 

 With a twinkum twankum twang. 



"But had she been honest as she was fair, 

 'Tis a thousand to one she had never come there. 



" 'Tis much to be feared she proved a scold, 

 And therefore the Devil had got her in hold. 



" But lest she should poison all hell with her tongue, 

 He straightway released her for an old song." 



His complaint about the pulpit (or tub, as he 

 calls it) was the peroration of a bit of florid elo- 

 quence which he often repeated, running very 

 closely as follows : 



" Instead of cultivated society [naming the people he 

 liad associated with in London], I have been driven to 

 lierd with baptized brutes, and when I was gaping for a 

 pair of colours, I was thrust into the tub." 



He was a professed hater of matrimony, a curious 

 mode of advertisement in a clergyman who had a 

 mistress in his house : but he used to say that he 

 doubted whether any parson in the county could 

 show an establishment so well composed as his. 

 He would continually refuse his fee for perform- 

 ing the marriage ceremony; putting it by with, 

 "Go your way, poor devils, go your way ; I have 

 done you mischief enough already." 



Looking back to B. Smith's assertions about 

 his cousin, I feel more and more inclined to be- 

 lieve thuX he really did speak as is reported of him, 

 and that the inaccuracy does not arise from lapse 

 of memory in the prebend. I suppose that his 

 misrepresentation was one of pure ignorance ; and 

 that he knew little more of his uncle's household 

 than other people. Nevertheless, it will be ob- 

 served that, known as his conduct was to his uncle, 

 he succeeded to his share of that uncle's personal 

 property on the same footing as the rest of the 

 half-nephews and nieces. This is strongly illus- 



trative of the principle which appears to have 

 actuated Newton, namely, that his next of kin had 

 rights which he was bound to respect. The chil- 

 dren of a nephew or niece who had died were 

 presented with their share during his life, ap- 

 parently to prevent the necessity of a will. All 

 this seems to me to militate against Sir David 

 Brewster's positive (but unsupported) -assertion 

 that it was Newton who bought the annuity for 

 Catherine Barton which Halifax held in trust. 

 This annuity would have exhausted his savings, — 

 even supposing that they had been sufficient, 

 which is rather a strong supposition — at a time 

 when he was more than sixty years old. It is 

 unlikely that, with his ideas, he would have felt 

 it right thus to provide for one of his next of kin 

 at the expense of the rest. It will be remembered 

 that the annuity was 200^ a year, a provision for 

 a single woman which, at that period, would have 

 been reckoned magnificent. 



I now resume the subject of the New Atalantia 

 (2"" S. ii. 265. 390.). I did not examine the third 

 and fourth volumes, finding no evidence in the 

 Museum that they were published before 1720. 

 From the preface to the third volume (which I 

 have had the opportunity of examining, through 

 the kindness of your correspondent T. C. S.) I 

 find that the third and fourth volume (marked 

 1720 in the copy) are the memoirs written by 

 Eginardus, described by Mr. Aspland, as from his 

 quotations one would suspect. The second edition 

 is of 1711, according to Mr. Aspland and Watt; 

 the first, according to Watt, is of 1710. The quo- 

 tation made by T. C. S., together with the addi- 

 tional sentence quoted by Mr. Aspland, comprise 

 all that relates to Bai-tica. 



These volumes certainly contain so much of the 

 scandal which we know to have circulated, that 

 there is a reasonable presumption of their being 

 really a genuine collection of things actually said, 

 with colouring and addition of mere narrative 

 details, to heighten effect. Indeed, when we con- 

 sider the quantity of scandal current, and the 

 quantity of good reason given for it, we may easily 

 suppose that a work of pure invention would have 

 been unnecessary trouble taken, and would have 

 wanted interest. Beyond this, of course, the 

 statements of the work prove nothing ; to my mind 

 they do prove that their fundamental points were 

 the talk of what was then called the town. 



In point of time, the statements accord with my 

 increasing belief that a private marriage took place 

 in 1706. The publication in 1710, the materials 

 being collected in the year or two preceding, gives 

 the time which would be requisite for the rumours 

 to become general, and to reach an unprincipled 

 writer who was not about the court. It will be 

 observed that there is a question of marriage in 

 the story, which there is in very few of Mrs. Man- 

 ley's narrfttives. The lady is represented as de- 



