444 On the Account of the Comtnercimn Epistolicum. 



directly and indirectly, that when they write of Newton, they 

 acknowledge an exalted intellect. 



The Latin translator-, in one place which has caught my eye, 

 seems to have been a little inclined to mend the baldness of his 

 original. Newton (as I believe) writes, " And by this sort of 

 Railery they are perswading the Germans that Mr. Newton wants 

 Judgment, and was not able to invent the Infinitesimal Method." 

 The Latin has it, " Atque hujusmodi cavillationibus, homines hi 

 conterraneis suis persuasum esse cupiunt judicio eum et acumine 

 parum valere ; neque eum esse qui Methodum Infinitesimalem 

 rem tarn arduam invenire potuisset." 



Throughout the paper Newton is " Mr. Newton," never " Sir 

 Isaac Newton," nor simply " Newton." Now though the first 

 designation be chronologically correct, inasmuch as knighthood 

 was not honoured with Newton till after the events under dis- 

 cussion, still it is unlikely that any one but Newton himself could 

 or would have been so correct throughout a long paper. 



Keill took his (Oxford) doctor's degree at the Act in 1713. 

 The author of the Account calls him Mr. Keill, Newton calls him 

 Dr. Keill in the later papers. 



It will be noticed that the Ad Lectorem and the Annotation 

 in the Appendix belong to Newton on the external testimony of 

 Wilson, in which is implied the testimony of Pemberton ; while 

 the Recensio has both the external and internal evidence. How 

 much of the latter kind of evidence may belong to the two former 

 pieces I am not now prepared to say. 



In papers on Robins's tracts, printed in the Republic of Letters 

 for 1735 and 1736, and reprinted by Wilson {op. cit.), there is 

 the same frequency of reference to No. 342, and the same uni- 

 form attribution of' it to Newton, which we have seen in Wilson's 

 dissertation. Whether these reviews were written by Robins, by 

 Wilson, or by another, they show us the assertion of Newton's 

 authorship, publicly made within a few years of his death ; and 

 I am not aware that any one of the time denied it. 



I suppose the information furnished by the bonne main to 

 Montucla, and which he probably misunderstood, to have been 

 given by some other than Wilson, probably by some one who 

 saw Pemberton's papers (as Montucla states) in the hands of his 

 representatives. Rigaud states that the residuary legatee of 

 Dr. Pemberton was the husband of his niece, Mr. Miles, a timber 

 merchant at Rotherhithe, who was alive in 1788, and had sons. 

 It will be desirable to repeat this statement from time to time, 

 so long as there is the least chance of discovering Pemberton's 

 papers. 



April 21, 1852. 



