402 Biographical Account of [Dec. 



of notation." * Leibnitz, understanding this passage as a direct 

 charge of plagiarism, complained of it as a calumny in a letter 

 to Sir Hans Sloane, the Secretary, dated March 4, 1711, and 

 moved that the Royal Society would cause Dr. Keill to make a 

 public recantation. Dr. Keill chose rather to explain and defend 

 what he had written ; and though Newton was at first offended 

 at his original paragraph, being apprehensive that it might 

 occasion a controversy, yet when he was shown the accusation in 

 the Acta Lipsica, he gave Keill liberty to maintain the opinions 

 which he had advanced. Keill wrote a long letter to Sir Hans 

 Sloane, in which he endeavours to demonstrate not only that 

 Newton was the original discoverer, but that he had given 

 Leibnitz so many hints of his method, that even a man of very 

 ordinary abilities could hardly fail to make it out. This letter 

 was sent to Leibnitz, who demanded that the Royal Society 

 would put a stop to the accusations of a man too young to know 

 what had passed between Newton and himself. Instead of 

 making good his own accusation, as he ought to have done, that 

 it might not be deemed a calumny, he insisted only on his own 

 candour, and refused to tell how he came by his method. He 

 said that the Acta Lipsica had given every man his due ; that 

 he had concealed the invention above nine years, that nobody 

 might pretend to have been before him in it. He called Dr. 

 Keill a novice who deserved to be silenced, and desired that 

 Newton himself would give his opinion in the matter. Dr. 

 Keill, in fact, had only repeated what Dr. Wallis had published 

 13 years before, and Newton had already given his opinion on 

 the matter before the dispute began ; and this opinion in all 

 probability was the cause of the controversy, by giving origin to 

 the severe and unjust treatment which the book had received in 

 the Acta Lipsica. 



The Royal Society being thus twice pressed by Mr. Leibnitz, 

 and seeing no reason to condemn or censure Dr. Keill without 

 inquiring into the matter; and that neither Newton nor Leib- 

 nitz (the only persons alive who knew and remembered any thing 

 that had passed respecting these matters -10 years before) could 

 be witnesses for or against Dr. Keill, nppointed a committee, 

 consisting of Dr. Arbuthnot, Mr. Hill, Dr. II alley, Mr. Jones, 

 Mr. Machin, and Mr. Burnet, to search old letters and papers, 

 and report their opinion on what they might find, and ordered 

 the letters and papers, with the report of their committee, to be 

 published. This publication was the famous Commereium Epis- 

 tolicum, containing the letters of Oldenburg, Collins, Leibnitz, 



* Phil . Trans. 1703, vol. xvvi. p. 174. Tlie pas^e occurs in a LatiA 

 paper, by Dr. Keith, on The I.aw= of Centripetal I'orce. 



