401 Biographical Account of [Dec. 



theorem. On the other hand, Keill went too far when he at- 

 tempted to show that Newton had committed no inadvertence 

 whatever. The dispute at last was silenced, if not terminated, 

 by the death of Leibnitz in 1 7 16. 



Now that the violence which actuated both parties in this 

 memorable dispute has subsided, and that all party feeling is, in 

 some measure, at an end, we may be allowed to judge of the 

 merits of both parties from the documents that remain. Perhaps 

 the safest way is to reject the arguments brought forward both by 

 the British and German writers of the times, considering them 

 as parties. But there are several French writers who have given 

 their opinions on the subject, and who may be considered as 

 more impartial. The principal of these are Fontenelle, Buffon, 

 Bossut, and Montucla. Fontenelle is very unsatisfactory. He 

 lived too near the time of the dispute, and had, in some measure, 

 committed himself beforehand in his Eloge on the Marquis de 

 l'Hospital. Buffon adopts the side of the English mathemati- 

 cians, and seems to have taken their assertions for granted 

 without ever having examined the documents. Bossut adopts 

 the side of Leibnitz ; but it is equally evident that he has never 

 examined the documents, but trusted to the assertions of the 

 Bernoullis, and the other coadjutors of Leibnitz, with whose 

 works lie is obviously much better acquainted than with the Com- 

 mercium Epistolicum, and the writings of Newton. His History 

 of Mathematics is written with much elegance, and does credit 

 to his taste and talents ; but from several particulars which it 

 contains we may infer that it was written when he was a very 

 young man, and that he gives many of the facts which his book 

 contains only at second hand. Montucla gives the most parti- 

 cular and the most impartial account of the dispute of any writer 

 that we have seen ; but even he does not appear to have perused 

 all the documents, at least if we may be allowed to give that 

 name to a very elaborate paper which appeared in the Philoso- 

 phical Transactions, giving an account of the Commercium 

 Epistolicum, and of the dispute between Leibnitz and Keill. 

 Tradition ascribes this composition to Newton, and there is every 

 reason, from internal evidence, to believe that he was the 

 author.* Now this paper brings forward several striking in- 

 stances of Leibnitz having attempted to palm Newton's inven- 

 tions, received in Newton's own writing, upon Newton himself 

 as his own, and of his having desisted from his claim when the 

 trick was pointed out to him. It shows also that Leibnitz had 

 formerly, during the life o( Dr. Wallis, acknowledged that 

 Newton was the original inventor of the calculus, and that he 

 had retracted this admission after the death of Dr. Wallis. In 



Pijl, Tjans. 1714, vol. xxix. p. 173. 



