HISTORY OF PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 



and again in 1701; and though lie was rejected in the dissolution oi 

 1705, those who opposed him acknowledged him 3 to be "the glory of 

 the University and nation," but considered the question as a political 

 one, and Newton as sent " to tempt them from their duty, by the great 

 and just veneration they had for him." Instruments and other memo- 

 rials, valued because they belonged to him, are still preserved in his 

 college, along with the tradition of the chambers which he occupied. 



The most active and powerful minds at Cambridge became at once 

 disciples and followers of Newton. Samuel Clarke, afterwards his 

 friend, defended in the public schools a thesis taken from his philos- 

 ophy, as early as 1694 ; and in 1697 published an edition of Renault's 

 Physics, with notes, in which Newton is frequently referred to with 

 expressions of profound respect, though the leading doctrines of the 

 Principia are not introduced till a later edition, in 1703. In 1699, 

 Bentley, whom we have already mentioned as a Newtonian, became 

 Master of Trinity College ; and in the same year, Whiston, another of 

 Newton's disciples, was appointed his deputy as professor of mathe- 

 matics. Whiston delivered the Newtonian doctrines, both from the 

 professor's chair, and in works written for the use of the University ; 

 yet it is remarkable that a taunt respecting the late introduction of 

 the Newtonian system into the Cambridge course of education, has 

 been founded on some peevish expressions which he uses in his 

 Memoirs, written at a period when, having incurred expulsion from 

 his professorship* and the University, he was naturally querulous and 

 jaundiced in his views. In 1709-10, Dr. Laughton, who was tutor in 

 Clare Hall, procured himself to be appointed moderator of the Univer- 

 sity disputations, in order to promote the diffusion of the new mathe- 

 matical doctrines. By this time the first edition of the Principia was 

 become rare, and fetched a great price. Bentley urged Newton to 

 publish a new one; and Cotes, by far the first, at that time, of the 

 mathematicians of Cambridge, undertook to superintend the printing, 

 and the edition was accordingly published in 1713. 



[2d Ed.] [I perceive that my accomplished German translator, Lit- 

 trow, has incautiously copied the insinuations of some modern writers 

 to the effect that Clarke's reference to Newton, in his Edition of 

 Renault's Physics, was a mode of introducing Newtonian doctrines 

 covertly, when it w r as not allowed him to introduce such novelties 



residence in college appears from the exit and redit book of that time, which ii 

 still preserved. 

 3 A pamphlet by Styan Thurlby. 





