86 DISSERTATION SECOND. - PAR r n. 



referred to were contrived and executed, — experiments of 

 so difficult a nature, that any error in the manipulation 

 would easily defeat the effect,, and appears actually to 

 have done so with many of those who objected to his 

 experiments. 1 



He succeeded perfectly in the construction of his teles- 

 scope, and his first communication with Oldenburg, and 

 the first reference to his optical experiments, is connect- 

 ed with the construction of this instrument, and mention- 

 ed in a letter dated the 11th January 1672. He had 

 then been proposed as a member of the Royal Society 



1 The Memoir of Conduit was sent to Fontenelle when he 

 was preparing the Eloge on Newton, but he seems to have 

 paid little attention to it, and has passed over the early part 

 of ! »is life with the remark, that one may apply to him what 

 Lucan says of the Nile, that it has not been " permitted to 

 mortals to see that river in a feeble state." If the letters 

 above referred to had formed a part of this communication, 

 I think the Secretary of the Academy would have sacrificed 

 a fine comparison to an instructive fact. In other respects 

 Conduit's Memoir did not convey much information that could 

 be of use. His instructions to Fontenelle are curious enough ; 

 he Dids him be sure to state, that Leibnitz had borrowed the 

 Differential Calculus from the Method of Fluxions. He con- 

 jured him in another place not to omit to mention, that Queen 

 Caroline used to delight much in the conversation of New- 

 ton, and nothing could do more honour to Newton than the 

 commendation of a Queen, the Minerva of her age. Fonte- 

 nelle was too much a philosopher, and a man of the world 

 (and had himself approached too near to the persons of 

 princes), to be of Mr. Conduit's opinion, or to think that the 

 approbation of the most illustrious princess could add dignity 

 to the man, who had made the three greatest discoveries yet 

 known, and in whose hands the sciences of Geometry, Optics, 

 and Astronomy, had all taken new forms. If he had been 

 called to write the Eloge of the Queen of England, he would, 

 no doubt, have remarked her relish for the conversation of 

 Newton. 



On the whole, the Efoge on Newton has great merit, and, 

 1o be the work of one who was at bottom a Cartesian, i? a 

 singular example of candour and impartiality. 



