42 SIB ISAAC NEWTON. 



months. He took no active part in the debates, 

 but was of course respected for his wonderful mind. 



This same year, his beloved mother died. Anx- 

 iously he had watched through whole nights by 

 her bedside, seeking in all ways to keep her from 

 leaving him alone in the world. 



He was now nearly fifty. His life had been 

 laborious, with an insufficient income. His friends, 

 John Locke among the number, tried to obtain 

 various positions for him, but failed. They rec- 

 ommended him for provost of King's College, but 

 the position could not be obtained because he had 

 not taken priest's orders. 



Seemingly unappreciated, worn with his inces- 

 sant brain work, his appetite failing, and unable to 

 sleep, with neither mother nor wife to comfort 

 him, the sensitive organization of the great man 

 became overstrained, and mind and body were 

 unfitted for work. It is stated that his ill health 

 was in part consequent upon the burning of some 

 manuscripts on optics, by a lighted candle on the 

 table among his papers. 



When he was .fifty-three, the long hard road of 

 poverty turned into a highway of plenty, through 

 the influence of a friend. Charles Montague, an 

 associate of Newton at the university and also in 

 parliament, though nineteen years his junior, 

 intellectual affinities are uninfluenced by age, 

 had been made Commissioner of the Treasury, 

 then Privy Councillor, then Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer, and later still, Baron of Halifax. 



