44 MR ISAAC NEWTON. 



he was elected President of the Koyal Society, 

 and was annually reflected during the remaining 

 twenty-five years of his life. On April 16. 1705, 

 when he was sixty-three, Queen Anne conferred 

 the honor of knighthood upon her most illustrious 

 subject, Sir Isaac Newton, before a distinguished 

 company at Cambridge University. In 1704, the 

 year previous, his great work on optics had been 

 published, written over twenty years before. 



About this time, it seems that the great philoso- 

 pher would have liked to marry Lady Norris, the 

 widow of Sir William Norris, Baronet of Speke, 

 and Member of Parliament. Sent to Delhi as 

 ambassador to the Great Mogul, he died in 1702, 

 between Mauritius and St. Helena, on his home- 

 ward passage. He was the third husband to 

 Lady Norris, and Sir Isaac, now over sixty, de- 

 sired to be the fourth, as appears from the follow- 

 ing letter : 



" Madam, Your ladyship's great grief at the 

 loss of Sir William shows that if he had returned 

 safe home, your ladyship could have been glad to 

 have lived still with a husband, and therefore your 

 aversion at present from marrying again can pro- 

 ceed from nothing else than the memory of him 

 whom you have lost. To be always thinking on 

 the dead, is to live a melancholy life among sepul- 

 chres, and how much grief is an enemy to your 

 health, is very manifest by the sickness it brought 

 when you received the first news of your widow- 



