OLD AGE 273 



accessible places, and at home we lived too close to 

 render writing necessary, except for dinner invitations. 

 In these his old country-house habits came out, and he 

 would often say, " There is a good moon now, will you 

 give me the pleasure of your company (I think it was 

 always ' the pleasure of your company ') on Sunday 

 next." 



With the advance of years Newton's infirmities 

 evidently became a greater trial to him, but he bore 

 them bravely and seldom spoke of them. One by one 

 his own people had passed away before him and he 

 grieved over their going. "I am the last of my 

 generation," he would pathetically and curiously often 

 say. Then it became evident to him that his own days 

 were numbered. The call came lingeringly, and he 

 fought the enemy inch by inch. Near the end he 

 rebelled against dying in his bed and directed that he 

 should be placed in his arm-chair. " Here will I meet 

 my fate," he said, in quaintly stilted phrase ; and in 

 his chair he died. 



In the light (or, should I not say, the darkness) of 

 these post-bellum days, Newton must be accounted an 

 extinct type, as extinct as the Great Auk and Dodo of 

 which he loved so much to write. Such strength of 

 individuality I cannot recall in any other person I have 

 known. It can safely be said that, having carefully 

 envisaged his question and decided it, no human power 

 could make him alter his mind. Yet one almost 

 hesitates to say it, lest a wrong impression should be 

 conveyed, for he was one of the most lovable of men, 

 and inspired an unusual degree of personal affection in 

 the many young men who frequented his rooms. The 

 influence he exercised upon them was remarkable, not 

 only upon the ornithologists, but upon men like Adam 

 Sedgwick, Bateson, Frank Darwin, Lydekker, and a 

 host of others in different fields. It would, I think, 

 be correct to describe him as the founder of the 

 modern Cambridge scientific school, developing the 

 good seed sown by Henslow, who was to a former 



T > 



