194 HISTORY OF PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 



impressions prevalent about him in his own time, 

 the expressions of Thomson, in the Poem on his 

 Death 27 . 



Say ye who best can tell, ye happy few, 

 Who saw him in the softest lights of life, 

 All unwithheld, indulging to his friends 

 The vast unborrowed treasures of his mind, 

 Oh, speak the wondrous man ! how mild, how calm, 

 How greatly humble, how divinely good, 

 How firm established on eternal truth ! 

 Fervent in doing well, with every nerve 

 Still pressing on, forgetful of the past, 

 And panting for perfection ; far above 

 Those little cares and visionary joys 

 That so perplex the fond impassioned heart 

 Of ever-cheated, ever-trusting man. 



27 In the same strain we find the general voice of the time. 

 For instance, one of Loggan's "Views of Cambridge" is dedi- 

 cated "Isaaco Newtono . . Mathematico, Physico, Chymico 

 consummatissimo ; nee minus suavitate morum et candore 

 animi . . . spectabili." 



In opposition to the general current of such testimony, we 

 have the complaints of Flamsteed, who ascribes to Newton 

 angry language and harsh conduct in the matter of the publica- 

 tion of the Greenwich Observations, and of Whiston. Yet even 

 Flamsteed speaks well of his general disposition. Whiston was 

 himself so weak and prejudiced that his testimony is worth very 

 little. 



