NOTES TO BOOK VII. oOI 



the novelty of Newton's discoveries, but on the contrary, 

 admiration is claimed for them as new. 



The promptitude with which the Mathematicians of 

 the University of Cambridge adopted the best parts of the 

 mechanical philosophy of Descartes, and the greater phi- 

 losophy of Newton, in the seventeenth century, has been 

 paralleled in our own times, in the promptitude with 

 which they have adopted and followed into their conse- 

 quences the Mathematical Theory of Heat of Fourier and 

 Laplace, and the Undulatory Theory of Light of Young 

 and Fresnel. 



In Newton's College, we possess, besides the memorials 

 of him mentioned in the text, (which include two locks of 

 his silver- white hair) a paper in his own hand- writing, 

 describing the preparatory reading which was necessary in 

 order that our College students might be able to read the 

 Principia. I have printed this paper in the Preface to 

 my Edition of the First Three Sections of the Principia 

 in the original Latin (1846). 



Bentley, who had expressed his admiration for New- 

 ton in his Boyle's Lectures in 1 692, was made Master of 

 the College in 1699, as I have stated ; and partly, no 

 doubt, in consequence of the Newtonian sermons which he 

 had preached. In his administration of the College, he 

 zealously stimulated and assisted the exertions of Cotes, 

 Whiston, and other disciples of Newton. Smith, Bent- 

 ley's successor as Master of the College, erected a statue 

 of Newton in the College Chapel (a noble work of 

 Roubiliac), with the inscription, Qui genus hutnanum in- 

 genio superamt. 



If it fell in with my plan to notice derivative works, 

 I might speak of Maclaurin's admirable Account of Sir 



