I70 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. pt. hi; 



attacked him with a number of foolish and ignorant ob- 

 jections, till at last he told his friend Huyghens that he was 

 almost sorry he had ever made them public. 



After his great work, the * Principia,' had been published 

 in 1687, he next turned his attention to chemistiy, but un- 

 fortunately all the results of his labour in this science were 

 destroyed by an accident. One day when he was in chapel, 

 his pet dog Diamond turned over a lighted taper, which set 

 fire to all the papers on which his work was written. When 

 he returned and found the charred heap it is said that he 

 merely exclaimed, * Oh Diamond, Diamond ! thou little 

 thinkest the mischief thou hast done ! ' but his grief at the 

 loss of his work affected his brain, and though he re- 

 covered and lived another forty years, publishing many 

 editions of his works, yet he never made any more great 

 discoveries. 



Newton received many honours in his old age : in 1699 

 he was elected Master of the Mint, and a member of the 

 French Royal Academy of Sciences ; in 1703 he was made 

 President of the Royal Society, and in 1705 he was knighted 

 by Queen Anne. Like all truly great men, he was modest 

 as to his own abilities, and always willing to be taught by 

 others. He felt so strongly how much we have still to 

 learn about the Universe, that he considered his own dis- 

 coveries as very trifling indeed. A short time before his 

 death he said of himself, * I know not what the world may 

 think of my labours ; but to myself I seem to have been only 

 like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in 

 now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell 

 than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all un- 

 discovered before me.' Yet this man who spoke so humbly 

 was the discoverer of the greatest and most universal law 



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