SIR ISAAC NEWTON. 259 



knowledge the world could benefit; and no sooner had it 1857. 

 become his own than he felt as much bound to give it to 

 whomsoever could receive it, as he did to repay to the 

 uttermost farthing, and with interest, a debt that he 

 believed himself to have incurred. 



Newton went to Cambridge as a sizar ( a student Newton a 

 whose poverty compels him to seek to maintain himself in graduate" 

 whole or in part by the performance of some duties which 

 were originally of a menial character. By this means a 

 youth could live by the work of his hands while he pursued 

 his studies. In our days there is little distinction between 

 the sizars and those above them ; except in college 

 charges, none at all. Those who look upon Universities 

 as institutions for gentlemen only that is, for persons who 

 can pay their way according to a certain conventional 

 standard praise the liberality with which poorer gentle- 

 men than others have gradually been emancipated from 

 what seems to them a mere badge of poverty. But those 

 who know the old constitution of the Universities see 

 nothing in it except the loss to the labouring man and the 

 destitute man of his inheritance in those splendid founda- 

 tions. If sizarships with paid personal services had not 

 existed, Newton could not have gone to Cambridge, and 

 the Principia might never have been written. Let it be 

 remembered, then, that so far as we owe this immortal 

 work and its immortal work to the University of Cam- 

 bridge, we owe it to the institution which no longer exists, 

 by which education and advancement were as much open 

 to honest poverty seeking a maintenance by labour as to 

 wealth and rank. Let the juries, who find on their oaths 

 that scores of pounds 9 worth of cigars are reasonable neces- 

 saries for young students, think of this, if they can 

 think. 9 ! 



Proofs of all the writer's assertions on the jealousy 

 and even vanity of the man whose intellectual work he 



1 Note to Memoir of Newton. The italics are mine. 

 s 2 



