454 HEMOTES OF THE LIFE, WEITENGS AND 



the Lueasian Chair, but do not seem to have previously made their 

 "way to the knowledge of the public. These discoveries, now univer- 

 sally accepted, met with attacks from various quarters to which 

 Newton replied with much patience and good temper, but which 

 seem to have aggravated his almost morbid sensitiveness and led him 

 more thau ever to shrink from publishing to the world under his own 

 name, so that for many years we find him only writing anonymously, 

 or under cover of correspondence with his friends ; yet through this 

 means it now began to be current among the London Philosophers 

 that Mr. Newton of Cambridge, a fine geometer, and who had pub- 

 lished an ingenious treatise on Optics, was in possession of some 

 unknown and powerful method by which he had solved the problem 

 of 'curvilinear motion' that had been baffling them all ; which coming 

 to the ears of Edmund Halley, who had himself broken his teeth over 

 this hard nut, and suspected that Wren and Hooke were in like 

 case, off he goes to Cambridge to consult Mr. Newton, and asking 

 him the question point-blank, receives an answer which takes away 

 his breath, "Why," says Newton simply, "I have calculated it," 

 and Halley finds that he has done this and a great deal more, and 

 urges his friend to lay these results before the Society, exacting after 

 some trouble a promise to this effect. Accordingly Newton sets to 

 work at this task, and on April 2Sth, 1686, the first instalment o* 

 his treatise is read before the Society, and thanks being returned to 

 the author, his work is referred to Halley to report on, touching the 

 printing, and at a subsequent meeting it is ordered to be printed 

 forthwith, and, of course, at the Society's expense ; but whether from 

 the want of funds, or informality causing delay, Halley is driven to 

 undertake the editing and printing at his own expense — all honor be 

 to his name ! At length about midsummer of 1687, the \ ork comes 

 out under the modest title of " Philosophise Naturalis Principia 

 Mathematica." To attempt any analysis of this work, or even to con- 

 vey the faintest notion of the grandeur of the discoveries, both phys- 

 ical and analytical, contained in it, would be quite futile within the 

 limits of a review ; in the words of Laplace, it is " pre-eminently 

 above all the other productions of human genius ;" the lapse of time 

 has only increased the reverence with which succeeding generations 

 regard it, and it stands imperishably the greatest memorial of god- 

 like intellect that has ever been reared on this earth. From the date 

 of this publication Newton's fame rose rapidly; in four years not 

 a copy of the work was to be had ; it took time before the age assim- 

 ilated the new philosophy, but the progress was certain, and before 

 his death Newton had the pleasure of seeing his doctrines trium- 



