458 MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE, WBITIKGS AND 



Not so can we dismiss Professor de Morgan, a profound mathemati- 

 cian and painful investigator, but withal afflicted so with an itch of 

 impartiality as to make him most partial against the side to which he 

 might be expected to lean. Certain insinuations against Newton's 

 fairness or truthfulness in the Leibnitzian controversy he has found 

 it necessary to withdraw, and we think it probable that after he has 

 written, more suo, half a dozen treatises on the matter, he will find 

 that, after all, the English and foreign disputants on Newton's side 

 are not so thoroughly and utterly disingenuous as he now believes. 

 Touching this celebrated controversy we may observe, that Newton's 

 claim to the original and first invention of the flnxional calculus, (or 

 the Differential, which is the same,) is undoubted ; while Leibnitz's 

 claim to the invention at all, is, at the best, doubtful, since he may have 

 had (indeed had many opportunities of getting) the idea from Newton, 

 and the contrary statement rests only on his own assertion, which no 

 one who has read his character would value a straw. The lately dis- 

 covered exercises on which de Morgan lays so much stress, seem to us 

 rather the attempts of one who is trying to make out a borrowed 

 idea than the track of original thought. No blame, however, can 

 attach to Professor de Morgan for his opinions on this score, but we 

 take leave to think that his revival of Voltaire's forgotten and ground- 

 less scandal about Newton's niece and the Earl of Halifax is simply 

 disgraceful. More serious are the charges brought against Newton 

 by Mr. Badly, in his life of Flamstead : for a complete refutation of 

 them we are indebted to Sir David Brewster, in the work which 

 stands at the head of this article, and we presume nothing more will 

 ever be heard of them. In that saddest period of English History, 

 when only not all men were base, it is an inexpressible relief to turn 

 to the lives of men like Locke, Wren, Halley and Newton, shining 

 mirrors which not the breath of all the rattlesnakes in Virginia can 

 dim. 



The work above cited, by Sir David Brewster, is professedly an ac- 

 count of the life, writings and discoveries of Newton. In some res- 

 pects Newton is happy in his Biographer, for Sir David is the " prince 

 of experimenters/' and moreover wields a caustic and vigorous pen, and 

 has an enthusiastic love for the great master ; but in other respects, 

 we are sorry to say, his performance has deeply disappointed us. In 

 the perfect philosopher there are three distinct characters united: 

 first, the experimenter who has to provide the raw material ; next, 

 the natural philosopher, who classifies phenomena and deduces the 

 laws or principles which govern them ; and last, the analyst, who has 

 to work out results from such laws, and to invent the machinery for 



