3 
Newton in the plenitude of his intellectual power, of whom 
Halley sang in 1687 : — 
Newtonum clausi reserantem scrinia veri, 
Newtonum Musis charum, cui pectore puro 
Phoebus adest, totoque incessit numine mentem, 
Nec fas est propius mortali attingere divos. 
Nor was it the portrait of him as he was when he published 
the second edition of his Principia , but a representation of 
him as a grand and venerable ruin covered with the lichens 
of time. 
But this picture of V anderbank’s, the writer greatly pre- 
ferred to the Houbraken and other prints published about 
1710 or 1712; and he contended that the portrait published, 
as the best extant one, by Sir David Brewster, as a frontis- 
piece to his larger Life of Newton, by no means gives a 
desirable representation of Newton the philosopher. It was 
rather an affected representation of Newton the dandy, and 
of Newton the prosperous man of the world, with a carriage 
and horses, and with three male and three female servants. 
The writer looked upon these prints with pity ; and could 
not, for one moment, allow that any one of them represented 
that Isaac Newton, the yeoman’s son, while at work in 
the wells of truth, and wresting from nature secrets hidden 
from the foundation of the world. In order to form some idea 
of the immortal Newton, as distinguished from Queen Anne’s 
Newton, he asked us to consider attentively the letter written 
by Newton’s former assistant, Humphrey Newton, to Mr. 
Conduit, in 1727, descriptive of Isaac’s manner of life and 
appearance between 1684 and the beginning of 1689. 
“ In the last year of King Charles II., Sir Isaac was 
pleased, through the mediation of Mr. Walker, then school- 
master at Grantham, to send for me up to Cambridge, of 
whom I had the opportunity, as well as honour, to wait of 
for about five years. In such time he wrote his Principia 
Mathematica, which stupendous work, by his order, I copied 
