NEWTON. 
men?” says the Marquis De I’Hospital, one 
of tlie greatest mathematicians of tlie age, 
to tlie English who visited him. “ I repre- 
sent him to myself as a celestial genius en- 
tirely disengaged from matter.” 
In the midst of these profound mathema- 
tical researches, just before his Principia^ 
went to the press in 1686, the privileges of 
the University being attacked by James 
the Second, Newton appeared among its 
most strenuous defenders, and was on that 
occasion appointed one of their delegates 
to the Iligh-comniission Court; and they 
made such a defence, that James thought 
proper to drop the adair. Our author was 
also chosen one of their members for the 
Convention Parliament, in 1688, in which 
he sat till it was dissolved. 
Newton’s merit was well known to Mr. 
Montague, then Chanceller of the Exche- 
quer, and afterwards Earl of Halifax, who 
had been bred at the same college with 
him; and when he undertook the great 
work of recoining the money, he fixed his 
eye upon Newton, for an assistant in it ; 
and accordingly, in 1696, he was appointed 
AEarden of the Mint, in which employment 
he rendered very signal service to the na- 
tion. And three years after he was promot- 
ed to be Master of the Mint, a place worth 
12 or 15001. per annum, which he held till 
his death. Upon this promotion he appoint- 
ed Mr. Whiston his deputy in the mathe- 
matical professdrsbip at Cambridge, giving 
him the full profits of the place, which ap- 
pointment itself he also procured for him in 
170S. The same year our author was cho- 
sen President of tlie Royal Society, in 
which chair he sat for 25 years, namely, till 
the time of his death ; and he had been 
chosen a member of the Royal Academy of 
Sciences at Paris, in 1699, as soon as the 
new regulation was made for admitting 
foreigners into that society. 
Ever since the first discovery of the hete- 
rogeneous mixture of light, and the produc- 
tion of colours thence arising, he had em- 
ployed a good part of his time in bringing 
the experiment upon which the theory is 
founded, to a degree of exactness that 
might satisfy himself. The truth is, this 
seems to have been his favourite invention ; 
thirty years he had spent in this arduous 
task, before he published it in 1704. In infi- 
nite series and fluxions, and in the power 
and rule of gravity, in preserving the solar 
system, there had been some, though dis- 
tant hints, given by others before him ; 
whereas in dissecting a ray of light into its 
primary constituent particles, which then 
admitted of no further separation, in the 
discovery of the different refrangibilities of 
these particles thus separated ; and that 
these constituent rays had each its own 
peculiar colour inherent in it ; that rays 
falling in the same angle of incidence have 
alternate fits of reflection and refraction ; 
that bodjes are rendered transparent by the 
minuteness of their pores, and become 
opaque by having them large ; and that the 
most transparent body, by having a great 
thinness, will become less pervious to the 
light ; in all these, which make up his new 
theory of light and colours, he was absolutely 
and entirely the first starter ; and as the sub- 
ject is of the most subtile and delicate nature, 
he though it necessary to be himself the last 
finisher of it. 
In fact, the affair that chiefly employed 
his researches for so many years was far 
from being confined to the subject of light 
alone. On the contrary, all that we know 
of natural bodies seemed to be compre- 
hended in it ; he had found out that there 
was a natural action, at a distance, between 
light and other bodies, by which both the 
reflections and refractions, as vvell as inflec- 
tions, of the former, were constantly pro- 
duced, To ascertain the force and extent 
of this principle of action was what had all 
along engaged his thoughts, and what, after 
all, by its extreme subtlety, escaped his 
most penetrating spirit. However, though 
he has not made so full a discovery of this 
principle, which directs the course of light, 
as he has in regard to the power by which 
the planets are kept in their courses ; yet 
he gave the best directions possible for such 
as should be disposed to carry on the work, 
and furnished matter abundantly sufficient 
to animate them to the pursuit. He has, 
indeed, hereby opened a way of passing 
from optics to an entire system of physics ; 
and, if we look upon his queries as contain- 
ing the history of a great man’s first 
thoughts, even in that view they must be 
always at least entertaining and curious. 
This same year, and in the same book 
with his Optics, he published, for the first 
time, his Method of Fluxions. It has been 
already observed, that these two inventions 
were intended for the public so long before 
as 1672 ; but were laid by then, in order to 
prevent his being engaged on that account 
in a dispute about them. And it is not a 
little remarkable that, even now, this last 
piece proved the occasion of another dis- 
pute, which continued for many years. 
