Sarah Bolton - Famous Men of Science

The "Principia" created the greatest interest throughout Europe, but met with violent opposition. While Laplace said it would take "pre-eminence above all the other productions of human genius," the majority could not believe that great planets were suspended in empty space, and retained in their orbits by an invisible power in the sun.

When Newton presented copies to the heads of colleges, some of them, Dr. Babington of Trinity among the number, said, "they might study seven years before they understood anything of it."

In 1687, Newton's method of fluxions was first published, twenty years after its invention, and then because the friends of Leibnitz, the author of the "Differential Calculus," claimed priority of discovery. The quarrel aroused the scientific world, embittered the silent mathematician, and impaired his health.

In 1689, when he was forty-seven, he was chosen member of parliament, and represented Cambridge University in the House of Commons for thirteen months. He took no active part in the debates, but was of course respected for his wonderful mind.

This same year, his beloved mother died. Anxiously he had watched through whole nights by her bedside, seeking in all ways to keep her from leaving him alone in the world.

He was now nearly fifty. His life had been laborious, with an insufficient income. His friends, John Locke among the number, tried to obtain various positions for him, but failed. They recommended him for provost of King's College, but the position could not be obtained because he had not taken priest's orders.

Seemingly unappreciated, worn with his incessant brain work, his appetite failing, and unable to sleep, with neither mother nor wife to comfort him, the sensitive organization of the great man became overstrained, and mind and body were unfitted for work. It is stated that his ill health was in part consequent upon the burning of some manuscripts on optics, by a lighted candle on the table among his papers.

When he was fifty-three, the long hard road of poverty turned into a highway of plenty, through the influence of a friend. Charles Montague, an associate of Newton at the university and also in parliament, though nineteen years his junior, – intellectual affinities are uninfluenced by age, – had been made Commissioner of the Treasury, then Privy Councillor, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and later still, Baron of Halifax.

Lord Halifax appointed Newton to be Warden of the Mint, and then Master, with an income of between six thousand and seven thousand five hundred dollars annually, which position he held for the remainder of his life. His home in London, where he kept six servants, with his brilliant niece, Miss Catherine Barton, for his companion, became a place of rest and comfort to the tired philosopher. Lord Halifax was a great admirer of Newton's niece, Miss Catherine Barton, to whom he left, at his death, a beautiful home and twenty-five thousand dollars, "as a token of the sincere love, affection, and esteem I have long had for her person, and as a small recompense for the pleasure and happiness I have had in her conversation."

The days of privation were over, and Newton had earned this rest and prosperity. Great people often came to dine with him. At one of his dinners, Newton proposed to drink, not to the health of kings and princes, but to all honest persons, to whatever country they belonged. "We are all friends," he added, "because we unanimously aim at the only object worthy of man, which is the knowledge of truth. We are also of the same religion, because, leading a simple life, we conform ourselves to what is right, and we endeavor sincerely to give to the Supreme Being that worship which, according to our feeble lights, we are persuaded will please him most."

Other honors now come to Newton. In 1703, he was elected President of the Royal Society, and was annually reëlected during the remaining twenty-five years of his life. On April 16, 1705, when he was sixty-three, Queen Anne conferred the honor of knighthood upon her most illustrious subject, Sir Isaac Newton, before a distinguished company at Cambridge University. In 1704, the year previous, his great work on optics had been published, written over twenty years before.

About this time, it seems that the great philosopher would have liked to marry Lady Norris, the widow of Sir William Norris, Baronet of Speke, and Member of Parliament. Sent to Delhi as ambassador to the Great Mogul, he died in 1702, between Mauritius and St. Helena, on his homeward passage. He was the third husband to Lady Norris, and Sir Isaac, now over sixty, desired to be the fourth, as appears from the following letter: —

"Madam, – Your ladyship's great grief at the loss of Sir William shows that if he had returned safe home, your ladyship could have been glad to have lived still with a husband, and therefore your aversion at present from marrying again can proceed from nothing else than the memory of him whom you have lost. To be always thinking on the dead, is to live a melancholy life among sepulchres, and how much grief is an enemy to your health, is very manifest by the sickness it brought when you received the first news of your widowhood. And can your ladyship resolve to spend the rest of your days in grief and sickness?

"Can you resolve to wear a widow's habit perpetually, – a habit which is less acceptable to company, a habit which will be always putting you in mind of your lost husband, and thereby promote you grief and indisposition till you leave it off? The proper remedy for all these mischiefs is a new husband, and whether your ladyship should admit of a proper remedy for such maladies, is a question which I hope will not need much time to consider of.

"Whether your ladyship should go constantly in the melancholy dress of a widow, or flourish once more among the ladies; whether you should spend the rest of your days cheerfully or in sadness, in health or in sickness, are questions which need not much consideration to decide them. Besides that your ladyship will be better able to live according to your quality by the assistance of a husband than upon your own estate alone; and, therefore, since your ladyship likes the person proposed, I doubt not but in a little time to have notice of your ladyship's inclinations to marry, at least, that you will give him leave to discourse with you about it.

"I am, madam, your ladyship's most humble and most obedient servant."

If Lady Norris "liked the person proposed," as Sir Isaac imagined, a marriage was not the result. It is just possible that he was like Leibnitz, who proposed to a lady when he was fifty. The lady asked for time to take the matter into consideration, and as Leibnitz thus obtained leisure to consider the matter again, he was never married.

For thirteen years Sir Isaac lived on Jermyn Street, London; then moved to Chelsea, a place dear to those who love George Eliot or admire Carlyle; and then to Martin Street, near Leicester Fields.

In his latter years he wrote much on theological subjects, especially to prove the existence of a Deity. When he was eighty-three he published a third edition of the "Principia." At eighty-five he read manuscript without spectacles. He reasoned as acutely as ever, his memory alone failing.

On March 2, 1727, he presided at a meeting of the Royal Society. He was taken ill on the following day, and, although a great sufferer for several days, never uttered a complaint. He died on Monday, March 20, and his body was laid in the Jerusalem Chamber, and thence conveyed to Westminster Abbey for burial. The pall was supported by the Lord High Chancellor and several Dukes and Earls.

On the front of his monument are sculptured youths, bearing in their hands emblematic designs of Newton's principal discoveries. One carries a prism, another a reflecting telescope, a third is weighing the sun and planets with a steelyard, a fourth is employed about a furnace, and two others are loaded with money newly coined. The monument bears this inscription.