Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/475

N E W T N 445 averse, but upon his pressing consented, before I considered what I did, for I am extremely troubled at the embroilment I am in, and have neither ate nor slept well this twelvemonth, nor have my former consistency of mind. I never designed to get any thing by your interest, nor by King James s favour, but am now sensible that I must withdraw from your acquaintance, and see neither you nor the rest of my friends any more, if I may but have them quietly. I beg your pardon for saying 1 would see you again, and rest your most humble and obedient servant." And in a letter written to Locke in reply to one of his about the second edition of his book, and dated October 15, 1693, Newton wrote: "The last winter, by sleeping too often by my fire, I got an ill habit of sleeping ; and a distemper, which this summer has been epidemical, put me farther out of order, so that when I wrote to you, I had not slept an hour a night for a fortnight together, and for five days together not a wink. I remember I wrote to you, but what I said of your book I remember not. If you please to send me a transcript of that passage, I will give you an account of it if I can." These letters of Newton are sufficient evidence that he must have been for a very considerable time seriously unwell. The loss of sleep to a person of Newton s temperament, whose mind was never at rest, and at times so wholly engrossed in his scientific pursuits that he even neglected to take food, must necessarily have led to a very great deal of nervous excitability. It is not astonishing that rumours got abroad that there was a danger of his mind giving way, or, according to a report which was believed at the time, that it had actually done so. Mr Pepys must have heard such rumours, as in a letter to his friend Mr Millington, the tutor of Magdalene College at Cambridge, dated September 26, 1693, he wrote : " I must acknowledge myself not at the ease I would be glad to be at in reference to excellent Mr Newton; concerning whom (methinks) your answer labours under the same kind of restraint which (to tell you the truth) my asking did. For I was loth at first dash to tell you that I had lately received a letter from him so surprising to me for the inconsistency of every part of it, as to be put into great disorder by it, from the concernment I have for him, lest it should arise from that which of all mankind I should least dread from him and most lament for, I mean a discomposure in head, or mind, or both. Let me, therefore, beg you, Sir, having now told you the true ground of the trouble I lately gave you, to let me know the very truth of the matter, as far at least as comes within your knowledge. For I own too great an esteem for Mr Newton, as for a public good, to be able to let any doubt in me of this kind concerning him lie a moment uncleared, where I can have any hopes of helping it." On September 30, 1693, Mr Millington wrote to Mr Pepys that he had been to look for Newton some time before, but that "he was out of town, and since," he says, "I have not seen him, till upon the 28th I met him at Hunting don, where, upon his own accord, and before I had time to ask him any question, he told me that he had writt to you a very odd letter, at which he was much concerned : added, that it was in a distemper that much seized his head, and that kept him awake for above five nights together, which upon occasion he desired I would represent to you, and beg your pardon, he being very much ashamed he should be so rude to a person for whom he hath so great an honour. He is now very well, and though I fear he is under some small degree of melancholy, yet I think there is no reason to suspect it hath at all touched his understanding, and I hope never will; and so I am sure all ought to wish that love learning or the honour of our nation, which it is a sign how much it is looked after, when such a person as Mr Newton lyes so neglected by those in power. And thus, honoured Sir, I have made you acquainted with all I know of the cause of such inconsist- encys in the letter of so excellent a person; and I hope it will remove the doubts and fears you are, with so much compassion and publickness of spirit, pleased to entertain about Mr Newton, but if I should have been wanting in any thing tending to the more full satisfaction, I shall, upon the least notice, endeavour to amend it with all gratitude and truth." The illness of Newton was very much exaggerated by foreign contemporary writers. In a manuscript journal of Huygens is to be found an entry : "29 Maj. 1694. Narravit mini D. Colin Scotus virum celeber- rimum ac summum geometram Is. Neutonum in phrenesin incidisse abhinc anno et sex mensibus. An ex nimia studii assiduitate, an dolore infortunii, quod incendio laboratorium chymicum et scripta quanlam amiserat ? Cum ad Archiepiscopum Cantabrigiensem venisset, ea locutum, qure alienationem mentis indicarent. Deinde ab amicis curam ejus susceptam, domoque clauso remedia volenti nolenti adhibita, quibus jam sanitatem recuperavit ut jam rursus librum suum Principiorum Philosophise Mathemati- corum intelligere incipiat." Huygens, in a letter dated June 8, 1694, wrote to Leibnitz, "I do not know if you are acquainted with the accident which has happened to the good Mr Newton, namely, that he has had an attack of phrenitis, which lasted eighteen months, and of which they say his friends have cured him by means of remedies, and keeping him shut up." To which Leibnitz, in a letter dated June 22, replied, " I am very glad that I received information of the cure of Mr Newton at the same time that I first heard of his illness, which doubtless must have been very alarming." The active part which Newton had taken in defending the legal privileges of the university against the encroach ments of the crown had probably at least equal weight with his scientific reputation when his friends chose him as a candidate for a seat in parliament as one of the repre sentatives of the university. The other candidates were Sir Robert Sawyer and Mr Finch. Sir Robert stood at the head of the poll with 125 votes, Newton next with 122, and Mr Finch was last with 117 votes. Newton retained his seat only about a year, from January 1689 till the dis solution of the Convention Parliament in February 1690. During this time Newton does not appear to have taken part in any of the debates in the House ; but he was not neglectful of his duties as a member. On April 30, 1689, he moved for leave to bring in a Bill to settle the charters and privileges of the university of Cambridge, just as Sir Thomas Clarges did for Oxford at the same time, and he wrote a series of letters to Dr Lovel, the vice-chancellor of the university, on points which affected the interests of the university and its members. Some of the members of the university who had lately sworn allegiance to James had some difficulty in swearing allegiance to his successor. On February 12, 1689, the day of the coronation of William and Mary, Newton intimated to the vice-chancellor that he would soon receive an order to proclaim them at Cambridge. He enclosed a form of the proclamation, and expressed a hearty " wish that the university would so compose themselves as to perform the solemnity with a reasonable decorum." During his residence in London Newton had made the acquaintance of John Locke. Locke had taken a very great interest in the new theories of the Principia. He was one of a number of Newton s friends who began to be uneasy and dissatisfied at seeing the most eminent scientific man of his age left to depend upon the meagre emoluments of a college fellowship and a professorship. At one time Newton s friends had nearly succeeded in getting him appointed provost of King s College, Cambridge, but the college offered a successful resistance on the ground that the appointment would be illegal, as the statutes required that the provost should be in priest s orders. Charles Montague, who was afterwards earl of Halifax, was a fellow of Trinity College, and was a very intimate friend of Newton s ; and it was on his influence that Newton relied in the main for promotion to some post of honour and emolument. His hopes, however, were blighted by long delay. In one of his letters to Locke at the beginning of the year 1692, when Montague, Lord Monmouth, and Locke were exerting themselves to obtain some appointment for him, Newton wrote that he was " fully convinced that Mr Montague, upon an old grudge which he thought had been worn out, was false to him." Newton was now in his fifty-fifth year, and whilst those of his own standing at the university had been appointed