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.”
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. Pepys must have heard such rumours, as in a letter to his friend Millington, the tutor of Magdalene College at Cambridge, dated the 26th of September 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.”
On the 30th of September 1693 Millington wrote to 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 Huntingdon, 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.”
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 mihi D. Colm Scotus virum celeberrimum 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 quaedam amiserat? Cum ad Archiepiscopum Cantabrigiensem venisset, ea locutum, quae 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 Philosophiae Mathematicorum intelligere incipiat.”
Huygens, in a letter dated the 8th of June 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 the 22nd of June, 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 encroachments 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 representatives 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 dissolution 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 the 30th of April 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 the 12th of February 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; 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 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 to high posts in church or state, he still remained without any mark of national gratitude. But this blot upon the English name was at last removed by Montague in 1694, when he was appointed chancellor of the exchequer. He had previously consulted Newton upon the subject of the recoinage, and on the opportunity occurring he appointed Newton to the post of warden of the mint. In a letter to Newton announcing the news, Montague writes:
“I am very glad that at last I can give you a good proof of my friendship, and the esteem the king has of your merits. Mr Overton, the warden of the mint, is made one of the Commissioners of Customs, and the king has promised me to make Mr Newton warden of the mint. The office is the most proper for you. ’Tis the chief office in the mint: ’tis worth five or six hundred pounds per annum, and has not too much business to require more attendance than you can spare.”
This letter must have convinced Newton of the sincerity of Montague’s good intentions towards him; we find them living as friends on the most intimate terms until Halifax’s death in 1715.
Newton’s chemical and mathematical knowledge proved of great use in carrying out the recoinage. This was completed in about two years. In 1697 Newton was appointed to the mastership of the mint, a post worth between £1200 and £1500 per annum. While he held this office, Newton drew up a very extensive table of assays of foreign coins, and composed an official report on the coinage.
Up to the time of the publication of the Principia in 1687 the method of fluxions which had been invented by Newton, and had been of great assistance to him in his mathematical investigations, was still, except to Newton and his friends, a secret. One of the most important rules of the method forms the second lemma of the second book of the Principia. Though this new and powerful method was of great help to Newton in his work, he did not exhibit it in the results. He was aware that the well-known geometrical methods of the ancients would clothe his new
