FOOTNOTES
[1] The Marquis La Place.—See Systême du Monde, p. 336.
[2] Sir Isaac Newton told Mr. Conduit, that he had often heard his mother say that when he was born he was so little that they might have put him into a quart mug.
[3] In Leicestershire, and about three miles south-east of Woolsthorpe.
[4] “I remember once,” says Dr. Stukely, “when I was deputy to Dr. Hailey, secretary at the Royal Society, Sir Isaac talked of these kind of instruments. That he observed the chief inconvenience in them was, that the hole through which the water is transmitted being necessarily very small, was subject to be furred up by impurities in the water, as those made with sand will wear bigger, which at length causes an inequality in time.”—Stukely’s Letter to Dr. Mead.—Turnor’s Collections, p. 177.
[5] Mr. Clark informed Dr. Stukely that the walls of the room in which Sir Isaac lodged were covered with charcoal drawings of birds, beasts, men, ships, and mathematical figures, all of which were very well designed.
[6] “One of his uncles,” says M. Biot, “having one day found him under a hedge with a book in his hand and entirely absorbed in meditation, took it from him, and found that he was occupied in the solution of a mathematical problem. Struck with finding so serious and so active a disposition at so early an age, he urged his mother no longer to thwart him, and to send him back to Grantham to continue his studies.” I have omitted this anecdote in the text, as I cannot find it in Turner’s Collections, from which M. Biot derived his details of Newton’s infancy, nor in any other work.
[7] Pemberton’s View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy. Pref.
[8] Peregregiæ vir indolis ac insignis peritiæ.—Epist ad. Lect.
[9] See Newton’s Letter to the Abbé Conti, dated February 26, 1715–16, in the Additamenta Comm. Epistolici.