[49] Whiston’s Memoirs of his own Life.
[50] “Dr. Reid states, that James Gregory, Professor of Philosophy at St. Andrew’s, printed a thesis at Edinburgh in 1690, containing twenty-five positions, of which twenty-two were a compend of Newton’s Principia.”
[51] Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 322. Cotes states in his preface to the second edition of the Principia, that copies of the first edition could only be obtained at an immense price.
[52] Preface to Desaguliers’s Experimental Philosophy. Dr. Desaguliers states that he was told this anecdote several times by Sir Isaac Newton himself.
[53] The Life of John Locke, p. 209–215, Lond. 1829.
[54] Principia, lib. i. prop. i.
[55] Ib. lib. i. prop. xi.
[56] “On peut regarder Fermat,” says Lagrange, “comme le premier inventeur des nouveaux calculs;” and Laplace observes, “Il paraitque Fermat le veritable inventeur du calcul differentiel, l’ait envisagé comme un cas particulier de celui des differences,” &c.
[57] Art. Mathematics, in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, volume xiii. p. 365.
[58] These facts are mentioned in Newton’s letter to Oldenburgh, October 24, 1676.