Newton ... declared, with all his grand discoveries recent,
That he himself felt only “like a youth
Picking up shells by the great ocean, truth.”
Byron, Don Juan, vii. 5 (1824).
Newton discovered the prismatic colors of light, and explained the phenomenon by the emission theory.
Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night.
God said, “Let Newton be,” and all was light.
Pope, Epitaph, intended for Newton’s Monument in Westminster Abbey (1727).
Newton is called by Campbell “The Priest of Nature.”—Pleasures of Hope, i. (1799).
Newton and the Apple. It is said that Newton was standing in the garden of Mrs. Conduitt, of Woolsthorpe, in the year 1665, when an apple fell from a tree and set him thinking. From this incident he ultimately developed his theory of gravitation.
Nibelung, a mythical king of Nibelungeland (Norway). He had twelve paladins, all giants. Siegfried [Sege.freed], prince of the Netherlands, slew the giants, and made Nibelungeland tributary.—Nibelungen Lied, iii. (1210).
Nibelungen Hoard, a mythical mass of gold and precious stones which Siegfried [Sege.freed], prince of the Netherlands, took from Nibelungeland and gave to his wife as a dowry. The hoard filled thirty-six wagons. After the murder of Siegfried, Hagan seized the hoard, and, for concealment, sank it in the “Rhine at Lockham,” intending to recover it at a future period, but Hagan was assassinated, and the hoard was lost for ever.—Nibelungen Lied, xix.
Nibelungen Lied [Ne.by-lung.’nleed], the German Iliad (1210). It is divided into two parts, and thirty-two lieds or cantos. The first part ends with the death of Siegfried, and the second part with the death of Kriemhild.
Siegfried, the youngest of the kings of the Netherlands, went to Worms, to crave the hand of Kriemhild in marriage. While he was staying with Günther, king of Burgundy (the lady’s brother), he assisted him to obtain in marriage Brunhild, queen of Issland, who announced publicly that he only should be her husband who could beat her in hurling a spear, throwing a huge stone, and in leaping. Siegfried, who possessed a cloak of invisibility, aided Günther in these three contests, and Brunhild became his wife. In return for these services, Günther gave Siegfried his sister Kriemhild, in marriage. After a time, the bride and bridegroom went to visit Günther, when the two ladies disputed about the relative merits of their respective husbands, and Kriemhild, to exalt Siegfried, boasted that Günther owed to him his victories and his wife. Brunhild, in great anger, now employed Hagan to murder Siegfried, and this he did by stabbing him in the back while he was drinking from a brook.