"Whether your ladyship should go constantly in the melancholy dress of a widow, or flourish once more among the ladies; whether you should spend the rest of your days cheerfully or in sadness, in health or in sickness, are questions which need not much consideration to decide them. Besides that your ladyship will be better able to live according to your quality by the assistance of a husband than upon your own estate alone; and, therefore, since your ladyship likes the person proposed, I doubt not but in a little time to have notice of your ladyship's inclinations to marry, at least, that you will give him leave to discourse with you about it.
"I am, madam, your ladyship's most humble and most obedient servant."
If Lady Norris "liked the person proposed," as Sir Isaac imagined, a marriage was not the result. It is just possible that he was like Leibnitz, who proposed to a lady when he was fifty. The lady asked for time to take the matter into consideration, and as Leibnitz thus obtained leisure to consider the matter again, he was never married.
For thirteen years Sir Isaac lived on Jermyn Street, London; then moved to Chelsea, a place dear to those who love George Eliot or admire Carlyle; and then to Martin Street, near Leicester Fields.
In his latter years he wrote much on theological subjects, especially to prove the existence of a Deity. When he was eighty-three he published a third edition of the "Principia." At eighty-five he read manuscript without spectacles. He reasoned as acutely as ever, his memory alone failing.
On March 2, 1727, he presided at a meeting of the Royal Society. He was taken ill on the following day, and, although a great sufferer for several days, never uttered a complaint. He died on Monday, March 20, and his body was laid in the Jerusalem Chamber, and thence conveyed to Westminster Abbey for burial. The pall was supported by the Lord High Chancellor and several Dukes and Earls.
On the front of his monument are sculptured youths, bearing in their hands emblematic designs of Newton's principal discoveries. One carries a prism, another a reflecting telescope, a third is weighing the sun and planets with a steelyard, a fourth is employed about a furnace, and two others are loaded with money newly coined. The monument bears this inscription.
Here Lies
SIR ISAAC NEWTON, KNIGHT,
Who by a vigor of mind, almost supernatural,
First demonstrated
The motions and figures of the Planets,
The Paths of the Comets, and the
Tides of the Ocean.
He diligently investigated
The different refrangibilities of the Rays of Light,
And the properties of the Colors to which
they give rise.
An Assiduous, Sagacious, and Faithful Interpreter
of Nature, Antiquity, and the Holy Scriptures,
He asserted in his Philosophy the Majesty of
God, and exhibited in his Conduct the
simplicity of the Gospel.
Let Mortals rejoice that there has existed
such and so great
An ornament of the human race.
Born 25 Dec., 1642; Died 20 March, 1727.
A beautiful full-length, white marble statue of Sir Isaac was erected in the ante-chapel of Trinity College, where he had done his wonderful work, when scarcely more than a boy.