Arte y Vocabulario de la lengua, Uamada quichua. En la Ciudad de los Reyes, 1586, 8vo.
CONDUITT AND NEWTON
In the prospectus of a new Life of sir Isaac Newton, by sir David Brewster, it is stated that in examining the papers at Hurstbourne Park, the seat of the earl of Portsmouth, the discovery had been maple of "copious materials which Mr. Conduit had collected for a life of Newton, which had never been supposed to exist."
About the year 1836 I consulted the principal biographers of Newton—Conduitt, Fontenelle, Birch, Philip Nichols, Thomas Thomson, Biot,
Brewster—and I have ever since believed that such materials did exist.
We are assured by Mr. Edmund Turnor, in the preface to his History of Grantham, printed in 1806, which work is quoted in the prospectus, that the manuscripts at Hurstbourne Park then chiefly consisted of some pocket-books and memorandums of sir Isaac Newton, and "the information obtained by Mr. Conduitt for the purpose of writing his life." Moreover, the collections of Mr. Conduitt are repeatedly quoted in that work as distinct from the memoirs which were sent to M. de Fontenelle.
I shall give another anecdote in refutation of the statement made in the prospectus, albeit a superfluity. In 1730 the author of The Seasons republished his Poem to the memory of sir Isaac Newton, with the addition of the lines which follow, and which prove that he was aware of the task on which Mr. Conduitt was then occupied. The lines, it should be observed, have been omitted in all the editions printed since 1738.
"This, Conduitt, from thy rural hours we hope;
As through the pleasing shade, where nature pours