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    578 THE LEADER. ¦ . ^[Saturday, I

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    — THE BOYHOOD OF SIR ISAAC NEWTOK Memoir...

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    ' % MENANDER AND THE GREEK COMEDY. | Mdh...

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    ! Memoirs Op Sydney Smith _ . A Memoir O...

    himself . It would be a case , not of bigamy , but trigamy ; the neighbourhood ? or ttte magistrates should interfere . There is enough of her to furnish _wi-wes _* fcrara wimBs parish . One man marry her ! it is monstrous . You might people a colony with her ; or g ive an assembly with her ; or perhaps take your morning ' s walk round her , always _jyrovided there were frequent resting-places , you were in rude health . I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast but only got half-way an < _igaye- _tTny _^ ng _^ h £ CS maS _^ he _^** _^ * _" * * _""" * _"" ' ' _~ * _"" _^ _"" _^ _/ , . J . „ .. , _Wemustceasp ; but in ceasing we must quote one more of the many good things in this Merno _. r , and on a future occasion call upon _ the rich fm . d of the Letters . Our finale is the mot on the Dean of : "He deserves to be preached to death _by-wzMeiuJOtes !

    578 The Leader. ¦ . ^[Saturday, I

    578 THE LEADER . ¦ . _^[ Saturday , I

    — The Boyhood Of Sir Isaac Newtok Memoir...

    — THE BOYHOOD OF SIR ISAAC _NEWTOK Memoirs of the Life , _Writings and Discoveries * of Sir Isaac Newton * , By Sir David Brewster . Constable and Co , This long-expected , very welcome work at last lies on our table : two liand- some volumes , filled with much curious and important matter , some of it quite new , none of it uninteresting . It addresses men of science more than the general public , for it is mainly occupied with the exhibition of Newton's scientific discoveries ; but although it has thus a more special interest for a special class , no reader tinctured with philosoph _} ' -will take it up without interest ; if he is forced to skip certain details , the general progress of Newton ' s discoveries will be marshalled intelligibly before him , and a picture of Newton ' s personal existence will stand out before him in some rough shape . We propose in the present article to disregard philosophic specula- _ticTns , and confine ourselves to a biographic sketch of Master Newton ; thinking that the many who hear of the Principia with a certain awe , may not be uninterested at this glimpse of its author . " The child i & father to the man , " but it is not in the childhood of every maa of genius that we can so distinctly trace the lineaments of after life as we can in that of Newton . He was born on Christmas-day , 1642- —the very year in which Galileo died ! It may console some parents , and puzzle some physiologists , to learn that this , the greatest of our scientific intellects was ushered prematurely into the world , and . was so tiny and feeble , that not only could he have been put into a " quart mug" ( to use his mother ' s language ) , but the experienced nurses had no belief he could live . He lived , however , and to some purpose , as we know ; but it is more remarkable , and not so familiarly known , that he lived to the age of eighty-five . Newton was the son of a farmer , and was expected to follow in his father ' s footsteps ; but his talk , the Fates had decreed , was not to be of oxen ; his mind was not to be devoted to subsoils and manure ; the vast field of Science needed such labourers , and Nature had sent this tin } 1 , feeble little day- labourer to do her work . Anecdotists and literary historians of a paradoxical turn cite Newton as one of the Dunces who become men of Genius : a foolish paradox , imply ing superficial knowledge of Genius . Newton did not shine at school , it is true ; he was very inattentive to his studies , and held a low rank in his class . But that was owing to the direction of his intellectual activity elsewhere . Dull he was not , neither in apprehension nor in temper , We find him , indeed , challenging a brutal boy who kicked him in the stomach , and succeeding in giving that boy the " drubbing" which superior spirit always inflicts on bulkier antagonists . Nay , having vanquished , he is told ' by the schoolmaster's son that he must treat his opponent as a coward , and rub his nose against the wall—which also is done , to the satisfaction of the victor and by-standers , less so to the vanquished . Nor was his ardour tamed by success . The boy whom he had beaten stood above him in class . He resolves to beat him there too ; which he finds no less easy ; and in a little while Master Newton is the top of the school , caputpuer , and admired by pedagogy . As we said , it was no dulness which had withdrawn his thoughts from books . He displayed 1 Ins talent for mechanical inventions by the construe- tion of models of certain machines and by amusing contrivances . This dull boy constructed a windmill , a water-clock , and a carriage to go without' horses—i . e ., moved by a person sitting in it . He had watched , as curious _boya wili watch , the workmen erecting a mill near Grantham _, and watched them with such success that the model he made for one actually worked when placed at the top of the house in which he lived ; and when the wind was still , anotiier mechanical agent being necessary , Master Newton be- thinks him of a * Mouse , whom he christens The Miller . How this amiable Rodent was made to perform functions so very unlike _thoBe to which Nature had destined it , one knows not ; but it is conjectured that some corn was p laced above a sort of treadwheel , and in attempting to reach this the JMouse . turned the mill . The water-clock , which Master Newton made , was a more useful inven- tion . It was made out of _aibox , and resembled the common clock-cases with a dial-plate . The index was turned by a piece of wood , which rose or fell by water dropping . It stood in the boy ' s bedroom , and was supplied each morning with the proper quantity of water . It was frequently used hy the inmates to ascertain the hour long after its inventor was a glory of Cam- bridge . One can understand perfectly how this " sober , silent , thinking lad " seldom took part in the games of his schoolfellows , but employed his leisure hours "knocking and hammering . " Master _Newton was not ahoy to play 5 or if lie played it must be scientifically . Thus he introduced the flying of Paper Kites . Think of that , O reader ! as memory travels back into the broad meadows of childhood , when racing through the buttercups you held aloft the tugging aspirant , think of your owing that joy to Master Isaac Newton ! He set to work scientifically , investigating the best forms and . proportions of kites , as well as the number and _position of the points to which the string should be attached . He constructed also lanterns of " crimplod paper , " in which caudles were placed , and with these he lighted himself to school on dark winter mornings ; nnd on dark nights he tied thorn to the tails of his kites to terrify tho boobies , who trembled at them as cornets . Otlier tokens of his " dulness 7 ' may be noted . He drovo wooden pegs into , the walls and roots of houses to serve as gnomons , marking by their shuidows thc houca and half-hours * of the day . Isaac's dial served tho people-round 1

    about-as a dock . But the reader , arguing ex post facto , will not be surprised I _atfsuchiindications of the philosophic mind ; he will be more surprise I * I hear of Newton ' s writing verses , and drawing " birds , beasts , ships , and m ' _» I Newton a poet ! Newton even a writer of verses—dues it not sound strin •> E He assured Mr . Conduit that he " excelled particularly in makine vpp _° _£ » i 1 b w , js the man w _, maki ve does not be ] i < f he _f therrfn _'? I With respect to Newton ' s verse , we have little doubt they were defSe I and vet , however antithetical mathematics-and poetry may be , however _unliti 9 Paradise Lost may be the Prhicipia , or the Optics , we may see in an " c ™ i si _, sag flashing out liere and there , a _revelation of grand poetical 1 concep _[ iori ) _^ ch never wouW have visited the mathematician who wCte _™ I verees ' . _^ iftis pcrhaps accurate to assume that without the imag inative I faculty in highs vigour , no great scientific conquest is possible . Thus in _fra noting the indications childhood gives of the future philosopher we- _nnnht Hi to insist on thi * verse-making . _' ' Sht | | Did he make-verses to Miss Storey ? He appears to have been in love H with her , or if not in / owe , at least in what Miss Jewsbury wittil y calls " a ffl tepid preference ; " and it is piquant to consider that somewhere about the | H same time another great mathematical thinker , Benedict Spinoza , was also M troubled with fluttering * of the _heart—flutter-ings which , as in Newton ' s case m subsided without much impairment of the _digestive function . Miss Storey 1 when a girl , was mutely courted by the philosopher , not by verses but by the a manufacture of " tables , cupboards , and otlier utensils" for her dolls and 1 trinkets . As she grew older she may have inspired his muse . But nothing III remains . If written , these verses have vanished with the hopes they strug- iff gled to express ; and posterity must turn from the search , to see young M Newton , now home and emancipated from school , doing his worst to succeed M as farmer and grazier . What a picture rises before the mind as we follow if this youth to market every Saturday , to dispose of grain and other farm pro- If dnce , and to purchase articles needed for domestic use . Isaac , being young If and inexperienced , is accompanied by an old servant who is to instruct him . S No sooner do they reach the market town , than Isaac leaves to the old § servant all the chaffering , and hurries to a garret in Mr . Clarke ' s house , i where a goodly store of books enables him to pass the hours in feasting . 1 When this store of books was exhausted , Master Isaac thought it a waste of 1 time to go so far as the town ; so sending his companion onwards he fj entrenched himself under a hedge , and studied there till his companion f | returned . This was the way to become a philosopher ; but as an education for ft the work of farmer and grazier it was not perhaps the most promising . Indeed f this boy , so dull at his books in early days , was now as dull at business . I Sent by his anxious mother to look after the sheep , or to watch the cattle | lest they should tread down the crops , he perches himself under a tree , book r | in hand , or shaping models with his knife , and the foolish sheep go astray , §§§ the foolish cattle wander unchecked among the corn fields . In this posture B lie is fomid by-the Rev . W . Ayscough , engaged in the solution of a mathema- 11 tical problem not in the remotest degree connected with sheep or oxen ; and 11 as the reverend gentleman had studied at Cambridge he prevails upon if Isaac ' s mother to send her son there , and give up all hope of making a [ II grazier of him . To Cambridge he is sent ; and here closes our narrative of |§ f his boyhood . But Sir David Brewster ' s work , from which we have taken it , Jm is too important and too interesting for us to dismiss it in one notice ; on a i | future occasion we may have something to say of Newton the Philosopher . | f |

    ' % Menander And The Greek Comedy. | Mdh...

    ' % MENANDER AND THE GREEK COMEDY . | Mdhandre : Etude historique et litte ' raire stir la _Cotndtiie et la Societd G ' _ncrjues Par | M - Guillaume Guizot . Paris .- Dirtier . | Those are pleasant epochs in our lives when what has hitherto been a mere i ;| name for us becomes the centre for _^ group of p leasant and fertile ideas— | | when , for instance , our travels bring us to same southern village which we p | have only known before as a mark in our map , and from that day forth the ft | once barren word suggests to us a . charming picture of houses " lit . up by a ||| glowing sun , a cluster of tall trees with tame goats ' browsing on the patch 111 of grass beneath them , and n large stone fountain where dark-complexioned ||| women are filling their pitchers;—or when Mr . A . B ., whose name we have IM seen in the visiting-book of an hotel , becomes the definite image of a _h { capital fellow , whose pleasant talk has beguiled a five hours'journey in ft m _diligence , and who turns out to be a . man very much like ourselves , with | J dubious theories , still more dubious hopes , imd quite indubitable sorrows . M And there is the same sort of pleasure iu getting something like a clear | conception of an ancient author , whose ntune has all our life _belonged to | that inventory of unknown things which so much of our youth is taken up a in learning . If we may suppose that to any of our readers _Meiiniidcr has _tf hitherto thus remained n mere nominis umbra , lot nue . li readers _j ; o to M . ( Jail- ] laumeGuizot's very agreeable volume , and they will learn , without the hast ') trouble to themselves , all that scholarly research has hitherto been able to j discover of Menander and his writings . It is is true that all the preliminary >; hard work had been done by Meineke , for wliut hard work in the way of his- : \ torical research and criticism has not been done by Germans ? They are ( ho ¦ purveyors of the raw material of learning for nil Europe ; but , as _, \ ir . Tools ¦ : suggests , raw materials require to be cooked , and in this kind of cookery , as _, ; well us in the otlier , the French are supremo . To have the Latin work of u German writer boiled down to a portable bulk and served up in that _ileliciiti : ¦ ; crystal vessel , the French language , is a benefit , that , will be _appreciated by > r those who are at all acquainted with the works of Germans , and .- 'till » ltll >( ' | _| by those who are not acquainted with Latin . This is the service rendered | hy M . Guilhuuno Guizot , and the way in which he has performed i _< < l"i te ! merits , as ifc has won , the prize of the French Academy . If is a double j pleasure to welcome a young author when ho is an exception to th . it rnlhei 1 | melancholy generalisation , that ; great fathers have insignificant sons ; and we I think this book on Menander gives some promise , that we may one day J » _'ivu to speak familiarly of Gui / . ot , the Elder , lost our hearers _ohould confound an illustrious father with an illustrious son . In tho first chapter of this work , which is only an octavo of about _l- _^ pages , wo have tho history of Menander ' _n reputation and _writingn : —the _"bundtmfc jealousy mid tho _apnring justice awarded him by his eonteinponiri « B , hi * luVg » reign , as iv " dead but-scoptrad monarch" over tho conrio _fcttagc , t

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 16, 1855, page 2, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/scld_16061855/page/2/