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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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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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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
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Citation
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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/
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