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578 % ¦ THE LEADER. [Saturday ,
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THE BOYHOOD OF SIR ISAAC NEWTOF. Memoirs...
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MENANDER AND THE GREEK COMEDY, Afenandre...
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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 Of Sydney Smith.. Tj- • J- *R. R...
himself . It would be a case , not of bigamy , but trigamy ; the _neighbourhood or the magistrates should interfere . There is enough of her to furnish wives foir ax wholb 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 _provided 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 and gave it up exhausted Or you might read the Rwt Act and disperse _ter ; m short you might do anything with her but marry her . We must cease ; but in-ceasing we must quote one more of the many good things in this Memoir , and on a future occasion call upon the rich fund of the Letters . Our finale is the mot on the Dean of : He deserves to be preached to death by _wiMcurate */ —
578 % ¦ The Leader. [Saturday ,
578 % ¦ THE LEADER . [ _Saturday ,
The Boyhood Of Sir Isaac Newtof. Memoirs...
THE BOYHOOD OF SIR ISAAC _NEWTOF . Memoirs of the Life , Writings , and _Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton . By Sir B > avid Brevrster . Constable and Co . This long-expected , very welcome work at last lies on our table : two hand- 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 philosophy 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- tions , and confine ourselves to a biographic sketch of Master Newton ; thinking that the many who hear of the _Prhicipia with a certain awe , may not be uninterested at this glimpse of its author . " _THIie child i & father to the man , " but it is not in the childhood of every man © f genius _^ that we can so distinctly trace the lineaments of after life as we care in that of Newton . He was-born on Christmas-day , 1642—the very year m 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 tiny , 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 , implying 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 b _} ' 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 , caput puer _, and admired by pedagogy . As we said , it was no dulness which had withdrawn his thoughts from books . He displayed his 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- boys will 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 , another 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 those to which Nature had destined it , one knows not ; but it is conjectured that some corn was placed above a sort of treadwheel , and in attempting to reach this the Mouse turned the mill . The water-clock , which Master Newton made , was a more useful inven- tion . It was made out of a box , 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 by the inmates to ascertain the hour long after its inventor was a glory of Cam- bridge . One can understand perfectly how this " sober r silent , thinking lad" seldom took part in the games of his schoolfellows , but employed his leisure hours "knocking and hammering . " _^ Master Newton was not a boy to play ; or if he 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 " crimpled paper , " in which candles were placed , and with these he lighted himself to school on dark winter mornings ; and on dark nights he tied them to the tails of his kites to terrify the boobies , who trembled at them as comets . Other tokens of his " dulness" may bo noted . He drove wooden pega into the walla and ; roofs-of houses to _serv « as gnomons , marking by their _shudows the _houcftftod _halfi-houra of the day . Isaac ' s dial served the people round
_abeut as ar efock . But the reader , arguing ex post facto , will not be surprised at such * indications of the philosophic mind ; he will be more _surprised hear of Newton ' s writing verses , and drawing " birds , beasts , ships , and me •» Newton a poet ! Newton even a writer of verses—does it not sound _strand ? He assured Mr . Conduit that he " excelled particularly in _makine verJ » b () t where j s the man who , making verses , does not believe he excels tw ! S \ w j th ect tQ Newton » s verses , % re have little doubt they were detestohl anf _, ye _^ owever antithetical mathematics and poetry may be , however unS 5 Par _- adise Lost may be tue Principia , or the Optic * , we may see in an _St siona _, assace _? flashing out here and there , a revelation of grand noetWl i conception _£ hich never wonW have visited the mathematician who wrote wi verses ; nay , it is perhaps accurate to assume that without the imag inative faculty in high vigour , no great scientific conquest is possible . Thus in _noting the indications childhood gives of the future philosopher wp _milu 1 to insist on this-verse-making . * ' ° M Did lie make verses to Miss Storey ? He appears to have been in love I witl , her , or if not in _foye , at least in what Miss Jewsbury wittily calls "a I tepid preference ; " and it is piquant to consider that somewhere about the I same time another great mathematical thinker , Benedict Spinoza , was also I troubled with fluttering . " ? of the heart—flutterings which , as in Newton ' s case I subsided without much impairment of the digestive function . Miss Storey I when a girl , was mutely courted by the philosopher , not by verses but b y the I manufacture of " tables , cupboards , and other utensils" for her dolls and I trinkets . As she grew older she may have inspired his muse . But nothing I remains . If written , these verses have vanished , with the hopes they strug . I gled to express ; and posterity must turn from the search , to see young I Newton , now home and emancipated from school , doing his worst-to succeed I as farmer and grazier . What a picture rises before the mind as we follow I this youth to market every Saturday , to dispose of grain and other farm pro- I duce , and to purchase articles needed for domestic use . Isaac , being young I and inexperienced , is accompanied by an old servant who is to instruct him . I 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 , where a goodly store of books enables him to pass the hours in feasting . When this store of books was exhausted , Master Isaac thought it a waste of time to go so far as the town ; so sending his companion onwards he entrenched himself under a hedge , and studied there till his companion 1 returned . This was the way to become a philosopher ; but as an education for I the work of farmer and grazier it was not perhaps the most promising . Indeed I 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 E lest they should tread down the crops , he perches himself under a tree , book ¦ in hand , or shaping models with his knife , and the foolish sheep go astray , m the foolish cattle wander unchecked among the corn fields . In this postuie m he is found by the Rev . W . Ayscough , engaged in the solution of a mathema- ¦ tical problem not in the remotest degree connected with sheep or oxen ; and W > as the reverend gentleman had studied at Cambridge he prevails upon B Isaac ' s mother to send her son there , and give up all hope of making a If grazier of him . To Cambridge he is sent ; and here closes our narrative of m his boyhood . But Sir David Brewster ' s work , from which we have taken it , is too important and too interesting for us to dismiss it in one notice ; on a future occasion we may have something to say of Newton the Philosopher .
Menander And The Greek Comedy, Afenandre...
MENANDER AND THE GREEK COMEDY _, Afenandre : Etude historique et litteraire stir la _Comt'die et la 8 oci € _td Grecques Par M - Guillaume Guizot . Paris : Didier . Those are pleasant epochs in our lives when what has hitherto been a mere p name for us becomes the centre for a group of pleasant and fertile ideas— M when , for instance , our travels bring us to some southern village which we B have only known before as a mark in our map , and from that day forth the If once barren word suggests to us a charming picture of houses lit up by a » glowing sun , a cluster of tall trees with tame gouts browsing on the patch if of grass beneath them , and a largo stone fountain where dark-complexioned I women are filling their pitchers—or when Mr . A . B ., whose name we have 11 seen in the visiting-book of an hotel , becomes the definite image of a i j capital fellow , whoso pleasant talk has beguiled a five hours'journey in a Ig diligence , and who turns out to be a man very much like ourselves , with B dubious theories , still more dubious hopes , and quite indubitable sorrows . M And there is the same sort of pleasure in getting something like a clear B conception of an ancient author , whose name has all our life belonged to K that inventory of unknown things which so much of our youth is taken up M in learning . If we may suppose that to any of our readers Menaixlor has hitherto thus remained a _merenorniuis umbra , let such readers go to M . Guillaurae Guizot's very agreeable volume , and they will learn , without the least trouble to themselves , all that scholarly research Las hitherto been able to discover of Menunder and his writings . It is is true that all the preliminary hard work had been done by Moinokc , for what hard work in the wnyofhistoricnl research and criticism has not been done by Germans ? They arc the §• purveyors of the raw material of learning for all Europe ; but , aa . Mr . Toots l ~; suggests , raw materials require to bo cooked , and in this kind of cookery , as Kg wellas in the other , the French lire supreme . To have the Latin work <>! ' a mi German writer boiled down to a portable bulk and served up in that delicate | | crystal vessel , the French language , is a benefit that will be appreciated hy l those who are at all acquainted with the works of Germans , and mill m « r _° _H by _thoso who are not . acquainted -with Latin . This is the sorvice rendered m by M . Guillaiuno Guizot , and the way in which Lie has performed it quite m merits , aa it has won , the prize of the French Academy . It is u double ¦ pleasure to welcome a young author when he is an exception to that rather R melanclioly generalisation , that groat fathers have insignificant sons ; and wo ¦ think this book on Menander gives some promise that we may one day have ¦ to speak familiarly of Gdizot the Elder , lent our hearers should confound an | illustrious father with an illustrious son . rrt I In the fu \ st oimptor of thin work , which is only an ootavo of about 4 jO pages , wo have the _history of Menandor ' s reputation and writings : —the abundant . jealousy and the sparing justice awarded him by his contain ])" 1 ' *" ries , Ma long reign aa a " dead but ecoptred monarch" over the comic _etuge ,
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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) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/sldr_16061855/page/2/
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