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in the dining-room. Having waited some time, he became impatient, and removed the cover from a chicken, which he presently ate, putting the bones back into the dish and replacing the cover. After a short interval, Newton came into the room, and, with the usual compliments, sat down to dinner; but, on taking up the cover, and seeing only the bones of the bird left, he observed, with some little surprise, "I thought I had not dined, but now find I have."

It is said of him, that he did once in his life go "a wooing;" and, as was to be expected, had the greatest attention and indulgence paid to the little peculiarities which ever accompany great genius. Knowing he was fond of smoking, the lady assiduously provided him with a pipe, and they were then seated, as if to open the business of Cupid. Sir Isaac smoked a few whiffs -seemed at a loss for something whiffed again-and, at last, drew his chair nearer the lady. Sir Isaac got hold of her hand-now her palpitations began he will kiss it, no doubt, thought she, and then the matter is ended. Sir Isaac whiffed with redoubled fury, and drew the captive hand nearer to his head-already the expected salute had vibrated from the hand to the heartone finger was gently separated from the others-when lo! the succeeding motion converted it into a tobacco stopper!"

During the latter half of his life, he devoted much of his time to theo

logical literature, and left a vast mass of unpublished manuscripts relating to chronology and church history, which were examined by a committee of the Royal Society; but none were thought worth printing, except his Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse, which appeared in 1733, quarto. Besides the foreign edition of his principal publications, all his works were published by Dr. S. Horsley, London, 1779, five volumes, quarto. The best edition of the Principia is that of Lesueur and Jacquier, four volumes, quarto, Geneva, 1739-42; four volumes, octavo, Glasgow, 1822. In person, this intellectual Colossus was of a middle stature, inclining, latterly, to corpulence. His eye was lively and piercing; and his aspect, in itself mild and gracious, was rendered doubly so by a fine head of hair, which was as white as silver. To the time of his last illness, he had upon his countenance the bloom, colour, and cheerfulness of youth. His sight was so good, that he never resorted to spectacles; and he never lost but one tooth in his life.

To sum up our account of Newton, it may be said of him, that if all the philosophers that ever lived were divided into two classes, all but himself would be one, and he the other; nor did Pope ever more happily combine poetry with truth, than when he said,

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, God said "Let Newton be," and all was light.

JOHN FLAMSTEED.

THIS eminent astronomer was born at Denby, in Derbyshire, on the 19th of August, 1646, and received his education at the free-school of Derby, where he remained until the year 1662, when ill-health prevented him from making further academical progress. On his return home, Sacrobosco's book, De Sphærâ, falling into his hands, he immediately conceived a fondness for astronomical studies; and, in a short time afterwards, the perusal of Fale's Art of Dialling enabled him to con

struct a quadrant, which he performed without help, and before he had heard of any artificial tables. His studies, though discountenanced by his father, he continued to pursue with equal ardour and success; and, with the assistance only of such books as fell in his hands by chance, he performed, with great rapidity, several important astronomical calculations. At length, one which he had made of an eclipse of the sun, which was to happen on the 22nd of June, 1666, having been shewn

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to Mr. Halton, that gentleman sent
him Ricciolus's Almagest, Kepler's
Rudolphine Tables, and other mathe-
matical works, to which he was before
a stranger. After an attentive perusal
of them, and particularly of Ricciolus,
in whom he detected many errors, he
attempted the discovery of a demon-
strable equation; but, in endeavouring
to establish his first opinion, "that the
natural days were always equal, and
that there needed no equation of time,"
he proved the contrary: first, that the
eccentricity of the earth's orbit from
the sun's centre caused an inequality;
and, afterwards, that the ecliptic's ob-
liquity caused another inequality of the
apparent day, which two causes, ap-
plied together, would make the absolute
equation of time.

At the end of the year 1669, he wrote an almanack for the following year; in which he inserted an eclipse that was omitted in the Ephemerides, and five appulses of the moon to fixed

stars.

But this," says he, in a manuscript, entitled Self Inspections, "being rejected, as beyond the capacity of the vulgar, and returned to me, I excerped the eclipse and appulses, and addressed them, with some astronomical speculations, to the Royal Society, suppressing my name under my anagram." His communication was most favourably received by the Society, and procured him letters of thanks from Mr. Oldenburgh, the secretary, and Mr. John Collins, one of the members; in his correspondence with whom will be found a number of interesting details respecting the progress of his future studies.

In June, 1670, Mr. Flamsteed proceeded to London, where he was introduced to some of the first mathematicians of the day, from whom he received both attention and assistance; and he, shortly afterwards, entered himself of Jesus' College, Cambridge, where he became acquainted with Barrow and Newton. In the spring of 1672, he translated into Latin several of Mr. Gascoigne's letters; and from some of them, showing how the images of remote objects were formed in the distinct base of a convex object glass, he got his dioptrics in a few hours, having previously read those of Des Cartes without gaining much instruc

tion. In 1673, he wrote a small tract
the planets, which he lent to Newton,
concerning the true diameters of all
who made use of it in the fourth book
of his Principia. In 1674, he wrote
an ephemeris, shewing the futility of
astrology; and, at the request of Sir
Jonas Moore, made a table of the
moon's true southings for that year;
from which, and Mr. Philip's theory of
the tides, the high waters being com-
times of the turn of the tides very near ;
puted, he found that they shewed the
whereas the ordinary seamen's coarse
hours. In this year, he made a pair of
rules would err sometimes two or three
Sir Jonas Moore, to the king, who,
barometers, which were presented, by
Flamsteed to the new office of astro-
about the same time, appointed Mr.
nomer-royal, with a salary of £100
a-year; and he, accordingly, took up
his residence at the observatory at
wards erected.
Greenwich, which was shortly after-

In 1681, appeared his Doctrine of ful work; in which he found how the the Sphere, a most excellent and uselatitude, were made and given by conparallaxes of altitude, longitude, and struction; and how the times of any then darkened, with the inclination of appearance of a solar eclipse, the part the cusps, might be determined without any calculation of them, by the He followed up help of projection.

this discovery by the construction of an
eclipse he had observed at Derby, on
the 25th of October, 1668; which, with
a brief description of the method, was
Christopher Wren, who was present,
laid before the Royal Society, when Sir
satisfactorily proved that he had adopted
the same plan sixteen years before. In
1684, having previously graduated
M. A., and taken orders, he was pre-
sented to the living of Burstow, near
Blechingley, in Surrey, which he con-
which month and year he died, leaving
tinued to hold till December, 1719, in
no children.
behind him a widow, by whom he had

In addition to the works already
the Philosophical
other papers to
mentioned, he communicated several
Transactions; but his most important
work, Historia Cœlestis Britannicæ, was
not ready for publication until 1725,
when it appeared in three volumes,

folio, and was justly pronounced "a noble and lasting monument to his memory." The first volume contains the observations of Mr. William Gascoigne (the inventor of the method of measuring angles in a telescope, by means of screws) with those of Flamsteed himself, taken at Derby, between 1675 and 1689, together with a number of curious observations, and necessary tables to be used with them at the Royal Observatory. The second volume contains his observations, made with a mural arch of near seven feet radius, and one hundred and forty degrees on the limb, of the meridional zenith distances of the fixed stars, sun, moon, and planets, with their transits over the meridian; also observations of the diameters of the sun and moon, with their eclipses, and those of Jupiter's satellites, and variations of the compass, from 1689 to 1719; with tables, shewing how to render the calculation of the places of the stars and planets easy and expeditious: to which are added, the moon's place at her oppositions, quadratures, &c.; also, the planets' places, derived from the observations. In the third volume will be found a catalogue of the right ascensions, polar distances, longitudes, and magnitudes, of near three thousand fixed stars, with the corresponding variations of the same. One of the most valuable parts of this volume is the preface, which contains an account of

all the astronomical observations made before his time, with a description of the instruments employed; as also of his own observations and instruments; a new Latin version of Ptolemy's catalogue of one thousand fixed stars, and Ulegh-Beigh's places annexed on the Latin page, with corrections; a small catalogue of the Arabs; Tycho Brahe's, of about seven hundred and eighty fixed stars; the Landgrave of Hesse's, of three hundred and eighty-six; Hevelius's, of one thousand five hundred and thirty-four; and a catalogue of some of the southern fixed stars, not visible in our hemisphere, calculated from observations made by Dr. Halley, at St. Helena, and adapted to the year 1726.

Flamsteed was held in great esteem by his illustrious contemporaries, both native and foreign; and among his greatest admirers may be ranked Newton, Halley, and Cassini, to some of whose doctrines he was occasionally opposed. He is represented to have spent the latter, as he had done the former, part of his life, in promoting true and useful knowledge, by the constant exercise of his own great abilities, and by taking all possible methods to obtain whatever lights the discoveries of others might afford him. In private life he was cheerful and convivial, and the facetious Tom Brown was occasionally to be found among the guests at his table.

ABRAHAM SHARP.

ABRAHAM SHARP, descended from becoming acquainted with Mr. Flaman ancient family at Little Horton, near steed, the celebrated astronomer, he Bradford, in the West Riding of York- then engaged himself as clerk to a mershire, was born there about the year chant in London, in whose house the 1651. After he had completed his former lodged. He had no reason to education, he was apprenticed to a mer- regret this step, which led to his emchant, at Manchester, but his attach- ployment in the dock-yard at Chatment to mathematics was too strong to ham, under Mr. Flamsteed, who, subseallow him to follow the business for quently, invited him to be his assistant which he was designed. He accord-in fitting up the observatory at Greeningly removed to Liverpool, and applied himself, without restraint, to mathematical and astronomical studies; opening, at the same time, a school for writing and accounts, as a means of procuring a subsistence. For the purpose of

wich, which had been erected about the year 1676. A catalogue of three thousand fixed stars was here formed, in which he had a considerable share; but his nightly observations brought on an illness which compelled him to desist

from his operations, and retire to his house at Horton. Here, on the recovery of his health, he built an observatory, fitted up with instruments all of his own making, and some of his own invention. Resuming his employment at Greenwich, he was employed chiefly in the construction of the mural arc which he completed, in a very masterly manner, in the course of fourteen months. Mr. Smeaton observes, that this mural arc may be considered as the first good and valid instrument of the kind, and that Mr. Sharp was the first who cut accurate and delicate divisions upon astronomical instruments. Sharp also rendered Flamsteed valuable assistance in the second volume of his Historia Cœlestis, and made some curious drawings of the constellations, which are said to have exceeded the engravings of them in beauty.

In 1699, he undertook the quadrature of the circle, deduced from two different series, by which the truth of it was proved to seventy-two places of figures, as appears in the introduction to Sherwin's Tables of Logarithms. In 1718, he published a book, entitled Geometry Improved, in which not only the geometrical lines on the plates, but the whole engraving of the letters and figures was done by himself. At the same time, observes his biographer, "this elaborate treatise affords an honourable proof of the author's great abilities, as a mathematician; and contains things well worthy of attention :First, a large and accurate table of segments of circles, with the method of its construction, and various uses in the solution of several difficult problems. Secondly, a concise treatise of polydra,

or solid bodies, of many bases, both the regular one and others; to which are added, twelve new ones, with various methods of forming them; and their exact dimensions in surds or species, and in numbers.' Mr. Sharp passed the latter years of his life at his native place, and died there on the 18th of July, 1742, in the ninety-first year of his age.

This eminent man had as much eccentricity as genius; though the one, probably, was the cause of the other. He kept four or five apartments in his house, into which he permitted none of his family to enter, without special permission. He received but a few favoured visitors, and these were admitted, on making a signal, by rubbing a stone against a certain part of the wall of the house. He was remarkably abstemious, and, instead of taking his meals with his family, had them placed, from without, behind a small sliding panel, in the wall of his study, where they often remained, untouched, for several hours. He was never married; and, indeed, the ceremony of courtship to such a man as Sharp would have been an absolute impossibility. To his scientific talents, Newton, Halley, and Flamsteed have borne testimony; and such is said to have been the accuracy of his computations, that there was scarcely an eminent mathematician of the day who did not apply to him in all troublesome and delicate calculations. The execution of his hand was equally ready to aid the contrivance of his head, in mechanics; and few, or none, it is said, of the mathematical instrument makers, could exceed him in exactly graduating or neatly engraving any mathematical or astronomical instrument.

EDMUND HALLEY.

EDMUND HALLEY, son of a soapboiler, was born at Haggerston, in the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, on the 29th of October, 1656. He was a youth of the most promising genius; and his father having acquired an ample fortune, spared no expense in his education, which he, in the first instance, received at St. Paul's School, where he

became captain at the age of fifteen. In 1673, he was entered a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, at which time he was not only skilled in every branch of classical learning, but also in plane and spherical trigonometry, navigation, and astronomy. These sciences he pursued at the university with unremitting industry, of which he gave a

proof by publishing, in 1675, when he was only nineteen years of age, A Direct and Geometrical Method of Finding the Aphelia and Eccentricity of the Planets, which gave to the Keplerian theory of planetary motion its first geometrical foundation, and was spoken of, by M. Mairan, as a work which might justly excite the envy of the most skilful astronomers of the time. On the 17th of June, 1675, he made some observations on an eclipse of the moon; and, in the July and August of the following year, upon a spot in the sun, by means of which he absolutely determined the motion of the sun round its own axis, a phenomenon until then not fully ascertained. In the latter month, he also observed an occultation of Mars by the moon, which subsequently enabled him to settle the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope, against the objections of the French astronomers. He likewise made several corrections, in the best astronomical tables then extant, of the planets of Saturn and Jupiter; and, previous to leaving Oxford, had discovered the method, now well known, of constructing solar eclipses, in which, however, he was preceded by Sir Christopher Wren, and followed by Flamsteed, as will be seen in our memoir of the latter.

About this time, he formed the resolution of perfecting the whole scheme of the heavens, by the addition of such stars as lay too near the south pole to have come within the observation of Flamsteed and Hevelius. For this purpose, he made a voyage to St. Helena, where he arrived in February, 1677; and after passing about eighteen months in making astronomical observations, he returned to England in November, 1678, and presented a planisphere to the king, who gave him a mandamus to the University of Oxford for the degree of M. A., and he was shortly afterwards chosen a fellow of the Royal Society. "To these honours," observes one of his biographers," he was justly entitled; for though there were two accounts of the southern stars then extant, yet both of them were so very imperfect and inaccurate, that Mr. Halley's catalogue was an acquisition to the astronomical world entirely new, and gave him an indisputable claim to the title which Mr. Flamsteed, not

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long afterwards, conferred upon him, of the Southern Tycho." In 1679, he published his Catalogus Stellarum Australium, sive Supplementum Catalogi Tychonici, &c., which was succeeded by two other treatises, entitled Modi quidam pene Geometrici pro parallaxi Luna investiganda, and Quædam Lunaris Theoria emendationem spectantia. Immediately after the publication of these works, he was selected, by the Royal Society, to go to Dantzic, for the purpose of settling a dispute between Mr. Hooke and Hevelius, respecting the preference of plain or glass sights in astroscopical instruments, which he decided in favour of the latter. In 1680, he set out on a continental tour, in company with Mr. Robert Nelson, and, in his way to Paris, he was the first who saw the remarkable comet which appeared that year. During his stay in the French capital, he visited the celebrated Cassini, and endeavoured to settle a friendly correspondence between the two royal astronomers of Greenwich and Paris. He passed the greater part of the year 1681 in Italy; and upon his marriage, in the following year, with Mary, daughter of Mr. Tooke, auditor of the exchequer, he took a house at Islington, where he fitted up an observatory for his astronomical researches.

In 1683, he published his Theory of the Variation of the Magnetical Com pass, wherein he supposes the whole globe of the earth to be one great magnet, having four magnetical poles, by which, in those parts of the world adjacent to any of them, the needle is governed; the nearest pole, or point of attraction, being always predominant over the most remote; an hypothesis which, with some amendments, it will be seen that he subsequently established. In the same year he commenced, and pursued for sixteen months, a series of lunar observations, with a view to finding the longitude at sea, by the motion of the moon; and, during that period, he detected several important errors in the tables of the Sarotic period, which he ultimately restored to its ancient reputation. In 1684, he turned his attention to Kepler's sesquialterate proportion; but being unable to demonstrate in any geometrical way, his conclusion, "that the centripetal force must de

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