"Whether your ladyship should go constantly in the melancholy
dress of a widow, or flourish once more among the ladies; whether
you should spend the rest of your days cheerfully or in sadness,
in health or in sickness, are questions which need not much
consideration to decide them. Besides that your ladyship will be
better able to live according to your quality by the assistance of
a husband than upon your own estate alone; and, therefore, since
your ladyship likes the person proposed, I doubt not but in a
little time to have notice of your ladyship's inclinations to
marry, at least, that you will give him leave to discourse with
you about it.
"I am, madam, your ladyship's most humble and most obedient
servant."
If Lady Norris "liked the person proposed," as Sir Isaac imagined, a
marriage was not the result. It is just possible that he was like
Leibnitz, who proposed to a lady when he was fifty. The lady asked for
time to take the matter into consideration, and as Leibnitz thus
obtained leisure to consider the matter again, he was never married.
For thirteen years Sir Isaac lived on Jermyn Street, London; then moved
to Chelsea, a place dear to those who love George Eliot or admire
Carlyle; and then to Martin Street, near Leicester Fields.
In his latter years he wrote much on theological subjects, especially to
prove the existence of a Deity. When he was eighty-three he published a
third edition of the "Principia." At eighty-five he read manuscript
without spectacles. He reasoned as acutely as ever, his memory alone
failing.
On March 2, 1727, he presided at a meeting of the Royal Society. He was
taken ill on the following day, and, although a great sufferer for
several days, never uttered a complaint. He died on Monday, March 20,
and his body was laid in the Jerusalem Chamber, and thence conveyed to
Westminster Abbey for burial. The pall was supported by the Lord High
Chancellor and several Dukes and Earls.
On the front of his monument are sculptured youths, bearing in their
hands emblematic designs of Newton's principal discoveries. One carries
a prism, another a reflecting telescope, a third is weighing the sun and
planets with a steelyard, a fourth is employed about a furnace, and two
others are loaded with money newly coined. The monument bears this
inscription.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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