was made President of the Royal Society, and held the office to the end
of his life. In 1705 he was knighted by Anne. In 1713 Cotes helped him
to bring out a new edition of the _Principia_, completed as we now have
it. On the 20th of March 1727, he died: having lived from Charles I. to
George II.
THE LAWS OF MOTION, DISCOVERED BY GALILEO, STATED BY NEWTON.
_Law 1._--If no force acts on a body in motion, it continues to move
uniformly in a straight line.
_Law 2._--If force acts on a body, it produces a change of motion
proportional to the force and in the same direction.
_Law 3._--When one body exerts force on another, that other reacts with
equal force upon the one.
LECTURE VII
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
The little hamlet of Woolsthorpe lies close to the village of
Colsterworth, about six miles south of Grantham, in the county of
Lincoln. In the manor house of Woolsthorpe, on Christmas Day, 1642, was
born to a widowed mother a sickly infant who seemed not long for this
world. Two women who were sent to North Witham to get some medicine for
him scarcely expected to find him alive on their return. However, the
child lived, became fairly robust, and was named Isaac, after his
father. What sort of a man this father was we do not know. He was what
we may call a yeoman, that most wholesome and natural of all classes. He
owned the soil he tilled, and his little estate had already been in the
family for some hundred years. He was thirty-six when he died, and had
only been married a few months.
Of the mother, unfortunately, we know almost as little. We hear that she
was recommended by a parishioner to the Rev. Barnabas Smith, an old
bachelor in search of a wife, as "the widow Newton--an extraordinary
good woman:" and so I expect she was, a thoroughly sensible, practical,
homely, industrious, middle-class, Mill-on-the-Floss sort of woman.
However, on her second marriage she went to live at North Witham, and
her mother, old Mrs. Ayscough, came to superintend the farm at
Woolsthorpe, and take care of young Isaac.
By her second marriage his mother acquired another piece of land, which
she settled on her first son; so Isaac found himself heir to two little
properties, bringing in a rental of about £80 a year.
[Illustration: FIG. 56.--Manor-house of Woolsthorpe.]
He had been sent to a couple of village schools to acquire the ordinary
accomplishments taught at those places, and for three years to the
grammar school at Grantham, then conducted by an old gentleman named Mr.
Stokes. He had not been very industrious at school, nor did he feel
keenly the fascinations of the Latin Grammar, for he tells us that he
was the last boy in the lowest class but one. He used to pay much more
attention to the construction of kites and windmills and waterwheels,
all of which he made to work very well. He also used to tie paper
lanterns to the tail of his kite, so as to make the country folk fancy
they saw a comet, and in general to disport himself as a boy should.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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