Newton, page 32
37. From Essay on Regimen, quoted in Bowles, p. 486.
38. Guerrini; Money, pp. 135–67.
39. Cheyne, p. 4.
40. Quotations from: letter to Samuel Richardson, quoted in Rousseau, p. 89; Cheyne, p. 327.
41. From Philosophical Principles of Natural Religion (1715 edition), quoted in Bowles, pp. 479–80.
42. Cantor and Hodge.
43. Popkin, ‘Fundamentalism II’, pp. 167–8. The major sources of the following account are Olson, pp. 236–83 (Priestley quoted on p. 238) and Halévy, pp. 5–34, 433–87.
44. Bichat, quoted in Hall, ‘Biological analogs’, p. 6.
45. Paulson, Hogarth: Graphic Works, pp. 52–4, 98–9, and High Art and Low, pp. 55–60, 99–101; Uglow, pp. 108–9, 167–70, 347–8. My major sources for this account are Rowbottom and Stewart, Rise of Public Science; for further references, see the New DNB article (by Fara).
46. Fara, pp. 31–65.
47. Desaguliers, Course of Experimental Philosophy, vol. 1, p. vii.
48. Desaguliers, Newtonian System, pp. 22–4.
49. Hales, p. 147.
50. Morton and Wess.
51. Desaguliers, Course of Experimental Philosophy, vol. 2, p. viii.
4: ENEMIES
1. Westfall, ‘Fudge factor’ (letter to Roger Cotes quoted p. 757).
2. William Chaloner, quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 574; Marquis de l’Hôpital, quoted ibid., p. 473; Johns, especially pp. 444–621.
3. Maclaurin, p. 13.
4. Shapin, ‘Hooke’.
5. Merton, Shoulders of Giants.
6. Dollond, pp. 289–90; Sorrenson.
7. Stevens, p. 134 (from ‘The Demirep; or, I know who’).
8. Emerson, pp. iv–v; Schaffer, ‘Newtonianism’.
9. Berkeley, vol. 5 (quotation p. viii).
10. Cantor, Analyst; Benjamin.
11. Berkeley, vol. 5, p. 116 (§243).
12. Quoted Gascoigne, p. 223 (John Hancock, 1706 Boyle Lecture).
13. Yolton.
14. Fara, pp. 24–30, 210–12 (quotations pp. 24, 211).
15. William Bowman, quoted in Times, 1 February 1828, 4b. Exchange reproduced and discussed in Yolton, pp. 190–4.
16. Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works, vol. 1, p. 288.
17. Hutchinson, Moses’s Principia, part 1, p. 30; Cantor, ‘Revelation and Hutchinson’.
18. Cantor, ‘Weighing light’.
19. Wilde, ‘Hutchinsonianism’.
20. Williamson; Guest, pp. 123–240; Smart, pp. 64, 72, 79 (Jubilate Agno, B130, B195, B264).
21. John Ker of Kersland, quoted in Klopp, vol. 11, p. xxxvi. My major biographical source is Aiton.
22. Herschel, pp. 7–8.
23. The original is ‘Les grands hommes ressemblent en cela aux femmes qui ne cèdent jamais leurs amants qu’avec le dernier chagrin et colère mortelle’: letter from Princess Caroline to Leibniz of 24 April 1716, in Klopp, vol. 11, p. 91.
24. Rice, pp. 211–19; Galloway, pp. 7–12; Hawking, Brief History of Time, pp. 181–2. See Hall, Philosophers at War, and Shapin, ‘Of gods and kings’.
25. Thackray (Archibald Pitcairne quoted p. 156).
26. Guicciardini.
27. As he saw it ‘querelle entre Mr Newton et moy, mais entre l’Allemagne et l’Angleterre’: Kemble, p. 529 (letter from Leibniz to Princess Caroline of 10 May 1715). Klopp, vol. 11; Alexander; Brewer, pp. 25–8.
28. Bertoloni Meli. Letter from Leibniz to Princess Caroline in November 1715, reproduced in Alexander, pp. 11–12, and Klopp, vol. 11, pp. 54–5.
29. Freudenthal; Meyer, pp. 58–9.
30. Shapin, ‘Of gods and kings’ (Leibniz quoted p. 208).
31. Euler, vol. 2, pp. 38–42 (letter CXXV); Watkins.
32. Werrett (quotation from Michael Lomonosov).
33. Russell, ‘Leibniz’, pp. 365–6 (originally published in 1903).
34. Kant, ‘What is enlightenment?’ (quotation p. 17).
35. Hagner, pp. 309–11; Kretschmer, pp. 174–6.
36. Kant, Anthropology, p. 126.
37. Kant, Critique of Judgement, pp. 174–8 (§§46–7); Schaffer, ‘Genius’.
38. Kistler; Abrams; Furst; Woodmansee; Ziolkowski.
39. Beddow; Krätz; Wells.
40. My major sources for the following account are: Burwick; Gage, Colour and Culture, pp. 107–15, 201–4, and Colour and Meaning, pp. 162–95; Sepper.
41. Matthaei, pp. 21–3.
42. Heffernan, pp. 140–5; Thomson, vol. 1, p. 256 (‘A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Isaac Newton’, ll. 102–11); see also vol. 1, p. 15 (The Seasons, ll. 228–37).
43. Boskamp, ‘L’arc-en-ciel de Joseph-Marie Vien’.
44. Brewster, ‘Review of Goethe’, pp. 99, 131.
45. Dubos, pp. 45–66.
46. Abrams, pp. 303–12 (Keats quoted p. 307 (from Lamia)).
47. Haydon, Diary, vol. 2, pp. 55, 173; see also pp. 154, 190–1, 229, 262; Tallis.
48. Burwick, pp. 176–209 (Coleridge’s letter to Thomas Pool of 1801 quoted pp. 177–8).
49. Thomas and Ober, pp. 244–54.
5: FRANCE
1. Hall, Eighteenth-century Perspectives, pp. 108–73. This chapter is informed by several basic texts, notably Ehrard, and Dhombres and Dhombres. Where available, I quote from published English translations, preferably contemporary ones; the other translations are my own, but I have reproduced the French originals in the notes.
2. Darnton, especially pp. 48–9, 71, 397 n. 32; Delisle de Sales, vol. 4, pp. 173–201; Malandian.
3. Diderot, Indiscreet Jewels, pp. ix–xlix, and Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 1–290 (especially pp. 57–60, 130–4, 261–6); Vartanian.
4. Universal Magazine 5 (1749), 281. Jean Baptiste de Boyer d’Agens (1749), quoted in Olson, p. 111.
5. Brook Taylor (1718, to Rémond de Monmort), quoted in Baillon, p. 74.
6. Quoted in Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 325.
7. Pearson, pp. 29–37.
8. D’Alembert, p. 81.
9. Jay, pp. 21–147.
10. D’Alembert, p. 47; Lemercier, ‘Dédication’ (‘O LUMINEUX ESPRIT! . . . Toi, de qui l’œil sonda le sein de l’univers, / Grand ombre de Newton, je t’adresse mes vers!’).
11. Place, vol. 3, pp. 130–1.
12. Voltaire, Letters on England, pp. 68, 57.
13. Gebelin and Morize, vol. 1, pp. 217–19, 231–3, 236–7; Hall, Eighteenth-century Perspectives, pp. 53–74 (Conduitt quoted p. 54).
14. Guerlac; Hall, ‘Newton in France’.
15. Voltaire, Letters on England, p. 68.
16. Ricard, pp. 154, 296–7 (‘Qui conduit ces mortels? Quelle étonnante audace / Leur fait ainsi franchir ces montagnes de glace, / Et braver ces torrens suspendus dans les airs . . . ? / . . . de plus beaux motifs ont enflammé leur cœur’); Iliffe, ‘ “Aplatisseur du monde” ’ and Greenberg, Problem of Earth’s Shape.
17. Du Châtelet, quoted in Guerlac p. 73; Sherlock, pp. 164–5.
18. Originally ‘vaste & puissant génie, Minerve de la France’: du Châtelet (includes poem from Voltaire’s Élémens); Walters.
19. Zinsser, ‘Translating Newton’s Principia’.
20. Algarotti, vol. 2, p. 170; Zinsser, ‘Émilie du Châtelet’; Terrall, ‘Émilie du Châtelet’ and ‘Gendered spaces’.
21. Crow, pp. 1–22. The striking portrait of du Châtelet looking up from her mathematical studies is no longer atttributed to Latour, although he probably did paint her.
22. Bongie, pp. 148–62; Goodman (although Ferrrand is not mentioned); Condillac, Philosophical Writings, pp. 170–2; L’Année Littéraire 1 (1754), pp. 620–1 (see also p. 638); Correspondance Littéraire, 1 December 1754, p. 438.
23. Conisbee, pp. 11–42; Fried, pp. 109–11; Debrie; Nicholson; Nolhac and Walsh.
24. Boskamp, ‘Mademoiselle Ferrand’; private communication from I. B. Cohen.
25. Schaffer, ‘Halley, Delisle’.
26. ‘M. de Voltaire parle enfin, & aussi-tôt Newton est entendu ou en voye de l’être; tout Paris retentit de Newton, tout Paris bégaye Newton, tout Paris étudie & apprend Newton’: Mémoires de Trévoux 1740 (1956) and 1738 (1673–4).
27. Canning, pp. 142, 156; Dainville; Dundon; Murdoch, ‘Newton’s law of attraction’.
28. Evans.
29. Grieder; John Collett, Grown Gentlemen Taught to Dance, discussed in Leppert, pp. 82–4. Gudin de la Brenellerie, p. 61 (‘Quoi? ces astres nouveaux sont vus dans Albion! / Dans ce pays célèbre et si fier de Newton! / Oh combien l’univers doit envier cet île!’).
30. Rosenau. There were several engravings of medals by Roettier: see Smith, ‘Portrait medals’. For advertisements, see Mercure de France (October 1735), 813 and (August 1766), 208; Yarrington; Ozouf.
31. Etlin; Charlton; McManners, pp. 33–67; Wiebenson, pp. 81–9.
32. Le Dantec and le Dantec, pp. 112–50 (quotation from Girardin p. 138); Girardin, pp. 33–40 (quotation p. 39: ‘ces Génies privilégiés qui paroissent un instant pour honorer leur patrie & éclairer leurs semblables’); Tour to Ermenonville, pp. 77–82. The other three poets on the obelisk were Theocritus, Virgil and Gessner. The other pillars in the Temple des Philosophes commemorate Voltaire, Penn, Montesquieu and Rousseau.
33. Roucher, vol. 1, p. 317 (‘Newton, sur l’aile du Génie, / Planoit, tenant en main le compas d’Uranie’): Murdoch, ‘French muse’.
34. Saint-Lambert, pp. xxv–xxxi, 143, 163 (‘s’éclairer entre Locke & Newton!’): de Nardis; Cameron.
35. Roucher, vol. 1, p. 81 (‘Mais si-tôt que Newton, cet aigle audacieux / En face eût regardé le Roi brûlant des Cieux, / L’Homme brisa les fers de l’ignorance antique’).
36. Genlis, vol. 1, p. 219.
37. Observations sur la littérature moderne 8 (1752), 5–6 (‘Sans cet illustre François, qu’on doit regarder comme le Fondateur de la bonne Philosophie, la Grande Bretagne gémiroit encore sous la tyrannie des Péripatéticiens’).
38. Meek (quotation p. 95, from On Universal History, first published 1808–11).
39. ’Descartes perçant les ténèbres de l’ignorance’: Hinks; Bordes and Chevalier, pp. 166–7; Taylor, ‘Artists and philosophes’; Pupil.
40. ’Newton découvre et montre la Vérité qui d’une main tient un prisme pour marquer la théorie des couleurs, et de l’autre un cercle aimanté pour désigner son système de l’attraction’: Sorel, pp. 140–2; Vidal.
41. I am grateful to Anthony Turner for his comments on this ‘instrument’.
42. Fontanes, vol. 1, p. 21 (‘Newton, qui, de ce Dieu le plus digne interprète, / Montra par quelles lois se meut chaque planète, / Newton n’a vu pourtant qu’un coin de l’univers; / Les cieux, même après lui, d’un voile sont couverts’).
43. Chênedollé, p. 11 (‘Bientôt d’un jour plus vrai Newton frappa nos yeux: / Ce grand législateur des mondes et des Cieux . . . / l’Erreur fut détrônée, et dans l’immensité / Son compas porta l’ordre et la simplicité’).
44. Dhombres.
45. Gudin de la Brenellerie, pp. 55, 57 (‘L’audace des Français conçoit, hasarde, achève / Cent prodiges qu’ailleurs on prendrait pour un rêve. / Que la gloire leur parle, ils volent, et sa voix / D’un peuple efféminé fait un peuple intrépide’); see also pp. 138–40, 141–59.
46. Martin, Lettres à Sophie, p. 52 (‘C’est Newton qui l’ordonne: à la voix du génie, / Les astres font entendre une douce harmonie; / Et l’immortalité, qui reconnait Newton, / Sur le front des soleils vole graver son nom’).
47. Chénier, André, Oeuvres, pp. 130 (from l’Invention) (‘Et qu’enfin Calliope, élève d’Uranie, / Montant sa lyre d’or sur un plus noble ton, / En langage des Dieux fasse parler Newton!’) and 403 (from Hermès) (‘Mais ces soleils assis dans leur centre brûlant / Et chacun roi d’un monde autour de lui roulant / Ne gardent point eux-mêmes une immobile place . . . Un invincible poids / Les courbe sous le joug d’irrésistibles lois, / Dont le pouvoir sacré, nécessaire, inflexible, / Leur fait poursuivre à tous un centre invisible’). See also pp. 125, 557–9, 877–8; Smernoff (especially pp. 45–54); Dimoff (especially vol. 1, pp. 58–63, 101–2, 323 and vol. 2, pp. 38–74); Vidal.
48. Chénier, Marie-Josèphe, Oeuvres, vol. 7, p. 248 (‘Qui . . . Rendit parfaits Virgile et Cicéron; / Ouvrit le ciel aux regards de Newton; / Le cœur humain à Racine, à Molière? / Je le répète: une exquise raison’).
49. Chênedollé, pp. 24–5 (‘Peuples! rassurez-vous: ces masses infécondes, / Dont vous avez tant craint le retour menaçant, / Ranimeront un jour le Soleil vieillissant. / Ainsi l’a dit Newton, et j’en crois son génie’); Schaffer, ‘Halley, Delisle’.
50. Roucher, vol. 1, p. 318 (‘Est maintenant semblable à ces sages Royaumes, / Où suffit une loi pour régir tous les hommes; / L’attraction: voilà la loi de l’univers’); Racine, p. 166 (‘Exerçant l’un sur l’autre un mutuel empire, / Par les mêmes liens l’un & l’Autre s’attire / Tandis qu’au même instant & par les même loix / Vers un centre commun tous pesent à la fois’.)
51. Vidler, Writing of the Walls; Picon, pp. 256–334; Pérez-Gómez, pp. 129–61; Ziolowski, pp. 309–77.
52. Boullée, pp. 136–45 (quotation pp. 139–40) (‘Être divin! . . . Si par l’étendue de tes lumières et la sublimité de ton génie, tu as déterminé la figure de la Terre, moi j’ai conçu le projet de t’envelopper de ta découverte’); Pérouse de Montclos, Boullée (1969) and Boullée (1994).
53. Pérouse de Montclos, ‘De nova stelli’; Vidler, Architectural Uncanny, pp. 165–75; Vidler, Ledoux, pp. 267–76.
54. Sistême Astronomique de la Révolution françoise: private collection of I. B. Cohen; J. Houël (in Year 8), quoted in Rosenau, p. 116 (‘Un globe, en tous les tems, n’est égal qu’à lui-même; / C’est de l’égalité le plus parfait embleme’).
55. Starobinski, pp. 31–8, 59–79; Stafford, ‘Science as fine art’; Charles Fourier, quoted in Beecher, p. 244; Boullée, pp. 137, 142 (‘Temples de la mort, votre aspect doit glacer nos cœurs . . . C’était dans le séjour de l’immortalité, c’était dans le ciel que je voulais placer Newton.’)
6: GENIUS
1. McKillop, pp. 20–5 (Grove quoted from Spectator 635 on p. 23).
2. Mallet, ‘Excursion’, p. 694 (Canto II).
3. Ibid.
4. Pope, p. 68 (from ‘An essay on criticism’).
5. Pattison, pp. 164–6 (from ‘To Mr Hedges, On Reading his Latin ODE to Dr. Broxholme’).
6. Money, Gentleman’s Magazine 11 (1741), 548, 641, 663.
7. Voltaire, Letters on the English, p. 112; Williams, Pope; Jenkyns.
8. Home, vol. 1, pp. 292–301 (quotation p. 299); Spadafora (quotation from John Clarke (1731) p. 49).
9. Spencer, ‘Lucretius’; earlier partial translations existed; Albury; MacPike, pp. 203–9 (quotation from 1755 translation by ‘Eugenio’).
10. Lucretius, p. 99 (by Thomas Creech); Book III, ll. 1042–5 (‘Ipse Epicurus obiit, decurso lumine vitae; / Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnis / Restinxit, stellas exortus uti aërius sol’).
11. Pemberton, p. 2 of unpaginated poem by Richard Glover.
12. Thomas and Ober, pp. 17–20.
13. Oxford English Dictionary. Ingenium is the nominative of ingenio, which could imply either the nature or the use of his mind; genus means race, and is, like genius and genitals, derived from the verb gignere, to beget; Ditton, p. 3 of unpaginated preface; Pope, p. 261 (from ‘Epistle to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington’): Fumaroli; Smith, Four Words, pp. 22–48.
14. Turnbull, vol. 1, p. 1415 (letter of 20 August 1669 to John Collins); letter of 16 August 1680 to John Sharp, quoted in Manuel, Portrait of Newton, p. 107; Martin, Biographia Philosophica, p. 362.
15. The Occasional Paper 3 / x (1719), p. 5.
16. The Prelude, Book III, ll. 60–3; Thomas and Ober.
17. Quoted in Woodmansee, pp. 429–30.
18. Ault, pp. 1–4; Gage, Colour and Meaning, pp. 144–52; Essick; Greenberg.
19. Tallis; Blake, p. 818 (from an 1802 letter to Thomas Butts).
20. Greenberg, ‘Blake’s science’; Blake, p. 470 (annotation to Discourse 6).
21. Hayley, pp. 314–15; Romney, pp. 228–9, 235–7; Ward and Roberts, vol. 2, pp. 197, 201; Schaffer, ‘Scientific Discoveries’.
22. Young, Conjectures, pp. 26–7; Abrams; Furst; Smith, Four Words, Schaffer, ‘Genius’.
23. DeNora and Mehan; Dubos and Dubos, pp. 45–66; Becker.
24. Blake, p. 472 (annotation to Reynolds’s Discourse 7); Shawe-Taylor, ‘Genial company’, p. 70.
25. Priestley, History of Electricity, p. 576; Schaffer, ‘Priestley’; Reid (quotations pp. 12, 15, 23); Laudan.
26. Kriz, pp. 1–8 (quotation p. 3 from London Packet); Mann.
27. Holmes: Davy quoted p. 119, Hazlitt quoted p. 240 (and p. 545).
28. Klein, pp. 47–8 (quotation p. 48).
29. Wollstonecraft, p. 119; Alaya; Battersby; Nochlin, pp. 145–78.
30. Brewer, pp. 573–612 (quotation p. 580).
31. Thrale, vol. 2, pp. 795–6.
32. Aikin, pp. 139–45 (quotation p. 144).
33. Quoted in Brewer, p. 150.
34. Gerard, p. 14.
35. MacLeod, ‘Paradoxes of patenting’ and ‘James Watt’; Miller (inscription p. 2).
36. Champion, 13 July 1742, reproduced in Gentleman’s Magazine 12 (1742), 365.
37. By Thomas Wilson, in St Stephen’s Walbrook, London.
38. Macaulay, p. 17.
39. George, no. 11941.
40. Rose, Brewer, pp. 125–66; Woodmansee.
41. Cobbett, vol. 17, pp. 999–1000 (1774); Macaulay, pp. 17–22 (quotation p. 22).
42. Miller (John Robison quoted p. 6).
43. Malthus, p. 49.
44. New Monthly Magazine 16 (1826), 32.
45. Gerard, especially pp. 317–434 (quotation p. 323); William Duff, also at Aberdeen, praised Newton in a long account of what he called ‘philosophic genius’.
46. John Thelwall, Monthly Magazine 59 (1825), 401n. (about Spurzheim’s claim to have invented phrenology).
47. Hazlitt, Selected Writings, p. 272 (from ‘Originality’).
48. Ibid., pp. 257–62 (‘Why the arts are not progressive’) and 136–7 (from ‘The Indian jugglers’).
