He arrived in London on November 16.  Soon after his return both the asthma and the dropsy became more violent and distressful, and though he was attended by Dr. Heberden, Dr. Brocklesby, Dr. Warren, and Dr. Butter, who all refused fees, and though he himself co-operated with them, and made deep incisions in his body to draw off the water from it, he gradually sank.  On December 2, he sent directions for inscribing epitaphs for his father, mother, and brother on a memorial slab in St. Michael’s Church, Lichfield.  On December 8 and 9 he made his will; and on Monday, December 13, he expired about seven o’clock in the evening, with so little apparent pain that his attendants hardly perceived when his dissolution took place.  A week later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, his old schoolfellow, Dr. Taylor, reading the service.

I trust I shall not be accused of affectation when I declare that I find myself unable to express all that I felt upon the loss of such a “Guide, Philosopher, and Friend.”  I shall, therefore, not say one word of my own, but adopt those of an eminent friend, which he uttered with an abrupt felicity:  “He has made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up.  Johnson is dead.  Let us go to the next best:  there is nobody; no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson.”

* * * * *

SIR DAVID BREWSTER

Life of Sir Isaac Newton

Sir David Brewster, a distinguished physicist, was born at Jedburgh, on December 11, 1781.  He was educated at Edinburgh University, and was licensed as a clergyman of the Church of Scotland by the Presbytery of Edinburgh.  Nervousness in the pulpit compelled him to retire from clerical life and devote himself to scientific work, and in 1808 he became editor of the “Edinburgh Encyclopaedia.”  His chief scientific interest was optics, and he invented the kaleidoscope, and improved Wheatstone’s stereoscope by introducing the divided lenses.  In 1815 he was elected a member of the Royal Society, and, later, was awarded the Rumford gold and silver medals for his discoveries in the polarisation of light.  In 1831 he was knighted.  From 1859 he held the office of Principal of Edinburgh University until his death on February 10, 1868.  The “Life of Sir Isaac Newton” appeared in 1831, when it was first published in Murray’s “Family Library.”  Although popularly written, not only does it embody the results of years of investigation, but it throws a unique light on the life of the celebrated scientist.  Brewster supplemented it in 1855 with the much fuller “Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton.”

I.—­The Young Scientist

Sir Isaac Newton was born at the hamlet of Woolsthorpe on December 25, 1642.  His father, a yeoman farmer, died a few months after his marriage, and never saw his son.