His Acquaintance with Dr. Pemberton, who edits the Third Edition of the Principia—His first Attack of ill Health—His Recovery—He is taken ill in consequence of attending the Royal Society—His Death on the 20th March, 1727—His Body lies in state—His Funeral—He is buried in Westminster Abbey—His Monument described—His Epitaph—A Medal struck in honour of him—Roubiliac’s full-length Statue of him erected in Cambridge—Division of his Property—His Successors.

About the year 1722, Sir Isaac was desirous of publishing a third edition of his Principia, and the premature death of Mr. Cotes having deprived him of his valuable aid, he had the good fortune to become acquainted with Dr. Henry Pemberton, a young and accomplished physician, who had cultivated mathematical learning with considerable success. M. Poleni, an eminent professor in the University of Padua, having endeavoured, on the authority of a new experiment, to overturn the common opinion respecting the force of bodies in motion, and to establish that of Leibnitz in its place, Dr. Pemberton transmitted to Dr. Mead a demonstration of its inaccuracy. Dr. Mead communicated this paper to Sir Isaac, who not only highly approved of it, but added a demonstration of his own, drawn from another consideration of the subject; and this was printed without his name, as a postscript to Pemberton’s paper, when it appeared in the Transactions.121

In a short time after the commencement of their acquaintance, Sir Isaac engaged Dr. Pemberton to superintend the new edition of the Principia. In discharging this duty, Dr. Pemberton had occasion to make many remarks on this work, which Sir Isaac285 always received with the utmost goodness, and the new edition appeared with numerous alterations in 1726. On the occasions upon which he had personal intercourse with Sir Isaac, and which were necessarily numerous, he endeavoured to learn his opinions on various mathematical subjects, and to obtain some historical information respecting his inventions and discoveries. Sir Isaac entered freely into all these topics and during the conversations which took place, and while they were reading together Dr. Pemberton’s popular account of Sir Isaac’s discoveries, he obtained the most perfect evidence that, though his memory was much decayed, yet he was fully able to understand his own writings.

During the last twenty years of his life, which he spent in London, the charge of his domestic concerns devolved upon his beautiful and accomplished niece, Mrs. Catharine Barton, the wife of Colonel Barton, for whom, as we have already seen, the Earl of Halifax had conceived the warmest affection. This lady, who had been educated at her uncle’s expense, married Mr. Conduit, and continued to reside with her husband in Sir Isaac’s house till the time of his death.

In the year 1722, when he had reached the eightieth year of his age, he was seized with an incontinence of urine, which was ascribed to stone in the bladder, and was considered incurable. By means of a strict regimen, however, and other precautions, he was enabled to alleviate his complaint, and to procure long intervals of ease. At this time he gave up the use of his carriage, and always went out in a chair. He declined all invitations to dinner, and at his own house he had only small parties. In his diet he was extremely temperate. Though he took a little butcher meat, yet the principal articles of his food were broth, vegetables, and fruit, of which he always ate very heartily. In spite of all286 his precautions, however, he experienced a return of his old complaint, and in August, 1724, he passed a stone the size of a pea, which came away in two pieces, the one at the distance of two days from the other. After some months of tolerable good health, he was seized in January, 1725, with a violent cough and inflammation of the lungs; and in consequence of this attack, he was prevailed upon, with some difficulty, to take up his residence at Kensington, where his health experienced a decided improvement. In February, 1725, he was attacked in both his feet with a fit of the gout, of which he had received a slight warning a few years before, and the effect of this new complaint was to produce a great and beneficial change in his general health. On Sunday the 7th March, when his head was clearer and his memory stronger than Mr. Conduit had known it to be for some time, he entered into a long conversation on various subjects in astronomy. He explained to Mr. Conduit how comets might be formed out of the light of vapours discharged from the sun and the fixed stars as the centres of systems. He conceived that these luminaries were replenished by the same comets being again returned to them; and upon this principle he explained the extraordinary lights which were seen among the fixed stars by Hipparchus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler’s disciples, and which he supposed to arise from the additional fuel which they received.122

Notwithstanding the improvement which his health had experienced, his indisposition was still sufficiently severe to unfit him for the discharge of his duties at the mint; and as his old deputy was confined with the dropsy, he was desirous in 1725 of resigning his office to Mr. Conduit. Difficulties probably were experienced in making this arrangement, but his nephew discharged for him all the287 duties of his office; and during the last year of his life he hardly ever went to the mint.

But though every kind of motion was calculated to aggravate his complaint, and though he had derived from absolute rest and from the air at Kensington the highest benefit, yet great difficulty was experienced in preventing him from occasionally going to town. Feeling himself able for the journey, he went to London on Tuesday the 28th of February, 1727, to preside at a meeting of the Royal Society. On the following day Mr. Conduit considered him better than he had been for many years, and Sir Isaac was himself so sensible of this improvement in his health, that he assured his nephew that on the Sunday preceding, he had slept from eleven o’clock at night till eight o’clock next morning without waking. He had undergone, however, great fatigue in attending the meeting of the Royal Society, and in paying and receiving visits, and the consequence of this was a violent return of his former complaint. He returned to Kensington on Saturday the 4th March, and was attended by Dr. Mead and Dr. Cheselden, who pronounced his disease to be stone, and held out no hopes of his recovery. From the time of his last journey to London he had experienced violent fits of pain with very short intermissions; and though the drops of sweat ran down his face during these severe paroxysms, yet he never uttered a cry or a complaint, or displayed the least marks of peevishness or impatience; but during the short intervals of relief which occurred, he smiled and conversed with his usual gayety and cheerfulness. On Wednesday the 15th of March he seemed a little better; and slight, though groundless hopes were entertained of his recovery. On the morning of Saturday the 18th he read the newspapers, and carried on a pretty long conversation with Dr. Mead, when all his senses and faculties were strong and vigorous; but at six o’clock288 of the same evening he became............