es,
known to the whole world? _Animi vi prope divina, planetarum motus,
figuras, cometarum semitas, Oceanique aestus, sua Mathesi lucem
praeferente, primus demonstravit. Radiorum lucis dissimilitudines,
colorumque inde nascentium proprietates, quas nemo suspicatus est,
pervestigavit_. So stands the record in Westminster Abbey; and in many
a dusty alcove stands the "Principia," a prouder monument perhaps, more
enduring than brass or crumbling stone. And yet, with rare modesty, such
as might be considered again and again with singular advantage by many
another, this great man hesitated to publish to the world his rich
discoveries, wishing rather to wait for maturity and perfection. The
solicitation of Dr. Barrow, however, prevailed upon him to send forth,
about this time, the "Analysis of Equations containing an Infinite
Number of Terms,"--a work which proves, incontestably, that he was in
possession of the Calculus, though nowhere explaining its principles.

This delay occasioned the bitter quarrel between Newton and Leibnitz,--a
quarrel exaggerated by narrow-minded partisans, and in truth not very
creditable, in all its ramifications, to either party. Newton, in the
course of a scientific correspondence with Leibnitz, published in 1712,
by the Royal Society, under the title, "Commercium Epistolicum
de Analysi promota," not only communicated very many remarkable
discoveries, but added, that he was in possession of the inverse problem
of the tangents, and that he employed two methods which he did
not choose to make public, for which reason he concealed them by
anagrammatical transposition, so effectual as completely to
extinguish the faint glimmer of light which shone through his scanty
explanation.[B] The reference is obviously to what was afterwards known
as the Method of Fluxions and Fluents. This method he derived from the
consideration of the laws of motion uniformly varied, like the motion of
the extreme point of the ordinate of any curve whatever. The name which
he gave to his method is derived from the idea of motion connected with
its origin.

[Footnote B: This logograph Newton afterwards rendered as follows: "Una
methodus consistit in extractione fluentis quantitatis ex aequatione
simul involvente; altera tantum in assumptione seriei pro quantitate
incognita ex qua ceterae commode derivari possunt, et in collatione
terminonim homologorum aequationis resultantis ad eruendos terminos
seriei assumptae."]

Leibn