Note 99 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: (continued 3)

So sensible was even the calm Newton to critical attacks, that Whiston tells us he lost his favour, which he had enjoyed for twenty years, for contradicting Newton in his old age; for no man was of “a more fearful temper.” Whiston declares that he would not have thought proper to have published his work against Newton’s “Chronology” in his lifetime, “because I knew his temper so well, that I should have expected it would have killed him; as Dr. Bentley, Bishop Stillingfleet’s chaplain, told me, that he believed Mr. Locke’s thorough confutation of the Bishop’s metaphysics about the Trinity hastened his end.” Pope writhed in his chair from the light shafts which Cibber darted on him; yet they were not tipped with the poison of the Java-tree. Dr. Hawkesworth, died of criticism.—Singing-birds cannot live in a storm.