Note 455 — Chapter IV

The Principia of Newton appeared in 1687; and Maupertuis, in 1732, ‘was the first astronomer of France who undertook a critical defence of the theory of gravitation.’ Grant's Hist. of Physical Astronomy, pp. 31, 43. In 1738, Voltaire writes, ‘La France est jusqu'à présent le seul pays où les théories de Newton en physique, et de Boerhaave en médecine, soient combattues. Nous n'avons pas encore de bons éléments de physique; nous avons pour toute astronomie le livre de Bion, qui n'est qu'un ramas informe de quelques mémoires de l'académie.’ Correspond. in Œuvres de Voltaire, vol. xlvii. p. 340. On the tardy reception of Newton's discoveries in France, compare Eloge de Lacaille, in Œuvres de Bailly, Paris, 1790, vol. i. pp. 175, 176. All this is the more remarkable, because several of the conclusions at which Newton had arrived were divulged before they were embodied in the Principia; and it appears from Brewster's Life of Newton (vol. i. pp. 25, 26, 290), that his speculations concerning gravity began in 1666, or perhaps in the autumn of 1665.