Note 161 — LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD (continued 3)

In June 1871 he wrote to me, ‘One Improvement I persist in recommending for your Chapel: but no one will do it. Instead of Lucretius’ line (which might apply to Shakespeare, etc.) at the foot of Newton’s Statue, you should put the first words of Bacon’s Novum Organum, (Homo) ‘Naturæ Minister et Interpres’: which eminently becomes Newton, as he stands, with his Prism; and connects him with his great Cambridge Predecessor, who now (I believe) sits in the Ante-Chapel along with him.’