31. of August 1726 –

SrSir I. N. told me that he had been told that when he was born he was so little they could put him into a quart pot & so weakly that he was forced to have a bolster all round his neck to keep it on itshis shoulders & so little likely to live that when two women were sent to Lady Packenham at North Witham for something for him they sate down on a stile by the way & said there was no occasion for making haste for they were sure the child would be dead before they could get back — He was born at Woolstrope a mannour of his own in Lincolnshire in the parish of Costerworth & says he saw his name registered in that church & that he was born in 1642 – he went to two smal schools at Kilingworth & Stoke before he was 12 year old

He was sent to Grantham school wchwhich had between 60 & 80 scholars when he was 12 year old & was put thein the lowermost form of all & was very idle till an odd accident put him on studying, when he was the last in the lowermost class but one the boy next above him as they were going to school gave him a kick in the belly which gave him a great deal of pain & as soon as school was over he challenged the boy to fight, & they went out andinto that part of the Church-yard next the end of the Church where the steeple is not, whilst they were fighting the schoolmaster's son came to them & claped his Antagonist on the back & winked at him to encourage them both he beat thisthe other to such a degree that he said he would fight no more upon wchwhich the schoolmaster's son said he should use him like a coward & rub his nose against the wall & accordingly he took pulled him along by the ears & did so – not content with this victory he was uneasie till he got his place & thouthough before that he was very idle & never minded his boook, (as you may believe (said he) by my being the last in the form) from that time he began to study & apply himself so earnestly that he soon got the place, & continued rising – after he had been about 4$\frac{1}{2}$ years at school his father mother took him home from school for 3 quarters of a year to see if he would take to country affairs & the managing his own estate, but he had tasted too deep of other pleasures studies to relish them or give any attention to them upon wchwhich his father mother sent him to school again for 3 quarters of a year more he grew to be the best scholar in the school & was famous for making verses then thouthough in his later years he had so ill an opinion of poetry that you could not do any man a worse turn with him than to say he was a poet he always imagining that poetry was a study so very contrary to Mathematicks that all poets must have an aversion & antipathy to him – When he was 18 he was sent a pensioner to Trinity College in Cambridge, before he went his uncle Aiscough gave him Sanderson's logick & told him that was the book his tutour would read to him first he read it over by himself & when he came to hear his tutour's lectures upon it found he knew more of it than his tutour, His tutor finding him so forward told him he was going to read Kepler's opticks to some gentlemen com̄mmoners & that he should come to those lectures, he immediately bought that book & read them thro'through by himself & when his tutor sent for him to those lectures told him he had read the book throuthrough already – About this time he had light on some books relating to judicial astrology & being desirous to know wether there was any thing in that found he could make no agreement till he could make a figure i.e. bring see how all the planets bear at a certain time he bought 2an English Euclid 1at Sturbridge fair with an index of all the problems at the end, he despised that as a trifling book & only turned to two or three problems wchwhich he wanted to cast make use of for his figure & as soon as he had done that found there was nothing in judicial astrology – He borrowed bought Descartes's Geometry & read it by himself when he was got ouer 2 or 3 pages he could understand no farther thanthen he began again & got 3 or 4 pages farther till he came to another difficult place, then he began again & advanced farther & continued so doing till he made himself Master of the whole without having the least light or instruction from any body – When he stood to be scholar of the house his tutour sent him to Dr Barrow then Mathematical professor to be examined the DrDoctor examined him in Euclid wchwhich SrSir I. had had neglected & knew little or nothing of, & finding him never asked him about Descartes's Geometry wchwhich he was master of SrSir I. was too modest to mention it himself & Dr Barrow could not imagine that any one could haue read that book without being first master of Euclid, so that Dr Barrow conceived then but an indifferent opinion of him but however he was made scholar of the house – In August 166635 SrSir I. who was then not 24 bought at Sturbridge fair a prism to try some experiments upon Descartes's book 1 of colours & when he came home & made a hole in his shutter & darkened the room & put his prism between that & the wall found instead of a circle the the light made with strait sides & circular ends &c – wchwhich convinced him immediately that Descartes was wrong & he then made found out his own Hypothesis of colours thouthough he could not demonstrate it for want of another prism for wchwhich he staid till next Sturbridge fair & then proved what he had before found out – Now he began to have the first hint of his method of fluxions, & by solving of difficult problems &c – soon gave Dr Barrow another quite opinion of him – In consequence of his book discovery of colours he made 2 speculums, the original of the reflecting telescope & sent one to the Royal Society in 17721672 – I asked him where he had it made, he laughed & 2 – he said he made it himself, & when I asked him where he got his tools said he made them himself & laughing added if I had staid for other people to make my tools & things for me Cæsar had not been such a general if he had I had never made any thing of it, the only help I had said he in those operations was my next chamber fellow who was stronger than I & used to help me on with my kettle sometimes for he had several furnaces in his own chambers for chymical experiments –