Directors could not have answered it to
their members, had it been for any less occasion than the preservation
of the kingdom."]

[Footnote 712: Haynes's Brief Memoires; Lansdowne MSS. 801. Montague's
friendly letter to Newton, announcing the appointment, has been
repeatedly printed. It bears date March 19. 1695/6.]

[Footnote 713: I have very great pleasure in quoting the words of
Haynes, an able, experienced and practical man, who had been in the
habit of transacting business with Newton. They have never I believe,
been printed. "Mr. Isaac Newton, public Professor of the Mathematicks
in Cambridge, the greatest philosopher, and one of the best men of this
age, was, by a great and wise statesman, recommended to the favour of
the late King for Warden of the King's Mint and Exchanges, for which he
was peculiarly qualified, because of his extraordinary skill in numbers,
and his great integrity, by the first of which he could judge correctly
of the Mint accounts and transactions as soon as he entered upon his
office; and by the latter--I mean his integrity--he set a standard to
the conduct and behaviour of every officer and clerk in the Mint. Well
had it been for the publick, had he acted a few years sooner in that
situation." It is interesting to compare this testimony, borne by a man
who thoroughly understood the business of the Mint, with the childish
talk of Pope. "Sir Isaac Newton," said Pope, "though so deep in algebra
and fluxions, could not readily make up a common account; and, whilst he
was Master of the Mint, used to get somebody to make up the accounts
for him." Some of the statesmen with whom Pope lived might have told him
that it is not always from ignorance of arithmetic that persons at the
head of great departments leave to clerks the business of casting up
pounds, shillings and pence.]

[Footnote 714: "I do not love," he wrote to Flamsteed, "to be printed
on every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about
mathematical things, or to be thought by our own people to be trifling
away my time about them, when I am about the King's business."]

[Footnote 715: Hopton Haynes's Brief Memoires; Lansdowne MSS. 801.; the
Old Postmaster, July 4. 1696; the Postman May 30., July 4, September
12. 19., October 8,; L'Hermitage's despatches of this summer and autumn,
passim.]

[Footnote 716: Paris Gazette, Aug. 11. 1696.]

[Footnote 717: On the 7th of August L'Hermitage remarked for the first
tim