we come to a little bit of the history of the
appointment to the Mint. It has appeared from the researches of late years
that Newton was long an aspirant for public employment: the only coolness
which is known to have taken place between him and Charles Montague[573]
[Halifax] arose out of his imagining that his friend was not in earnest
about getting him into the public service. March 14, 1696, Newton writes
thus to Halley: "And if the rumour of preferment for me in the Mint should
hereafter, upon the death of Mr. Hoar [the comptroller], or any other
occasion, be revived, I pray that you would {312} endeavour to obviate it
by acquainting your friends that I neither _put in_ for _any_ place in the
Mint, nor would meddle with _Mr. Hoar's place_, were it offered to me."
This means that Mr. Hoar's place had been suggested, which Newton seems to
have declined. Five days afterwards, Montague writes to Newton that he is
to have the _Wardenship_. It is fair to Newton to say that in all
probability this was not--or only in a smaller degree--a question of
personal dignity, or of salary. It must by this time have been clear to him
that the minister, though long bound to make him an object of patronage,
was actually seeking him for the Mint, because he wanted both Newton's name
and his talents for business--which he knew to be great--in the weighty and
dangerous operation of restoring the coinage. It may have been, and
probably was, the case that Newton had a tolerably accurate notion of what
he would have to do, and of what degree of power would be necessary to
enable him to do it in his own way.

We have said that the non-epistolary manuscripts are still unexamined.
There is a chance that one of them may answer a question of two centuries'
standing, which is worth answering, because it has been so often asked.
About 1640, Warner,[574] afterwards assisted by Pell,[575] commenced a
table of _antilogarithms_, of the kind which Dodson[576] afterwards
constructed anew and published. In the Museum collection there is inquiry
after inquiry from Charles Cavendish,[577] first, as to when the
_Analogics_, as he called them, would be finished; next, when they would be
printed. Pell answers, in 1644, that Warner left his papers to a kinsman,
who had become bankrupt, and proceeds thus:

"I am not a little afraid that all Mr. Warner's papers, {313} and no small
share of my labours therein, are seazed upon, and most unmathematically
divided be