50 LIFE OP SIR ISAAC NEWTON. Newton's hiving that method above fifteen years before Mr Leibnitz began to publish it in the Acta Eruditorum of Leipsic. " For which reason we reckon Mr. Newton the first inventor ; and are of opinion that Mr. Keill, in asserting the same, has been no ways injurious to Mr. Leibnitz. And we submit to the judg ment of the Society, whether the extract and papers, now pre sented to you, together with what is extant, to the same pur pose, in Dr. Wallis's third volume, may not deserve to be made public." This Report, with the collection of letters and manuscripts, under the title of COMMERCIUM EPISTOLICUM D. JOHANNIS COLLINS ET ALIORUM DE ANALYSI PROMOTA JuSSU SoCIETATIS REGIES EDITUM, appeared accordingly in the early part of 1713. Its publication seemed to infuse additional bitterness into the feelings of Leibnitz, who descended to unfounded charges and empty threats. He had been privy counsellor to the Elector of Han over, before that prince was elevated to the British throne ; and in his correspondence, in 1715 and 1716, with the Abbe Conti, then at the court of George L, and with Caroline, Princess of Wales, he attacked the doctrines of the PRINCIPIA, and indirectly its author, in a manner very discreditable to himself, both as a learned and as an honourable man. His assaults, however, were triumphantly met; and, to the complete overthrow of his rival pretensions, Newton was induced to give the finishing blow. The verdict is universal and irreversible that the English preceded the German philosopher, by at least ten years, in the invention of fluxions. Newton could not have borrowed from Leibnitz ; but Leibnitz might have borrowed from Newton. A new edition of the Commercium Epistolicum was published in 1722-5 (?) ; but neither in this, nor in the former edition, did our author take any part. The disciples, enthusiastic, capable and ready, effectually shielded, with the buckler of Truth, the character of the Master, whose own conduct throughout was replete with delicacy, dignity and justice. He kept aloof from the controversy — in which Dr. Keill stood forth as the chief representative of the Newtonian side — till the very last, when, for the satisfaction of the King, George L. rather than for his own, he consented to put forth his