William Croft.

DIED A. D. 1727.

THE limits of our work necessarily preclude us from noticing many names of considerable eminence in science and literature, especially in the department of music. We could with pleasure have enlarged our brief notices of such men as Purcell, Aldrich, and Blow; and devoted separate articles to other names, such as the elder Hall, organist of Hereford, who died in 1707, whose anthems are still much esteemed; Jeremiah Clark, an excellent church composer; and John Weldon, who confined himself almost entirely to the composition of church music To these names might be added those of the Eccleses, Dr Tudway, Britton the small-coal man, Weldon, Isham, and many others.

The subject of the present memoir was a native of Nether Eatington in Warwickshire. He was educated in the royal chapel under Dr Blow, and in 1707 became organist of the chapel royal. The next year he succeeded his master as organist of St Peter's, Westminster. In 1715 he was created doctor in music by the university of Oxford. His exercise for the degree was published, under the title of Musicus Apparatus Academicus.' In 1724, Dr Croft published his Musica Sacra, or Select Anthems in score.' This noble work consists of two volumes, the first containing the burial service, which Purcell had begun but did not live to finish. In the preface, Croft says of this work, that it is the first essay in music-printing of the kind, that is, in score, and engraven or stamped on plates, and that, for want of some such contrivance, all the music hitherto published in England had proved very incorrect and defective. The Musica Sacra' contains a number of thanksgiving anthems, composed by Croft on the occasion of different victories obtained by the English arms during the reign of Queen Anne. One of the finest of these is that of 1708, Sing unto the Lord.' Among his other anthems, the most admired are, O Lord, rebuke me not,' 'God is gone up,' and 'O Lord, thou hast searched

me out.'

The practice of music printing from copper plates seems to have been begun in Italy about the middle of the 17th century.

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Sir Isaac Newton.

BORN A. D. 1642.-DIED A. D. 1727.

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SIR ISAAC NEWTON, the father of the physical philosoply of modern times, and the greatest mathematical genius that ever lived, was the son of Isaac Newton, lord of the manor of Woolsthorpe, in the parish of Colsterworth in Lincolnshire, and of his wife, Hannah Ayscough. He was born on the 25th of December, 1642, (O. S.) at the manorhouse of Woolsthorpe, which lies embosomed among hills, a short distance to the west of the great northern road from London, and about six miles south from the town of Grantham. In the Gentleman's Magazine' for 1778, vol. xlviii. p. 64, is given an engraving, professing to represent the house in which Newton first saw the light: and in the same publication for 1781, vol. li. p. 414, we are presented with a plan of the interior of the same edifice, in which one of the rooms, occupying one-half of the upper story, to the left of the door, is marked as that in which this event actually took place. But as we shall have occasion to notice again below-the house from which these drawings have been taken, and which is still standing, was not built till some years after Newton's birth. He was an only and a posthumous child, his father having died at the age of 36, about three months before he came into the world. A writer of the name of Thomas Maude, author of a poem entitled Wensley Dale, or Rural Contemplations,' published in 1772, who professes to give the world some original anecdotes respecting the infancy and boyhood of Newton, tells us that his father was a weak and extravagant man;" but we cannot put much confidence in this information, inasmuch as the relater seems to know so little of the true history of the person whose character he thus describes, as to charge hun with neglecting the education of his son, who, as we have just seen, was not born till nearly a quarter of a year after his decease. The estate which Newton inherited from his father was worth about £30 per annum, as we are informed by a letter from Dr Stukeley to Dr Mead, dated 26th June, 1727, a part of which was published in the Gentleman's Magazine' for 1772, vol. xlii. p. 520, and which has since been printed in a complete form in Mr Turnor's splendid volume, entitled Collections for the History of the Town and Soke of Grantham. As this work, which was published in 1806, is extremely scarce, we may here mention that the portion of its contents relating to Newton is to be found reprinted nearly entire in the fourth volume of the late Mr Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth century. Newton-Stukeley in this letter also informs us -inherited, besides his paternal acres, another property at Sustem, in the same neighbourhood, of larger extent, and worth about £50 per annum. This came to him from his mother's family. As for the Newtons, Stukeley's account is "that they had held the manor of Woolsthorpe ever since the time of Elizabeth, having purchased it from one of the Cecils." Mr Conduitt, who supplied Fontenelle with the materials from which the latter composed his Eloge on the English philosopher, asserts that Newton's father was descended from the eldest branch