“I was on Sunday night, the 7th of March, 1724–5, at Kensington with Sir Isaac Newton, in his lodgings, just after he was come out of a fit of the gout, which he had had in both his feet, for the first time, in the eighty-third year of his age. He was better after it, and his head clearer, and memory stronger than I had known them for some time. He then repeated to me, by way of discourse, very distinctly, though rather in answer to my queries than in one continued narration, what he had often hinted to me before, viz. that it was his conjecture (he would affirm nothing) that there was a sort of revolution in the heavenly bodies; that the vapours and light emitted by the sun, which had their sediment as water and other matter, had gathered themselves by degrees into a body, and attracted more matter from the planets, and at last made a secondary planet (viz. one of those that go round another planet) and then by gathering to them, and attracting more matter, became a primary planet; and then by increasing still became a comet, which after certain revolutions, by coming nearer and nearer to the sun, had all its volatile parts condensed, and became a matter fit to recruit and replenish the sun (which must waste by the constant heat and light it emitted) as a fagot would this fire if put into it (we were sitting by a wood fire), and that that would probably be the effect of the comet of 1680, sooner or later, for, by the observations made upon it, it appeared, before it came near the sun, with a tail only two or three degrees long; but by the heat it contracted in going so near the sun, it seemed to have a tail of thirty or forty degrees when it went from it; that he could not say when this comet would drop into the sun; it might perhaps have five or six revolutions more first, but whenever it did it would so much increase the heat of the sun that this earth would be burnt, and no animals in it could live. That he took the three phenomena seen by Hipparchus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler’s disciples to have been of this kind, for he could not otherwise account for an extraordinary light as those were, appearing all at once among the fixed stars (all which he took to be suns enlightening other planets as our sun does ours) as big as Mercury or Venus seems to us, and gradually diminishing for sixteen months, and then sinking into nothing. He seemed to doubt whether there were not intelligent beings superior to us who superintended these revolutions of the heavenly bodies by the direction of the Supreme Being. He appeared also to be very clearly of opinion that the inhabitants of this world were of a short date, and alleged as one reason for that opinion, that all arts, as letters, ships, printing, needle, &c., were discovered within the memory of history, which could not have happened if the world had been eternal; and that there were visible marks of ruin upon it which could not be effected by a flood only. When I asked him how this earth could have been repeopled if ever it had undergone the same fate it was threatened with hereafter by the comet of 1680, he answered, that required the power of a Creator. He said he took all the planets to be composed of the same matter with this earth, viz. earth, water, stones, &c., but variously concocted. I asked him why he would not publish his conjectures as conjectures, and instanced that Kepler had communicated his; and though he had not gone near so far as Kepler, yet Kepler’s guesses were so just and happy that they had been proved and demonstrated by him. His answer was, ‘I do not deal in conjectures.’ But upon my talking to him about the four observations that had been made of the comet of 1680, at 574 years’ distance, and asking him the particular times, he opened his Principia, which laid on the table, and showed me there the particular periods, viz. 1st, the Julium Sidus, in the time of Justinian, in 1106, in 1680.

And I, observing that he said there of that comet, ‘incidet in corpus solis,’ and in the next paragraph adds, ‘stellæ fixæ refici possunt,’ told him I thought he owned there what we had been talking about, viz. that the comet would drop into the sun, and that fixed stars were recruited and replenished by comets when they dropped into them; and, consequently, that the sun would be recruited too; and asked him why he would not own as freely what he thought of the sun as well as what he thought of the fixed stars. He said, ‘that concerned us more;’ and, laughing, added, ‘that he had said enough for people to know his meaning.’”

The preceding paper, with the title prefixed to it, was first published by Mr. Turnor in his Collections, &c. p. 172. It was found among the Portsmouth manuscripts, in the handwriting of Mr. Conduit.

THE END.