who did not find it difficult to produce a report rather unfavourable to the continental philosopher, bearing "That Mr Leibnitz was in London in 1673, and kept a correspondence with Mr Collins, by means of Mr Oldenburgh, till September, 1676, when he returned from Paris to Hanover, by way of London and Amsterdam; that it did not appear that M. Leibnitz knew anything of the differential calculus before his letter of the 21st June, 1677, which was a year after a copy of a letter wrote by Sir Isaac Newton, in the year 1672, had been sent to Paris to be communicated to him, and about four years after Mr Collins began to communicate that letter to his correspondents; wherein the method of fluxions was sufficiently explained to let a man of his sagacity into the whole matter: and that Sir I. Newton had even invented his method before the year 1669, and of consequence fifteen years before Mr Leibnitz had given anything on the subject In the Leipsic acts;" from which train of circumstances they concluded that Keill was justified in his imputations. The censure of the society, and the papers connected with it, were published apart from the Transactions in 1712, under the title "Commercium Epistolicum de Analysi Promota." For some time the philosopher appears not to have answered this array against him, until the Abbe Conti, in the year 1716, addressed him, calling on him, if he did not choose to answer Keill, at least to vindicate himself from the non-admission of his claim on the part of Newton;[1] and he just commenced the work of vindication at a period when death prevented him from completing it
In the year 1709, Keill was appointed treasurer to the Palatines, and in performance of his duties, attended them in their passage to New England. On his return in 1710, he was appointed successor to Dr Caswell, Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford. At this period, he again entered the field of controversy, in support of his friend Sir Isaac Newton, whose philosophy had been attacked on the foundation of Des Cartes's theory of a plenum; and he published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1713, a communication to the society, on the rarity of matter and the tenuity of its composition.[2] In this controversy, he was, however, interrupted by his appointment to the situation of decypherer to the queen, and he was soon afterwards presented with the degree of doctor of medicine, by the university of Oxford. About this period we find him gratefully remembered by that unfortunate scholar Simon Oakley, for having permitted him the use of the Savilian study.[3]
Keill, in the year 1717, took to himself a wife. The name of the lady who made him the happiest of men, has not been preserved; but it is said he married her "for her singular accomplishments." In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1739, we find a curious Horatian ode, addressed to Keill by the celebrated Anthony Alsop; its period of publication is some years after the death of both the parties, and there is no comment alluding to the date of its composition; but the circumstances mentioned show it to be a congratulatory epistle to Keill on his marriage. The ode is extremely spirited and not destitute of elegance; but whether from other motives, or the anxiety of the author to reach the familiar vivacity of the Roman lyrist, he has treated his grave subject in a manner which would not now be considered very worthy of a divine, or to convey a pleasing compliment to a venerable professor. The subject was one of some delicacy to Alsop, who was then enjoying a species of banishment, the consequence of a verdict obtained against him for breach of a contract of marriage;
