Page:Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's life.djvu/133

hall to dinner, but had his victuals brought to his chamber; & then very often, so deeply intent was he, that he never thought of it, till supper time.

⁺when he was busy in study, he never minded his meal times. & when he took a turn in the fellows gardens, if some new gravel happen'd to be laid on the walks, it was sure to be drawn over, & over, with a bit of stick, in Sir Isaac's diagrams; which the fellows would cautiously spare, by walking beside them. & there they would sometime remain for a good while.

At Cambridg I often heard storys of his absence of mind, from common things of life. as when he has been in the hall at dinner, he has quite neglected to help himself; and the cloth has been taken away before he has eaten any thing. that sometime, when on surplice days; he would goe toward Saint Mary's church, insted of college chapel.

^Xor perhaps has gone in his surplice to dinner, in the hall.

that when he had friends to entertain at his chamber, if he stept in to his study for a bottle of wine, & a thought came into his head, he would sit down to paper, & forget his friends.

^θthus the human mind wholly taken up in abstract reasonings, & long concatenation of causes & consequences, was apt, as it were, to desert the body: assume its essential & true life. & enjoy those superlative pleasures arising from contemplations of the most worthy sort, nearly approaching to angelical. tis an anticipation of part of those divine joys, in our future state of being.

I have heard him say, that during his closest application, he never forgot going to bed about 12. this he learn'd by experience. for if he exceeded that hour, it did him more mischief in his health, the next day, than a whole days study, at regular times.

he often amusd himself in reading, & writing on lighter matters, as an alleviation of his deeper researches. for in short he had study'd every thing. he had very good knowledg in physick, as we commonly understand the word. & to that probably