Dark Matter

After breakfast the next day, we received a note from Wallis inviting us to call on him at eleven of the clock, and at the appointed hour we did go to Exeter College to see him. I did not like Exeter as much as Merton, Magdalen, or Christchurch, it being disfigured by large and unsightly chimneys, not to mention much building work being done in the front quadrangle, so that I wondered how Wallis could study there. But this was soon explained when we entered the Professor’s rooms and met Wallis himself, since it was quickly evident that Doctor Wallis was a little deaf, which was no great wonder in a man of his age. He was of medium height, with a small head and slightly infirm of gait, and leaned upon a stick and a boy of about fourteen years old, whom he introduced to us as his grandson William.

“There, William,” said his doting grandfather. “One day you will be able to say that you once met the great Isaac Newton, whose notions of mathematics are received with great applause.”

Newton bowed deeply. “Doctor Wallis,” he said, “I was not able to find anything general in quadratures, until I had understood your own work on infinitesimals.”

Wallis acknowledged the compliment with a nod, and then told the boy to run along before inviting us to sit and declaring himself mighty honoured that Newton should think fit to visit an old scholar like himself.

“Pray tell me, sir,” he asked. “Does this mean that you have reconsidered your decision not to publish your Opticks in my book? Is that why you have come?”

“No sir,” Newton said firmly. “I have not changed my mind. I am here on the business of His Majesty’s Mint.”

“It’s not too late, you know. Even now Mister Flamsteed sends me an account of his observations, which shall be included. Will you not reconsider, Doctor Newton?”

“No sir, for I fear that disputes and controversies may be raised against me by some confounded ignoramus.”

“But perhaps some other may get scraps of your notion and publish it as his own,” said Wallis. “Then it will be his, not yours, though he may perhaps never attain a tenth part of what you are already the master of. Consider that it is now almost thirty years since you were master of those notions about fluxions—”

“I think,” said Newton, interrupting, “that you have already written me a letter to this same effect.”

Wallis grunted loudly. “I own that modesty is a virtue,” he said. “I merely wished to point out that too much diffidence is a fault. How should this, or the next age, know of your discoveries if you do not publish, sir?”

“I shall publish, sir, when I am minded so to do.”

Wallis tried to conceal his show of exasperation, with little success.

“The business of the Mint, you say?” he said, changing the subject. “I had heard you were Master of the Mint. From Mister Hooke.”

“For the present I am merely the Warden. The Master is Mister Neale.”

“The Lottery man?”

Smiling thinly, Newton nodded.

“But is the work so very challenging?”

“It is a living, that is all.”

“I wonder that you do not have a church living. I myself have the living of St. Gabriel’s in London.”

“I have not the aptitude for the Church,” replied Newton. “Only for inquiry.”

“Well then, sir, I am at the Mint’s service, although if we are to talk of money, I can tell you there’s none in the whole of Oxford.” Wallis gestured at his own surroundings. “And I cannot counterfeit anything save this show of worldly comfort. The only silver hereabouts is the college plate, and all sober men of the University are fearful of ruin. This Great Recoinage has been badly handled, sir.”

“Not by me,” insisted Newton. “But I have come about a book, sir, not the scarcity of good coin in Oxford.”

“We have plenty of those, sir,” said Wallis. “Sometimes I would we had fewer books and more money.”

“I seek a particular book—Polygraphia, by Trithemius — which I would desire to have sight of.”

“You have come a long way to read one ancient book.” The old man got up from his chair and fetched a handsomely bound volume from his bookcase.

“Polygraphia, eh? That is an ancient book indeed. It was first published in 1517. This is an original copy which I have owned these past fifty years.”

“But did you not order another from Mister Lowndes of the Savoy?” asked Newton.

“Who told you that, sir?”

“Why, Mister Lowndes, of course.”

“I like this discovery not, sir,” said Wallis, frowning. “A man’s bookseller should keep his confidence, like his physician. What can become of a world where every man knows what another man reads? Why, sir, books would become like quacks’ potions, with every mountebank in the newspapers claiming one volume’s superiority over another.”

“I regret the intrusion, sir. But as I said, this is official business.”

“Official business, is it?” Wallis turned the book over in his hands and then stroked the cover most lovingly.