Draft letter from Newton to John Wallis concerning the publication of his 'Epistola posterior'

<1r>

Sir

I meet with no other amendments which need be made beside these which follow.

The plague was in Cambridge in both the years 1665 & 1666 but it was in 1666 that I was absent from Cambridge & therefore I have set down an amendment of the year. I wrote to you lately that I found the method of converging series in the winter between the years 1665 & 1666. For that was the earliest mention of it I could find then amongst my papers. But meeting since with the notes which in the year 1664 upon my first reading of Vieta's works Schooten's Miscelanies & your Arithmetica Infinitorum I took out of those books & finding among these notes my deduction of the series for the circle out of yours in your Arithmetica Infinitorum : I collect that it was in the year 1664 that I deduced these series out of yours Then is also among these notes Mercators series for squaring the Hyperbola found by the same method with some others. But I cannot find that I understood the invention of these series by division & extraction of roots or made any further progress in this business before the writer which was between the years 1665 & 1666. But in that winter & that spring following by the use of Division & extraction of roots I brought that method to be general, & then the plague made me leave Cambridge. But I do not think it requisite that you should make a particular mention of these things. I believe you have said enough in the beginning of your 91^th Chapter.

In your third Chapter you have given us a collation of the Arabic cyphers with ours both old & modern. The other day looking into Taverniere's travells into India lib. 1 pag 23 I met with the cyphers now used all over India. They are these.
$\begin{array}{ccccccccccccc}\mathrm{q}& \mathrm{ɀ}& \mathrm{\epsilon }& \mathrm{४}& \mathit{y}& \mathrm{ʒ}& \mathit{9}& \mathrm{ﺡ}& ७& \mathrm{q}.& \mathrm{q}..& \mathrm{q}...& \mathrm{q}....\\ 1& 2& 3& 4& 5& 6& 7& 8& 9& 10& 100& 1000& 10000\end{array}$
Our old figures 2, 4 5 & 8 (thus marked ɀ ४ $\mathit{y}$ ﺡ) seem to be borrowed from these.

I communicated the Postscript of your letter to our Vicechancellor together with such other Papers as your messenger shewed me. His answer was that he had been so much pressed by the heads of Colleges upon several occasions to admit nothing of this kind without full evidence that the {petitioner} was a true object of charity, that feared some of the Heads would be displeased if he {should} he could not give leave without better evidence then he had in this case least he should meet with a new check from the Heads. He exprest a <1v> great respect to your letter & said that he lived within five miles of Sandwich & knew the hands of most of the gentry there & had the case come recommended by some of them whome he could have confided in he would have admitted it, but for the seale of the corporation he represented that he knew they sometimes granted it upon too {sleight} occasions to get rid of troublesome people & therefore he could lay no great stress upon that. . M^r Deeds he said he knew, but seemed to lay no stress upon his testimony. I beleive he mistook the man, because I since heare there are more of that name. He desired that you should be will satisfied about the business & so telling him that I would represent it to you I took my leave & giving your Messenger ten shillings was fain to dismis him with this answer. Last summer when the Vicechancellor stood to be our Burgess I voted against him & so can challenge no interest in him tho he is very fair & civil to me. My hearty thanks for the sheets of your book I am very glad it is so near finishing. You have done our nation a great honour in putting so useful a work into Latin for the perusal of foreigners.