fail, though nothing seems to have prevented him from
writing. His brilliant correspondence with Clarke belongs
to this period of his life. In 1716, Leibniz died, and not a
single member of the Court of Hanover followed his body
to the grave. An acquaintance of Leibniz, John Ker, who
happened to be in Hanover at the time, says that he was
buried 'more like a robber than, what he really was, the
ornament of his country'. The Berlin Academy, of which
he was the founder and first President, and the Royal
Society of London took no notice of Leibniz's death, but
a year later, Fontenelle delivered a fine oration to his
memory before the Parisian Academy. Later generations
of English philosophers and mathematicians have, how-
ever, done ample justice to Leibniz's achievements, and
have reversed the studied neglect by the Royal Society of
1716.

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