Diamond (dog)

Diamond was, according to legend, Sir Isaac Newton's favourite dog, who, by upsetting a candle, set fire to manuscripts containing his notes on experiments conducted over the course of twenty years.

"[1] The story is largely apocryphal: according to another account, Newton simply left a window open when he went to church, and the candle was knocked over by a gust of wind.

[4] In 1816 Walter Scott used the story in the third of his Waverley Novels, The Antiquary (volume 2, chapter 1).

This pet of Newton's was also mentioned in Thomas Carlyle's book The French Revolution: A History, employed in discussing the deathbed of Louis XV.

Carlyle writes "To the eye of History many things, in that sick room of Louis, are now visible, which to the courtiers there present were invisible.