Chapter XVII: Part 17

Some there were, in that unsettled state of politics and religion, in whose breasts the embers of the late Revolution were still hot: they were panic-struck that the advocates of popery and arbitrary power were returning on them, disguised as natural philosophers. This new terror had a very ludicrous origin:--it arose from some casual expressions, in which the Royal Society at first delighted, and by which an air of mystery was thrown over its secret movements: such was that "Universal Correspondence" which it affected to boast of; and the vaunt to foreigners of its "Ten Secretaries," when, in truth, all these magnificent declarations were only objects of their wishes. Another fond but singular expression, which the illustrious BOYLE had frequently applied to it in its earliest state, when only composed of a few friends, calling it "The Invisible College," all concurred to make the Royal Society wear the appearance of a conspiracy against the political freedom of the nation. At a time, too, when, according to the historian of the Royal Society, "almost every family was widely disagreed among themselves on matters of religion," they believed that this "new experimental philosophy was subversive of the Christian faith!"[254] and many mortally hated the newly-invented optical glasses, the telescope and the microscope, as atheistical inventions, which perverted our sight, and made everything appear in a new and false light! Sprat wrote his celebrated "History of the Royal Society," to show that experimental philosophy was neither designed for the extinction of the Universities, nor of the Christian religion, which were really imagined to be in danger.

Others, again, were impatient for romantic discoveries; miracles were required, some were hinted at, while some were promised. In the ecstasy of imagination, they lost their soberness, forgetting that they were but the historians of nature, and not her prophets.[255] But amid these dreams of hope and fancy, the creeping experimentalist was still left boasting of improvements, so slow that they were not perceived, and of novelties so absurd that they too often raised the laugh against their grave and unlucky discoverers. The philosophers themselves seemed to have been fretted into the impatient humour which they attempted to correct; and the amiable Evelyn becomes an irritated satirist, when he attempts to reply to the repeated question of that day, "What have they done?"[256]

But a source of the ridicule which was perpetually flowing against the Royal Society, was the almost infantine simplicity of its earliest members, led on by their honest zeal; and the absence of all discernment in many trifling and ludicrous researches, which called down the malice of the wits;[257] there was, too, much of that unjust contempt between the parties, which students of opposite pursuits and tastes so liberally bestow on each other. The researches of the Antiquarian Society were sneered at by the Royal, and the antiquaries avenged themselves by their obstinate incredulity at the prodigies of the naturalists; the student of classical literature was equally slighted by the new philosophers; who, leaving the study of words and the elegancies of rhetoric for the study merely of things, declared as the cynical ancient did of metaphors, "Poterimus vivere sine illis"--We can do very well without them! The ever-witty South, in his oration at Oxford, made this poignant reflection on the Royal Society--"Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos, et seipsos." They can admire nothing except fleas, lice, and themselves! And even Hobbes so little comprehended the utility of these new pursuits, that he considered the Royal Society merely as so many labourers, who, when they had washed their hands after their work, should leave to others the polishing of their discourses. He classed them, in the way they were proceeding, with apothecaries, and gardeners, and mechanics, who might now "all put in for, and get the prize." Even at a later period, Sir William Temple imagined the virtuosi to be only so many Sir Nicholas Gimcracks; and contemptuously called them, from the place of their first meeting, "the Men of Gresham!" doubtless considering them as wise as "the Men of Gotham!" Even now, men of other tempers and other studies are too apt to refuse the palm of philosophy to the patient race of naturalists.[258] Wotton, who wrote so zealously at the commencement of the last century in favour of modern knowledge, is alarmed lest the effusions of wit, in his time, should "deaden the industry of the philosophers of the next age; for," he adds, "nothing wounds so effectually as a jest; and when men once become ridiculous, their labours will be slighted, and they will find few imitators." The alarm shows his zeal, but not his discernment: since curiosity in hidden causes is a passion which endures with human nature. "The philosophers of the next age" have shown themselves as persevering as their predecessors, and the wits as malicious. The contest between men of meditation and men of experiment, is a very ancient quarrel; and the "divine" Socrates was no friend to, and even a ridiculer of, those very pursuits for which the Royal Society was established.[259]

In founding this infant empire of knowledge, a memorable literary war broke out between Glanvill, the author of the treatise on "Witches," &c., and Stubbe, a physician, a man of great genius. It is the privilege of genius that its controversies enter into the history of the human mind; what is but temporary among the vulgar of mankind, with the curious and the intelligent become monuments of lasting interest. The present contest, though the spark of contention flew out of a private quarrel, at length blazed into a public controversy.

The obscure individual who commenced the fray, is forgotten in the boasted achievements of his more potent ally; he was a clergyman named Cross, the Vicar of Great Chew, in Somersetshire, a stanch Aristotelian.

Glanvill, a member of the Royal Society, and an enthusiast for the new philosophy, had kindled the anger of the peripatetic, who was his neighbour, and who had the reputation of being the invincible disputant of his county.[260] Some, who had in vain contended with Glanvill, now contrived to inveigle the modern philosopher into an interview with this redoubted champion.

When Glanvill entered the house, he perceived that he was to begin an acquaintance in a quarrel, which was not the happiest way to preserve it. The Vicar of Great Chew sat amid his congregated admirers. The peripatetic had promised them the annihilation of the new-fashioned virtuoso, and, like an angry boar, had already been preluding by whetting his tusks. Scarcely had the first cold civilities passed, when Glanvill found himself involved in single combat with an assailant armed with the ten categories of Aristotle. Cross, with his _Quodam modo_, and his _Modo quodam_, with his _Ubi_ and his _Quando_, scattered the ideas of the simple experimentalist, who, confining himself to a simple recital of _facts_ and a description of _things_, was referring, not to the logic of Aristotle, but to the works of nature. The imperative Aristotelian was wielding weapons, which, says Glanvill, "were nothing more than like those of a cudgel-player, or fencing-master."[261]

The last blow was still reserved, when Cross asserted that Aristotle had more opportunities to acquire knowledge than the Royal Society, or all the present age had, or could have, for this definitive reason, "because Aristotle did, _totam peragrare Asiam_." Besides, in the Chew philosophy, where novelty was treason, improvements or discoveries could never exist. Here the Aristotelian made his stand; and at length, gently hooking Glanvill between the horns of a dilemma, the entrapped virtuoso threw himself into an unguarded affirmation; at which the Vicar of Great Chew, shouting in triumph, with a sardonic grin, declared that Glanvill and his Royal Society had now avowed themselves to be atheistical! This made an end of the interview, and a beginning of the quarrel.[262]

Glanvill addressed an expostulatory letter to the inhuman Aristotelian, who only replied by calling it a recantation, asserting that the affair had finished with the conviction.

On this, Glanvill produced his "Plus Ultra,"[263] on the modern improvements of knowledge. The quaint title referred to that Asian argument which placed the boundaries of knowledge at the ancient limits fixed by Aristotle, like the pillars of Hercules, on which was inscribed _Ne plus ultra_, to mark the extremity of the world. But Glanvill asserted we might advance still further--_plus ultra_! To this book the Aristotelian replied with such rancour, that he could not obtain a licence for the invective either at Oxford or London. Glanvill contrived to get some extracts, and printed a small number of copies for his friends, under the sarcastic title of "The Chew Gazette,"--a curiosity, we are told, of literary scolding, and which might now, among literary trinkets, fetch a Roxburgh prize.

Cross, maddened that he could not get his bundle of peripatetic ribaldries printed, wrote ballads, which he got sung as it chanced. But suppressed invectives and eking rhymes could but ill appease so fierce a mastiff: he set on the poor F.R.S. an animal as rabid, but more vigorous than himself--both of them strangely prejudiced against the modern improvements of knowledge; so that, like mastiffs in the dark, they were only the fiercer.

This was Dr. Henry Stubbe, a physician of Warwick--one of those ardent and versatile characters, strangely made up of defects as strongly marked as their excellences. He was one of those authors who, among their numerous remains, leave little of permanent value; for their busy spirits too keenly delight in temporary controversy, and they waste the efforts of a mind on their own age, which else had made the next their own. Careless of worldly opinions, these extraordinary men, with the simplicity of children, are mere beings of sensation; perpetually precipitated by their feelings, with slight powers of reflection, and just as sincere when they act in contradiction to themselves, as when they act in contradiction to others. In their moral habits, therefore, we are often struck with strange contrasts; their whole life is a jumble of actions; and we are apt to condemn their versatility of principles as arising from dishonest motives; yet their temper has often proved more generous, and their integrity purer, than those who have crept up in one unvarying progress to an eminence which they quietly possess, without any of the ardour of these original, perhaps whimsical, minds. The most tremendous menace to a man of this class would be to threaten to write the history of his life and opinions. When Stubbe attacked the Royal Society, this threat was held out against him. But menaces never startled his intrepid genius; he roved in all his wild greatness; and, always occupied more by present views than interested by the past events of his life, he cared little for his consistency in the high spirit of his independence.

The extraordinary character of Stubbe produced as uncommon a history. Stubbe had originally been a child of fortune, picked up at Westminster school by Sir Henry Vane the younger, who sent him to Oxford; where this effervescent genius was, says Wood, "kicked, and beaten, and whipped."[264] But if these little circumstances marked the irritability and boldness of his youth, it was equally distinguished by an entire devotion to his studies. Perhaps one of the most anomalous of human characters was that of his patron, Sir Henry Vane the younger (whom Milton has immortalised in one of the noblest of sonnets), the head of the Independents, who combined with the darkest spirit of fanaticism the clear views of the most sagacious politician. The gratitude of Stubbe lasted through all the changeful fortunes of the chief of a faction--a long date in the records of human affection! Stubbe had written against monarchy, the church, the university, &c.; for which, after the Restoration, he was accused by his antagonists. He exults in the reproach; he replies with all that frankness of simplicity, so beautiful amid our artificial manners. He denies not the charge; he never trims, nor glosses over, nor would veil, a single part of his conduct. He wrote to serve his patrons, but never himself. I preserve the whole of this noble passage in the note.[265] Wood bears witness to his perfect disinterestedness. He never partook of the prosperity of his patron, nor mixed with any parties, loving the retirement of his private studies; and if he scorned and hated one party, the Presbyterians, it was, says Wood, because his high generous nature detested men "void of generous souls, sneaking, snivelling, &c." Stubbe appears to have carried this philosophical indifference towards objects of a higher interest than those of mere profit; for, at the Restoration, he found no difficulty in conforming to the Church[266] and to the Government. The king bestowed on him the title of his physician; yet, for the sake of making philosophical experiments, Stubbe went to Jamaica, and intended to have proceeded to Mexico and Peru, pursuing his profession, but still an adventurer. At length Stubbe returned home; established himself as a physician at Warwick, where, though he died early, he left a name celebrated.[267] The fertility of his pen appears in a great number of philosophical, political, and medical publications. But all his great learning, the facility of his genius, his poignant wit, his high professional character, his lofty independence, his scorn of practising the little mysterious arts of life, availed nothing; for while he was making himself popular among his auditors, he was eagerly depreciated by those who would not willingly allow merit to a man who owned no master, and who feared no rival.

Literary coteries were then held at coffee-houses;[268] and there presided the voluble Stubbe, with "a big and magisterial voice, while his mind was equal to it," says the characterising Wood; but his attenuated frame seemed too delicate to hold long so unbroken a spirit. It was an accident, however, which closed this life of toil and hurry and petulant genius. Going to a patient at night, Stubbe was drowned in a very shallow river, "his head (adds our cynic, who had generously paid the tribute of his just admiration with his strong peculiarity of style) being then intoxicated with bibbing, but more with talking and snuffing of powder."

Such was the adversary of the Royal Society! It is quite in character that, under the government of Cromwell, he himself should have spread a taste for what was then called "The New Philosophy" among our youth and gentlemen, with the view of rendering the clergy contemptible; or, as he says, "to make them appear egregious fools in matters of common discourse." He had always a motive for his actions, however opposite they were; pretending that he was never moved by caprice, but guided by principle. One of his adversaries, however, has reason to say, that judging him by his "printed papers, he was a man of excellent contradictory parts." After the Restoration, he furnished as odd, but as forcible a reason, for opposing the Royal Society. At that time the nation, recent from republican ardours, was often panic-struck by papistical conspiracies, and projects of arbitrary power; and it was on this principle that he took part against the Society. Influenced by Dr. Fell and others, he suffered them to infuse these extravagant opinions into his mind. No private ends appear to have influenced his changeable conduct; and in the present instance he was sacrificing his personal feelings to his public principles; for Stubbe was then in the most friendly correspondence with the illustrious Boyle, the father of the Royal Society, who admired the ardour of Stubbe, till he found its inconvenience.[269]

Stubbe opened his formidable attacks, for they form a series, by replying to the "Plus Ultra" of Glanvill, with a title as quaint, "The _Plus Ultra_ reduced to a _Non-plus_, in animadversions on Mr. Glanvill and the Virtuosi." For a pretence for this violent attack, he strained a passage in Glanvill; insisting that the honour of the whole faculty of which he was a member was deeply concerned to refute Glanvill's assertion, that "the ancient physicians could not cure a cut finger."--This Glanvill denied he had ever affirmed or thought;[270] but war once resolved on, a pretext as slight as the present serves the purpose; and so that an odium be raised against the enemy, the end is obtained before the injustice is acknowledged. This is indeed the history of other wars than those of words. The present was protracted with an hostility unsubduing and unsubdued. At length the malicious ingenuity, or the heated fancy, of Stubbe, hardly sketched a political conspiracy, accusing the ROYAL SOCIETY of having adopted the monstrous projects of CAMPANELLA;--an anomalous genius, who was confined by the Inquisition the greater part of his life, and who, among some political reveries, projected the establishment of a universal empire, though he was for shaking off the yoke of authority in the philosophical world. He was for one government and one religion throughout Europe, but in other respects he desired to leave the minds of men quite free. Campanella was one of the new lights of the age; and his hardy, though wild genius much more resembled our Stubbe, who denounced his extravagancies, than any of the Royal Society, to whom he was so artfully compared.

This tremendous attack appeared in Stubbe's "Campanella Revived, or an Enquiry into the History of the Royal Society; whether the Virtuosi there do not pursue the projects of Campanella, for reducing England into Popery; relating the quarrel betwixt H. S. and the R. S., &c. 1670."[271]

Such was the dread which his reiterated attacks caused the Royal Society, that they employed against him all the petty persecutions of power and intrigue. "Thirty legions," says Stubbe, alluding to the famous reply of the philosopher, who would not dispute with a crowned head, "were to be called to aid you against a young country physician, who had so long discontinued studies of this nature." However, he announces that he has finished three more works against the Royal Society, and has a fourth nearly ready, if it be necessary to prove that the rhetorical history of the Society by Sprat must be bad, because "no eloquence can be complete if the subject-matter be foolish!" His adversaries not only threatened to write his life,[272] but they represented him to the king as a libeller, who ought to be whipped at a cart's tail; a circumstance which Stubbe records with the indignation of a Roman spirit.[273] They stopped his work several times, and by some stratagem they hindered him from correcting the press; but nothing could impede the career of his fearless genius. He treated with infinite ridicule their trivial or their marvellous discoveries in his "Legends no Histories," and his "Censure on some Passages of the History of the Royal Society." But while he ridiculed, he could instruct them; often contributing new knowledge, which the Royal Society had certainly been proud to have registered in their history. In his determination of depreciating the novelties of his day, he disputes even the honour of HARVEY to the discovery of the circulation of the blood: he attributes it to ANDREAS CAESALPINUS, who not only discovered it, but had given it the name of _Circulatio Sanguinis_.[274]

Stubbe was not only himself a man of science, but a caustic satirist, who blends much pleasantry with his bitterness. In the first ardour of philosophical discovery, the Society, delighted by the acquisition of new facts, which, however, rarely proved to be important, and were often ludicrous in their detail, appear to have too much neglected the arts of reasoning; they did not even practise common discernment, or what we might term philosophy, in its more enlarged sense.[275] Stubbe, with no respect for "a Society," though dignified by the addition of "Royal," says, "a cabinet of virtuosi are but pitiful reasoners. Ignorance is infectious; and 'tis possible for men to grow fools by contact. I will speak to the virtuosi in the language of the Romish Saint Francis (who, in the wilderness, so humbly addressed his only friends,) '_Salvete, fratres asini! Salvete, fratres lupi!_'" As for their Transactions and their History, he thinks "they purpose to grow famous, as the Turks do to gain Paradise, _by treasuring up all the waste paper they meet with_." He rallies them on some ridiculous attempts, such as "An Art of Flying;" an art, says Stubbe, in which they have not so much as effected the most facile part of the attempt, which is to break their necks!

Sprat, in his dedication to the king, had said that "the establishment of the Royal Society was an enterprise equal to the most renowned actions of the best princes." One would imagine that the notion of a monarch founding a society for the cultivation of the sciences could hardly be made objectionable; but, in literary controversy, genius has the power of wresting all things to its purpose by its own peculiar force, and the art of placing every object in the light it chooses, and can thus obtain our attention in spite of our conviction. I will add the curious animadversion of Stubbe on Sprat's compliment to the king:--

"Never Prince acquired the fame of great and good by any knickknacks--but by actions of political wisdom, courage, justice," &c.

Stubbe shows how Dionysius and Nero had been depraved by these _mechanic philosophers_--that

"An Aristotelian would never pardon himself if he compared _this_ heroical enterprise with the actions of our Black Prince or Henry V.; or with Henry VIII. in demolishing abbeys and rejecting the papal authority; or Queen Elizabeth's exploits against Spain; or her restoring the Protestant religion, putting the Bible into English, and supporting the Protestants beyond sea. But the reason he (Sprat) gives why the establishment of the Royal Society of experimentators equals the most renowned actions of the best princes, is such a pitiful one as Guzman de Alfarache never met with in the whole extent of the _Hospital of Fools_--'To increase the power, by new arts, of conquered nations!' These consequences are twisted like the _cordage of Ocnus_, the God of Sloth, in hell, which are fit for nothing but _to fodder asses with_. If our historian means by _every little invention to increase the powers of mankind_, as an enterprise of such renown, he is deceived; this glory is not due to such as go about with a dog and a hoop, nor to the practicers of legerdemain, or upon the high or low rope; not to every mountebank and his man Andrew; all which, with many other mechanical and experimental philosophers, do in some sort increase the powers of mankind, and differ no more from some of the virtuosi, than _a cat in a hole_ doth from _a cat out of a hole_; betwixt which that inquisitive person ASDRYASDUST TOSSOFFACAN found a very great resemblance. 'Tis not the increasing of the _powers of mankind_ by a pendulum watch, nor spectacles whereby divers may see under water, nor the new ingenuity of apple-roasters, nor every petty discovery or instrument, must be put in comparison, much less preferred, before _the protection and enlargement of empires_."[276]

Had Stubbe's death not occurred, this warfare had probably continued. He insisted on a complete victory. He had forced the Royal Society to disclaim their own works, by an announcement that they were not answerable, as a body, for the various contributions which they gave the world: an advertisement which has been more than once found necessary to be renewed. As for their historian Sprat, our intrepid Stubbe very unexpectedly offered to manifest to the parliament that this courtly adulator, by his book, was chargeable with high treason; if they believed that the Royal Society were really engaged so deeply as he averred in the portentous Caesarean Popery of Campanella. Glanvill, who had "insulted all university learning," had been immolated at the pedestal of Aristotle. "I have done enough," he adds, "since my animadversions contain more than they all knew; and that these have shown that the _virtuosi_ are very great impostors, or men of little reading;" alluding to the various discoveries which they promulgated as novelties, but which Stubbe had asserted were known to the ancients and others of a later period. This forms a perpetual accusation against the inventors and discoverers, who may often exclaim, "Perish those who have done our good works before us!" "The Discoveries of the Ancients and Moderns" by Dutens, had this book been then published, might have assisted our keen investigator; but our combatant ever proudly met his adversaries single-handed.

The "Philosophical Transactions" were afterwards accused of another kind of high treason, against grammar and common sense. It was long before the collectors of facts practised the art of writing on them; still later before they could philosophise, as well as observe: Bacon and Boyle were at first only imitated in their patient industry. When Sir HANS SLOANE was the secretary of the Royal Society, he, and most of his correspondents, wrote in the most confused manner imaginable. A wit of a very original cast, the facetious Dr. KING,[277] took advantage of their perplexed and often unintelligible descriptions; of the meanness of their style, which humbled even the great objects of nature; of their credulity that heaped up marvels, and their vanity that prided itself on petty discoveries, and invented a new species of satire. SLOANE, a name endeared to posterity, whose life was that of an enthusiast of science, and who was the founder of a national collection; and his numerous friends, many of whose names have descended with the regard due to the votaries of knowledge, fell the victims. Wit is an unsparing leveller.

The new species of literary burlesque which King seems to have invented, consists in selecting the very expressions and absurd passages from the original he ridiculed, and framing out of them a droll dialogue or a grotesque narrative, he adroitly inserted his own remarks, replete with the keenest irony, or the driest sarcasm.[278] Our arch wag says, "The bulls and blunders which Sloane and his friends so naturally pour forth cannot be misrepresented, so careful I am in producing them." King still moves the risible muscles of his readers. "The Voyage to Cajamai," a travestie of Sloane's valuable "History of Jamaica," is still a peculiar piece of humour; and it has been rightly distinguished as "one of the severest and merriest satires that was ever written in prose."[279] The author might indeed have blushed at the labour bestowed on these drolleries; he might have dreaded that humour so voluminous might grow tedious; but King, often with a LUCIANIC spirit, with flashes of RABELAIS, and not seldom with the causticity of his friend Swift, dissipated life in literary idleness, with parodies and travesties on most of his contemporaries; and he made these little things often more exquisite at the cost of consuming on them a genius capable of better. A parodist or a burlesquer is a wit who is perpetually on the watch to catch up or to disguise an author's words, to swell out his defects, and pick up his blunders--to amuse the public! King was a wit, who lived on the highway of literature, appropriating, for his own purpose, the property of the most eminent passengers, by a dextrous mode no other had hit on. What an important lesson the labours of King offer to real genius! Their temporary humour lost with their prototypes becomes like a paralytic limb, which, refusing to do its office, impedes the action of the vital members.

WOTTON, in summing up his "Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning," was doubtful whether knowledge would improve in the next age proportionably as it had done in his own. "The humour of the age is visibly altered," he says, "from what it had been thirty years ago. Though the Royal Society has weathered the rude attacks of Stubbe," yet "the sly insinuations of the _Men of Wit_," with "the _public ridiculing_ of all who spend their time and fortunes in scientific or curious researches, have so taken off the edge of those who have opulent fortunes and a love to learning, that these studies begin to be contracted amongst physicians and mechanics."--He treats King with good-humour. "A man is got but a very little way (in philosophy) that is concerned as often as such a merry gentleman as Dr. King shall think fit to make himself sport."[280]

FOOTNOTES:

[253] Some may be curious to have these monkish terms defined.
_Causes_ are distinguished by Aristotle into four kinds:--The
material cause, _ex qua_, out of which things are made;
the formal cause, _per quam_, by which a thing is that
which it is, and nothing else; the efficient cause, _a qua_,
by the agency of which anything is produced; and the final
cause, _propter quam_, the end for which it is produced. Such
are his notions in his Phys. 1. ii. c. iii., referred to by
Brucker and Formey in their Histories of Philosophy. Of the
Scholastic Metaphysics, _Sprat_, the historian of the Royal
Society, observes, "that the lovers of that cloudy knowledge
boast that it is an excellent instrument to refine and
make subtle the minds of men. But there may be _a greater
excess in the subtlety of men's wits_ than in their
_thickness_; as we see those threads, which are of too fine
a spinning, are found to be more useless than those which are
homespun and gross."--_History of the Royal Society_, p. 326.

In the history of human folly, often so closely connected with
that of human knowledge, some of the schoolmen (the
commentators on Aquinas and others) prided themselves, and
were even admired for their impenetrable obscurity! One of
them, and our countryman, is singularly commended by Cardan,
for that "only one of his arguments was enough to puzzle all
posterity; and that, when he had grown old, he wept because he
could not understand his own books." Baker, in his Reflections
upon Learning, who had examined this schoolman, declares that
his obscurity is such, as if he never meant to be understood.
The extravagances of the schoolmen are, however, not always
those of Aristotle. Pope, and the wits of that day, like these
early members of the Royal Society, decried Aristotle, who did
not probably fall in the way of their studies. His great
imperfections are in natural philosophy; but he still
preserves his eminence for his noble treatises of Ethics, and
Politics, and Poetics, notwithstanding the imperfect state in
which these have reached us. Dr. Copleston and Dr. Gillies
have given an energetic testimony to their perpetual value.
Pope, in satirising the University as a nest of dunces,
considered the followers of Aristotle as so many stalled oxen,
"_fat bulls of Basan_."

"A hundred head of Aristotle's friends."
DUNCIAD.

Swift has drawn an allegorical personage of Aristotle, by
which he describes the nature of his works. "He stooped much,
and made use of a staff; his visage was meagre, his hair lank
and thin, and his voice hollow;" descriptive of his abrupt
conciseness, his harsh style, the obscurities of his
dilapidated text, and the deficiency of feeling, which his
studied compression, his deep sagacity, and his analytical
genius, so frequently exhibit.

[254] Sprat makes an ingenious observation on the notion of those who
declared that "_the most learned ages are still the most
atheistical, and the ignorant the most devout_." He says this
had become almost proverbial, but he shows that piety is
little beholden to those who make this distinction. "The
Jewish law forbids us to offer up to God a sacrifice that has
a blemish; but these men bestow the most excellent of men on
the devil, and only assign to religion those men and those
times which have the greatest blemish of human nature, even a
defect in their knowledge and understanding."--_History of the
Royal Society_, p. 356.

[255] Science, at its birth, is as much the child of imagination as
curiosity; and, in rapture at the new instrument it has
discovered, it impatiently magnifies its power. To the
infant, all improvements are wonders; it chronicles even its
dreams, and has often described what it never has seen,
delightfully deceived; the cold insults of the cynics, the
wits, the dull, and the idle, maliciously mortify the
infant in its sports, till it returns to slow labour and
patient observation. It is rather curious, however, that
when science obtains a certain state of maturity, it is
liable to be attacked by the same fits of the marvellous
which affected its infancy;--and the following extract from
one of the enthusiastic _Virtuosi_ in the infancy of science,
rivals the visions of "the perfectibility of man" of which we
hear so much at this late period. Some, perhaps, may consider
these strong tendencies of the imagination, breaking out at
these different periods in the history of science, to
indicate results, of which the mind feels a consciousness,
which the philosopher should neither indulge nor check.

"Should these heroes go on (the Royal Society) as they
have happily begun, they will fill the world with wonders;
and posterity will find many things that are now but
_rumours_, verified into practical _realities_. It may be,
some ages hence, a _voyage_ to the southern unknown tracts,
yea, possibly the _Moon_, will not be more strange than one
to America. To them that come after us, it may be as
ordinary to _buy a pair of wings_ to fly into remotest
regions, as now _a pair of boots_ to ride a journey. And to
confer at the distance of the Indies, by _sympathetic
conveyances_, may be as usual to future times, as to us in a
literary correspondence. The restoration of _grey hairs to
juvenility_, and renewing the _exhausted marrow_, may at
length, be effected without a miracle; and the turning the
now-comparative _desert world_ into a _paradise_, may not
improbably be expected from late _agriculture_.

"Those that judge by the narrowness of former principles and
successes, will smile at these paradoxical expectations. But
the great inventions of latter ages, which altered the face of
all things, in their naked proposals and mere suppositions,
were to former times as ridiculous. To have talked of a new
earth to have been discovered, had been a romance to
antiquity; and to sail without sight of stars or shores, by
the guidance of a mineral, a story more absurd than the
flight of Daedalus. That men should speak after their tongues
were ashes, or communicate with each other in differing
hemispheres, before the invention of letters, could not but
have been thought a fiction. Antiquity would not have
believed the almost incredible force of our cannons, and
would as coldly have entertained the wonders of the
telescope."--GLANVILL, _Scepsis Scientifica_, p. 133.

[256] Evelyn, whose elegant mind, one would have imagined, had been
little susceptible of such vehement anger, in the preface
to his "Sylva," scolds at no common rate: "Well-meaning
people are led away by the noise of a few ignorant and
comical buffoons, who, with an insolence suitable to their
understanding, are still crying out, _What have the Society
done?_" He attributes all the opposition and ridicule the
Society encountered to a personage not usual to be introduced
into a philosophical controversy--"The Enemy of Mankind." But
it was well to denounce the devil himself, as the Society had
nearly lost the credit of fearing him. Evelyn insists that
"next to the propagation of our most holy faith," that of the
new philosophy was desirable both for the king and the
nation; "for," he adds, "it will survive the triumphs of
the proudest conquerors; since, when all their pomp and
noise is ended, they are those _little things in black_, whom
now in scorn they term philosophers and fops, to whom they
must be obliged for making their names outlast the pyramids,
whose founders are as unknown as the heads of the Nile." Why
Evelyn designates the philosophers as _little things in
black_, requires explanation. Did they affect a dress of
this colour in the reign of Charles II., or does he allude
to the dingy appearance of the chemists?

[257] It is not easy to credit the simplicity of these early
inquirers. In a Memorial in Sprat's History, entitled,
"Answers returned by Sir Philliberto Vernatti to certain
Inquiries sent by order of the Royal Society;" among some of
the most extraordinary questions and descriptions of
nonentities, which must have fatigued Sir Philliberto, who
then resided in Batavia, I find the present:--"Qy. 8. What
ground there may be for that relation concerning _horns
taking root, and growing about Goa_?" It seems the question
might as well have been asked at London, and answered by
some of the members themselves; for Sir Philliberto
gravely replied--"Inquiring about this, a friend laughed,
and told me it was a jeer put upon the Portuguese, because
the women of Goa are counted none of the chastest." Inquiries
of this nature, and often the most trivial objects set off
with a singular minuteness of description, tempted the laugh
of the scoffers. Their great adversary, Stubbe, ridiculing
their mode of giving instructions for inquiries, regrets
that the paper he received from them had been lost, otherwise
he would have published it. "The great Mr. Boyle, when he
brought it, tendered it with blushing and disorder," at the
simplicity of the Royal Society! And indeed the royal founder
himself, who, if he was something of a philosopher, was much
more of a wit, set the example. The Royal Society, on the day
of its creation, was the whetstone of the wit of their
patron. When Charles II. dined with the members on the
occasion of constituting them a Royal Society, towards the
close of the evening he expressed his satisfaction in being
the first English monarch who had laid a foundation for a
society who proposed that their sole studies should be
directed to the investigation of the arcana of nature; and
added with that peculiar gravity of countenance he usually
wore on such occasions, that among such learned men he now
hoped for a solution to a question which had long perplexed
him. The case he thus stated:--"Suppose two pails of water
were fixed in two different scales that were equally
poised, and which weighed equally alike, and that two live
bream, or small fish, were put into either of these pails, he
wanted to know the reason why that pail, with such addition,
should not weigh more than the other pail which stood
against it." Every one was ready to set at quiet the royal
curiosity; but it appeared that every one was giving a
different opinion. One, at length, offered so ridiculous a
solution, that another of the members could not refrain from
a loud laugh; when the King, turning to him, insisted that he
should give his sentiments as well as the rest. This he did
without hesitation, and told his majesty, in plain terms, that
he denied the fact! On which the King, in high mirth,
exclaimed--"Odds fish, brother, you are in the right!" The
jest was not ill designed. The story was often useful, to cool
the enthusiasm of the scientific visionary, who is apt
often to account for what never has existed.

[258] Pope was severe in his last book of the _Dunciad_ on the
students of insects, flowers, &c.; and R.O. Cambridge followed
out the idea of a mad virtuoso in his "Scribleriad," which he
has made up from the absurd or trifling parts of natural
history and philosophy. His hero is--

"A much-enduring man, whose curious soul
Bore him with ceaseless toil from pole to pole;
Insatiate endless knowledge to obtain,
Thro' woes by land, thro' dangers on the main."

He collects curiosities from all parts of the world; studies
occult and natural sciences; and is at last beatified by
electrical glories at a meeting of hermetical philosophers.
This poem is elucidated by notes, which point the allusions to
the works or doings of the old philosophers.--ED.

[259] Evelyn, who could himself be a wit occasionally, was, however,
much annoyed by the scorners. He applies to these wits a
passage in Nehemiah ii. 19, which describes those who laughed
at the _builders of Jerusalem_. "These are the Sanballats,
the Horonites, who disturb our men upon the wall; but _let
us rise up and build_!" He describes these Horonites of wit as
"magnificent fops, whose talents reach but to the adjusting of
their perukes." But the Royal Society was attacked from other
quarters, which ought to have assisted them. Evelyn, in his
valuable treatise on forest-trees, had inserted a new
project for making cider; and Stubbe insisted, that in
consequence "much cider had been spoiled within these three
years, by following the directions published by the
commands of the Royal Society." They afterwards announced
that they never considered themselves as answerable for
their own memoirs, which gave Stubbe occasion to boast that
he had forced them to deny what they had written. A passage
in Hobbes's "Considerations upon his Reputation, &c.," is as
remarkable for the force of its style as for that of sense,
and may be applicable to _some_ at this day, notwithstanding
the progress of science, and the importance attached to
their busy idleness.

"Every man that hath spare money can get furnaces, and buy
coals. Every man that hath spare money can be at the charge of
making great moulds, &c., and so may have the best and
greatest telescopes. They can get engines made, recipients
made, and try conclusions; but they are never the more
philosophers for all this. 'Tis laudable to bestow money on
curious or useful delights, but that is none of the praises of
a philosopher." p. 53.

[260] Glanvill was a learned man, but evidently superstitious,
particularly in all that related to witchcraft and apparitions;
the reality of both being insisted on by him in a series of
books which he published at various periods of his life, and
which he continually worked upon with new arguments and
instances, in spite of all criticism or opposition. He was a
member of the Royal Society, prebend of Worcester, and rector
of Bath, where he died, October 4, 1680.--ED.

[261] The ninth chapter in the "Plus Ultra," entitled "The Credit of
Optic Glasses vindicated against a disputing man, who is
afraid to believe his eyes against Aristotle," gives one of
the ludicrous incidents of this philosophical visit. The
disputer raised a whimsical objection against the science of
optics, insisting that the newly-invented glasses, the
telescope, the microscope, &c., were all deceitful and
fallacious; for, said the Aristotelian, "take two spectacles,
use them at the same time, and you will not see so well as
with one singly--_ergo_, your microscopes and telescopes are
impostors." How this was forced into a syllogism does not
appear; but still the conclusion ran, "We can see better
through one pair than two, therefore all perspectives are
fallacious!"

One proposition for sense,
And t'other for convenience,

will make a tolerable syllogism for a logician in despair. The
Aristotelian was, however, somewhat puzzled by a problem which
he had himself raised--"Why we cannot see with two pair of
spectacles better than with one singly?" for the man of axioms
observed, "_Vis unita fortior_," "United strength _is
stronger_." It is curious enough, in the present day, to
observe the sturdy Aristotelian denying these discoveries, and
the praises of optics, and "the new glasses," by Glanvill. "If
this philosopher," says the member of the Royal Society, "had
spared some of those thoughts to the profitable doctrine of
optics which he hath spent upon _genus_ and _species_, we had
never heard of this objection." And he replies to the paradox
which the Aristotelian had raised by "Why cannot he write
better with _two pens_ than with a _single one_, since _Vis
unita fortior_? When he hath answered this _Quaere_, he hath
resolved his own. The reason he gave why it should be so, is
the reason why 'tis not." Such are the squabbles of infantine
science, which cannot as yet discover causes, although it has
ascertained effects.

[262] This appears in chap. xviii. of the "Plus Ultra." With great
simplicity Glanvill relates:--"At this period of the
conference, the disputer lost all patience, and with sufficient
spite and rage told me 'that I was an atheist!--that he had
indeed desired my acquaintance, but would have no more on't,'
and so turned his back and went away, giving me time only to
answer that 'I had no great reason to lament the loss of an
acquaintance that could be so easily forfeited.'" The
following chapter vindicates the Royal Society from the
charge of atheism! to assure the world they were not to be
ranked "among the black conspirators against Heaven!" We see
the same objections again occurring in the modern system of
geology.

[263] This book was so scarce in 1757, that the writer in the
"Biographia Britannica" observes that this "small but elegant
treatise is still very much esteemed by the curious, being
become so scarce as not to be met with in other hands." Oldys,
in 1738, had, in his "British Librarian," selected this work
among the scarce and valuable books of which he has presented
us with so many useful analyses.

The history of books is often curious. At one period a book is
scarce and valuable, and at another is neither one nor the
other. This does not always depend on the caprice of the
public, or what may be called literary fashions. Glanvill's
"Plus Ultra" is probably now of easy occurrence; like a
prophecy fully completed, the uncertain event being verified,
the prophet has ceased to be remembered.

[264] His early history is given by Wood in his usual style. His
father had been a Lincolnshire parson, who was obliged to
leave his poor curacy because "anabaptistically inclined," and
fled to Ireland, whence his mother and her children were
obliged to return on the breaking out of the rebellion of
1641, and landed at Liverpool; afterward, says Wood, "they all
beated it on the hoof thence to London, where she, gaining a
comfortable subsistence by her needle, sent her son Henry,
being then ten years of age, to the collegiate school at
Westminster. At that time Mr. Richard Busbie was the chief
master, who finding the boy have pregnant parts to a miracle,
did much favour and encourage him. At length Sir Henry Vane,
junior (the same who was beheaded on Tower Hill, 1662), coming
casually into the school with Dr. Lambert Osbaldiston, he did,
at the master's motion, take a kindness to the said boy, and
gave him the liberty to resort to his house, and to fill that
belly which otherwise had no sustenance but what one penny
could purchase for his dinner: and as for his breakfast, he
had none, except he got it by making somebody's exercise. Soon
after, Sir Henry got him to be a king's scholar; and his
master perceiving him to be beyond his years in proficiency,
he gave him money to buy books, clothes, and his teaching for
nothing." Such was the humble beginning of a learned man, who
lived to be a formidable opponent to the whole body of the
Royal Society.--ED.

[265] When Sprat and Glanvill, and others, had threatened to write his
life, Stubbe draws this apology for it, while he shows how
much, in a time of revolutions, the Royal Society might want
one for themselves.

"I was so far from being daunted at those rumours and threats,
that I enlarged much this book thereupon, and resolved to
charge the enemy home when I saw how weak a resistance I
should meet with. I knew that recriminations were no answers.
I understood well that the passages of a life like mine, spent
in different places with much privacy and obscurity, was
unknown to them; that even those actions they would fix their
greatest calumnies upon, were such as that they understood not
the grounds, nor had they learning enough and skill to
condemn. I was at Westminster School when the late king was
beheaded. I never took covenant nor engagement. In sum, _I
served my patron_. I endeavoured to express my _gratitude_ to
him who had relieved me, being a _child_, and in great poverty
(the rebellion in Ireland having deprived my parents of all
means wherewith to educate me); who made me a king's scholar;
preferred me to Christchurch College, Oxon.; and who often
supplied me with money when my tender years gave him little
hopes of any return; and who protected me amidst the
_Presbyterians_, and _Independents_, and other _sects_. With
none thereof did I contract any relation or acquaintance; my
familiarity never engaged me with ten of that party; and my
genius and humour inclined me to fewer. I neither enriched,
nor otherwise advanced myself, during the late troubles; and
shared the common _odium_ and _dangers_, not _prosperity_,
with my _benefactor_. I believe no generous man, who hath the
least sense of bravery, will condemn me; and I profess I am
ashamed rather to have done so little, than that I have done
so much, for him that so frankly obliged a _stranger_ and a
_child_. When Gracchus was put to death for sedition, that
faithful friend and accomplice of his was dismissed, and
mentioned with honour by all posterity, who, when he was
impeached, _justified his treason_ by the avowing a
_friendship_ so great that, whatever Gracchus had commanded
him, he would not have declined it. And being further
questioned, whether he would have burned the capitol at his
bidding? he replied again, that he should have done it; but
Gracchus would not bid such a thing. They that knew me
heretofore, know I have a thousand times thus apologised for
myself; adding, that in _vassals_ and _slaves_, and persons
_transcendently obliged_, their fidelity exempted them from
all ignominy, though the principal _lords_, _masters_, and
_patrons_, might be accounted _traitors_. My youth and other
circumstances incapacitated me from rendering him any great
services; but _all that I did_, and _all that I writ_, had no
other aim than _his interest_; nor do I care how much any man
can inodiate my former writings, as long as they were
subservient to him.

"Having made this declaration, let them (or more able men
than they) write the life of a man who hath some virtues of
the most celebrated times, and hath preserved himself free
from the vices of these. My reply shall be a scornful
silence."--Preface to Stubbe's "Legends no Histories," 1670.

[266] His reasons for conformity on these important objects are given
with his usual simplicity. "I have at length removed all the
umbrages I ever lay under. I have joined myself to the Church
of England, not only upon account of its being _publicly
imposed_ (which in _things indifferent_ is no small
consideration, as I learned from the Scottish transactions at
Perth), but because it is _the least defining_, and
consequently _the most comprehensive and fitting to be
national_."

[267] He died at Bath in 1676, where he had gone in attendance upon
several of his patients from the neighbourhood of Warwick,
where he for a long time practised as a physician. His old
antagonist Glanvill was at that time rector of the Abbey
Church in which he was buried, and so became the preacher of
his funeral sermon. Wood says he "said no great matter of
him."--ED.

[268] Pope said to Spence, "It was Dryden who made Will's coffee-house
the great resort for the wits of his time. After his death
Addison transferred it to Button's, who had been a servant of
his." Will's coffee-house was at the corner of Bow-street,
Covent-garden, and Button's close by in Russell-street.--ED.

[269] "Some years after the king's restoration he took pet against the
Royal Society, (for which before he had a great veneration,)
and being encouraged by Dr. Jo. Fell, no admirer of that
society, became in his writings an inveterate enemy against it
for several pretended reasons: among which were, first, that
the members thereof intended to bring a contempt upon ancient
and solid learning, upon Aristotle, to undermine the
universities, and reduce them to nothing, or at least to be
very inconsiderable. Secondly, that at long running to destroy
the established religion, and involve the nation in popery,
and I know not what, &c. So dexterous was his pen, whether
_pro_ or _con_, that few or none could equal, answer, or come
near him. He was a person of most admirable parts, had a most
prodigious memory, though his enemies would not acknowledge
it, but said he read indexes; was the most noted Latinist and
Grecian of his age; and after he had been put upon it, was so
great an enemy to the _virtuosi_ of his time, I mean those of
the Royal Society, that, as he saith, they alarmed him with
dangers and troubles even to the hazard of his life and
fortunes."--_Wood._

[270] The aspersed passage in Glanvill is this: "The philosophers of
elder times, though their wits were excellent, yet the way
they took was not like to bring much advantage to knowledge,
or any of the uses of human life, being, for the most part,
that of _Notion_ and _Dispute_, which still runs round in a
labyrinth of talk, but advanceth nothing. _These methods_, in
so many centuries, _never brought the world so much practical
beneficial knowledge as could help towards the cure of a cut
finger_." Plus Ultra, p. 7.--Stubbe, with all the malice of a
wit, drew his inference, and turned the point unfairly against
his adversary!