The Life and Times of John Wilkins Part 2

Before the end of his stay in London he had taken the covenant and definitely given his allegiance to the Parliamentarian party. He was marked out for promotion as a known man of great ability, and he had made many friends among influential persons by his courtesy and tact. It was inevitable that a distinguished Oxford man should be chosen for an important post in the University, which Cromwell desired to convert from a hotbed of Royalism into a nursery of Puritans. Wilkins was qualified by his common-sense and genial ways for what would have been a hopeless task to the clumsy fanatics ready enough to undertake it.

The new Warden must have found himself in a difficult position. There were in Oxford the three parties into which Englishmen and Scotchmen invariably divide themselves. These parties are called by different names at different times, and are formed on different questions, but remain essentially the same. In Oxford they were called Royalists, Presbyterians, Independents; the questions at issue were the life, discipline, and religion of the University.

This cla.s.sification has all the faults which a cla.s.sification can have; it is not exhaustive, for the variations, religious and political, being infinite, cannot be included under three heads; nor do the _membra dividentia_ exclude each other: among the Royalists were some members of the established Church, of Calvinistic opinions, who were hardly distinguishable from Presbyterians; and some professed Presbyterians would have stood by Charles had not Laud driven them away, for they had in their nature some of the best elements of conservatism, the historical sense, and a love of order and discipline, especially as administered by themselves. But cla.s.sifications may be illogical yet useful, and Wilkins would have accepted this one, in his practical way, for working purposes.

The Presbyterians were for forcing on the Church of England, the Covenant, the Westminster Confession, and the deposition of the Bishop by the Presbyter, or a board of Presbyters. The Independents conceived that every Christian congregation had, under Christ, supreme jurisdiction in things spiritual; that appeals to provincial and national synods were scarcely less Scriptural than appeals to the Court of Arches or to the Vatican, and that Popery, Prelacy, Presbyterianism, were merely three forms of one great apostacy. In politics the Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, "root and branch men," or, to use the kindred phrase of our own time, radicals: not content with limiting the power of the monarch, they were desirous to erect a commonwealth on the ruins of the old English polity. Macaulay's vigorous words explain the difference between the Presbyterians and the Independents: that difference is explained also by Wood in words as vigorous but less dignified and scholarly. "The Presbyterians," he says, "with their disciples seemed to be very severe in their course of life, manners or conversation, and habits or apparell; of a Scoth (_i.e._, Scotch) habit, but especially those that were preachers. The other (the Independents) were more free, gay, and, with a reserve, frollicsome, of a gay habit, whether preachers or not." John Owen, Dean of Christ Church--to be distinguished from Thankful Owen, President of St John's--seems to have been of a specially gay habit; when Vice-Chancellor "he had alwaies his hair powdred, cambric bands with large costly band strings, velvet jacket, his breeches set round at knee with ribbons pointed, Spanish leather boots with cambric tops, &c.,--all this was in opposition to prelattical cutt." The habit of a Vice-Chancellor, even in full dress, is nowadays far less gay, and of the Presbyterian rather than the Independent fas.h.i.+on. Whatever may have been their difference in dress, both parties were "void of public and generous spirits: the Presbyterians for the most part preached nothing but d.a.m.nation, the other not, but rather for libertie; yet both joyne together to pluck downe and silence the prelattical preachers, or at least to expose their way to scorne." Wood carries his comparisons further, and tells, perhaps invents, many things about their common hatred of Maypoles, players, ca.s.socks, surplices, and the use of the Lord's Prayer in public religious service. He more than hints at darker sins,--drunkenness, and immorality cloaked by hypocrisy, the favourite theme of the Restoration dramatists. His account of the Puritan domination in Oxford is, despite his bitter prejudices, historically important, and must have been used by Scott when he wrote 'Woodstock.'

It seems at first sight strange that the Independents should have been "gay," and, even with a reserve, frolicsome, for they were originally the soldiers of Cromwell's "New Model," "honest and religious men." But Wood describes them as he knew them many years after Naseby and Marston Moor, when their character had changed with changing circ.u.mstances.

Triumphant success seldom improves the morale of any party. Oxford proved a Capua to the Independents who lived in it after the strain of war was over: the very principle of Independency, liberty of opinion and action given to every Christian congregation, came to be applied to the life of the individual: freedom to reject any doctrine or practice which you do not like naturally ends in much gaiety and frolicsomeness, especially if your lines are cast in pleasant places: it becomes difficult not to slide into practical Antinomianism. What a place to live in for eleven years! yet Wilkins did so with success and general applause. He was inclined by temperament to the freedom of mellowed Independency rather than to the stiffness of the Presbyterians, who more successfully than their rivals resisted the enervating influences of life in Oxford. Circ.u.mstances as well as inclination led him to become an Independent: his marriage with Cromwell's sister, and the appointment to be one of the Commissioners to execute the office of Chancellor, perhaps also his appointment to the Wardens.h.i.+p, all tended to draw him to the side of Ireton and the Protector. Of the latter he saw much, and was consulted by him on academical and ecclesiastical affairs.

Lord Morley[2] records "a story told by Bishop Wilkins, who was the husband of Cromwell's youngest sister Robina, that the Protector often said to him that no temporal government could have a sure support without a national church that adhered to it, and that he thought England was capable of no const.i.tution but Episcopacy." Lord Morley thinks that "the second imputation must be apocryphal." That is by no means clear: Cromwell may have said what Wilkins probably did not invent, meaning that he thought Episcopacy good enough for England, for Englishmen were incapable of any better const.i.tution; or he may have modified his judgment of Episcopacy,--who knows all that Cromwell came to think in his latter days, a time when most men revise their opinions?

He may have felt the disenchantment which awaits success.

Wilkins' marked success, both in his College and in his University, can be explained only by the fact that he possessed the qualities necessary for the work he had to do,--strong common-sense, moderation, and geniality. He had to live, as the most prominent man, in a society composed of three factions crowded together within the narrow limits of a University town, which even in quiet times is not always the abode of peace. He had to deal with the most burning questions, religious and political, which divide communities: questions which had been stifled for a time by force, and therefore, when force was removed or slackened, came back into vigorous life, and were constantly and bitterly discussed. But he was the man for the time and the place.

His College flourished under his wise and kindly rule. Dr Pope tells us that "many country gentlemen, of all persuasions, but especially those then called Cavaliers and Malignants for adhering to the King and to the Church, sent their sons to his College to be under his government. The affluence of gentlemen was so great that I may fairly say of Wadham College that it was never before in so flouris.h.i.+ng a condition." The "affluence of gentlemen" of all sorts, Fellow Commoners, Commoners, Servitors, and migrants from Cambridge, was, in 1649, fifteen; in 1650, fifty-one; in 1651, twenty-four; in 1652, forty. In the ten complete years of Wilkins' Wardens.h.i.+p the average of admissions was thirty. The large admission made in 1650 was due to the reputation of Wilkins as an able and tolerant College Head, as well as to the belief that the tumult of war had died away. Men's thoughts were turning to civil affairs and the ordinary business of life, especially to education, the preparation for it.

In the registers of the period between 1648 and 1659, are found many names either of distinction in themselves, or of interest as showing that the connection of Wadham with the western counties was well maintained. Walter Pope, who has been already mentioned, was appointed Scholar by the Visitors in 1648, perhaps on the suggestion of the new Warden, his half-brother. He filled many offices in the College, was one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society, and became Professor of Astronomy in Gresham College. He deserves to be remembered as the author of a quaint and interesting little book, in which he gives a brief account of Wilkins, Lawrence Rooke, and Isaac Barrow, as well as a complete life of Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury. It is full of digressions on the manners and customs of the time, written with much humour, and is worthy of a humble place beside the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys.

Seth Ward was a Scholar of Sidney Suss.e.x, ejected from his College and from Cambridge because "he refused the Covenant and other oaths." He went to London, and, like Wren and Wallis, studied mathematics under William Oughtred, the author of the 'Clavis Mathematica,'--"a little book, but a great one as to the contents,"--which brought its author a great name, as well it might. When in London Ward met Wilkins and formed a lifelong friends.h.i.+p with him. They were both men of learning, moderate, dexterous, and successful. Ward entered Wadham as a Fellow Commoner in October 1649, became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and in 1659 President of Trinity. Like Wilkins, he was ejected from his Heads.h.i.+p at the Restoration, and like him obtained high preferment under the new _regime_ and became a Bishop. Both of them, when in Oxford, "became liable to the persecutions of peevish people who ceased not to clamour, and even to article against them as Cavaliers in their hearts--meer moral men without the Power of G.o.dliness." "You must know,"

continues Pope, "that a moral and unblamable person, if he did not herd with them, was an abomination to that Party. I have heard one of them deliver himself in this manner." The "manner" is impossible to quote; it is to the effect that the speaker's opponents were hypocrites and Pharisees of the worst kind, and "in a desperate condition, on whom Jesus Christ can take no hold." The pa.s.sage is instructive; it reveals the exasperation of party feeling in those times, and gives much food for reflection.

Christopher Wren belongs both to Wadham and to All Souls. He was admitted Fellow Commoner of Wadham in 1649, and migrated to All Souls in 1653, but maintained his connection with his first College, and for several years occupied the chamber over the gateway. Of him, the close friend of Wilkins, the scientist and architect, the President of the Royal Society, nothing more need here be said. His portrait hangs in Wadham College Hall, beneath that of Robert Blake.

Less known is Thomas Sprat, admitted Scholar of Wadham in 1651. Of him Wood says that he was "an excellent poet and orator, and one who arrived at a great mastery of the English language." His reputation does not rest on his poetry: he was known by the strange and dubious t.i.tle of "Pindarick Sprat." But his History of the Royal Society justifies Wood's encomium; and he wrote a 'Relation of the late wicked contrivance of Stephen Blackhead and of Robert Young,' of which Macaulay, who does not praise lightly, says that "there are few better narratives in the language." Sprat became Bishop of Rochester and Chaplain to Charles II., though in his youth he had written an Ode on the death of Oliver Cromwell.

Lawrence Rooke was admitted in 1650 from King's College, Cambridge. He accompanied Ward in his migration to Oxford, "and seated himself in Wadham College for the benefit of his conversation." Pope "never was acquainted with any person who knew more and spoke less." He was a prominent member of the band of philosophers who met in Wilkins'

Lodgings; and after the Restoration held the Professors.h.i.+p of Astronomy in Gresham College, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society. Pope's account of him is well worth reading: of his travels in France; of his encounter with the redoubtable Thomas Hobbes, whose quadrature of the circle he proved false: that hard-headed philosopher's logic or "computation" must have failed him on this occasion, for finding, as he thought, errors in Rooke's criticism, he concluded that his own solution must be true. With Ward and Wallis Hobbes had still more fierce encounters on the same question.

Gilbert Ironside, admitted in 1650, became Warden, Vice-Chancellor of the University, and, as his father had been, Bishop of Bristol, and finally of Hereford. He was the "rudest man in the University," and that without respect of persons, for he remonstrated, in a tone not far removed from rudeness, with James II. when he visited Oxford in 1687 to enforce his mandate on Magdalen College.

William Lloyd, who entered Wadham in 1655, was a learned Divine, with his learning at command, of whom Burnet says that "he had the most learning in ready cash of any one he knew." He devoted himself to the interpretation of prophecy. His labours were rewarded by the t.i.tle of Pseudopropheta Ca.n.u.s, bestowed on him when he was old and white-haired, by the _terrae filius_ of 1703. He had himself in his younger days shown some tendency to irreverent joking, by inventing an Eastern Patriarch, a native of London, a man of venerable appearance and dressed to suit the character, who deceived some eminent members of the University, and gave them his blessing; an incident of which Lloyd used to make his "bragge"

long afterwards. He became Bishop of St Asaph, and was one of the Seven Bishops committed to the Tower. William III. rewarded him with the Bishoprics of Lichfield and Coventry, and finally of Worcester.

Samuel Parker matriculated in 1657, and became Bishop of Oxford in 1686.

In the following year he was intruded by James II. into the President's place at Magdalen College, but held his office for only five months. He died in his Lodgings, and was buried in the ante-chapel, but honoured by no memorial to mark the place of his interment. His must have been a dismal reign.

Beside these names of bishops and philosophers occur names of interest of various kinds: historic names--Russell, Lovelace, Windham, Strangways; one also of quite different a.s.sociations, Sedley, who entered Wadham in 1656, the boon companion later of Rochester, who, also a Wadham undergraduate, was his junior by four years. Both of them were libertines and wits, who received at their College, it may be presumed, an education the precepts of which they did not practise at the Court of Charles II. Other entries show the continued connection of the College with the West of England--with Somerset, the Wadhams' county; with Devon, Dorset, Hamps.h.i.+re, and Gloucesters.h.i.+re.

Enough has been said to prove that Wadham under Wilkins was a college of high reputation and efficiency. It was a nursery of bishops, contributing to the bench no less than six, including Wilkins himself; a nursery also of Fellows of the Royal Society,--Wilkins, Ward, Rooke, Wren, Sprat, and Pope were original members of the "invisible college."

Not only to the Church and to Science did Wadham do good service, but more directly to the State, by educating together impartially the youth of both the great parties. "When the hurly-burly's done, when the battle's lost and won," it is above all things desirable to allay bitter feelings, and bring the former combatants together. For this most difficult and delicate of tasks Wilkins was well qualified. He was beloved by the Cavaliers because he treated all his undergraduates kindly, Royalists and Puritans alike, in marked contrast with other Heads of Houses, who appear to have dealt faithfully with young Malignants, the sons of their political opponents.

That Wilkins possessed great administrative abilities and vigour is shown by his work in the University and in his College. He had seen much of the world, and was in the prime of life, and already a man of eminence--a combination of qualities as rare in Heads of Houses as in Cabinet Ministers. He persuaded the Visitors that Wadham and Trinity were fitted, specially and immediately, in 1651 for freedom to elect their Fellows--a privilege of which all the Colleges had been deprived in 1648. The administration of the College estates and finances was carefully revised, and the Statutes were amended. Wilkins' life was varied and full of activities outside as well as within his College. He was selected to deal with problems more difficult and pressing than Compulsory Pa.s.s Greek, or degrees for women. Was Oxford to be dismantled? Its security had been threatened by a rising of the "Levellers"; and in 1649 Wilkins, along with the Proctor and a Canon of Christ Church, was appointed to confer with the mayor and the citizens on this important question, not then decided.

Two years later he served on a Commission appointed to consider how to suppress troubles caused by st.u.r.dy beggars, "poore soldiers, cas.h.i.+ered or maimed, and Irish people with pet.i.tions, that pretended to be undon by the late rebellion there,"--the miserable sequel of the civil war.

He helped in the revision of the College and University Statutes, and on the nomination of Cromwell was made one of the Commissioners for executing the office of Chancellor, proving himself a man of affairs as well as of learning. For ten years, as critical as any in the history of Oxford, he took a leading part in its academical and munic.i.p.al administration.

Yet he found time to avail himself of the privilege to marry given to the Warden of Wadham: it was accorded to him by a dispensation of the Visitors, who doubtless thought that enforced celibacy savoured of Popery. The privilege was withdrawn after the Restoration, as being a concession made by Puritans, whose views on the marriage of the clergy were not the views of the High Church party. Leave to marry was given to all Wardens of Wadham by a special Act of Parliament in 1806, and not, as the College story goes, by a clause tacked on to a Ca.n.a.l or Turnpike Bill.

Pope's account of Wilkins' marriage is a strange solution of an always interesting question, and not altogether complimentary to the lady of his choice. "Dr Ward," he says, "rid out of this storm,"--the storm of obloquy which broke out on him and Wilkins as being "mere moral men."

Wilkins "put into the port of matrimony," apparently as a harbour of refuge in distress. He married Robina, the Protector's sister, widow of Dr Peter French, Canon of Christ Church. Her first husband was "a pious, humble, and learned person, and an excellent preacher," the best, in Pope's opinion, of the censorious party. Ward did not imitate his friend, though, if we believe Pope, he had many opportunities for doing so. "He was never dest.i.tute of friends of the Fair s.e.x, never without proffers of Wives," which became increasingly frequent as he rose in the world. Pope professes to have known "several persons of great quality and estates who found ways to make it known to Ward, that if he would address himself to them in the honourable way of marriage, he should not want a kind entertainment." But he, then Bishop of Salisbury, had before his eyes the fate of one of his predecessors who married after he became a bishop, and "upon that had received so severe a reprimand from his brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and laid it so much to heart that it accelerated his death." This story may be apocryphal; it is certainly startling. Do ladies of quality still give such hints to bishops? Do bishops die of a rebuke from the archbishop of their province?

Wilkins' marriage "gained him a strong interest and authority in the University, and set him at safety, and out of the reach of his Adversaries." We may trust that it was for his happiness in other ways.

Of his wife little is known, nor is there a portrait of her in the College. She had a son by her second marriage, Joshua Wilkins, who became Dean of Down: by her first marriage she had a daughter, Elizabeth French, the wife of Tillotson. The writer once amused himself with the fancy that the Archbishop to-be met and courted Miss French in the Warden's Lodgings at Wadham, which have few romantic a.s.sociations; but chronology proves that Tillotson, a Cambridge man, born in 1630, would probably not have made acquaintance with Wilkins before 1659, when he became Master of Trinity. The romance had therefore to be transferred to the Master's Lodge. Even there it could not stay, for Tillotson's first meeting with his future wife in all likelihood took place in London, when he was appointed Tuesday Lecturer at St Lawrence Jewry, the vicarage of which was one of Wilkins' earliest preferments after his ejection from the Masters.h.i.+p of Trinity. When Tillotson made suit for the hand of his stepdaughter, Wilkins, upon her desiring to be excused, said, "Betty, you shall have him, for he is the best polemical Divine this day in England." Though excellence in polemical divinity has not an attraction for most women, she consented, and they were married in 1664.

The stories both of Dorothy and Betty are myths, which fade away at the first touch of criticism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WADHAM COLLEGE FROM THE COLLEGE GARDEN.]

Wilkins was a diligent student, and wrote books of many kinds. These books the writer does not pretend to have read, save in the most hurried, even careless way, except two of them, the 'Real Character' and 'Natural Religion.' The others are of interest to natural philosophers, as containing antic.i.p.ations of discoveries and ideas which belong to a later age, and as showing that Wilkins possessed the inspiring conviction of all genuine men of Science, that for it the word impossible does not exist.

In 1638 he published his first work, an Astronomical treatise, the fruit of his studies at Oxford and at Fawsley. It is ent.i.tled 'The Discovery of a World in the Moone, or a discourse tending to prove that there may be another habitable World in that Planet': in the third impression, issued in 1640, is added a "Discourse concerning the Possibility of a Pa.s.sage thither." Like Lucian he imagined a voyage to the moon, though he admits that the journey through the air was a formidable difficulty.

He successfully defended his views against an objection raised by the d.u.c.h.ess of Newcastle. That clever and eccentric lady, the auth.o.r.ess of many "fancies," philosophical and poetical, asked him where she was to bait her horses if she undertook the journey. "Your Grace could not do better," he replied, "than stop at one of your castles in the air." In his treatment of the difficulties caused by the apparent conflict between certain pa.s.sages of Scripture and the conclusions of Astronomical Science, which he accepts, he antic.i.p.ates in a remarkable way that explanation of them which rests on the understanding of the meaning of the Bible and of the nature of inspiration. The book was parodied in the story of 'Peter Wilkins' Journey to the Moon,' which even usually well-informed persons have been known to attribute as a _jeu-d'esprit_ to the Warden of Wadham. It was written by Robert Paltock, and published in 1751.

His next production was 'Mercurie; or the Secret and Swift Messenger,'--a treatise on Cryptography or ciphers; curious contrivances whereby A can communicate with C without B's suspecting or understanding, by signs, gestures, parables, and transpositions of the alphabet: such as the writer looked at seemed to confirm the view that every cipher which depends on system, and not on an arrangement of a capricious kind, can be interpreted by an expert, a t.i.tle to which he lays no claim. The book was meant perhaps for use in the Civil War, as was the system of Wilkins' friend, Dr Wallis, who could both invent and solve such puzzles, and distinguished himself by deciphering the letters of the king which fell into the hands of the Parliamentarians at Naseby.

There is also among the "Tracts of Bishop Wilkins," a treatise dated 1648, ent.i.tled 'Mathematical Magic; or, the Wonders worked by Mechanical Powers and Motions,' subdivided, according to that distinction, into two books, styled Archimedes and Daedalus. The names are quaint, and the cla.s.sical ill.u.s.trations are very numerous. The work is a kind of handbook for engineers, enlivened by quotations, not always apposite, from ancient authors, as was the fas.h.i.+on when high literary culture and science could be more easily combined than in our days of ruthless specialism. It is dedicated in very courtly language to the Prince Elector Palatine. Wilkins looks forward to the Prince's restoration to his dominions--a curious aspiration to be professed by a man who did not, then at least, put his trust in princes. But he did not foresee what was to come, both to himself or others.

His two books of a devotional character were, one on 'The Gift of Prayer,' a formal and elaborate treatise with many divisions and subdivisions, in spirit earnest and devout. Its companion treatise, 'Ecclesiastes; or the Gift of Preaching,' shows a high conception of the learning which he thought necessary for one who would preach well; knowledge of commentators; of preachers, especially of English sermon-writers; of works on Christian doctrine, on the history of Christianity; of all subjects which can be included in Theology. The list of books recommended is enormous, and beyond the reach of any man--even of Wilkins or Casaubon: it must have been intended to be a work of reference, a catalogue from which a student might select. It, like his 'Sermons Preached on Several Occasions,' is illumined by quaint utterances, humorous, sensible, and devout; qualities more frequently combined in those days than in our own, when the "dignity of the pulpit," a lamentable superst.i.tion, has weakened its influence, and has made religion appear to simple people remote from common life.

Wilkins' most original and valuable contribution to Theology is 'The Principles and Duties of Natural Religion,' written in his later years, and published after his death by Tillotson. Mr Sanders, the writer of the too short article on Wilkins in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' says that "in this work there are thoughts which antic.i.p.ate the argument of Butler's 'a.n.a.logy.'" Wilkins, like Butler and Newman, draws distinctions between different kinds of evidence and different degrees of consequent a.s.sent. He points out that neither Natural Religion nor Christianity can be proved true by demonstration like a conclusion in geometry, or in any kind of mathematical reasoning; that in default of this inference from self-evident premises to propositions of equal cogency, we must, in a matter of paramount practical importance, be content to judge, as fairly and soberly as we can, by that "probability" which Butler calls "the guide of life." Wilkins perceived, what few in his time perceived, that there are no "demonstrations" of Christianity, nor even of Theism; that faith is faith. Further, he emphasises the harmony between Natural and Revealed Religion, the fact that one is the complement of the other. But in him there are not the depth, candour, and seriousness of Butler, nor that sense of mystery which makes him the weightiest of Christian Apologists in the estimation both of disciples and opponents.

The book by which Wilkins will always be remembered among curious students and philologers is his 'Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language.' It is a quarto of 600 pages, including an alphabetical dictionary of English words, with their equivalents in what may be called, without irreverence, Wilkinese. It was written at the request of the Royal Society, and, by its order, published in 1688. The meaning of the somewhat obscure t.i.tle is explained by Wilkins in a very interesting preface. Character means language, or rather writing, and a universal character is the script of a language like that which was spoken before the confusion of tongues; a language for and of all men.

By "Real" is signified that the new language is founded on a study of things which are "better than words"; of "the nature of things, and that common notion of them wherein mankind does agree." The making of such a language "will prove the shortest and plainest way for the attainment of real knowledge," and the language thus made will be truly philosophical, or, to use our modern term, scientific. The labour bestowed by Wilkins on his magnificent project was immense, but the result was failure.

"Sunt lacrimae rerum," and tears were never shed over a greater waste of ingenuity and heroic toil, if indeed a fine example of fruitless devotion is to be called waste. With apologies to the Esperantists, it must be said that the invention of a universal language, of any but the narrowest compa.s.s, seems impossible, for language, in any real sense, is not made but grows. It is dangerous, however, to dogmatise on possibilities. Misled, as we can gather from his preface, by the proved usefulness of mathematical signs, Wilkins attempted to provide for philosophers of all countries a better means of communication than Latin, then the universal language of literature and science, but in his opinion unscientific, full of anomalies and difficult to acquire; for in it there were, he said, thirty thousand words. In his language there were only three thousand, and they could be learnt by a man of good capacity in a month. His estimate of capacity and diligence is somewhat high. It is possible to explain the principles on which he constructed his new tongue. He began by dividing the universe, the sum total of existence, things, thoughts, relations, after the manner of Aristotle, though not into ten, but into forty categories, or genera, or great cla.s.ses, such as World, Element, Animal, and apparently species of animals, such as Bird, Fish, Beast: for each of these great cla.s.ses he devised a monosyllabic name--_e.g._, De for Element, Za for Fish; each of these genera is subdivided into species indicated by the addition of a consonant, and these are again subdivided into subordinate species distinguished by a vowel affixed. For example--De means an Element, any of the four, Fire, Air, Earth, Water; add to it B, which, as the first consonant, stands for the first species of a genus, and you will have the significant word DEB, which means Fire, for it, we know not why, is the first of the four Elements. Let us take a more complex instance--his name for Salmon. The salmon is a species of Za or Fish, a particular kind of fish called N, namely, the Squameous river fish. This cla.s.s ZaN is subdivided into lower cla.s.ses, and the lower cla.s.s Salmon is called A, which means the red-fleshed kind of squameous river fish, and so a salmon is a ZaNA. If you wished to state the fact that a salmon swims, you would use the words ZaNA GoF, for Go stands for the great category of motion, F for the particular kind of motion meant, swimming. Voice, tense, and mood are indicated by lines of different lengths, straight or curved, crossed, hooked, looped; adverbs and conjunctions by dots or points differently arranged.

Wilkins' universal character therefore means a kind of shorthand writing of his Real Language.

The writer fears that he may only have confused his readers and himself by his bold but poor attempt to express in a few lines the meaning of six hundred pages. He would be the last to ridicule the "folly" of a great man, whose system he has made no very laborious effort to understand, for it seems to be built on sand, on a cla.s.sification of things superficial, imperfect, and capricious, which would not have been accepted by learned men, and if accepted would have become obsolete in a quarter of a century. The syllable Co stands for all relations between human beings, and these relations are of eight kinds. What would a professor of social science now say to this? What would an ichthyologist say to Wilkins' definition of a salmon? The interest of the book lies in its being the most striking of many proofs of the wide intellectual interests, the alert and insatiable curiosity, and the extraordinary industry of its writer. It has also the pathetic interest of "love's labour lost," for who now reads the 'Real Character,' or who read it twenty years after Wilkins' death? His name was "writ in water," for he spent himself on many things, and did little because he did too much.

The "greatest curioso" of his time relieved his toils by music. Nowhere are Wood's vanity and self-consciousness shown more vividly than in his account of a musical entertainment given by Wilkins in honour of Thomas Baltzar, "the most famous artist for the violin which the world had yet produced. The books and instruments were carried thither," to the Warden's lodgings, "but none could be persuaded there to play against him in consort on the violin. At length the company, perceiving A. W.

standing behind in a corner neare the dore, they haled him in among them, and play forsooth he must against him: whereupon, he being not able to avoid it, took up a violin, and behaved himself as poor Troylus did against Achilles." Wood consoled himself for his failure by the honour he acquired from being asked to play with the Master, of whom he maliciously remarks that "he was given to excessive drinking,"--a characteristic comment.

Wilkins' greatest achievement was the founding of the Royal Society. He may be called its founder, if that high t.i.tle can be given to any one of the eminent men who, in Oxford and in London, revived or regenerated the study of natural philosophy. Pope, Aubrey, and Sprat differ from Wallis in their accounts of the origin of the mother of scientific parliaments. The first three find that origin in meetings held in Wadham College under the presidency of Wilkins. Wallis traces the beginnings of the Royal Society to meetings held in London in 1645. "In that year," he writes, "there had sprung up an a.s.sociation of certain worthy persons inquisitive in Natural Philosophy, who met together, first in London, for the investigation of what was called the new or experimental philosophy, and afterwards several of the more influential of the members, about 1648 or 1649, finding London too much distracted by civil commotions, commenced holding their meetings in Oxford." Among those who removed to Oxford were, "first, Dr Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr G.o.ddard, whereupon our company divided. Those at London (and we when we had occasion to be there) met as before. Those of us at Oxford, with Dr Ward, Dr Petty, and many others of the most inquisitive persons in Oxford, met weekly for some years at Dr Petty's lodgings, on the like account, to wit, so long as Dr Petty continued in Oxford, and for some while after, because of the conveniences we had there (being the house of an apothecary) to view and make use of drugs, and other like matters as there was occasion. We did afterwards (Dr Petty being gone to Ireland and our numbers growing less) remove thence, and (some years before his Majesty's return) did meet at Dr Wilkin's lodgings in Wadham College."

This account is plain enough: it differs from the story told by Sprat in this point only, that Sprat omits reference to the first meetings in London between 1645 and 1648, and to the meetings in Oxford at Dr Petty's lodgings. The causes of these omissions are not far to seek.

Sprat was a youth of seventeen in 1651, the year of his admission into Wadham: it is difficult to believe that he was present at the gatherings of men many years his senior in Dr Petty's lodgings, or knew as much as Wallis did of the infancy of the Royal Society. No Oxford man is to be entirely trusted when writing about his own College, and Sprat laudably claimed for Wadham the honour of being the cradle of the great a.s.sociation.

In his history of the Royal Society, published in 1667, he gives a full account of its growth and objects, though not of its beginnings.

"It was some s.p.a.ce," he writes, "after the end of the Civil Wars at Oxford, in Dr Wilkins, his lodgings, in Wadham College, which was then the place of resort for virtuous and learned men, that the first meetings were held which laid the foundation of all this that followed.

The University had at this time many members of its own who had begun a free way of reasoning; and was also frequented by some gentlemen of philosophical minds, whom the misfortunes of the kingdom, and the security and ease of a retirement among Gownsmen had drawn thither.

Their first purpose was no more than only the satisfaction of breathing a freer air, and of conversing in quiet one with another, without being engaged in the pa.s.sions and madness of that dismal Age. And from the Inst.i.tution of that a.s.sembly, it had been enough if no other advantage had come but this: that by this means there was a race of young men provided, against the next Age, whose minds, receiving from them their first impressions of sober and general knowledge, were invincibly armed against the enchantments of Enthusiasm. But what is more, I may venture to affirm that it was in good measure by the influence which these Gentlemen had over the rest, that the University itself, or at least any part of its Discipline or Order was saved from ruine. For such a candid and impa.s.sionate company as that was, and for such a gloomy season, what could have been a fitter subject to pitch upon than Natural Philosophy?

To have been always tossing about some Theological question would have been to have made that their private diversion the excess of which they themselves disliked in the public. To have been eternally musing on Civil business and distresses of their Country was too melancholy a reflection. It was Nature alone which could pleasantly entertain them in that estate."

It would be superfluous to praise this n.o.ble and pathetic pa.s.sage. It shows the weariness of political and religious controversy which oppressed men's minds; the discouragement, almost hopelessness, which made the Restoration welcome, and Puritanism odious, for a time at least, to the majority of Englishmen. The word Enthusiasm is of strange significance; then and for more than a hundred years later it connoted extravagance and fanaticism. Worthy of notice also are Sprat's words to the effect that the influence of Wilkins and his friends was on the side of discipline and order in the University, and saved it from "ruine."

They ought to please and encourage, perhaps instruct, the modern apostles of science who are with us now.

From a comparison of Wallis' and Sprat's accounts, it is clear that the dispute, if dispute there be, whether Wadham or London was the cradle of the Royal Society, can be settled more easily than most contested claims of this kind. The facts are ascertained: the question turns on the meaning of the words "founder" and "foundation." The first meetings of the Philosophical Club, which became the Royal Society, were unquestionably held in London, and were continued there, at the Bull's Head Tavern in Cheapside, after Wilkins had removed to Oxford in 1648, and gathered round him there the members of a new philosophical society, which may be called, if that name be preferred, an offshoot from the parent stem: the two clubs co-existed till the Restoration, when most of the Oxford philosophers migrated or returned to London, and were incorporated into one society which received its name and charter from Charles II. in July 1662.