Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 40

But sense must sure thy safest plunder be, Since no reprisals can be made on thee.

Thus thou mayst rise, and in thy daring flight (Though ne'er so weighty) reach a wondrous height: So, forced from engines, lead itself can fly, And pond'rous slugs move nimbly through the sky.[251]

Sure Bavius copied Maevius to the full, And CHaeRILUS[252] taught CODRUS to be dull; Therefore, dear friend, at my advice give o'er This needless labour, and contend no more To prove a _dull Succession_ to be true, Since 'tis enough we find it so in you.

FOOTNOTES:

[247] The fullest account we have of Settle, a busy scribe in his day, is in Mr. Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes," vol. i. p. 41.

[248] It was the custom when party feeling ran high on the subject of papacy, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, to get up these solemn mock-processions of the Pope and Cardinals, accompanied with figures to represent Sir Edmundbury G.o.dfrey, and other subjects well adapted to heat popular feelings, and parade them through the streets of London. The day chosen for this was the anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth (Nov. 17), and when the procession reached Temple-bar, the figure of the Pope was tossed from his chair by one dressed as the Devil into a great bonfire made opposite the statue of Queen Elizabeth, on the city side of Temple-bar. Two rare tracts describe these "solemn mock-processions," as they are termed, in 1679 and 1680. Prints were also published depicting the whole proceedings, and descriptive pamphlets from the pen of Settle, who arranged these shows.--ED.

[249] Thus altered in the _Dunciad_, book i., ver. 183--

"As clocks to weight their nimble motions owe, The wheels above urged by the load below."

[250] This original image a late caustic wit (Horne Tooke), who probably had never read this poem, employed on a certain occasion. G.o.dwin, who had then distinguished himself by his genius and by some hardy paradoxes, was pleading for them as hardily, by showing that they did not originate in him--that they were to be found in Helvetius, in Rousseau, and in other modern philosophers. "Ay," retorted the cynical wit; "so you eat at my table venison and turtle, but from you the same things come quite changed!" The original, after all, is in Donne, long afterwards versified by our poet. See Warton's edition, vol. iv. p. 257. Pope must have been an early reader of Donne.

[251] Thus altered in the _Dunciad_, book i. ver. 181--

"As, forced from wind-guns, lead itself can fly, And pond'rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky."

[252] Perhaps, by _Chaerilus_, the juvenile satirist designated _Flecknoe_, or _Shadwell_, who had received their immortality of dulness from his master, catholic in poetry and opinions, Dryden.

THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

THE ROYAL SOCIETY at first opposed from various quarters--their Experimental Philosophy supplants the Aristotelian methods--suspected of being the concealed Advocates of Popery, Arbitrary Power, and Atheism--disappointments incurred by their promises--the simplicity of the early Inquirers--ridiculed by the Wits and others--Narrative of a quarrel between a Member of the Royal Society and an Aristotelian--Glanvill writes his "Plus Ultra," to show the Improvements of Modern Knowledge--Character of Stubbe of Warwick--his Apology, from himself--opposes the "Plus Ultra" by the "Plus Ultra reduced to a Nonplus"--his "Campanella revived"--the Political Projects of Campanella--Stubbe persecuted, and menaced to be publicly whipped; his Roman spirit--his "Legends no Histories"--his "Censure on some Pa.s.sages of the History of the Royal Society"--Harvey's ambition to be considered the Discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood, which he demonstrates--Stubbe describes the Philosophy of Science--attacks Sprat's Dedication to the King--The Philosophical Transactions published by Sir Hans Sloane ridiculed by Dr. King--his new Species of Literary Burlesque--King's character--these attacks not ineffectually renewed by Sir John Hill.

The Royal Society, on its first establishment, at the era of the Restoration, encountered fierce hostilities; nor, even at later periods, has it escaped many wanton attacks. A great revolution in the human mind was opening with that establishment; for the spirit which had appeared in the recent political concussion, and which had given freedom to opinion, and a bolder scope to enterprise, had now reached the literary and philosophical world; but causes of the most opposite natures operated against this inst.i.tution of infant science.

In the first place, the new experimental philosophy, full of inventions and operations, proposed to supplant the old scholastic philosophy, which still retained an obscure jargon of terms, the most frivolous subtilties, and all those empty and artificial methods by which it pretended to decide on all topics. Too long it had filled the ear with airy speculation, while it starved the mind that languished for sense and knowledge. But this emanc.i.p.ation menaced the power of the followers of Aristotle, who were still slumbering in their undisputed authority, enthroned in our Universities. For centuries the world had been taught that the philosopher of Stagira had thought on every subject: Aristotle was quoted as equal authority with St.

Paul, and his very image has been profanely looked on with the reverence paid to Christ. BACON had fixed a new light in Europe, and others were kindling their torches at his flame. When the great usurper of the human understanding was once fairly opposed to Nature, he betrayed too many symptoms of mere humanity. Yet this great triumph was not obtained without severe contention; and upon the Continent even blood has been shed in the cause of words. In our country, the University of Cambridge was divided by a party who called themselves _Trojans_, from their antipathy to the _Greeks_, or the Aristotelians; and once the learned Richard Harvey, the brother of Gabriel, the friend of Spenser, stung to madness by the predominant powers, to their utter dismay set up their idol on the school-gates, with his heels upwards, and a.s.s's ears on his head. But at this later period, when the Royal Society was established, the war was more open, and both parties more inveterate. Now the world seemed to think, so violent is the reaction of public opinion, that they could reason better without Aristotle than with him: that he had often taught them nothing more than self-evident propositions, or had promoted that dangerous idleness of maintaining paradoxes, by quibbles and other captious subtilties. The days had closed of the "illuminated," the "profound," and the "irrefragable," t.i.tles, which the scholastic heroes had obtained; and the Aristotelian four modes, by which all things in nature must exist, of _materialiter_, _formaliter_, _fundamentaliter_, and _eminenter_, were now considered as nothing more than the noisy rattles, or chains of cherry-stones, which had too long detained us in the nursery of the human mind.[253] The world had been cheated with words instead of things; and the new experimental philosophy insisted that men should be less loquacious, but more laborious.

Some there were, in that unsettled state of politics and religion, in whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 gla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.sical 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 polis.h.i.+ng of their discourses. He cla.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 Somersets.h.i.+re, 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-fas.h.i.+oned virtuoso, and, like an angry boar, had already been preluding by whetting his tusks. Scarcely had the first cold civilities pa.s.sed, when Glanvill found himself involved in single combat with an a.s.sailant 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 a.s.serted 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, a.s.serting that the affair had finished with the conviction.

On this, Glanvill produced his "Plus Ultra,"[263] on the modern improvements of knowledge. The quaint t.i.tle 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 a.s.serted 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 t.i.tle 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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 n.o.blest of sonnets), the head of the Independents, who combined with the darkest spirit of fanaticism the clear views of the most sagacious politician. The grat.i.tude 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 n.o.ble pa.s.sage 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 t.i.tle 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sage in Glanvill; insisting that the honour of the whole faculty of which he was a member was deeply concerned to refute Glanvill's a.s.sertion, 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 foolis.h.!.+" 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 circ.u.mstance 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 Pa.s.sages 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 demolis.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d of Sloth, in h.e.l.l, which are fit for nothing but _to fodder a.s.ses 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.serted 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 a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.sages 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]