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An essay by Isaac Disraeli |
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The Royal Society |
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Title: The Royal Society Author: Isaac Disraeli [More Titles by Disraeli] 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 Passages 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.
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 emancipation 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 ass'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," titles, 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.[1] 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 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!"[2] 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.[3] 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?"[4] 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;[5] 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.[6] 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.[7] 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.[8] 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."[9] 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.[10] 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,"[11] 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."[12] 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.[13] 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[14] 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.[15] 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;[16] 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.[17] 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;[18] 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."[19] 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,[20] 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.[21] 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 CÆSALPINUS, who not only discovered it, but had given it the name of Circulatio Sanguinis.[22] 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.[23] 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."[24] 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 Cæsarean 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,[25] 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.[26] 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."[27] 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."[28]
[1] 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."
[2] 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. [3] 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 Dædalus. 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. [4] 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? [5] 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. [6] 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--
[7] 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. [8] 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. [9] 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!"
[10 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. [11 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. [12]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. [13] 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. [14] 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." [15] 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. [16] 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. [17] "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. [18] 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! I shall here observe how much some have to answer, in a literary court of conscience, when they unfairly depreciate the works of a contemporary; and how idly the literary historian performs his task, whenever he adopts the character of a writer from another who is his adversary. This may be particularly shown in the present instance. MORHOFF, in his Polyhistor Litteraria, censures the Plus Ultra of Glanvill, conceiving that he had treated with contempt all ages and nations but his own. The German bibliographer had never seen the book, but took its character from Stubbe and Meric Casaubon. The design of the Plus Ultra, however, differs little from the other works of Glanvill, which Morhoff had seen, and has highly commended. [19] The political reverie of Campanella was even suspected to cover very opposite designs to those he seemed to be proposing to the world. He attempted to turn men's minds from all inquiries into politics and religion, to mere philosophical ones. He wished that the passions of mankind might be so directed, as to spend their force in philosophical discussions, and in improvements in science. He therefore insisted on a uniformity on those great subjects which have so long agitated modern Europe; for the ancients seem to have had no wars merely for religion, and perhaps none for modes of government. One may discover an enlightened principle in the project; but the character of Campanella was a jumble of sense, subtlety, and wildness. He probably masked his real intentions. He appears an advocate for the firm establishment of the papal despotism; yet he aims to give an enlightened principle to regulate the actions of mankind. The intentions of a visionary are difficult to define. If he were really an advocate for despotism, what occasioned an imprisonment for the greater part of his days? Did he lay his project much deeper than the surface of things? Did Campanella imagine that, if men were allowed to philosophise with the utmost freedom, the despotism of religion and politics would dissolve away in the weakness of its quiescent state? The project is a chimera--but, according to the projector, the political and religious freedom of England formed its greatest obstacle. Part of his plan, therefore, includes the means of weakening the Insular heretics by intestine divisions--a mode not seldom practised by the continental powers of France and Spain. The political project of this fervid genius was, that his "Prince," the Spanish king, should be the mightiest sovereign in Europe. For this, he was first to prohibit all theological controversies from the Transalpine schools, those of Germany, &c. "A controversy," he observes, "always shows a kind of victory, and may serve as an authority to a bad cause." He would therefore admit of no commentaries on the Bible, to prevent all diversity of opinion. He would have revived the ancient philosophical sects, instead of the modern religious sects. The Greek and the Hebrew languages were not to be taught! for the republican freedom of the ancient Jews and Grecians had often proved destructive of monarchy. Hobbes, in the bold scheme of his Leviathan, seems to have been aware of this fatality. Campanella would substitute for these ancient languages the study of the Arabic tongue! The troublesome Transalpine wits might then employ themselves in confuting the Turks, rather than in vexing the Catholics; so closely did sagacity and extravagance associate in the mind of this wild genius. But Mathematical and Astronomical schools, and other institutions for the encouragement of the mechanical arts, and particularly those to which the northern genius is most apt, as navigation, &c., were to occupy the studies of the people, divert them from exciting fresh troubles, and withdraw them from theological factions. Campanella thus would make men great in science, having first made them slaves in politics; a philosophical people were to be the subjects of despots--not an impossible event! His plan, remarkable enough, of weakening the English, I give in his words:--"No better way can possibly be found than by causing divisions and dissensions among them, and by continually keeping up the same; which will furnish the Spaniard and the French with advantageous opportunities. As for their religion, which is a moderated Calvinism, that cannot be so easily extinguished and rooted out there, unless there were some schools set up in Flanders, where the English have great commerce, by means of which there may be scattered abroad the seeds of schism and division. These people being of a nature which is still desirous of novelties and change, they are easily wrought over to anything." These schools were tried at Douay in Flanders, and at Valladolid in Spain, and other places. They became nests of rebellion for the English Catholics; or for any one, who, being discontented with government, was easily converted to any religion which aimed to overturn the British Constitution. The secret history of the Roman Catholics in England remains yet to be told: they indeed had their martyrs and their heroes; but the public effects appear in the frequent executions which occurred in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. Stubbe appears to have imagined that the ROYAL SOCIETY was really formed on the principle of Campanella; to withdraw the people from intermeddling with politics and religion, by engaging them merely in philosophical pursuits.--The reaction of the public mind is an object not always sufficiently indicated by historians. The vile hypocrisy and mutual persecutions of the numerous fanatics occasioned very relaxed and tolerant principles of religion at the Restoration; as, the democratic fury having spent itself, too great an indulgence was now allowed to monarchy. Stubbe was alarmed that, should Popery be established, the crown of England would become feudatory to foreign power, and embroil the nation in the restitution of all the abbey lands, of which, at the Reformation, the Church had so zealously been plundered. He was still further alarmed that the virtuosi would influence the education of our youth to these purposes; "an evil," says he, "which has been guarded against by our ancestors in founding free-schools, by uniformity of instruction cementing men's minds." We now smile at these terrors; perhaps they were sometimes real. The absolute necessity of strict conformity to the prevalent religion of Europe was avowed in that unrivalled scheme of despotism, which menaced to efface every trace of popular freedom, and the independence of nations, under the dominion of Napoleon. [20] To this threat of writing his life, we have already noticed the noble apology he has drawn up for the versatility of his opinions. See p. 347. At the moment of the Restoration it was unwise for any of the parties to reproach another for their opinions or their actions. In a national revolution, most men are implicated in the general reproach; and Stubbe said, on this occasion, that "he had observed worse faces in the society than his own." Waller, and Sprat, and Cowley had equally commemorated the protectorship of Cromwell and the restoration of Charles. Our satirist insidiously congratulates himself that "he had never compared Oliver the regicide to Moses, or his son to Joshua;" nor that he had ever written any Pindaric ode, "dedicated to the happy memory of the most renowned Prince Oliver, Lord Protector:" nothing to recommend "the sacred urn" of that blessed spirit to the veneration of posterity; as if
[21] He has described this intercourse of his enemies at court with the king, where, when this punishment was suggested, "a generous personage, altogether unknown to me, being present, bravely and frankly interposed, saying, that 'whatever I was, I was a Roman; that Englishmen were not so precipitously to be condemned to so exemplary a punishment; that representing that book to be a libel against the king was too remote a consequence to be admitted of in a nation free-born, and governed by laws, and tender of ill precedents.'" It was a noble speech, in the relaxed politics of the court of Charles II. He who made it deserved to have had his name more explicitly told: he is designated as "that excellent Englishman, the great ornament of this age, nation, and House of Commons; he whose single worth balanceth much of the debaucheries, follies, and impertinences of the kingdom."--A Reply unto the Letter written to Mr. Henry Stubbe, Oxford, 1671, p. 20. [22] Stubbe gives some curious information on this subject. Harvey published his Treatise at Frankfort, 1628, but Cæsalpinus's work had appeared in 1593. Harvey adopted the notion, and more fully and perspicuously proved it. I shall give what Stubbe says. "Harvey, in his two Answers to Riolan, nowhere asserts the invention so to himself, as to deny that he had the intimation or notion from Cæsalpinus; and his silence I take for a tacit confession. His ambition of glory made him willing to be thought the author of a paradox he had so illustrated, and brought upon the stage, where it lay unregarded, and in all probability buried in oblivion; yet such was his modesty, as not to vindicate it to himself by telling a lie."--STUBBE'S Censure, &c., p. 112. I give this literary anecdote, as it enters into the history of most discoveries, of which the improvers, rather than the inventors, are usually the most known to the world. Bayle, who wrote much later than Stubbe, asserts the same, and has preserved the entire passage, art. Cæsalpinus. It is said Harvey is more expressly indebted to a passage in Servetus, which Wotton has given in the preface to his "Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning," edition 1725. The notion was probably then afloat, and each alike contributed to its development. Thus it was disputed with Copernicus, whether his great discovery of a fixed sun, and the earth wheeling round that star, was his own; others had certainly observed it; yet the invention was still Copernican: for that great genius alone corrected, extended, and gave perfection to a hint, till it expanded to a system. So gradual have often been the great inventions of genius. What others conjectured, and some discovered, Harvey demonstrated. The fate of Harvey's discovery is a curious instance of that patience and fortitude which genius must too often exert in respect to itself. Though Harvey lived to his eightieth year, he hardly witnessed his great discovery established before he died; and it has been said, that he was the only one of his contemporaries who lived to see it in some repute. No physician adopted it; and when it got into vogue, they then disputed whether he was the inventor! Sir William Temple denied not only the discovery, but the doctrine of the Circulation of the Blood. "Sense can hardly allow it; which," says he, "in this dispute must be satisfied as well as reason, before mankind will concur." [23] Stubbe has an eloquent passage, which describes the philosophy of science. The new Experimental School had perhaps too wholly rejected some virtues of the old one; the cultivation of the human understanding, as well as the mere observation on the facts that they collected; an error which has not been entirely removed. "That art of reasoning by which the prudent are discriminated from fools, which methodiseth and facilitates our discourses, which informs us of the validity of consequences and the probability of arguments, and manifests the fallacies of impostors; that art which gives life to solid eloquence, and which renders Statesmen, Divines, Physicians, and Lawyers accomplished; how is this cried down and vilified by the ignoramuses of these days! What contempt is there raised upon the disputative Ethics of Aristotle and the Stoics; and those moral instructions, which have produced the Alexanders and the Ptolemies, the Pompeys and the Ciceroes, are now slighted in comparison of day-labouring! Did we live at Sparta, where the daily employments were the exercises of substantial virtue and gallantry, and men, like setting dogs, were rather bred up unto, than taught reason and worth, it were a more tolerable proposal (though the different policy of these times would not admit of it); but this working, so recommended, is but the feeding of carp in the air, &c. As for the study of Politics, and all critical learning, these are either pedantical, or tedious, to those who have a shorter way of studying men."--Preface to "Legends no Histories." [24] "Legends no Histories," p. 5. [25] Dr. King was allied to the families of Clarendon and Rochester; he took a degree as Doctor of Civil Law, and soon got into great practice. "He afterwards went with the Earl of Pembroke, Lord-Lieutenant, to Ireland, where he became Judge Advocate, Sole Commissioner of the Prizes, Keeper of the Records, Vicar-General to the Lord Primate of Ireland; was countenanced by persons of the highest rank, and might have made a fortune. But so far was he from heaping up riches, that he returned to England with no other treasure than a few merry poems and humorous essays, and returned to his student's place in Christ Church."--Enc. Brit. He was assisted by Bolingbroke; but when his patronage failed, Swift procured him the situation of editor to "Barber's Gazette." He ultimately took to drinking; Lintot the bookseller, told Pope, "I remember Dr. King could write verses in a tavern three hours after he could not speak." His last patron was Lord Clarendon, and he died in apartments he had provided for him in London, Dec. 25, 1712, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey at the expense of his lordship.--ED. [26] Sloane describes Clark, the famous posture-master, "Phil. Trans." No. 242, certainly with the wildest grammar, but with many curious particulars; the gentleman in one of Dr. King's Dialogues inquires the secretary's opinion of the causes of this man's wonderful pliability of limbs; a question which Sloane had thus solved, with colloquial ease: it depended upon "bringing the body to it, by using himself to it." In giving an account of "a child born without a brain"--"Had it lived long enough," said King, "it would have made an excellent publisher of Philosophical Transactions!" Sloane presented the Royal Society with "a figure of a Chinese, representing one of that nation using an ear-picker, and expressing great satisfaction therein."--"Whatever pleasure," said that learned physician, "the Chinese may take in thus picking their ears, I am certain most people in these parts, who have had their hearing impaired, have had such misfortune first come to them by picking their ears too much."--He is so curious, says King, that the secretary took as much satisfaction in looking upon the ear-picker, as the Chinese could do in picking their ears! But "What drowning is"--that "Hanging is only apoplexy!" that "Men cannot swallow when they are dead!" that "No fish die of fevers!" that "Hogs s--t soap, and cows s--t fire!" that the secretary had "Shells, called Blackmoor's-teeth, I suppose from their whiteness!" and the learned RAY'S, that grave naturalist, incredible description of "a very curious little instrument!" I leave to the reader and Dr. King. [27] Sir Hans Sloane was unhappily not insensible to these ludicrous assaults, and in the preface to his "History of Jamaica," 1707, a work so highly prized for its botanical researches, absolutely anticipated this fatal facetiousness, for thus he delivers himself:--"Those who strive to make ridiculous anything of this kind, and think themselves great wits, but are very ignorant, and understand nothing of the argument, these, if one were afraid of them, and consulted his own ease, might possibly hinder the publication of any such work, the efforts to be expected from them, making possibly some impression upon persons of equal dispositions; but considering that I have the approbation of others, whose judgment, knowledge, &c., I have great reason to value; and considering that these sorts of men have been in all ages ready to do the like, not only to ordinary persons and their equals, but even to abuse their prince and blaspheme their Maker, I shall, as I have ever since I seriously considered this matter, think of and treat them with the greatest contempt." [28] Dr. King's dispersed works have fortunately been collected by Mr. Nichols, with ample illustrations, in three vols. 8vo, 1776. The "Useful Transactions in Philosophy and other sorts of Learning," form a collection of ludicrous dissertations of Antiquarianism, Natural Philosophy, Criticism, &c., where his own peculiar humour combines with his curious reading. [In this he burlesqued the proceedings of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies with some degree of spirit and humour. By turning vulgar lines into Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon, a learned air is given to some papers on childish subjects. One learned doctor communicates to another "an Essay proving, by arguments philosophical, that millers, falsely so reputed, are not thieves, with an interesting argument that taylors likewise are not so." A Welsh schoolmaster sends some "natural observations" made in Wales, in direct imitation of the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1707, and with humorous love for genealogy, reckons that in his school, "since the flood, there have been 466, and I am the 467th master: before the flood, they living long, there were but two--Rice ap Evan Dha the good, and Davie ap Shones Gonnah the naught, in whose time the flood came." The first paper of the collection is an evident jest on John Bagford and his gatherings for the history of printing, now preserved among the manuscripts of the British Museum. It purports to be "an Essay on the invention of samplers, communicated by Mrs. Judith Bagford, with an account of her collections for the same:" and written in burlesque of a paper in the "Philosophical Transactions" for April, 1697. It is a most elaborate performance, deducing with mock-seriousness the origin of samplers from the ancient tales of Arachne, who "set forth the whole story of her wrongs in needlework, and sent it to her sister;" and our author adds, with much humour, "it is very remarkable that the memory of this story does at present continue, for there are no samplers, which proceed in any measure beyond the first rudiments, but have a tree and a nightingale sitting on it." Such were the jests of the day against the Royal philosophers.] He also invented satirical and humorous indexes, not the least facetious parts of his volumes. King had made notes on more than 20,000 books and MSS., and his Adversaria, of which a portion has been preserved, is not inferior in curiosity to the literary journals of Gibbon, though it wants the investigating spirit of the modern philosopher. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |