36 37 In the dialogue, called Affectation of the Learned Lady, there is portrayed a comic character, who is the equal of Valeria in the Basset-Table and Lady Science in The Humours of Oxford. Calphurnia keeps on her table, instead of toilet articles, "the works of Jansenius, Descartes, Casaubon, Kircher, with such like Authors, and Manuscripts innumerable" 35 "I was so visited in the Morning", she explains, "by the Virtuosi, Criticks, Poets, Booksellers; so taken up with my Correspondence with the learned both at home and Abroad, that I had little time to talk with my Milliner, Dresser, Mantua-Maker, and such illiterate People". So greatly absorbed is she in these scientific interests that she "keeps a calling day once a fortnight for the ladies, but everyday for the Virtuosi". The Dialogues of the Deadss is a satire on the famous astrologer, Lilly, and Modern Learning on the study of insects. The former does not touch upon the new science; the tone of the latter has long since grown familiar. Moderno appears bespattered with filth, and, on the enquiry of Indifferentio, accounts for his condition by saying he has been in a ditch in search of knowledge; for "there has been more true Experience in Natural Philosophy gather'd out of Ditches in this latter Century than Pliny and Aristotle were Masters of both together" 39 Although the spring has not fully come, he has gone out into the fields because he has grown weary of the "winter-sports within Doors, as Rat-Catching, Mouse-fleying, Crevice-searching for Spiders, Cricket-dissecting, and the like".40 "Indifferentio,-Pray, Sir, have you not some Diversions peculiar to the summer? Moderno,-Oh! Yes! infinite! Maggots, Flies, Gnats, Bugges, Chaffers, Humble-Bees, Wasps, Grasshoppers, and in a good year Caterpillars in abundance Gredartius and Swam merdam became Eminent for this Business".41 King's attitude is that cf comedy; he exploits the scientific in 35 Ibid. p. 304. 36 Ibid. 309. 87 Miscellanies, p. 309. 38 Ibid. p. 314. 29 Ibid. p. 334. 40 Ibid. p. 326. 41 Ibid. p. 326-7. > terest as a humor. There is, however, no bitterness in his attack. His aim is to raise a laugh, and he does it at the expense of the worthy and the unworthy. One looks in vain for any serious treatment of the subject in his work; yet there is a single passage in the Dialogues of the Dead, which seems to contain as definite a statement of King's real attitude as can be found. "Consider further, That men of true Learning will always be Honour'd whilst their Mimicks are despised".42 Of the same character as King's are the satires, or Amusements, of Thomas Brown. Apothecaries, surgeons and physicians are all ridiculed in Amusement X. A boy has swallowed a knife and these wise men have met in consultation as to the best method of removing it from his stomach. The apothecaries advise certain quack emetics; the surgeons say cut him open; the physicians suggest an effective method by the use of a loadstone, but too indecent to explain. Brown does not hesitate in his satire to become personal; it was "my particular Friend Dr. W-dw-rd (Woodward) who first mentioned the loadstone, and he is no quack I assure you' 43 There is also a satiric comment on Lilly and astrology; Lilly is the chief "proficient in the Celestial Gimcracks". The quackery in astrology Brown understood full well, and has here given it the kind of treatment it deserved. The amplest satire on the virtuosi occurs where Brown arrives at "The Philosophical or Virtuosi Country". "This Country of Experimental Philosophy is very amusing, and their Collections of Rarities exceeds that of John Trudusken (Tradescant), for here are Galls of Doves, the eye-teeth of flying Toads, the eggs of Ants, and the eyes of Oysters. Here they weigh the Air, measure heat, cold, dryness, and humidity-great discoveries for the public advantage of Mankind. Without giving our selves the trouble of making use of our senses, we need only cast our eyes upon a weather glass to know if 'tis hot or cold, if it rains, or is fair weather" " In this country the "Contemplative Gentlemen" occupy themselves "with dissecting atoms, or mites in cheese, with transfusing blood from an Ass to an astrological quack, from a sheep into a bully, or 42 Miscellanies, p. 314. 43 Works, vol. III, p. 100. 44 Wks. vol. III, Amusement X, p. 94. 44 from a fish into an exchange woman". They are continually "chewing the cud of Burnet's Sacred Theory", or quarreling incessantly over the opposing theories of Aristotle and Descartes, Cardan and Copernicus, William Penn and Christianity. Acidists and Alkalidists, or "putting a period to the abstruse debates between the engineers and mouse-trap makers".45 The satire of Brown is bright and keen. As usual with writers of his stamp, he makes no discrimination between pretense and true worth. Lilly and Cooley are boldly attacked by name as exponents of quackery in his scornful assault on astrology; but there is no praise for the splendid work of Boyle, Halley, and Newton among the virtuosi. Brown avoids seriousness and generally with success hides his real attitude behind the mask of boisterous laughter. He has, however, once at least come near the true mark and expressed with shrewdness and wit the secret of the misunderstanding between the new philosophers and the men about town. "The Vertuoso despises the Rich for making such a bustle about so foolish and pale-faced a metal as Gold. The Rich laugh at Learning and learned Men, and cry, A Fig for Aristotle and Descartes''.48 Brown saw with surprising clearness that there were these two points of view, these two standards of value, which led to a natural and mutual misunderstanding. Dean Swift, besides his efforts to defend Sir William Temple against the Moderns, found other occasions to scoff at the new philosophers. In his Art of Growing Poor, he ridicules those foolish beliefs that were clinging like parasites to the new science and which made it an easy prey for satirists,-"the Philosophers' Stone, and Perpetual Motion, could not miss being among the principal Embellishments of this work, any more than the Art of Flying, which set so many of the Virtuoso's of the last Age upon their Tiptoes".47 Mathematical calculations applied to astronomy are ridiculed in A Tripos, the pretended speech assumed to have been delivered at the Commencement, University of Dublin, July 11, 1688. The virtuosi "aimed at here are Ashe and Molyneux who had made so much of a predicted eclipse of the sun in the Philosophical 45 Ibid. p. 95. 46 Wks. III, p. 83. > Transactions, 1684". So exactly is the actual moment of eclipse calculated, "as sure as a gun", that the virtuosi arrange their minutest affairs to suit the coming darkness. In the conclusion to the piece Swift predicts a retaliation upon himself for his stric"The virtuosi will set their brains a-work for Gimcracks to pull my eyes out . . . . . And the Astronomers wont allow me one good star nor inform me when the sun will be totally eclipsed, that I may provide myself with candles''.48 In the Purallel a virtuoso is to get a reward of five thousand pounds "for inventing perpetual motion". As mentioned before, Boyle's Occasional Reflections is burlesqued in a Meditation on a Broomstick.50 Swift's severest arraignment of the new science is to be found in Gulliver's travels. Upon the arrival of the traveller among the Brobdignagians, he finds the king of that country to be a great mathematician, who has drawn around him a company of philosophers. Gulliver is at once examined by these learned men and classed as a "lusus naturae", "a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human knowledge."51 As mementos Gulliver brings back to England four wasps' stings, three of which he gives to Gresham College.52 The general comment on the learning of these people is that they know only the sensible and useful things, which among the virtuosi would be little esteemed.53 The inhabitants of Laputa, or the Flying Island, are greatly given to the speculative sciences. With them everything takes form according to the principles of mathematics or music; they believe in judicial astrology; they have the latest "odd notions", regarding the celestial bodies, such as, the earth approaches the sun, the 48 A Tripos, vol. VI, p. 242. 49 Wks. vol. VIII, p. 209. 50 Ibid. IX, p. 120. 51 Ibid. vol. XI, p. 127. 62 vol. XI, p. 134. 58 vol. XI, p. 166. tail of a comet has brushed the earth, and the sun is losing its heat. The motions of the island are guided by means of a great magnet located at its centre. As a consequence of all their speculations these people are "dexterous enough upon a piece of paper”, but are clumsy, awkward and unhandy "in the common actions and behaviours of life".54 At the "Grand Academy of Lagado" are found the projectors, who have discovered the means of drawing sunbeams out of cucumbers, who have conceived the idea of ploughing with hogs and of using spiders to weave silk, who write books. by machinery in an universal language. The whole passage, though imitated in form from Rabelais, has for its substance the recent projects of the Royal Society. 55 Swift seemed to find himself a misfit among the new ideas, as elsewhere. So thoroughly has the satiric mood colored all his thought, so successfully does he screen his real self behind ironical raillery, that one is never sure of knowing what his mind truly is. His manner of dealing with the new science is well expressed in Gulliver's Travels (II), where Gulliver finds the ladies among the Brobdignagians so ugly. By applying a magnifying glass, he says, "the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse, and ill-coloured" 5 Swift has applied his satiric magnifying glass to the work of the new philosophers. "I confess I value the opinion of the judicious few", he has written in what appears to be a serious manner, .. but for the rest, to give my judgment at once, I think the long dispute among the philosophers about a vacuum, may be determined in the affirmative that is to be found in the Critick's head."56, And, again, when Glubbdrubdrib has called up the spirit of Artistotle, that philosopher is made to say of the new scientific beliefs,-"New systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined".57 In his defense of Temple, he pretended to ridicule only the absurdities that clung to the new science, but he Swift's Works, vol. XI, p. 198. Swift, Wks. vol. XI, p. 112. 66 A Tritical Essay, vol. IX, pp. 128-9. Gulliver's Travels, III, vol. XI, p. 241. |