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.
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 institution 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 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.[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 breasts the embers of the late Revolution were still hot: they
were panic-struck that the advocates of popery and arbitrary power
were returning on them, disguised as natural philosophers. This new
terror had a very ludicrous origin:--it arose from some casual
expressions, in which the Royal Society at first delighted, and by
which an air of mystery was thrown over its secret movements: such was
that "Universal Correspondence" which it affected to boast of; and the
vaunt to foreigners of its "Ten Secretaries," when, in truth, all
these magnificent declarations were only objects of their wishes.
Another fond but singular expression, which the illustrious BOYLE had
frequently applied to it in its earliest state, when only composed of
a few friends, calling it "The Invisible College," all concurred to
make the Royal Society wear the appearance of a conspiracy against
the political freedom of the nation. At a time, too, when, according
to the historian of the Royal Society, "almost every family was widely
disagreed among themselves on matters of religion," they believed that
this "new experimental philosophy was subversive of the Christian
faith!"[254] and many mortally hated the newly-invented optical
glasses, the telescope and the microscope, as atheistical inventions,
which perverted our sight, and made everything appear in a new and
false light! Sprat wrote his celebrated "History of the Royal
Society," to show that experimental philosophy was neither designed
for the extinction of the Universities, nor of the Christian religion,
which were really imagined to be in danger.
Others, again, were impatient for romantic discoveries; miracles were
required, some were hinted at, while some were promised. In the
ecstasy of imagination, they lost their soberness, forgetting that
they were but the historians of nature, and not her prophets.[255] But
amid these dreams of hope and fancy, the creeping experimentalist was
still left boasting of improvements, so slow that they were not
perceived, and of novelties so absurd that they too often raised the
laugh against their grave and unlucky discoverers. The philosophers
themselves seemed to have been fretted into the impatient humour which
they attempted to correct; and the amiable Evelyn becomes an irritated
satirist, when he attempts to reply to the repeated question of that
day, "What have they done?"[256]
But a source of the ridicule which was perpetually flowing against the
Royal Society, was the almost infantine simplicity of its earliest
members, led on by their honest zeal; and the absence of all
discernment in many trifling and ludicrous researches, which called
down the malice of the wits;[257] there was, too, much of that unjust
contempt between the parties, which students of opposite pursuits and
tastes so liberally bestow on each other. The researches of the
Antiquarian Society were sneered at by the Royal, and the antiquaries
avenged themselves by their obstinate incredulity at the prodigies of
the naturalists; the student of classical literature was equally
slighted by the new philosophers; who, leaving the study of words and
the elegancies of rhetoric for the study merely of things, declared as
the cynical ancient did of metaphors, "Poterimus vivere sine
illis"--We can do very well without them! The ever-witty South, in his
oration at Oxford, made this poignant reflection on the Royal
Society--"Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos, et seipsos." They
can admire nothing except fleas, lice, and themselves! And even Hobbes
so little comprehended the utility of these new pursuits, that he
considered the Royal Society merely as so many labourers, who, when
they had washed their hands after their work, should leave to others
the polishing of their discourses. He classed them, in the way they
were proceeding, with apothecaries, and gardeners, and mechanics, who
might now "all put in for, and get the prize." Even at a later period,
Sir William Temple imagined the virtuosi to be only so many Sir
Nicholas Gimcracks; and contemptuously called them, from the place of
their first meeting, "the Men of Gresham!" doubtless considering them
as wise as "the Men of Gotham!" Even now, men of other tempers and
other studies are too apt to refuse the palm of philosophy to the
patient race of naturalists.[258] Wotton, who wrote so zealously at
the commencement of the last century in favour of modern knowledge, is
alarmed lest the effusions of wit, in his time, should "deaden the
industry of the philosophers of the next age; for," he adds, "nothing
wounds so effectually as a jest; and when men once become ridiculous,
their labours will be slighted, and they will find few imitators." The
alarm shows his zeal, but not his discernment: since curiosity in
hidden causes is a passion which endures with human nature. "The
philosophers of the next age" have shown themselves as persevering as
their predecessors, and the wits as malicious. The contest between men
of meditation and men of experiment, is a very ancient quarrel; and
the "divine" Socrates was no friend to, and even a ridiculer of, those
very pursuits for which the Royal Society was established.[259]
In founding this infant empire of knowledge, a memorable literary war
broke out between Glanvill, the author of the treatise on "Witches,"
&c., and Stubbe, a physician, a man of great genius. It is the
privilege of genius that its controversies enter into the history of
the human mind; what is but temporary among the vulgar of mankind,
with the curious and the intelligent become monuments of lasting
interest. The present contest, though the spark of contention flew out
of a private quarrel, at length blazed into a public controversy.
The obscure individual who commenced the fray, is forgotten in the
boasted achievements of his more potent ally; he was a clergyman
named Cross, the Vicar of Great Chew, in Somersetshire, a stanch
Aristotelian.
Glanvill, a member of the Royal Society, and an enthusiast for the new
philosophy, had kindled the anger of the peripatetic, who was his
neighbour, and who had the reputation of being the invincible
disputant of his county.[260] Some, who had in vain contended with
Glanvill, now contrived to inveigle the modern philosopher into an
interview with this redoubted champion.
When Glanvill entered the house, he perceived that he was to begin an
acquaintance in a quarrel, which was not the happiest way to preserve
it. The Vicar of Great Chew sat amid his congregated admirers. The
peripatetic had promised them the annihilation of the new-fashioned
virtuoso, and, like an angry boar, had already been preluding by
whetting his tusks. Scarcely had the first cold civilities passed,
when Glanvill found himself involved in single combat with an
assailant armed with the ten categories of Aristotle. Cross, with his
_Quodam modo_, and his _Modo quodam_, with his _Ubi_ and his _Quando_,
scattered the ideas of the simple experimentalist, who, confining
himself to a simple recital of _facts_ and a description of _things_,
was referring, not to the logic of Aristotle, but to the works of
nature. The imperative Aristotelian was wielding weapons, which, says
Glanvill, "were nothing more than like those of a cudgel-player, or
fencing-master."[261]
The last blow was still reserved, when Cross asserted that Aristotle
had more opportunities to acquire knowledge than the Royal Society, or
all the present age had, or could have, for this definitive reason,
"because Aristotle did, _totam peragrare Asiam_." Besides, in the Chew
philosophy, where novelty was treason, improvements or discoveries
could never exist. Here the Aristotelian made his stand; and at
length, gently hooking Glanvill between the horns of a dilemma, the
entrapped virtuoso threw himself into an unguarded affirmation; at
which the Vicar of Great Chew, shouting in triumph, with a sardonic
grin, declared that Glanvill and his Royal Society had now avowed
themselves to be atheistical! This made an end of the interview, and a
beginning of the quarrel.[262]
Glanvill addressed an expostulatory letter to the inhuman Aristotelian,
who only replied by calling it a recantation, asserting that the affair
had finished with the conviction.
On this, Glanvill produced his "Plus Ultra,"[263] on the modern
improvements of knowledge. The quaint title referred to that Asian
argument which placed the boundaries of knowledge at the ancient
limits fixed by Aristotle, like the pillars of Hercules, on which was
inscribed _Ne plus ultra_, to mark the extremity of the world. But
Glanvill asserted we might advance still further--_plus ultra_! To
this book the Aristotelian replied with such rancour, that he could
not obtain a licence for the invective either at Oxford or London.
Glanvill contrived to get some extracts, and printed a small number of
copies for his friends, under the sarcastic title of "The Chew
Gazette,"--a curiosity, we are told, of literary scolding, and which
might now, among literary trinkets, fetch a Roxburgh prize.
Cross, maddened that he could not get his bundle of peripatetic
ribaldries printed, wrote ballads, which he got sung as it chanced.
But suppressed invectives and eking rhymes could but ill appease so
fierce a mastiff: he set on the poor F.R.S. an animal as rabid, but
more vigorous than himself--both of them strangely prejudiced against
the modern improvements of knowledge; so that, like mastiffs in the
dark, they were only the fiercer.
This was Dr. Henry Stubbe, a physician of Warwick--one of those ardent
and versatile characters, strangely made up of defects as strongly
marked as their excellences. He was one of those authors who, among
their numerous remains, leave little of permanent value; for their
busy spirits too keenly delight in temporary controversy, and they
waste the efforts of a mind on their own age, which else had made the
next their own. Careless of worldly opinions, these extraordinary men,
with the simplicity of children, are mere beings of sensation;
perpetually precipitated by their feelings, with slight powers of
reflection, and just as sincere when they act in contradiction to
themselves, as when they act in contradiction to others. In their
moral habits, therefore, we are often struck with strange contrasts;
their whole life is a jumble of actions; and we are apt to condemn
their versatility of principles as arising from dishonest motives; yet
their temper has often proved more generous, and their integrity
purer, than those who have crept up in one unvarying progress to an
eminence which they quietly possess, without any of the ardour of
these original, perhaps whimsical, minds. The most tremendous menace
to a man of this class would be to threaten to write the history of
his life and opinions. When Stubbe attacked the Royal Society, this
threat was held out against him. But menaces never startled his
intrepid genius; he roved in all his wild greatness; and, always
occupied more by present views than interested by the past events of
his life, he cared little for his consistency in the high spirit of
his independence.
The extraordinary character of Stubbe produced as uncommon a
history. Stubbe had originally been a child of fortune, picked up
at Westminster school by Sir Henry Vane the younger, who sent him
to Oxford; where this effervescent genius was, says Wood, "kicked,
and beaten, and whipped."[264] But if these little circumstances
marked the irritability and boldness of his youth, it was equally
distinguished by an entire devotion to his studies. Perhaps one of
the most anomalous of human characters was that of his patron, Sir
Henry Vane the younger (whom Milton has immortalised in one of the
noblest of sonnets), the head of the Independents, who combined with
the darkest spirit of fanaticism the clear views of the most sagacious
politician. The gratitude of Stubbe lasted through all the changeful
fortunes of the chief of a faction--a long date in the records of
human affection! Stubbe had written against monarchy, the church, the
university, &c.; for which, after the Restoration, he was accused
by his antagonists. He exults in the reproach; he replies with all
that frankness of simplicity, so beautiful amid our artificial
manners. He denies not the charge; he never trims, nor glosses over,
nor would veil, a single part of his conduct. He wrote to serve his
patrons, but never himself. I preserve the whole of this noble
passage in the note.[265] Wood bears witness to his perfect
disinterestedness. He never partook of the prosperity of his patron,
nor mixed with any parties, loving the retirement of his private
studies; and if he scorned and hated one party, the Presbyterians, it
was, says Wood, because his high generous nature detested men "void
of generous souls, sneaking, snivelling, &c." Stubbe appears to have
carried this philosophical indifference towards objects of a higher
interest than those of mere profit; for, at the Restoration, he found
no difficulty in conforming to the Church[266] and to the Government.
The king bestowed on him the title of his physician; yet, for the
sake of making philosophical experiments, Stubbe went to Jamaica,
and intended to have proceeded to Mexico and Peru, pursuing his
profession, but still an adventurer. At length Stubbe returned
home; established himself as a physician at Warwick, where, though he
died early, he left a name celebrated.[267] The fertility of his pen
appears in a great number of philosophical, political, and medical
publications. But all his great learning, the facility of his genius,
his poignant wit, his high professional character, his lofty
independence, his scorn of practising the little mysterious arts of
life, availed nothing; for while he was making himself popular
among his auditors, he was eagerly depreciated by those who would
not willingly allow merit to a man who owned no master, and who
feared no rival.
Literary coteries were then held at coffee-houses;[268] and there
presided the voluble Stubbe, with "a big and magisterial voice, while
his mind was equal to it," says the characterising Wood; but his
attenuated frame seemed too delicate to hold long so unbroken a
spirit. It was an accident, however, which closed this life of toil
and hurry and petulant genius. Going to a patient at night, Stubbe was
drowned in a very shallow river, "his head (adds our cynic, who had
generously paid the tribute of his just admiration with his strong
peculiarity of style) being then intoxicated with bibbing, but more
with talking and snuffing of powder."
Such was the adversary of the Royal Society! It is quite in character
that, under the government of Cromwell, he himself should have spread
a taste for what was then called "The New Philosophy" among our youth
and gentlemen, with the view of rendering the clergy contemptible; or,
as he says, "to make them appear egregious fools in matters of common
discourse." He had always a motive for his actions, however opposite
they were; pretending that he was never moved by caprice, but guided
by principle. One of his adversaries, however, has reason to say, that
judging him by his "printed papers, he was a man of excellent
contradictory parts." After the Restoration, he furnished as odd, but
as forcible a reason, for opposing the Royal Society. At that time the
nation, recent from republican ardours, was often panic-struck by
papistical conspiracies, and projects of arbitrary power; and it was
on this principle that he took part against the Society. Influenced by
Dr. Fell and others, he suffered them to infuse these extravagant
opinions into his mind. No private ends appear to have influenced his
changeable conduct; and in the present instance he was sacrificing his
personal feelings to his public principles; for Stubbe was then in the
most friendly correspondence with the illustrious Boyle, the father of
the Royal Society, who admired the ardour of Stubbe, till he found its
inconvenience.[269]
Stubbe opened his formidable attacks, for they form a series, by
replying to the "Plus Ultra" of Glanvill, with a title as quaint,
"The _Plus Ultra_ reduced to a _Non-plus_, in animadversions on
Mr. Glanvill and the Virtuosi." For a pretence for this violent
attack, he strained a passage in Glanvill; insisting that the honour
of the whole faculty of which he was a member was deeply concerned
to refute Glanvill's assertion, that "the ancient physicians could not
cure a cut finger."--This Glanvill denied he had ever affirmed or
thought;[270] but war once resolved on, a pretext as slight as the
present serves the purpose; and so that an odium be raised against
the enemy, the end is obtained before the injustice is acknowledged.
This is indeed the history of other wars than those of words. The
present was protracted with an hostility unsubduing and unsubdued.
At length the malicious ingenuity, or the heated fancy, of Stubbe,
hardly sketched a political conspiracy, accusing the ROYAL SOCIETY of
having adopted the monstrous projects of CAMPANELLA;--an anomalous
genius, who was confined by the Inquisition the greater part of his
life, and who, among some political reveries, projected the
establishment of a universal empire, though he was for shaking off
the yoke of authority in the philosophical world. He was for one
government and one religion throughout Europe, but in other respects
he desired to leave the minds of men quite free. Campanella was one
of the new lights of the age; and his hardy, though wild genius
much more resembled our Stubbe, who denounced his extravagancies,
than any of the Royal Society, to whom he was so artfully compared.
This tremendous attack appeared in Stubbe's "Campanella Revived, or an
Enquiry into the History of the Royal Society; whether the Virtuosi
there do not pursue the projects of Campanella, for reducing England
into Popery; relating the quarrel betwixt H. S. and the R. S., &c.
1670."[271]
Such was the dread which his reiterated attacks caused the Royal
Society, that they employed against him all the petty persecutions of
power and intrigue. "Thirty legions," says Stubbe, alluding to the
famous reply of the philosopher, who would not dispute with a crowned
head, "were to be called to aid you against a young country physician,
who had so long discontinued studies of this nature." However, he
announces that he has finished three more works against the Royal
Society, and has a fourth nearly ready, if it be necessary to prove
that the rhetorical history of the Society by Sprat must be bad,
because "no eloquence can be complete if the subject-matter be
foolish!" His adversaries not only threatened to write his life,[272]
but they represented him to the king as a libeller, who ought to be
whipped at a cart's tail; a circumstance which Stubbe records with the
indignation of a Roman spirit.[273] They stopped his work several
times, and by some stratagem they hindered him from correcting the
press; but nothing could impede the career of his fearless genius. He
treated with infinite ridicule their trivial or their marvellous
discoveries in his "Legends no Histories," and his "Censure on some
Passages of the History of the Royal Society." But while he ridiculed,
he could instruct them; often contributing new knowledge, which the
Royal Society had certainly been proud to have registered in their
history. In his determination of depreciating the novelties of his
day, he disputes even the honour of HARVEY to the discovery of the
circulation of the blood: he attributes it to ANDREAS CAESALPINUS, who
not only discovered it, but had given it the name of _Circulatio
Sanguinis_.[274]
Stubbe was not only himself a man of science, but a caustic satirist,
who blends much pleasantry with his bitterness. In the first ardour
of philosophical discovery, the Society, delighted by the acquisition
of new facts, which, however, rarely proved to be important, and were
often ludicrous in their detail, appear to have too much neglected the
arts of reasoning; they did not even practise common discernment, or
what we might term philosophy, in its more enlarged sense.[275]
Stubbe, with no respect for "a Society," though dignified by the
addition of "Royal," says, "a cabinet of virtuosi are but pitiful
reasoners. Ignorance is infectious; and 'tis possible for men to grow
fools by contact. I will speak to the virtuosi in the language of the
Romish Saint Francis (who, in the wilderness, so humbly addressed his
only friends,) '_Salvete, fratres asini! Salvete, fratres lupi!_'" As
for their Transactions and their History, he thinks "they purpose to
grow famous, as the Turks do to gain Paradise, _by treasuring up all
the waste paper they meet with_." He rallies them on some ridiculous
attempts, such as "An Art of Flying;" an art, says Stubbe, in which
they have not so much as effected the most facile part of the attempt,
which is to break their necks!
Sprat, in his dedication to the king, had said that "the establishment
of the Royal Society was an enterprise equal to the most renowned
actions of the best princes." One would imagine that the notion of a
monarch founding a society for the cultivation of the sciences could
hardly be made objectionable; but, in literary controversy, genius
has the power of wresting all things to its purpose by its own
peculiar force, and the art of placing every object in the light it
chooses, and can thus obtain our attention in spite of our conviction.
I will add the curious animadversion of Stubbe on Sprat's compliment
to the king:--
"Never Prince acquired the fame of great and good by any knickknacks--but
by actions of political wisdom, courage, justice," &c.
Stubbe shows how Dionysius and Nero had been depraved by these
_mechanic philosophers_--that
"An Aristotelian would never pardon himself if he compared _this_
heroical enterprise with the actions of our Black Prince or Henry V.;
or with Henry VIII. in demolishing abbeys and rejecting the papal
authority; or Queen Elizabeth's exploits against Spain; or her
restoring the Protestant religion, putting the Bible into English, and
supporting the Protestants beyond sea. But the reason he (Sprat) gives
why the establishment of the Royal Society of experimentators equals
the most renowned actions of the best princes, is such a pitiful one
as Guzman de Alfarache never met with in the whole extent of the
_Hospital of Fools_--'To increase the power, by new arts, of conquered
nations!' These consequences are twisted like the _cordage of Ocnus_,
the God of Sloth, in hell, which are fit for nothing but _to fodder
asses with_. If our historian means by _every little invention to
increase the powers of mankind_, as an enterprise of such renown, he
is deceived; this glory is not due to such as go about with a dog and
a hoop, nor to the practicers of legerdemain, or upon the high or low
rope; not to every mountebank and his man Andrew; all which, with many
other mechanical and experimental philosophers, do in some sort
increase the powers of mankind, and differ no more from some of the
virtuosi, than _a cat in a hole_ doth from _a cat out of a hole_;
betwixt which that inquisitive person ASDRYASDUST TOSSOFFACAN found a
very great resemblance. 'Tis not the increasing of the _powers of
mankind_ by a pendulum watch, nor spectacles whereby divers may see
under water, nor the new ingenuity of apple-roasters, nor every petty
discovery or instrument, must be put in comparison, much less
preferred, before _the protection and enlargement of empires_."[276]
Had Stubbe's death not occurred, this warfare had probably continued.
He insisted on a complete victory. He had forced the Royal Society to
disclaim their own works, by an announcement that they were not
answerable, as a body, for the various contributions which they gave
the world: an advertisement which has been more than once found
necessary to be renewed. As for their historian Sprat, our intrepid
Stubbe very unexpectedly offered to manifest to the parliament that
this courtly adulator, by his book, was chargeable with high treason;
if they believed that the Royal Society were really engaged so deeply
as he averred in the portentous Caesarean Popery of Campanella.
Glanvill, who had "insulted all university learning," had been
immolated at the pedestal of Aristotle. "I have done enough," he adds,
"since my animadversions contain more than they all knew; and that
these have shown that the _virtuosi_ are very great impostors, or men
of little reading;" alluding to the various discoveries which they
promulgated as novelties, but which Stubbe had asserted were known to
the ancients and others of a later period. This forms a perpetual
accusation against the inventors and discoverers, who may often
exclaim, "Perish those who have done our good works before us!" "The
Discoveries of the Ancients and Moderns" by Dutens, had this book been
then published, might have assisted our keen investigator; but our
combatant ever proudly met his adversaries single-handed.
The "Philosophical Transactions" were afterwards accused of another
kind of high treason, against grammar and common sense. It was long
before the collectors of facts practised the art of writing on them;
still later before they could philosophise, as well as observe: Bacon
and Boyle were at first only imitated in their patient industry. When
Sir HANS SLOANE was the secretary of the Royal Society, he, and most
of his correspondents, wrote in the most confused manner imaginable. A
wit of a very original cast, the facetious Dr. KING,[277] took
advantage of their perplexed and often unintelligible descriptions;
of the meanness of their style, which humbled even the great objects
of nature; of their credulity that heaped up marvels, and their vanity
that prided itself on petty discoveries, and invented a new species of
satire. SLOANE, a name endeared to posterity, whose life was that of
an enthusiast of science, and who was the founder of a national
collection; and his numerous friends, many of whose names have
descended with the regard due to the votaries of knowledge, fell the
victims. Wit is an unsparing leveller.
The new species of literary burlesque which King seems to have
invented, consists in selecting the very expressions and absurd
passages from the original he ridiculed, and framing out of them a
droll dialogue or a grotesque narrative, he adroitly inserted his own
remarks, replete with the keenest irony, or the driest sarcasm.[278]
Our arch wag says, "The bulls and blunders which Sloane and his
friends so naturally pour forth cannot be misrepresented, so careful
I am in producing them." King still moves the risible muscles of his
readers. "The Voyage to Cajamai," a travestie of Sloane's valuable
"History of Jamaica," is still a peculiar piece of humour; and it has
been rightly distinguished as "one of the severest and merriest
satires that was ever written in prose."[279] The author might indeed
have blushed at the labour bestowed on these drolleries; he might have
dreaded that humour so voluminous might grow tedious; but King, often
with a LUCIANIC spirit, with flashes of RABELAIS, and not seldom with
the causticity of his friend Swift, dissipated life in literary
idleness, with parodies and travesties on most of his contemporaries;
and he made these little things often more exquisite at the cost of
consuming on them a genius capable of better. A parodist or a
burlesquer is a wit who is perpetually on the watch to catch up or to
disguise an author's words, to swell out his defects, and pick up his
blunders--to amuse the public! King was a wit, who lived on the
highway of literature, appropriating, for his own purpose, the
property of the most eminent passengers, by a dextrous mode no other
had hit on. What an important lesson the labours of King offer to real
genius! Their temporary humour lost with their prototypes becomes like
a paralytic limb, which, refusing to do its office, impedes the action
of the vital members.
WOTTON, in summing up his "Reflections upon Ancient and Modern
Learning," was doubtful whether knowledge would improve in the next
age proportionably as it had done in his own. "The humour of the age
is visibly altered," he says, "from what it had been thirty years ago.
Though the Royal Society has weathered the rude attacks of Stubbe,"
yet "the sly insinuations of the _Men of Wit_," with "the _public
ridiculing_ of all who spend their time and fortunes in scientific or
curious researches, have so taken off the edge of those who have
opulent fortunes and a love to learning, that these studies begin to
be contracted amongst physicians and mechanics."--He treats King with
good-humour. "A man is got but a very little way (in philosophy) that
is concerned as often as such a merry gentleman as Dr. King shall
think fit to make himself sport."[280]