Copernicans of all sorts convicted ... to which is added a Treatise of
the Magnet. By the Hon. Edw. Howard, of Berks. London, 1705, 8vo.
Not all the blood of all the Howards will gain respect for a writer who
maintains that eclipses admit no possible explanation under the Copernican
hypothesis, and who asks how a man can "go 200 yards to any place if the
moving superficies of the earth does carry it from him?" Horace Walpole, at
the beginning of his _Royal and Noble Authors_, has mottoed his book with
the Cardinal's address to Ariosto, "Dove diavolo, Messer Ludovico, avete
pigliato tante coglionerie?"[271] Walter Scott says you could hardly pick
out, on any principle of selection--except badness itself, he means of
course--the same number of plebeian authors whose works are so bad. But his
implied satire on aristocratic writing forgets two points. First, during a
large period of our history, when persons of rank condescended to write,
they veiled themselves under "a person of honor," "a person of quality,"
and the like, when not wholly undescribed. Not one of these has Walpole
got; he omits, {132} for instance, Lord Brounker's[272] translation of
Descartes on Music. Secondly, Walpole only takes the heads of houses: this
cuts both ways; he equally eliminates the Hon. Robert Boyle and the
precious Edward Howard. The last writer is hardly out of the time in which
aristocracy suppressed its names; the avowal was then usually meant to make
the author's greatness useful to the book. In our day, literary peers and
honorables are very favorably known, and contain an eminent class.[273]
They rough it like others, and if such a specimen as Edw. Howard were now
to appear, he would be greeted with
"Hereditary noodle! knowest thou not
Who would be wise, himself must make him so?"