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 354 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. 355 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.[274]
Stubbe was not only himself a man of science, but a caustic satirist, who blends much pleasantry with his bitterness. In 356 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 357 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 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,[277] took advantage of their perplexed and often 359 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.