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“A much-enduring man, whose curious soul Bore him with ceaseless toil from pole to pole; Insatiate endless knowledge to obtain, Thro’ woes by land, thro’ dangers on the main.” |
He collects curiosities from all parts of the world; studies occult and natural sciences; and is at last beatified by electrical glories at a meeting of hermetical philosophers. This poem is elucidated by notes, which point the allusions to the works or doings of the old philosophers.—Ed.
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.
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.
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!”
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One proposition for sense, And t’other for convenience, |