will make a tolerable syllogism for a logician in despair. The Aristotelian was, however, somewhat puzzled by a problem which he had himself raised—“Why we cannot see with two pair of spectacles better than with one singly?” for the man of axioms observed, “Vis unita fortior,” “United strength is stronger.” It is curious enough, in the present day, to observe the sturdy Aristotelian denying these discoveries, and the praises of optics, and “the new glasses,” by Glanvill. “If this philosopher,” says the member of the Royal Society, “had spared some of those thoughts to the profitable doctrine of optics which he hath spent upon genus and species, we had never heard of this objection.” And he replies to the paradox which the Aristotelian had raised by “Why cannot he write better with two pens than with a single one, since Vis unita fortior? When he hath answered this Quære, he hath resolved his own. The reason he gave why it should be so, is the reason why ’tis not.” Such are the squabbles of infantine science, which cannot as yet discover causes, although it has ascertained effects.
This appears in chap. xviii. of the “Plus Ultra.” With great simplicity Glanvill relates:—“At this period of the conference, the disputer lost all patience, and with sufficient spite and rage told me ‘that I was an atheist!—that he had indeed desired my acquaintance, but would have no more on’t,’ and so turned his back and went away, giving me time only to answer that ‘I had no great reason to lament the loss of an acquaintance that could be so easily forfeited.’” The following chapter vindicates the Royal Society from the charge of atheism! to assure the world they were not to be ranked “among the black conspirators against Heaven!” We see the same objections again occurring in the modern system of geology.
This book was so scarce in 1757, that the writer in the “Biographia Britannica” observes that this “small but elegant treatise is still very much esteemed by the curious, being become so scarce as not to be met with in other hands.” Oldys, in 1738, had, in his “British Librarian,” selected this work among the scarce and valuable books of which he has presented us with so many useful analyses.
The history of books is often curious. At one period a book is scarce and valuable, and at another is neither one nor the other. This does not always depend on the caprice of the public, or what may be called literary fashions. Glanvill’s “Plus Ultra” is probably now of easy occurrence; like a prophecy fully completed, the uncertain event being verified, the prophet has ceased to be remembered.
His early history is given by Wood in his usual style. His father had been a Lincolnshire parson, who was obliged to leave his poor curacy because “anabaptistically inclined,” and fled to Ireland, whence his mother and her children were obliged to return on the breaking out of the rebellion of 1641, and landed at Liverpool; afterward, says Wood, “they all beated it on the hoof thence to London, where she, gaining a comfortable subsistence by her needle, sent her son Henry, being then ten years of age, to the collegiate school at Westminster. At that time Mr. Richard Busbie was the chief master, who finding the boy have pregnant parts to a miracle, did much favour and encourage him. At length Sir Henry Vane, junior (the same who was beheaded on Tower Hill, 1662), coming casually into the school with Dr. Lambert Osbaldiston, he did, at the master’s motion, take a kindness to the said boy, and gave him the liberty to resort to his house, and to fill that belly which otherwise had no sustenance but what one penny could purchase for his dinner: and as for his breakfast, he had none, except he got it by making somebody’s exercise. Soon after, Sir Henry got him to be a king’s scholar; and his master perceiving him to be beyond his years in proficiency, he gave him money to buy books, clothes, and his teaching for nothing.” Such was the humble beginning of a learned man, who lived to be a formidable opponent to the whole body of the Royal Society.—Ed.
When Sprat and Glanvill, and others, had threatened to write his life, Stubbe draws this apology for it, while he shows how much, in a time of revolutions, the Royal Society might want one for themselves.