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English Letters and the Royal Society in the Seventeenth Century*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2016
Extract
The Royal Society received its first Charter in 1662 from that “Defender of the Faith ” and “universal lover and patron of every kind of truth ”, Charles II, The movement in human thought which made its foundation inevitable had already a long history behind it. In literature the Renaissance manifested itself in a new interest in the classics of Greece and Rome and in the application of the wisdom of the ancients to modern life ; in philosophy it rejected scholasticism and declared its faith in the exercise of reason and free enquiry ; in art it delighted in the reproduction of human and natural forms ; and in science it conceived that the boundaries of man's knowledge of the universe were infinitely extendible by properly conducted experiments to the glory of God and especially to the relief of man's estate.
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- Copyright © Mathematical Association 1935
Footnotes
*
A paper read to the Yorkshire Branch of the Mathematical Association on the 17th November, 1934
References
page no 343 note † Cf. T. E. Hulme, Speculations (1924), 47.
page no 343 note ‡ C. R. Weld, History of the Royal Society (1848), i. 4-10.
page no 344 note * The Royal College of Physicians, established in 1518 through the efforts of Thomas Linacre, is an apparent exception, but this was not primarily a society for the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake but a professional body designed to discourage quacksalvers and to reform the practices of the profession. Cf. C. R.Weld, op. cit. i. 73-4
page no 344 note † W. C. D. Dampier-Whetham, A History of Science (1929), 130
page no 344 note ‡ The importance of Digges's work in the history of science was first pointedout by two American scholars, F. R. Johnson and S. V. Larkey, in The Huntington Library Bulletin, Number 5, April 1934.
page no 345 note * W. C. D. Dampier-Whetham, op. cit. 138
page no 345 note † As, for example, in the last paragraph but one of The Advancement of Learning, Book I, or in the fragmentary Filum Labyrinthi, to which Shelley refers in A Defence of Poetry when he calls Bacon a poet.
page no 346 note * I quote from the fourth edition (1734).
page no 347 note * Weld, op. cit. i. 65 (cited from the first Journal Book of the Society).
page no 347 note † Of whom Dryden wrote :
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
page no 348 note * T. Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London (1756), i. 41 and 66, and C. R. Weld, op. cit. i. 110-113. The experiment with unicorn's horn had been performed years earlier by William Davenant with the same result. It was believed that if the powder was from the horn of a genuine unicorn the spider would becharmed to remain within the circle. The difficulty was to secure genuine horn.Cf. John Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), i. 205.
page no 348 note † C. R. Weld, op. cit. i. 187 and 278. In 1682 the Museum of the Tradescants became the property of the University of Oxford
page no 348 note ‡ Miscellanies (1696), 106. The Spell is “ much approv'd ”, and with it “ oneof Wells hath Cur'd above an Hundred of the Ague”.
page no 348 note § Cf. Samuel Butler, The Genuine Remains (1759), ii. 186
page no 348 note ‖ The editors of Shadwell do not seem to have noticed that the dramatist took some of his dialogue from Glanvill. Cf. with the passage cited above from Scepsis Scientifica Gimcrack's speech in Act II (Complete Works, ed. Montague Summers,iii. 126) :“I doubt not but in a little time to improve the Art [of Flying] so far,'twill be as common to buy a pair of Wings to fly to the World in the Moon, as to buy a pair of Wax Boots to ride into Sussex with.”
page no 349 note ‖ Op cit. i. 1.
page no 350 note * T. Birch, op. cit. iv. 130
page no 350 note † All except Cowley were original Fellows. Cowley was proposed for member-ship and elected in 1661, but the records do not show that he was ever admittedor attended any of the meetings. See A. Nethercot, Abraham Cowley (1931), 217.
page no 351 note * Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker, i. 13 and ii. 236. Dryden was ejected from the Society in 1666, not because he disapproved of it—the apostrophe in Annus Mirabilis was published later—but through failure to pay his dues. But although he does not attack the Society, in later years he seems to have lost interestin it. His conversion to Roman Catholicism may have influenced his attitude.
Rest then, my soul, from endless anguish freed :
nor sciences thy guide, nor sense thy creed.
(The Hind and the Panther, i. 146-7.)page no 352 note * Cf. O. F. Emerson, “John Dryden and a British Academy ” (Proceedings ofthe British Academy, vol. x.).
page no 352 note † Christian Morals, ii. 5.
page no 352 note ‡ No doubt this was what the Society was at in some of the experiments cited above.
page no 353 note * On Browne's capacity for living in both worlds see Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (1934), ch. iii.