THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 533 



Campanella and the more intelligent F. R. S. would alike, instead 

 of advocating despotism in any shape, have asserted that if men 

 were allowed to experiment, analyze, dissect, and philosophize 

 " with the utmost freedom, the despotism of religion and politics 

 would dissolve away in the weakness of its quiescent state." The 

 truth is, the scholastics who opposed the experimental philosophy 

 considered novelty of speculation, without regard to character or 

 tendency, as heresy and treason. Perhaps Evelyn inadvertently 

 raised this specter of Campanellaism. Maude" whose book on 

 libraries he translated for the Royal Society was not only a 

 skeptic and an advocate of absolute monarchy, but he was a 

 warm friend and defender of Campanella, whose religious and 

 political views are not very clearly defined. 



Spratt, in his History of the Royal Society, eulogized Charles 

 II for his interest in science ; but Stubbes, his opponent, perhaps 

 not wholly unmindful of the ignorant popular prejudice against 

 Campanella, retorted that the natural philosophers were likely to 

 demoralize the king (was anybody capable of that!), for "never 

 prince acquired the name of great and good by any knickknacks, 

 but by actions of political wisdom, courage, and justice." 



It seems strange, when reading the literary and scientific his- 

 tory of the seventeenth century, to find Sir William Temple 

 among the scoffers at the virtuosi. Personal dislike of some of 

 the founders of the Royal Society was, no doubt, the reason in 

 part of his opposition to experimentalists. He fancied the Fel- 

 lows a " set of Sir Nicholas Gimcracks," and, with the wise men 

 of Gotham probably in his thoughts, " contemptuously called 

 them, from the place of their first meeting, ' men of Gresham.' " 



In a letter to Cowley, urging the poet to write his poem in 

 praise of the society an ode described by Macaulay as " weighty 

 in thought and resplendent in wit" Evelyn indignantly ex- 

 claims : " There be those who aske, What have the Royal Society 

 done ? Where their colledge ? I neede not instruct you how to 

 answer or confound these persons, who are able to make even 

 these informe Blocks and Stones daunce into order, and charme 

 them into better sense. Or if their insolence presse, you are ca- 

 pable to shew how they [the F. R. S.] have layd solid foundations 

 to perfect all noble Arts, and reforme all imperfect sciences. It 

 requires an History to recite onely the Arts, the Inventions, and 

 Phaenomena already absolved, improved or opened. In a word, 

 our Registers have outdone Pliny, Porta, and Alexis, and all the 

 Experimentalists, nay, the great Verulam himself e, and have made 

 a nobler and more faithfull Collection of real seacrets, usefull 

 and instructive than has hitherto been shewn. Sir, we have a 

 Library, a Repository, and an assembly of as worthy and greate 

 Persons as the World has any ; and yet we are sometimes the 



