534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



subject of Satyr and the songs of Drunkards. We have a king 

 to our founder and yet want a Macaenas ; and above all a Spirit 

 like yours to raise up Benefactors and to compell them to thinke 

 the Designe of the Royall Society as worthy of their reguards and 

 as capable to embalme their names, as the most heroic enterprise, 

 or anything Antiquity has celebrated ; and I am even amaz'd at 

 the wretchednesse of this Age that acknowledges it no more. 

 But the Devil, who was ever an enemy to Truth and to such as 

 discover his praestigious effects, will never suffer the promotion 

 of a designe so destructive to his dominion, which is to fill the 

 world with imposture and keep it in Ignorance, without the ut- 

 most of his malice and contradiction. But you have numbers 

 and charms that can binde even these spirits of darkenesse, and 

 render their instruments obsequious ; and we know you have a 

 divine Hyme for us ; the luster of the Royall Society calls for an 

 Ode from the best of Poets upon the noblest Argument. To con- 

 clude, you have a field to celebrate the Greate and the Good, who 

 either do or should favour the most august and worthy designe 

 that ever was set on foot in the world ; and those who are our 

 real Patrons and Friends you can eternize, those who are not you 

 can conciliate and inspire to do gallant things." 



Evelyn's indignant defense of his beloved association is not 

 surprising when we read the abuse the F. R. S. received from 

 some of the most talented writers of the seventeenth century. 

 The witty Dr. South said that the members of the Royal Society 

 " could admire nothing but fleas, lice, and themselves." Hobbes, 

 the philosopher of Malmesbury, considered them so many labor- 

 ers, apothecaries, gardeners, and mechanics, who " might now all 

 put in for and get the prize." Cross, Vicar of Chew, wrote ribald 

 pamphlets and ballads, which he got sung about the streets, 

 against the new philosophy. Stubbes, a man of perverted gen- 

 ius, accused the F. R. S. of atheism and treason, and they greatly 

 feared his formidable series of attacks. Dr. King burlesqued 

 their published volumes of Transactions, and ridiculed alike their 

 grammar, style, and the inventions and discoveries they de- 

 scribed. Wotton, who was a less sensitive F. R. S. than Evelyn, 

 treats King, in his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learn- 

 ing, with " great good humor." He says : " A man is got but a 

 very little way [in philosophy] that is concerned as often as such 

 a merry gentleman as Dr. King shall think fit to make himself 

 sport." Sir John Hill published a quarto volume of satire in the 

 form in which the Transactions of the society were issued, and 

 other books against the Fellows. But he did them good, for his 

 parodies and ridicule taught them to be more cautious in the se- 

 lection of papers for their printed reports. 



In his preface to his Sylva the usually amiable Evelyn scolds at 



