104 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



for material. John Tradescant of Lambeth was the great leader of 

 the new interest in the seventeenth century, from whose efforts the 

 Ashmolean Museum was first stocked. But countless others were 

 "infected". The older seventeenth antiquarians were Burton, 

 Browne, Walton ; the later ones were Llwyd, Plot, Ralph Thoresby, 

 Elias Ashmole. In the eighteenth century all the physicians who 

 pretended to social distinction had their collections; 140 and gentle 

 men and ladies of leisure sought for curiosities, coins, manuscripts, 

 old and rare copies of books, * ' pickled hieroglyphics ' ', and whatever 

 rust had corrupted and age had dimmed. Such gentlemen of dis 

 tinction as Lord Montague and Lord Winchilsea were much inter 

 ested in antiquarian researches in England and elsewhere. The in 

 terest lived on through the "Whartons, Gray, and Horace Walpole, 

 and has not yet passed away. Besides, before the end of the seven 

 teenth century coffee-houses were advertising collections of "rari 

 ties". 141 There was, also, the work of such scientific classifica- 

 tionists as Ray, Morison, Willoughby, Grew, Malpighi, and Wood 

 ward. 1420 To the lay mind these men, too, were hunting curiosities. 

 Everywhere there was material ready at hand for the writers of 

 comedy. 



The men and women who professed a dominating interest in 

 science were, in the seventeenth century comic parlance, fools, one 

 and all; that is, they were possessed by a humor. "No Phantas- 

 tick", says Bruce of Sir Nicholas, "that has lost his Wits in Revela 

 tion, is so mad as this Fool". "You are mistaken", Longvil an 

 swers, "this is but a faint Copy to some Originals of the Tribe ". 142b 

 Valeria is a "Daughter run mad after Philosophy"; Periwinkle 

 has "maggots enough in his own brain to stock all the virtuosoes in 

 Europe with butterflies" ; Lady Maurice is "possessed" ; Crispin be 

 lieves that, unless ' ' the world belies 'em, there are many physicians 

 just as great fools as myself"; Mopus is following "Quixotism in 

 Philosophy"; Gainlove thinks "there is no great Difference between 

 a Philosopher and a Lover only the first is the more reasonable 



140 Besant, Walter, London in the 18th Cent., Medicine. 



m Supra, chap. I, p. 18. 



i42a Woodward, Physician and Antiquarian, was satirized by the triumvirate, Gay, 

 Pope, Arbuthnot, in Three Hours After Marriage. Of. also the farce Harlequin Hydaspes; 

 or, The Greshamite, 1722. 



"> The Virtuoso, Act V. 



