108 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



blood was transfused with success and reported benefit. The oper 

 ation was repeated December 12th of the same year, again with 

 success. At once the -imagination began to picture the most won 

 derful possibilities, according to the writers of comedy. The words 

 of Oldenburg, however, are words of sober sense and express more 

 clearly the conservative attitude of the scientists. "It seems not 

 irrational to guess aforehand, that the exchange of Blood will 

 not alter the Nature or Disposition of Animals, upon which it 

 shall be practiced; though it may be thought worth while for the 

 satisfaction and certainty to determine that point by Experi 

 ments". 157 "The most probable Use of this Experiment may be 

 conjectured to be that one Animal may live with the Blood of an 

 other". 158 Modern science has proved this to be true. Thus were 

 facts transformed in the Great Alembic of satire. 



As the physicians in the eighteenth century were distinguished 

 by their "full-bottomed wigs, cloudy-headed canes, and sober de 

 meanor," so the scientist was known by his "learned language", 

 in comedies. Sir Nicholas's "emittent and recipient", "humid ele 

 ment", "superficies", cacochymious", Valeria's pedantic Acci 

 dent, Substance, Lumbricus Laetus, Fossils, Lapis Lydius, were as 

 sumed to be the general learned style of speech and writing. The 

 representation is manifestly unfair. Bishop Sprat has stated the 

 ideal of scientific writing fully, 159 and followed it himself. Boyle 

 has a clear, unaffected style; Glanvil and Hooke wrote in a terse, 

 compact, direct manner, far on the road toward Addison. The gen 

 erality of scientists could write and did write, simply and unaf 

 fectedly. "The virtues of scientific writing spread and 



wrought with the instinct of conversation and social amenity, and 

 with the love of argument and pleading and oratory, to form 

 modern style." 160 Though the terms in comedy are the real terms 

 of science, the style is the style of the rhetorician, not the scientist. 



Not all scientific material was suited for comedy. The wits 



167 Phil. Trans. Dec. 17, 1666, p. 357. 

 1B 8Ibid. p. 358. 



159 Sprat, Thomas, History of the Royal Society, "And to accomplish this they have 

 endeavor'd to separate Knowledge of Nature from the Colours of Rhetoric, the Deceits 

 of Fancy, or the Deceits of Fables," p. 62. "Preferring the language of Artizans, Country 

 men, and Merchants, before that of Wits and Scholars." p. 113. 



160 Elton, Oliver, The Augustan Ages, p. 420. 



