THE NEW SCIENCE AND POETRY 119 



It was at this time that Andrew Marvell's pen flowed with 

 vitriolic wit. He sought chiefly to correct political abuses, but 

 touched again and again upon the new science, and always to 

 ridicule it. The atomic theory is derided in The Clarendon House- 

 Warming ; 44 the telescopic observations of the sun in To the King; 

 transfusion of the blood in Britannia and Raleigh. A selection 

 from his Instructions to a Painter about the Dutch Wars, 1667, will 

 illustrate his attitude. 



"With Hooke then through your microscope take aim, 



To see a louse brandish a white staff, 



Paint then again her Highness to the life 



Philosopher beyond Newcastle's wife". 45 



There follow some absurd experiments by which to restore vir 

 ginity after childbirth and to mature royal heirs quickly. 



"Hence Crowder made the rare inventress free 



Of 's Highness 's Royal Society." 



Many miscellaneous satirical references occur. John Oldham 

 satirized the art of flying in his Satire on Jesuits* 6 The Duke of 

 Buckingham poked fun at the new inventions in The Rump-Parlia 

 ment. Physiological studies were ridiculed in An Occasional Re 

 flection on Dr. Charleton's "Feeling a Dog's Pulse at Gresham 

 College". 47 The investigation of mineral springs found satiric 

 treatment in Tunbridgia; or, The Pleasures of Tunbridge* 8 Sir 

 Samuel Morland's inventions were ridiculed in Cullen with his 

 Flock of Misses (1679). 49 New projects, in the virtuoso's manner 

 are discovered in the poem On the Late Inventions of the New 

 Light, 50 and on The Late Invention of the Penny Post, 51 In 1691 

 Alicia D'Anvers sent a Country bumpkin to Oxford, where he be 

 held with wonder and amazement the scientific apparatus and the 

 rarities of the virtuosi. 52 



"St. XV. 

 Sat. III. 

 11. 141-7. 



47 Attributed to Butler. 



48 Poems on State Affairs, vol. II, p. 205. 



49 Ibid. I, p. 133. 

 60 Ibid. II, p. 244. 

 81 Ibid. II, p. 246. 



^Academia; or, The Humours of Oxford in Burlesque Verse. 



