THE NEW SCIENCE AND PROSE 159 



from a fish into an exchange woman". They are continually 

 ''chewing the cud of Burnet's Sacred Theory", or quarreling in 

 cessantly over the opposing theories of Aristotle and Descartes, 

 Cardan and Copernicus, William Penn and Christianity. Acidists 

 and Alkalidists, or "putting a period to the abstruse debates be 

 tween the engineers and mouse-trap makers". 45 



The satire of Brown is bright and keen. As usual with writers 

 of his stamp, he makes no discrimination between pretense and 

 true worth. Lilly and Cooley are boldly attacked by name as ex 

 ponents of quackery in his scornful assault on astrology ; but there 

 is no praise for the splendid work of Boyle, Halley, and Newton 

 among the virtuosi. Brown avoids seriousness and generally with 

 success hides his real attitude behind the mask of boisterous laugh 

 ter. He has, however, once at least come near the true mark and 

 expressed with shrewdness and wit the secret of the misunderstand 

 ing between the new philosophers and the men about town. ' l The 

 Vertuoso despises the Rich for making such a bustle about so fool 

 ish and pale-faced a metal as Gold. The Rich laugh at Learning 

 and learned Men, and cry, A Fig for Aristotle and Descartes". 48 

 Brown saw with surprising clearness that there were these two 

 points of view, these two standards of value, which led to a natural 

 and mutual misunderstanding. 



Dean Swift, besides his efforts to defend Sir William Temple 

 against the Moderns, found other occasions to scoff at the new phil 

 osophers. In, his Art of Growing Poor, he ridicules those foolish 

 beliefs that were .clinging like parasites to, the new science and 

 which made it an easy prey for satirists, "the Philosophers' Stone, 

 and Perpetual Motion, could not miss being among the principal 

 Embellishments of this work, any more than the Art of Flying, 

 which set so many of the Virtuoso 's of the last Age upon their Tip 

 toes". 47 Mathematical calculations applied to astronomy are ridi 

 culed in A Tripos, the pretended speech assumed to have been de 

 livered at the Commencement, University of Dublin, July 11, 1688. 

 The virtuosi "aimed at here are Ashe and Molyneux who had made 

 so much of a predicted eclipse of the sun in the Philosophical 



Ibid. p. 95. 

 "Wka. Ill, p. 83. 

 47 See A. New Project. 



