THE NEW SCIENCE AND PROSE 167 



of her lamented husband in the pages of The Tatler, and relates 

 briefly how the symptoms of this strange scientific humor, which 

 possessed him so completely, first manifested themselves. Sir 

 Nicholas bought a microscope, was elected a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society, and never afterwards talked in a manner that other people 

 could understand. Not even the members of his own household 

 could understand him. He was wont to wander about with his 

 pockets full of moss and pebbles, and once ran five miles in the 

 chase of an "odd-colored butterfly". In his very last moments, 

 he remembered a flea which he had kept imprisoned for the pur 

 pose of making observations, and in imitation of the ancient 

 Romans who freed their slaves with their dying breath, he asked 

 that it might be given its liberty. He was ever more industrious 

 "to improve his mind than his estate." 



This was the same kind of virtuoso who was reported to have 

 been set the task in the reign of Charles II to people Ireland with 

 frogs. 80 He caught one, and started out with it in a boat, but 

 found it grew faint and seasick with the first breath from those 

 shores. By waiting until the wind blew from the open sea, the 

 virtuoso managed to land with his precious charge. It soon ex 

 pired, however, after touching Irish soil. 



Why, one is inclined to ask, is there no appreciation of the 

 good work done by the virtuosi? "Why all this burlesque on the 

 absurdities of the new movement ? The time was not yet come for 

 commendation, but it was near at hand. Addison, who wrote these 

 Tatler papers on the new science, had a lesson to teach, a folly to 

 correct. Here is the point he has been emphasizing all the time, 

 ' ' There is no study more becoming a rational creature than that of 

 natural Philosophy; but, as several of our modern virtuosi man 

 age it, their speculations do not so much tend to open and enlarge 

 the mind, as to contract and fix it upon trifles". 81 When this 

 point has been pressed home to his satisfaction, he will turn, as did 

 the pious poets, to those nobler aspects of the new interest. 



The Spectator, also, must have its fling at the new philosophy. 

 Physicians, says Addison in Spectator 21, have "taken to amusing 

 themselves with the stifling of cats in an air-pump, cutting up 



80 The Tatler, Number 236. 



81 Ibid. 





