THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 413 



in sucli full, clear and exact terms that any person skilled 

 in the art to which it nearest relates shall be able to under- 

 stand it and put it in practice. In a word, the Royal Society 

 completely revolutionized didactic and technical writing 

 and the mode of expressing scientific thought, and thereby 

 did enough, had it immediately afterwards gone out of 

 existence, to earn for itself the perpetual gratitude of man- 

 kind. 



Yet the glowing language of the ode which Cowley ad- 

 dresses to the young Society, in which he compares it to 

 Gideon's band picked out by divine design to do "noble 

 wonders," and predicts its discovery of "New Scenes of 

 Heaven" and "Crowds of Golden Worlds on High," not 

 to mention numerous new countries on earth, by no means 

 commanded universal assent. In fact, the poet especially 

 desires that 



''Mischief and tru Dishonour fall on those 

 Who would to laughter or to scorn expose 

 So Virtuous and So Noble a Design " 



which referred, with direct indirection, to Butler, who 

 lampooned, and to Hobbes who both sneered and thun- 

 dered at the new repository of all wisdom, and to the 

 many others who detested the Baconian method as sub- 

 versive of religion, civil law, reason and true learning. 

 Sttibbe, writing to Robert Boyle, beseeches him to con- 

 sider "the mischief it hath occasioned in this once flour- 

 ishing kingdom," and warns him, that unless he season- 

 ably relinquishes "these itnpertinents" "all the incon- 

 veniences that have befallen the land, all the debauchery 

 of the gentry . . . will be charged on your account." 1 

 Imagine the most pious and amiable of English philoso- 

 phers held to responsibility for the eccentricities of Lady 

 Castlemaine and Mistress Eleanor Gwynne ! 



There was a deal of appropriateness in Mr. Stubbe's 

 solicitude that Boyle should abandon the Society. He 



1 Thorpe: Essays on Hist. Chemistry, cit. sup. 



