November 2, 1S93] 



NA rURE 



1 1 



i tinued their pursuit of the " new philosophy," meeting 

 generally at that time in " Dr. Wilkins's lodgings in 



I Wadham College." The London branch of the same 

 movement, too, was now becoming active, meeting usually 

 at Gresham College " at the Wednesday's and Thurs- 

 day's lectures of Dr. Wren and Mr. Rorke." After the 



■ Restoration many of the Oxford professors lost their 

 positions and came to London, and on the 28th Novem- 

 ber, 1660, at the close of a lecture of Wren's at Gresham 



, College, it was resolved to reconstitute the Society, 

 which had hitherto been somewhat amorphous, as a 

 " Society for promoting the physical-mathematical e.xperi- 

 mental sciences." . Oldenburg, who had just returned 

 from abroad, was elected a member of the first Council, 

 and he and Dr. Wilkins were chosen the first secre- 

 taries of the Society. From that moment Oldenburg 

 threw himself heart and soul into the work of the Society. 

 Its interests he regarded as his own, and Prof. Masson 

 gives it as his opinion, and with justice, that without 

 his endeavours and those of Hooke, the Society would 

 scarcely have held together. The great difficulty, of 

 course, was the want of money. Charles II., the so- 

 called " Founder," had promised to endow it, but he 

 broke his promise and only gave it a mace. The Society 

 could not afford to pay its secretary, and yet the secretary 

 must live. In the British Museum is preserved a rough 

 memorandum in Oldenburg's handwriting, quoted, but 

 not very acc'irately, by Weld in his " History of the 

 Royal Society," which gives a very vivid idea of the 

 secretary's labours and poverty. It runs as follows : — 



The Business of the Secretary of ye R. Soc. 



He attends constantly the meetings both of ye Society and 

 Councill ; noteth the observables, said and done there ; diges- 

 teth y"^ in private ; takes care to have y™ entered in the 

 Journal and Register-books ; reads over and corrects all 

 cntrys ; sollicites the performances of taskes recommended and 

 undertaken ; writes all Letters abroad and answers the returns 

 made to y'", entertaining a corresp. w''' at least 30 psons ; em- 

 ployes a great deal of time, and takes much pains in satisfying 

 forran demands about philosophicall matters ; disperseth farr 

 and near store of directions and inquiries for the Society's pur- 

 pose, and sees them well recommended, etc. 



Qy. Whether such a person ought to be left vn-assisted? 



In connection with this may be mentioned another 

 memorandum of Oldenburg's. It is preserved in the 

 same MSS. (Birch MSS. 4441), and is headed as 

 follows : — 



Liste oj Members yt are likely to promote ye 

 dessein of ye R. S. 



Members )* will probably! Such, as will pay, and pro- 

 both pay and give yearly one cure an entertainment to be 

 entertainment to ye Society. | made by others. 



In the first column occur among others the names of 

 Boyle, Petty, Wren, Evelyn, Wallis, Croon, Grew, Pell, 

 Mercator, Hook, Collins, Newton, and Smethwick. 

 Against the names of Newton, Grew, Pell, Mercator, 

 Hook, Collins, and Smethwick are written the words "no 

 pay." 



The "no pay " element was one main difficulty of the 

 new Society. Even those who promised to pay, frequently 

 neglected to do so. In 1666 the arrears amounted to 

 ^600 sterling, and in 1673 to ^1957, and this, notwith- 

 standing strenuous efforts on the part of the Secretary to 

 collect the contributions. In fact, at that time, out of 

 156 Fellows, only 53 paid regularly. 



At the beginning of 1664 Oldenburg was authorised to 

 make what he could by publishing the Transactions of 

 the Society, but they were printed at his own risk, and 

 seldom brought him in as much as ^40 a year. The 

 very next year the Plague appeared in London and drove 

 away the book-purchasers, and the year after occurred 

 the Great Fire of London, which ruined the booksellers, 



NO. 1253. VOL. 49 J 



and made publication still more difficult. Besides all 

 this, the sale of the Latin edition in foreign countries was 

 greatly hindered by the war with Holland. And to 

 crown all, in 1667, the very year after these great dis- 

 asters, Oldenburg himself, who had stuck to his post 

 through Plague and Fire, was imprisoned in the Tower 

 of London. The warrant, which is signed by the Prime 

 Minister, Lord Arlington, charges him with" dangerous 

 plans and practices" ; but the fact appears to be that the 

 immense number of his foreign letters had attracted atten- 

 tion, and since the Government of that time did not under- 

 stand a man who had, as he wrote in the letter quoted above, 

 " taken to taske the whole Vniverse," this voluminous 

 correspondence excited suspicion. He was kept in prison 

 for two months, " during which comitment," as he after- 

 wards wrote to Boyle, he "learned to know his real! 

 friends." Among these friends was Evelyn, who visited 

 him in the Tower on August 8. After his discharge he 

 waited upon Lord Arlington, and then went down into 

 the country to recruit. " I was so stifled by the prison- 

 air," he writes on September 3, " that, as soon as I had 

 my enlargement from the Tower, I widen'd it, and took 

 it from London into the country, tofann myself for some 

 days in the good air of Craford in Kent. Being now re- 

 turned, and having recovered my stomack, which I had 

 in a manner quite lost, I intend, if God will, to fall to 

 my old trade, if I have any support to follow it." 



He fell to his old trade with his old energy, and how 

 indispensable that energy was to the Royal Society is 

 shown by the fact that during his imprisonment the 

 Society did not meet. Besides his purely official work 

 and his voluminous scientific correspondence, he was 

 ready at all times to do battle for the Society. For in 

 those early days it was far from being plain sailing. 

 The Society had to meet much odium, especially on the 

 score that it was " an enemy of the established religion 

 and destroyer of the ancient well-grounded learning " ; 

 and it is with reference to these charges that Oldenburg 

 breaks out in the fifth volume of the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions : " Let envy snarle, it cannot stop the wheels of 

 Active Philosophy, in no part of the known world. Not 

 in France, either in Paris, or at Caen. Not in Italy, 

 either in Rome, Naples, Milan, Florence, Venice, 

 Bononia, or Padua. In none of the Universities, either 

 in this or that side of the seas. Madrid and Lisbon, all 

 the best spirits in Spain and Portugal, and the spacious 

 and remote dominions to them belonging; the Imperial 

 Court, and the Princes of Germany ; the Northern Kings 

 and their best luminaries ; and even the frozen Muscovite 

 and Russian have all taken the Operative ferment, and it 

 works high, and prevails every way, to the encourage- 

 ment of all sincere Lovers of Knowledg and Virtue." 



Oldenburg died suddenly in September, 1677, at Charl- 

 ton, in Kent. In the Archives of the Royal Society there 

 are no less than 405 of his autograph letters and drafts, 

 besides ninety-four letters to Robert Boyle in a separate 

 guard-book, and many rough drafts in his own private Liber 

 Epistolaris. One letter in this last-named MS. book, 

 which has not hitherto been published, I cannot forbear 

 to mention in concluding this article, since it shows 

 Oldenburg, even at that early date, as an advocate of the 

 higher education of women. The letter is written to Lady 

 Frances Jones, and is dated August 28, 1660. " I wish 

 heartily," he writes, " that that sexe, which is thus 

 advantaged by Nature with a choyce structure of body, 

 and thereby gives cause to conclude, that the guest 

 thereof must be more than ordinary, would not suffer 

 themselves to be diverted from those nobler improve- 

 ments they are, to speak the truth, as capable of as men ; 

 nor be contented to have their innate capacity in their 

 education stifled or debased to the needle or the making 

 of sweet meats." Many such passages, full of sound 

 sense, might be quoted from his letters did the limits of 

 this article permit, but at present we can only express a 



