ABRAHAM COWLEV S 'PROPOSITION 



9 



always travelling beyond the seas, one in each of the tour quarters 

 of the globe, where he was to be resident for three years, while 

 the remaining sixteen were to remain at the College, engaged 

 in studying and teaching 'all sorts of natural experimental 

 philosophy' 'briefly, all things contained in the Catalogue of 

 natural histories annexed to my Lord Bacon's " Organon " \ Not 

 only were the scholars to be trained in these subjects, but there 

 was to be also a school of about 200 boys who were to receive 

 from the professors free education ' in things as well as words ', by 

 a method to be there established ' for the infusing knowledge and 

 language at the same time into them, that this may be their 

 apprenticeship in natural philosophy '. While Cowley recognized 

 the advantage of combining the literary and scientific domains in 

 his plan of education, he seems to have had a suspicion that his 

 scheme was * too much for the charity or generosity of this age to 

 extend to'. He was careful, however, to insist that what he 

 contemplated was not to be confounded with Bacon's model in 

 the ' New Atlantis ', which in his view was ' a project for experi- 

 ments that can never be experimented '. It is worthy of record 

 that a proposition for the establishment of combined classical 

 and scientific education should have been seriously advocated as 

 part of a scheme for the advancement of experimental philosophy 

 at the time when the foundations of the Royal Society were 

 being laid, and that this proposition should have been made 

 by a memorable personage in English literature whose name 

 appears on the first list of those from whom the Royal Society 

 originated. 1 



1 In his Life of Cowley Johnson states : ' A doctor of physick, however, he was made 

 at Oxford, in December 1657 ; and in the commencement of the Royal Society, he appears 

 busy among the experimental philosophers with the title of Doctor Cowley'. ' Lives of 

 the Poets,' vol. i, p. 11, G. B. Hill's edit. Sprat states that the publication of Cowley's 

 tract ' very much hastened' the formation of the Royal Society (Hist., p. 59). But the 

 outlines of the organization of the Society had already been traced the year before that 

 tract appeared. 



It deserves to be remembered that an earlier scheme for the endowment and cultivation 

 of science was sketched by another original member of the Society, John Evelyn, in 

 a letter to Robert Boyle dated September 3, 1659. He thought that some gentlemen who 

 ' desire nothing more than to give a good example, preserve science, and cultivate 

 themselves, might join together in a society': ' Had it been possible,' he says, ' I would 

 cheerfully devote my small fortune towards a design by which I might hope to assemble 

 some small number together who would resign themselves to live profitably and sweetly 



