48 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



onstrated the truth of his position. But Sprat himself, as a 

 writer of verse, failed to bring his precepts into practice. His 

 principles condemn his own poetry. The only reference to the 

 material of the new science are found in his poems, To the Lord 

 Protector, and To Abraham Coivley. These lines, even, are filled 

 with the imagery of the old Ptolemaic cosmology,^^ the imagery 

 of astrology, and medical superstitions.*** The music of the spheres 

 sounds on through his verse, in spite of Copernicus and Galileo.^^ 

 He had written against the belief in witches and fairies, — "the 

 course of Things goes quietly along, in its own true channel of 

 Natural Causes and Effects, for this we are beholden to Ex- 

 periments".^^ And yet, as a poet, he made use of sympathetic 

 powder^^ and judicial astrology.^^ In brief, there is in Sprat 's verse 

 no use of the new material of scientific experiments and discoveries. 

 When he wrote theory, he was sane and intelligible, and progres- 

 sive ; when he turned poet, he forgot his owti doctrine. His theory 

 was sound, but he brought nothing to practice. 



In Sprat's History of the Royal Society is to be found the first 

 evidence of the rising tide of opposition against which the new 

 philosophy was destined to struggle for forty years. The new 

 science fosters scepticism and nurtures atheism, said the church- 

 men; it is not in harmony with Plato and Aristotle, said the phil- 

 osophers; it is a foolish humor, said the wits. To each of these 

 Sprat makes reply. The last objection only has been discussed 

 here, because the others appear later on. In his effort to propitiate 

 the "Wits and Railleurs", Sprat has presented a remarkable 

 example of how advanced a man may be in theory without bring- 

 ing it to practice. In literary theory he anticipated the late 

 eighteenth century poets; in poetic practice he belonged to the 

 second quarter of the seventeenth century. 



While it is true, through these years, that "philosophy was 

 preoccupied with the problem of differentiation of science from 



" To Abraham Cowley, st. IX. 



•^Ibid. 



"•To the Lord Protector, st. III. 



•• To Abraham Cowley, st. IX. 



*» To Abraham Cowley, st. VI, st. II. 



0^ History of the R. S., p. 340-1. 



