62 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



never to fall down again, but turn like that of Evander, into met- 

 eors; or, like the cannon ball, into stars. "^^-^ Paracelsus led the 

 "stink-pot flingers", Harvey the dragoons, Wilkins the "engin- 

 ers". The victory went in this case to the ancients. "Homer 

 slew Wesley, and then seized Perrault and hurled him at Fonton- 

 elle, killing both,"^^*' "Aristotle let fly an arrow at Bacon, and 

 missing him, pierced the eye of Descartes, "^^^ The whole battle, 

 however, closed in a draw, but the advantage had all been on the 

 side of Temple and the Ancients. 



This heroic burlesque shows what the layman might be expected 

 to know of the activities in science. Swift, in his early years, had 

 expressed a great admiration for scientific research. It would 

 seem that this interest might have led him to considerable knowl- 

 edge of the new experiments. In these two satires, however, where 

 he is a special pleader, only the most obvious things, the most sen- 

 sational things are mentioned. He made the most of the satiric 

 possibilities in the sensational claims of the new philosophers. 

 But of the real workers, of Newton, Boyle, Hooke, Halley, Hans 

 Sloane, Ray, Willughby, — ail of them already famous English- 

 men — he makes no mention. Of the great accomplishments, — 

 Boyle 's law, Newton 's Gravitation theory, the Copernican system, 

 the revelations of the microscope and the telescope — he is either 

 ignorant, or wilfully omits them. 



The effect of these satires was to sweep aside this vain con- 

 troversy. It was not a victory for Temple and the Ancients, nor 

 did it leave the field wholly in possession of the Modems. This 

 result was just what Swift must have desired: He had defended 

 Temple and had shown the Moderns the unreasonable lengths to 

 which their claims had gone. 



As this period saw the defeat of witchcraft, the sweeping away 

 of untenable physical hypotheses, and the banishment of a foolish 

 reverence for antiquity, so it beheld the downfall of "judicial 

 astrology". This pseudo-science, which clung like a parasite to 

 the new philosophy, had long since lost prestige among the leamed,^^' 



>WT/ie Battle of the Books (Everyman's Edition, p. 155-6). 



«« Ibid. p. 160. 



^ Ibid. 



"** There were men, of course, who had not given it up entirely; for example John 

 Dryden, who is known to have "inclined to a belief in it". For the famous astrologers 

 of the day see supra, Chap. I, p. 20, note. 



