THE NEW SCIENCE AND COMEDY 95 



seems to be no attempt to distinguish between the obsolete, "pre- 

 tended sciences" and the new philosophy. 



Fossil stands as a late comic representative of the scientific 

 humor. He shows no progress over his predecessors ; indeed, much 

 of his scientific knowledge had appeared several times before him, 

 and was certainly common property in the days of Sir Nicholas 

 Gimcrack. There is nothing new in what he has to offer ; even the 

 "virtuosa", Valeria, could teach him experiments. But here he is 

 as one ' ' who never opposes a iucif erous experiment ; it is the beaten 

 highway to truth", — at the time when Merital, in Fielding's Love 

 in Several Masques (1728), could say, — "In town we look on none 

 to be so great a fool as a philosopher, and there is no fool so out 

 of fashion ".i"-* 



James Miller wrote a comedy in 1726, called The Humours of 

 Oxford. The chief humor, as might be expected, is pedantry, and 

 the chief exponent is Lady Science, whom Clarinda, her niece, calls 

 "Lady Gimcrack ".^"^ She is, indeed, wholly possessed with this 

 pedantic scientific hunior; every thought finds expression in scien- 

 tific terms. "I might as easily make the most erratick Comet des- 

 cribe a regular circle, as reduce you within the Sphere of Under- 

 standing ",^°^ she says to Clarinda. "I can't bear much malignant 

 Defamation ; but leave you as an Ignoramus of the first Magni- 

 tude", she cries is exasperation. "There is not an individual 

 Angle in the whole Solid of my Body, but quakes when I come near 

 jjgj." 107 ^hen she discovers that she has mistaken Gainlove in 

 disguise for Victoria's learned husband- to-be, she exclaims, — "I 

 am in an universal Fermentation at the thoughts of it — every 

 Nerve and Fibre in my Frame is put into Vibration with the 

 Fright. "^°« 



Lady Science demands that the man she has chosen for her son- 

 in-law shall answer certain interrogatories; — 



"Lady Science, — In the first place. Sir — which Hypothesis are 



you of — the Ptolmaick, or Copernican ? 



*** Love in Several Masques, Act I, sc. 1. 



*•* The Humours of Oxford, Act I, sc. 1. 



i«« Itid. 



!<" Ibid. Act II, sc. 1. 



losibid. Act IV, sc. 2. 



