THE NEW SCIENCE AND COMEDY 97 



Water-pumps, send all my Serpent's Teeth, Mummy's Bones, and 

 Monstrous Births, to the Oxford ]\Iuseum ; for the entertainment of 

 other as ridiculous Pools as myself"."^ This ambitious philoso- 

 pher, also, has taken the whole realm of knowledge to be her prov- 

 ince. 



But, with all her pretense to learning and college manners, she 

 is des]nsed by all the other characters. Her daughter and her niece 

 mock her ; Haughty deceives her ; Ape- All derides her. ' ' You know 

 what a Pretender the old Lady is to learning and Philosophy","^ 

 says Gainlove, even while he prepares to avoo her. The "College 

 Manners" so highly recommended by Lady Science to her niece, 

 "like your College Learning are a Hodge Podge of Contradictions 

 to every Thing in Practice, and only fit for the Place where they 

 are taught"."* Like Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, she reforms at the 

 end of the play. " I am justly made a Fool of, for aiming to be a 

 Philosopher — I ought to suffer, like Phaeton, for affecting to move 

 in a Sphere that did not belong to me"."^ 



The special point to this comic satire is the pursuit of the new 

 philosophy by women. The play-WTiter, however, has been carried 

 so far beyond this end as to satirize all the university interests. 

 There is not a single character who has come to college for serious 

 endeavor. Young Ape-All thinks he has wasted two years of life 

 because he followed his tutor's advice and studied Latin and Greek; 

 Connundrum is a veritable travesty on all pretense to scholarship ; 

 Haughty is a rascal and a fraud. But there is an element of serious 

 criticism in the speech given to Gainlove at the close of the play. 

 "Why, People of either Sex, Madam, are generally imposed on, when 

 they concern themselves with what is properly the Business of the 

 other. The Dressing-Room, not the Study, is the Lady's Province 

 — and a Woman makes as ridiculous a Figure, poring over Globes, 

 or through a Telescope, as a Man would with a pair of Preservers 

 mending Lace". Philosophy may "fit men as Jack-Boots do"; but 

 it is no business for women. 



A very stupid comedy w^as published anonymously in 1742, en- 



"2 n)id. Act V, 6C. 1. 



"»n)id. Act I, sc. 1. 



"«Ibid. Act II, 80. 1. 



"» The Humourt of Oxford, Act V, so. 1. 



