108 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



blood was transfused with success and reported benefit. The oper- 

 ation was repeated December 12th of the same year, again with 

 success. At once the imagination began to picture the most won- 

 derful possibilities, according to the writers of comedy. The words 

 of Oldenburg, however, are words of sober sense and express more 

 clearly the conservative attitude of the scientists. "It seems not 

 irrational to guess aforehand, that the exchange of Blood will 

 not alter the Nature or Disposition of Animals, upon which it 

 shall be practiced; though it may be thought worth while for the 

 satisfaction and certainty to determine that point by Experi- 

 ments".^" "The most probable Use of this Experiment may be 

 conjectured to be that one Animal may live with the Blood of an- 

 other ".^^® Modern science has proved this to be true. Thus were 

 facts transformed in the Great Alembic of satire. 



As the physicians in the eighteenth century were distinguished 

 by their "full-bottomed wigs, cloudy-headed canes, and sober de- 

 meanor," so the scientist was known by his "learned language", — 

 in comedies. Sir Nicholas 's ' * emittent and recipient ", " humid ele- 

 ment", "superficies", cacochymious ", Valeria's pedantic Acci- 

 dent, Substance, Lumbricus Laetus, Fossils, Lapis Lydius, were as- 

 sumed to be the general learned style of speech and writing. The 

 representation is manifestly unfair. Bishop Sprat has stated the 

 ideal of scientific writing fully,^"" and followed it himself. Boyle 

 has a clear, unaffected style ; Glanvil and Hooke wrote in a terse, 

 compact, direct manner, far on the road toward Addison. The gen- 

 erality of scientists could write and did write, simply and unaf- 

 fectedly. "The virtues of scientific writing spread and 



wrought with the instinct of conversation and social amenity, and 

 with the love of argument and pleading and oratory, to form 

 modern style. "^^^ Though the terms in comedy are the real terms 

 of science, the style is the style of the rhetorician, not the scientist. 



Not all scientific material was suited for comedy. The wits 



^T Phil. Trans. Dec. 17, 1666, p. 357. 



>»8 Ibid. p. 358. 



*°® Sprat, Thomas, History of the Royal Society, "And to accomplish this they have 

 endeavor'd to separate Knowledge of Nature from the Colours of Rhetoric, the Deceits 

 of Fancy, or the Deceits of Fables," p. 62. "Preferring the language of Artizans, Country- 

 men, and Merchants, before that of Wits and Scholars." p. 113. 



""Elton, Oliver, The Angustan Ages, p. 420. 



