116 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



And, 'cause perhaps it is not true, 

 Obstruct, and ruin all we do. 

 As no great act was ever done, 

 Nor ever can, with truth alone; 

 If nothing else but Truth w' allow 

 'Tis no great Matter what we do, 

 For Truth is too reserv'd and nice, 

 T' appear in mix'd societies."^* 

 It is, they say, far easier to create a thing like truth than to 

 take the pains to discover truth itself. "But nature would not be 

 thus forsworn, and for their pretended knowledge Butler paid 

 them scorn". 



Butler apparently nursed his wrath to keep it warm against 

 Sir Paul Neal. Nor, indeed, did he confine his animosity to this 

 one virtuoso. Other characters can be identified in the poem, as 

 Evelyn, Hooke, Leeuwenhoek, and perhaps Boyle. The whole group 

 were under his ban and were ridiculed without discrimination. 



A later fragment, A Satire upon the Royal Society, shows that 

 Butler's mind returned to this theme persistently. It is clear that 

 he contemplated an extensive satire on the new philosophers. 

 These fragmentary lines contain merely an enumeration of the 

 various scientific activities. Comets, meteors, light, magnetism, the 

 course of the sun, the moon, the atmosphere, — these were all their 

 learned speculations, 



"And all their constant occupations; 

 To measure wind, and weigh the air. 

 And turn the circle, to a square; 

 To make a powder of the sun, 

 By which all doctors should b' undone; 

 To find the Northwest passage out, 

 Although the farthest way about ; 

 If chymists from a rose's ashes 

 Can raise the rose itself in glasses; 

 Wliether the line of incidents 

 Rise from the object or the sense ; 

 To stew the Elixir in a bath 

 Of hope, credulity, and faith ; 



*• Butler, Samuel, The Elephant in the Moon. 



