120 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Throughout all of this verse the attitude is the same. The 

 satirists came to this new interest to scoff. They were never seri- 

 ous, never sincere, never fair, never candid. New science was to 

 them another folly, another evidence of England's decadence, and 

 those who followed it were fools and knaves, as much to be scorned 

 as the veriest fop, as much to be ridiculed as the worst quack, as 

 much to be despised as the religious hypocrite, and as much to be 

 lashed with satiric whips as the most dishonest political intriguer. 

 There is here no appreciation of unselfish devotion to truth, no 

 respect for men of high and noble character, no belief in the pos- 

 sibilities of the new philosophy. 



William King stands between the wits of the Restoration and 

 those of Queen Anne's reign. Besides, for his own sake he de- 

 serves individual treatment. He was a writer of charming clever- 

 ness and of brilliant wit. His satire was keen yet full of fun. He 

 wrote apparently with ease and facility. Politics, society, and 

 religion occupied his pen for the most part, but he glances again 

 and again at the new science. In Just as you Please; or, The In- 

 curious, there is an experiment made by a virtuoso who had a 

 mind to see a man that would never disagree with any expressed 

 opinion; in The Stumhling Block, there is a good-natured satire 

 on the old atomic theory and on the new atmospheric studies, — 

 "A Vacuum's another maxim; 



"Where, he brags, experience backs him; 



Denying that all space is full, 



From inside of a Tory's skull ".'^^ 



But it was in the Transactioneer (1700) that he struck out most 

 boldly against the Royal Society and its work. This was intended 

 to be a burlesque on the Philosophical Transactions.''* These head- 

 ings, ''taken at random", ^vill illustrate the nature of the sub- 

 jects treated; "Eggs in the Cauda of a barnacle. Four sorts of 

 Lady's Bugs. A Buck in a snake's belly. A Shower of Whitings. 

 A Shower of Butter to dress them with."''^ The sole purpose, it 

 may be seen, was to raise a laugh. The same is true of King 's satiric 

 verse. Here is a specimen of some crude lines in ironic vein, — 



^ The Stumbling Block, 1. 308-11. 



" The Transactioneer, with some of his philosophical fancies, in two dialogues. 



" Quoted in Weld's Ilistory of the Royal Society, p. 352. 



