124 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



"And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath, 

 Which yet who e'er examines right will find 

 To be an Art as vain as bottling up of wind"/° 



If such scientific information was really dispensed through the 

 medium of The Athenian Mercury, its original source was certainly 

 the Royal Society. The same is true of the references in these 

 lines from an Ode to Music, — 



"The longitude miss'd on 



By wicked "Will Whiston ; 



And not better hit on 



By good Master Ditton."'^^ 



The Broken Mug contains a scene on ]\It. Parnassus Avhere a dis- 

 cussion has been carried on among a group of friends as to whether 

 "The earth mov'd, or the sun", — 



"Who writ the best Philosophy 

 Copernicus or Ptolomy. 

 Whether they were not both outdone, 

 By Newton's Principles alone." 



Swift's satire on the new science, in verse, is good-natured. He 

 never seemed to have endeavored seriously to exploit that humor, 

 doubtless because he dealt with it so fully in prose. The new phil- 

 osophy has entered to such a small extent into his poetry as to be- 

 come almost negligible, and no definite attitude can be determined. 



Other poets took their fling at the new philosophy. John Byrom 

 has some derisive verses in A Full and True Account, The Bisec- 

 tion of a Beau's Head,''^ and The Astrologer. The first poem, writ- 

 ten in his youth, ridicules "The Goddess Shorthand, bright celes- 

 tial maid", a system recently proposed before the Royal Society; 

 the second is, as the name suggests, a burlesque on dissection ; the 

 third is an invocation to astrology, "Goddess divine. Celestial 

 Decypheress". All these show the crudities of youth, the affec- 

 tation of a sophomore. They are of no value either as verse or as 

 satire. 



In Fenton there is found once more that form of piety which 



7« stanza VIL 



"Works, vol. XIII, p. 313. 



" See The Spectator, 275. 



