160 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Transactions, 1684". So exactly is the actual moment of eclipse 

 calculated, "as sure as a gun", that the virtuosi arrange their 

 minutest affairs to suit the coming darkness. In the conclusion 

 to the piece Swift predicts a retaliation upon himself for his stric- 

 tures. "The virtuosi will set their brains a- work for Gimcracks 



to pull my eyes out And the Astronomers wont allow 



me one good star nor inform me when the sun will be totally 

 eclipsed, that I may provide myself with candles".*^ In the Par- 

 allel a virtuoso is to get a reward of five thousand pounds ' ' for in- 

 venting perpetual motion".*^ As mentioned before, Boyle's Oc- 

 casional Reflections is burlesqued in a Meditation on a Broom- 

 stick.^'^ 



Swift's severest arraignment of the new science is to be found 

 in Gulliver's travels. Upon the arrival of the traveller among the 

 Brobdignagians, he finds the king of that country to be a great 

 mathematician, who has dra^vn around him a company of phil- 

 osophers. Gulliver is at once examined by these learned men and 

 classed as a "lusus naturae", "a determination exactly agreeable 

 to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining 

 the old evasion of occult causes whereby the followers of Aristotle 

 endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this 

 wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advance- 

 ment of human knowledge. "^^ As mementos Gulliver brings 

 back to England four wasps' stings, three of which he gives to 

 Gresham College.^- The general comment on the learning of these 

 people is that they know only the sensible and useful things, which 

 among the virtuosi would be little esteemed.^^ 



The inhabitants of Laputa, or the Flying Island, are greatly 

 given to the speculative sciences. With them everything takes form 

 according to the principles of mathematics or music; they believe 

 in judicial astrology; they have the latest "odd notions", regarding 

 the celestial bodies, — such as, the earth approaches the sun, the 



*8 4. Tripos, vol. VI, p. 242. 

 *» Wks. vol. VIII, p. 209. 

 Mlbid. IX, p. 120. 

 "Ibid. vol. XI, p. 127. 

 °vol. XI, p. 134. 

 Mvol. XI, p. 166. 



