162 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



seems at last to have found it practically all absurd. A splendid 

 work was being done in astronomy, and yet to Swift it amounted 

 to no more than the calculations of an eclipse to avoid eating in 

 the dark. Apparently he looked upon the new philosophy with 

 the same jaundiced eyes with which he saw the affairs of church and 

 state and society. 



A study of Swift leads directly to a consideration of the Mar- 

 tinus Scriblerus Papers, the fragmentary production of the fam- 

 ous Scriblerus Club. The members of the Club were Swift, Pope, 

 Arbuthnot, Gay, and Parnell.^^ Their design was "to have ridi- 

 culed all the false tastes in learning, under the character of a man 

 of Capacity enough, that had dipped into every art and science, 

 but injudiciously in eacli".^'' With such a purpose before them 

 no appreciation of the good points can be expected. The inevitable 

 injustice of satire will be found; — namely, the exaggeration of 

 weaknesses and absurdities and the suppression of good qualities. 



The problem of authorship of the Scriblerus Papers has never 

 been fully resolved ; it seems a fair position, however, to assume the 

 work a collaboration. The wit is surely the combined brilliance 

 of the triumvirate, Arbuthnot, Swift, and Pope. The character 

 of Martinus Scriblerus himself, attributed to Arbuthnot, is a 

 comprehensive travesty on the philosophers. Everything about 

 him, — parentage, time of birth, infantile precocity, — foretells his 

 philosophic greatness. "This day, my Friends", says the proud 

 father, Cornelius Scriblerus, "I purpose to exhibit my son before 

 you ; a child not wholly unworthy of Inspection, as he is descended 

 from a Race of Virtuosi ".®° This youth quickly becomes a pro- 

 digy. He is trained to be a physician and exhibits all the quackery 

 of medicine,*'^ and all the wild fancies of a projector.^- With irre- 

 pressible energy he "seeks to disprove Sir Isaac Newton's theory 

 of gravity and Mr. Halley's of the Variations".®^ "He taught 

 the way to many Modem Physicians, to cure by Intuition, and to 



^Cf. Aitken, Life of Arbuthnot, p. 56. 



B»Ibid. p. 57. 



«o Pope's Wks. vol. VI, p. 106. 



"Chap. X. 



«Chap. XIV. 



«Chap. XIV, p. 159. 



