164 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Dissertation on a Dumpling .^^ "I received", he asserts, "this 

 part of the history of pudding from old Mr. Lawrence of Wilsden 

 Green, the greatest Antiquary of the present Age".^° The ac- 

 count that follows is full of good fun and is free from all bitter- 

 ness. A Letter to the Students of both Universities is a scurrilous 

 attack on modern scientific controversies. All kinds of study are 

 diseases that manifest themselves in varying forms. One interest 

 develops the vapors, perhaps, and produces "a deal of speculation 

 upon Circles, and the squaring of Comets, the Courses of Heavenly 

 Bodies, Vortex's, the Longitude, perpetual Motion. "^^ "All this 

 show, when expressed on Paper, still betrays its original to be mere 

 Flatus, Air, Wind, and Vapour."" The Congress of the Bees is 

 another burlesque on the reports to the Royal Society. It purports 

 to be in part a study of those insects made by Sir John IMande- 

 ville, found recently in a manuscript preserved at Gresham Col- 

 lege. A severe and unkindly criticism is made of Dr. Woodward 

 in The Sickness and Death of Dr. Woodivard,^^ and the Life and 

 Death of Don Bilioso de L'EstofnacJ* The untenable theories of 

 Woodward are attacked in A71 Examination of Dr. Woodward's 

 Account of the Deluge''^ and The Longitude Examin'd.'^^ 



All of the satire attributed to Arbuthnot, with the exception of 

 The Death of a Late Right Reverend — (Gilbert Burnet), is good- 

 natured. There is in it neither the bitter irony of Swift nor the 

 cruelty of Pope. As a matter of fact, the author was himself one 

 of the new philosophers, a physician and a member of the Royal 

 Society. He even presented before that learned body a serious 

 discussion of Mathematical Learning, His quarrel with Wood- 

 ward, therefore, was one of theories merely; they were alike in 

 sympathy with the new philosophy. But Arbuthnot saw scientific 

 interest becoming a fad, saw untenable theories foisted upon it. 

 "To hunt after comets, and catch them by the tail ; to reform the 



6» Arbuthnot, Wks. vol. I, p. 59. 



'» Ibid. 



■'ilbid. vol. II, p. 109. 



"Ibid. vol. II, pp. 10910. 



■" Wks. vol. II, p. 464. 



"Ibid. p. 183. 



"Ibid. p. 196. 



"» Wks. vol. II, Supplement, p. 66. 



