done? Where their College? I need not instruct you how to answer or confound these persons, who are able to make even these inform blocks and stones dance into order, and charm them into better sense. Or if their insolence press, you are capable to show how they have laid solid foundations to perfect all noble arts, and reform all imperfect sciences. It requires an history to recite only the arts, the inventions, and phenomena already absolved, improved, or opened. In a word, our registers have outdone Pliny, Porta, and Alexis, and all the experimentists, nay, the great Verulam himself, and have made a nobler and more faithful collection of real secrets, useful and instructive, than has hitherto been shown.-Sir, we have a library, a repository, and an assembly of as worthy and great persons as the world has any; and yet we are sometimes the subject of satire1 and the songs of the drunkards; have a king to our founder, and yet want a Mæcenas; and above all, a spirit like yours, to raise us up benefactors, and to compel them to think the design of the Royal Society as worthy of their regards, and as capable to embalm their names, as the most heroic enterprise, or anything antiquity has celebrated; and I am even amazed at the wretchedness of this age that acknowledges it no more. But the devil, who was ever an enemy to truth, and to such as discover his prestigious effects, will never suffer the promotion of a design so destructive to his dominion (which is to fill the world with imposture and keep it in ignorance), without the utmost of his malice and contradiction. But you have numbers and charms that can bind even these spirits of darkness, and render their instruments obsequious; and we know you have a divine hymn for us; the lustre of the Royal Society calls for an ode from the best of poets upon the noblest argument. To conclude: here you have a field to celebrate the great and the good, who either do, or should, favour the most august and worthy design that ever was set on foot in the world: and those who are our real patrons and friends you can eternise, those who are not you can conciliate and inspire to do gallant things.-But I will add no more, when I have told you with great truth that I am, Sir, etc. 1 [Cf. ante, p. 298. Lord-Keeper North declined to join the Society because it "was made very free with by the ridiculers of the town (Lives of the Norths, 1826, ii. 179).] SIR, From Abraham Cowley to John Evelyn. CHERTSEY, 13th May, 1667. I am ashamed of the rudeness I have committed in deferring so long my humble thanks for your obliging letter, which I received from you at the beginning of the last month. My laziness in finishing the copy of verses upon the Royal Society, for which I was engaged before by Mr. Sprat's desire, and encouraged since by you, was the cause of this delay, having designed to send it to you enclosed in my letter: but I am told now that the History is almost quite printed, and will be published so soon, that it were impertinent labour to write out that which you will so suddenly see in a better manner, and in the company of better things. I could not comprehend in it many of those excellent hints which you were pleased to give me, nor descend to the praises of particular persons, because those things afford too much matter for one copy of verses, and enough for a poem, or the History itself; some part of which I have seen, and think you will be very well satisfied with it. I took the boldness to show him your letter, and he says he has not omitted any of those heads, though he wants your eloquence in expression. Since I had the honour to receive from you the reply to a book written in praise of a solitary life, I have sent all about the town in vain to get the author, having very much affection for the subject, which is one of the noblest controversies both modern and ancient; and you have dealt so civilly with your adversary, as makes him deserve to be looked after. But I could not meet with him, the books being all, it seems, either burnt or bought up. If you please to do me the favour to lend it to me, and send it to my brother's house (that was) in the King's Yard, it shall be returned to you within a few days with a humble thanks of your most faithful obedient servant, A. COWLEY. [Ode "To the Royal Society," Works, 1721, ii. 557-62 (see ante, p. 192).] 2 [Sir George Mackenzie's Moral Essay upon Solitude, preferring it to Public Employment, 1665 (see ante, p. 268).] END OF VOL. II Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh. |