Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

GRANDAMICUS AND POWER.

405

haps because of its fostering care, we hear now and then of a new conceit; such as Hartlib's discovery of the ink which gives a dozen copies on a moist sheet of paper ap- ▸ plied to the writing; or Colonel Blount's new plows, or Neale's telescopes, or Greatrex's fire engine, or Petty's double-bottomed ship.' Evelyn dines with Wilkins in 1654, and admires his ingenious apiaries, so made that the honey can be taken without disturbing the bees, his waywiser, thermometer and monstrous magnet. A year later, he records seeing a "pretty terrella, described with all the circles and showing all the magnetic deviations."'3

4

2

Gilbert had said that the earth is a magnet and does rotate. The Jesuits, contrariwise, and with characteristic casuistry, had said that the earth is not a big magnet, but merely a magnetical body, and that it does not rotate. Others had admitted that the earth rotates, while denying its inherent magnetic quality. Now comes Father Grandamicus, from the Jesuit College at Flêche, in France, with an effort to reconcile all difficulties on the new and original basis that the earth is a big magnet, and for that very reason does not rotate, because, like the magnet, it has poles, and no magnet has ever been seen, by its own inherent magnetism, to turn itself around its own poles. But Dr. Power' was ready with a "confutation," and, to the credit of the College, he talks of the corporeal effluviums of the magnet and the electric about as well as anybody had done before him, and sets the Frenchman right with all the emphasis peculiar to a semi-theological disputation of the times.

The great impulse which was to start anew the progress

'Knight: Hist. England, iv., 174. "Evelyn's Diary. 13 July, 1654. 3 Ibid., 3 July, 1655.

* Grandamicus: Nova Demonstratio Immobilitatis Terrae petita ex vir tute magnetica. Flexiae, 1645.

5 Power: A confutation of Grandamicus, his magnetical tractate de Immobilitate Terrae. London, 1663.

of English experimental science had not yet, however, been felt. It was to come, if at all, from without, and from without it came, and from a quarter least of all to be anticipated. For the first time in the history of mankind Fashion and Science joined hands. All the benefits which the stern goddess had offered had been as nothing; all her struggles to stir the inertia of the load had been futile; but now a beckon and a nod from the fickle and laughing dame, a touch of the finger, and the mountain moved.

The Society applied to Charles for a charter. There was no reason why so devoted a band of Royalists should not thus be rewarded, especially as doing so involved no settlement of old pecuniary scores for aid and comfort. So the King not only converted it into the Royal Society, but gave to it, what was far more immediately valuable than the charter, the light of his kingly countenance. The result upon the fortunes of the new philosophy was magical.' The Court, in lieu of baiting Puritans, place jobbing, flirting and gambling, fell to discussing the pneumatic engine, the ponderation of the air, blood transfusion, and the variation of the compass. My Lord Keeper Guilford thriftily had barometers constructed for sale in London, and united with my Lord Chief Justice Hale in making suitors wait pending the production of obiter dicta on hydrostatics. Prince Rupert invented mezzo-tinto engraving, and set the willingly admiring courtiers to breaking off the tails of the wonderful little drops of glass which he had brought into England, to see them fly to pieces. Even Buckingham found time, amid the pressing claims of wine, women, the gaming table and the stage, to dabble in chemistry. If one dropped in at Will's it was to find men of fashion discussing telescopes and the Vacuo Boyleano. My lady, in her boudoir, chattered of the shining phosphorus from Germany, or went in her coach and six to visit the Gresham curiosities, and "broke forth into cries of delight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle,

1 1 Macaulay: Hist. of England, Chap. iii.

CHARLES II. AS A PATRON OF SCIENCE.

407

and that a microscope really made a fly look as large as a sparrow." Did not that "mighty pretender to learning, poetry and philosophy," the Duchess of Newcastle (and. with her the Ferabosco, with "good little black eyes”), visit the new Society to witness experiments "upon colors, lodestones, microscopes and liquors?" And did not the Lord President receive her (together with the Ferabosco) and escort her to her seat with the mace solemnly borne before?—and, let us hope, with a properly straight visage. And her Grace was indeed edified, for "after they had shown her many experiments," records Mr. Pepys,' “she cried still she was full of admiration, and departed," Mr. Evelyn being in waiting to hand her to her coach.

And Mr. Pepys likewise undertakes a little magnetic experimenting on his own account. "This day" (Nov. 2d, 1663), he records, "I received a letter from Mr. Barlow with a terrella which I had hoped he had sent me, but to my trouble I find it is to present from him to my Lord Sandwich; but I will make a little use of it first, and then give it to him." He kept it nearly a month before delivering to Sandwich, who, he says, received it with great pleasure.

And as for the king, he set up a laboratory at Whitehall and worked in it. He went to the Society's rooms and looked at experiments on the new liquid for staunching the flow of blood. And, when the men of quality came to chat with him of a morning during the portentous ceremonies of tying his cravat or combing his wig, they found his Majesty with far less appetite for court gossip than for weather observations. Even at the Coun. cil Board, the royal thoughts were apt to wander from the doings of the Dutch abroad and his last idea for extorting taxes at home, to the new baroscope with which he and his chaplain Beal amused themselves.

3

1 Pepys' Diary, May 30, 1667. See also Evelyn's Diary, same year. 2 Phil. Trans., 1673, No. 96, p. 6078.

3 Thorpe: Essays on Hist. Chemistry. London, 1894 (Robert Boyle).

Hence it came about-because Iris had lent Minerva her wings because Folly had put her shoulder to the load which Reason could not move-that a great progress in philosophical thought was made. The Aristotelian physics and the moribund relics of scholasticism expired; the newer vagaries of the Rosicrucians faded into thinner air than even their most refined spirits could breathe. The "sure arguments and demonstrated experiments" for which Gilbert had so strongly pleaded were hereafter to be the only foundation for physical knowledge. And all this, because the touch of that singularly wise, pure and good Charles had made experimental science the mode.

But however much people betook themselves to the new philosophy because it was fashionable, this was far from being the reason which influenced the king himself. His taste for science was no craving for new diversion, nor did he soon tire of his fancy. His inclination to physical study and experiment was natural. He would have been a good chemist or physicist had he not been king. Sprat, writing five years after the establishment of the Society, tells us that he constantly spurred the members onward to fresh exertion and "provok'd them to unwearied activity in their Experiments by the most effectual means of his Royal example:" that "the noise of Mechanick Instruments is heard in Whitehall itself, and the King has under his own roof found place for Chymical Operators.” It is the king who "has endowed the College of London with new Priviledges . . planted a Physick Garden under his own eye" and "made Plantations enough, even almost to repair the ruines of a Civil War"—the king who offered rewards to "those that shall discover the Meridian," the king who, "acknowledged to be the best Judge amongst Seamen and Shipwrights," set the Society studying the problems of navigation and ship-building. That he was especially interested in magnetism is shown by his presentation of a terrella to the Society-a stone which the

THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

409

members examined twenty-five years later to see whether its poles had changed in position.'

"He has frequently committed many things to their search," says the future Bishop, beginning a succession of sentences which insist upon irrelevantly recalling the arraignment of George III. in the immortal Declaration-"he has referred many foreign rarities to their inspection: he has recommended many domestick improvements to their care: he has demanded the result of their trials in many appearances of Nature: he has been present and assisted with his own hands at the performing of many of their Experiments, in his Gardens, his Parks and on the River. . he has sometimes reproved them for the slowness of their proceedings."

Nor did he fail to recognize the democracy of sciencefor when the young Society demurred at admitting into its fold John Graunt, citizen of London, the judicious author of the Observations on the Bills of Mortality (the first great work on its subject) because he was a tradesman, it was speedily brought to its senses by a sharp message of disapproval from his Majesty and a curt order “that if they found any more such tradesmen, they should be sure to admit them all without any more ado.'

[ocr errors]

The importance of the part which the Royal Society played in the development of the new philosophy, and later in that of the new science of electricity, can not be overrated. Indeed, it may be said that at the very beginning of its career, the sturdy blows which it dealt to witchcraft, sorcery and demonology, by shattering popular belief in these delusions, did much to emancipate electrical knowledge from the errors with which it was encumbered. But the example, the stimulus, the encouragement, the immediate help, without which its efforts might well have proved fruitless, it owes in no small measure to the king himself. Therefore in estimating the conditions of the philosophical renaissance now under review, it is necessary to remember

1 Phil. Trans., No. 388, p. 344, 1687.

« AnteriorContinuar »