Nicolson 1956

Nicolson, Marjorie. Science and Imagination. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956.

The Microscope and the English Imagination

Pepys buys microscope, Power's Experimental Philosophy, and Hooke's Micrographia; records many conversations on it during 1664-6 (169-170)

Abraham Cowley, "To the Royal Society" [[1]]

Nature's great Workes no distance can obscure,

No smalness her near Objects can secure

      Y'have taught the curious Sight to press

      Into the privatest recess

Of her imperceptible Littleness.

      Y'have learn'd to Read her smallest Hand,

And well begun her deepest Sense to Understand.

Samuel Butler, "The Elephant in the Moon" [[2]]

• about a society of men gathering to look through a telescope and see curious men on the moon
• includes satire of microscopists: "one, whose Task was to determin / And solve th' Appearances of Vermin; / Wh' had made profound Discoveries / In Frogs, and Toads, and Rats, and Mice"

"Hudibras"

How many different Specieses

Of Maggots breed in rotten Cheeses;

And which are next of kin to those

Engender'd in a Chandler's nose;

Or those not seen, but understood,

That live in Vinegar and Wood.

other miscellaneous verse by Butler on the microscope:

When one, who for his Excellence

In height'ning Words and shad'wing Sense,

And magnifying all he writ

With curious microscopick Wit,

Was magnify'd himself no less

In home and foreign Colleges,

He that would understand what you have writ

Must read it through a Microscop of wit;

For evry Line is Drawn so curious there

He must have more then eies that reads it cleare.

Andrew Marvell, "Last Instructions to a Painter"

• microscope as a weapon

With Hook then, through the microscope, take aim

Where, like the new Controller, all men laugh

To see a tall Lowse brandish the white Staff.

"Upon Appleton House" [[3]]

Such Fleas, ere they approach the Eye,

In Multiplyiug Glasses lye.

They feed so wide, so slowly move,

As Constellations do above.

Or turn me but, and you shall see

I was but an inverted Tree.

Thomas Shadwell, Virtuoso [[4]]