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.

Other than Hudibras, Butler's poems not published until 1759; [[3]] [[4]]

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" [[5]]

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 [[6]]

• Sir Nicholas Gimcrack has a an "Elaboratory" with many instruments, including the microscope; looks at insects, etc.
• Joseph Addison, "Will of a Virtuoso" published in 1710 continues satire; Gimcrack dies, leaves all his pointless items to his friends/family; elsewhere, Addison admires the microscope, seems to direct his satire toward collecting (177)

"Shadwell's Virtuoso was a prelude to an outburst of mingled irony and enthusiasm for such themes. On the one hand, we hear persistent laughter at 'collectors' whose 'rare specimens' of mean and insignificant objects seemed to the age fantastical and absurd; on the other, there is a new interest in anatomical dissection under the microscope, impressing even those who laughed at the devotees." (Nicolson 173)

'Ned Ward, 1698

• visited Gresham College, home of the Royal Society; called it "Maggot-Monger's Hall"
• thought the collection was so worthless he immediately left to visit an insane asylum instead
• satirical description of the "character of the virtuoso"

'William King

• satirized "journies" of Samuel Sorbiere and Martin Lister through the character of "Mr. Shuttleworth", a virtuoso collector who shows "rarities" (snails, frogs, etc.) (174)
• Ninth Dialoge of Dialogues of the Dead contains "Moderno," a character who is dirty from digging in ditches for insects and tadpoles to examine; mentions Swammerdam

Mr. Willis of St. Mary Hall, Oxon." (really Tom Brown), "A Comical Panegyrick on that familiar Animal by the Vulgar call'd a Louse"

• addresses insect in mock-heroics

William Shenstone, "To the Virtuosi"

• "To slight Dame Nature's fairest form, / And sigh for Nature's vermin."

Jonathan Swift

So, naturalists observe, a flea

Has samller fleas that on him prey;

And these have smaller still to bite 'em,

And so proceed ad infinitum.

• in Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver gets four stings from a wasp; takes three back to Gresham College (177)

Susanna Centlivre, Bold Stroke for a Wife

• Mistress Lovely warns against collecting insects (177)
• Pseudo-scientist Periwinkle wants to "anatomize" Mrs. Lovely, going over her with a microscope (179-80)

Richard Blackmore, Creation, 17122; close descriptions of parts of human body, versification of anatomies; non-satirical

The Living fabrick now in pieces take,

Of every part due observation make.

The Sepctator, "The Beau's Head" and The Coquette's Heart";

• takes the form of a report to the Royal Society dissecting brains/hearts; play on metaphorical use of "heart"