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Matthew Prior's Attitude Toward Natural Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Monroe K. Spears
Monroe K. Spears*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Extract

Recent studies have made evident the profound effect of natural science, especially of physics and astronomy, upon English neo-classical literature. In several of these studies, it has been remarked that Matthew Prior's writings contain many passages referring to scientific doctrines and manifesting an unusual attitude toward them. There has been, however, no thorough investigation of the rôle played by the new science in Prior's thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , June 1948 , pp. 485 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1948

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References

1 C. S. Duncan, in The New Science and English Literature in the Classical Period (Chicago, 1913), pointed out some of the references to scientific doctrines; his interpretation is, however, unreliable. L. I. Bredvold, in The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (Ann Arbor, 1934), p. 64n, cited Prior's 1688 Exodus ode as evidence that the “skeptical attitude toward science was not without later influence.” Marjorie Nicolson, in “The Microscope and English Imagination”, Smith College Studies in Modem Languages, xvi (1934-35), #4, p. 34, described the effect of microscopic and anatomical studies upon Alma; in “A World in the Moon: A Study of Changing Attitudes toward the Moon in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, published in the same series (xvii, 1935-36, #2), Professor Nicolson mentioned two passages in Prior inspired by the new astronomy (pp. 31, 67); and in Newton Demands the Muse (Princeton, 1946) the same author remarked that Prior, in Alma, “dared have fun with current theories of perception and vision” (p. 92). The only discussion of any length is that by H. N. Fairchild, in Religious Trends in English Poetry, Vol. i: 1700-40 (New York, 1939), pp. 33-40, which is excellent as far as it goes.

2 “The Meaning of Matthew Prior's Alma”, ELU, xiii (1946), 266–90. Mr. Charles Kerby-Miller, in reviewing this article (PQ, xxvi [1947], 136-7), has charged me with “referring repeatedly to the Cambridge Platonists as ‘the scientists’ and the Cartesian dualism which they supported as ‘the scientific conception’ and ‘the scientific theory of the soul’.” I wish to assure readers of the present article that, whatever my semantic sins, they are not so mortal. To consider the Cambridge Platonists typical “scientists” would be a hopeless confusion, and damning indeed. The only Cambridge Platonist I discussed at length in the Alma article was Henry More; I cited a work of his as a parallel to Alma in upholding the Aristotelian over the Cartesian conception of the soul, and later stressed again his opposition to the Cartesian doctrine. Glanville I mentioned briefly as sceptical of the Cartesian and other theories of the soul. I am unable to determine why Mr. Kerby-Miller should think I mean “Cambridge Platonist” when I say “scientist”, except that, following Prior, I associate the scientists (Newton et al.) with Cambridge, and therefore sometimes speak of “Cambridge scientists.”

The reference of the term “scientist” in the present article is, I trust, sufficiently specific; “science” is used to mean natural science, and “new science” primarily the developments in physics and astronomy culminating in Newton's Principia.

3 Dialogues of the Dead and Other Works in Prose and Verse, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1907), p. 185. Cf. C. K. Eves, Matthew Prior, Poet and Diplomatist (New York, 1939), pp. 25–6.

4 H. B. Wright's unpublished doctoral dissertation, Matthew Prior: A Supplement to his Biography (Northwestern, 1937), contains an annotated transcription of the catalogue of Prior's library, which is my authority for all statements about Prior's books. Numbers given in parentheses after each book cited are those in Wright's list. Prior owned the 1682 Latin edition of Rohault's Tractus Physicus with Le Grand's notes (#1835), and two 1683 editions in French (#856, #857).

5 S. L. Lamprecht, “The Role of Descartes in Seventeenth-Century England”, Studies in the History of Ideas, ed. by the Dept. of Philosophy of Columbia Univ., iii (1935), 196.

6 Cf. Eves, pp. 26, 171. Montague assisted Newton in his unsuccessful attempt to form a scientific society at Cambridge. 7 Eves, p. 38.

8 Numbers 580 through 597 all deal with medicine or anatomy. Some examples are: P. Dionis, Nouvelle Anatomie de l'Homme, Suivant la Circulation du Sang et les Dernières Découvertes, Paris, 1695 (#580); Thomas Gibson, The Anatomy of Humane Bodies Epitomized, 1682 (#591); James Keill, The Anatomy of the Human Body Abridged, 1703 (#597); John Woodward, The State of Physich, and of Diseases, 1718 (#581).

9 Four physicians attended Prior's funeral: Dr. Arbuthnot, Dr. John Freind, Dr. Alexander Inglis, who attended Prior during his last illness, and Dr. John Inglis, physician to William and to Anne (H. B. Wright, “Matthew Prior's Funeral”, MLN, ivn [1942], 341-5). Physicians constituted the dominant group in the Royal Society throughout its early history (Sir Henry Lyons, The Royal Society, 1660–1940 [Cambr., 1944], p. 77).

10 G. R. Potter, “Swift and Natural Science”, PQ, xx (1941), 97-118; L. M. Beattie, John Arbuthnot, Mathematician and Satirist (Cambr., Mass., 1935), p. 208 et passim; and the two studies by M. Nicolson and N. M. Mohler in Annals of Science, ii (1937): “The Scientific Background of Swift's Voyage to Laputa” (299-334); “Swift's ‘Flying Island’ in the Voyage to Laputa” (405–30).

11 Swift's Correspondence, ed. F. E. Ball (London, 1910-14), i, 229 n.

12 Journal to Stella, Feb. 1,1711/2. Both the Freinds were present at Prior's funeral; Dr. Robert Freind wrote Prior's epitaph.

13 #586 in Wright's list. See Philip Shorr, “Sir John Freind (1675-1728) M.D., Pioneer Historian of Medicine”, Isis, xxvn (1937), 453-74.

14 “… if Six Bells as John Keil tells me can make more than a thousand Millions of Changes, what must be the result of the jangling of ten or twelve Passions sustained by an infinite variety of objects in Minds upon which every thing can Operate …” (Dialogues, p. 196).

15 “… an Oyleman on Fish Street Hill did actually wrap up his Anchovies in the first Horace that was ever Printed, whilst Frazer has with useless Pains been looking for the Book this Two and Twenty Years. How many better Editions has been since Published, or why the worst is the most Valuable I refer to another Opportunity” (Dialogues, p. 192). “Those who could never read their Grammar; / When my dear Volumes touch the Hammer; / May think Books best, as richest bound” (Poems on Several Occasions, ed. A. R. Waller [Cambr., 1905], p. 253).

16 Of Prior's biographers, only Francis Bickley (Life of Matthew Prior [London, 1914], pp. 89-90) notes Prior's election to membership in the Royal Society. The records of the Royal Society give no date for Prior's election; possibly it was the same as that for the member preceding him on the list, March 23, 1697/8 (Thomas Thompson, History of the Royal Society, from its Institution to the End of the Eighteenth Century [London, 1812], Appendix rv, p. xxx). Prior sailed for France in January, 1697/8; there is no record of his admission to the Royal Society.

17 Prior's friend Charles Montague was President of the Society at the time, and his friend George Stepney had recently become a member (November 30, 1697). As Sir Henry Lyons makes clear, less than a third of the members at this time were scientists in any sense of the word (op. cit., p. 115; see also p. 76 and Appendix ii).

18 Poems on Several Occasions, ed. Waller, p. 117.

19 A passage from the Advancement of Learning serves as one of the epigraphs for Solomon (Poems, p. 255); in the dedication to Poems on Several Occasions, Prior calls Sprat a “great Author” and cites his history (p. xix). Prior owned both works (#509, #127).

20 Wanley, mentioned in the conclusion of Alma, helped Prior to prepare his 1718 volume for the press; he was then librarian to the Earl of Oxford. Previously, Wanley had served as Clerk to the R. S. from 1701 to 1706, and had been elected a Fellow in 1706 (Lyons, op. cit., p. 143). He contributed a paper to the Philosophical Transactions, “How to judge of the Age of Manuscripts, the Style of Learned Authors, Painters, Musicians, &c” (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, from their commencement, in 1665, to the year 1800; Abridged, with notes and biographic illustrations, by Charles Hutton, George Shaw, Richard Pearson [London, 1809], v, 227-37). See also John Arbuthnot, “An Argument for Divine Providence, taken from the Constant Regularity observed in the Births of both Sexes”, v, 606-8; John Keill, “On the Laws of Attraction and other Physical Principles”, v, 417-24 (a defense of Newton); Dr. John Freind, “Concerning a Hydrocephalus”, iv, 423-6.

21 In the dialogue, Montaigne (who obviously has kept up with developments since his death) cites the inventors of such instruments as benefactors of mankind, in contrast to philosophers like Locke: “Archimedes found out the burning-glass. Jacob Metius the Telle-scope. Sanctorius the Thermometer, and Flavia Goia, the Compass, without Consulting or being guided by any sort of Verbiage like this …” (Dialogues, p. 230). Later, he appeals to the history of science to prove that “the Vulgar are the only Scholars.” “The Observations made by Shepherds in Egypt and Chaldea gave birth to Geometry and Astronomy. … Was not Gun Powder invented by a poor Monk at Nuremberg; And Printing by an Inferior Tradesman at Haerlem. Look thro your Microscopes and know that Lewinhoeck that brought them to such perfection was a Glazier; and when you next set your Watch, remember that Tompion was a farrier, and began his great Knowledge in the Equation of Time by regulating the wheels of a common Jack …” (pp. 231–2).

22 “The Microscope and English Imagination”, pp. 32-4. Considering Alma as “physiological poetry”, Professor Nicolson observes that the poem “is to the later century what Fletcher's Purple Island was to the earlier.”

23 Professor Nicolson mentions Prior's “commonplace post-Newtonian statement” in the Exodus ode (1688) of the conception of the moon's borrowed light (“A World in the Moon …, ” p. 31), and his description in Solomon of the “vast post-Newtonian cosmos” in which there are many suns and moons and earths (p. 67). Numerous other passages showing a knowledge of astronomy could be cited; many occur in the first book of Solomon. Prior uses focusing the telescope as an analogy for the effect of prejudice upon opinion: “If we love him his Defects are diminished, if we hate him, his faults are Exagerated. We look upon the different Objects without finding that we have insensibly turned the Tube” (Dialogues, p. 201).

24 Op. cit., p. 39.

25 Such commonplace jibes are those in Alma at attempts to square the circle or to determine the longitude (Poems, p. 248) and in the Essay upon Opinion at the collecting humor of the virtuosi, including Sir Hans Sloane (Dialogues, p. 194). Prior does not, however, often concern himself with such superficial aspects of science.

28 Essais, ed. Pierre Villey (Paris, 1930), n, 413. All quotations from Montaigne are from this edition; references will henceforth be given in the text. Prior owned three French editions of Montaigne (#838, #1079, #1855) and one English translation (#510).

27 It is likely that Prior has Newton's Principia, which had appeared the preceding year, in mind. The Pyrrhonist current of thought was widespread and protean in the seventeenth century, and many writers expressed ideas similar to Prior's. The closest parallel is this passage in Denham's “The Progress of Learning” (1668): “With their new Light our bold Inspectors press / Like Cham, to shew their Fathers' Nakedness / By whose Example, after-ages may / Discover, we more naked are than they” (Poetical Works, ed. T. H. Banks [New Haven, 1928], p. 203). Prior owned Denham's poems (#1175), and another passage in the same poem sounds very much like a verbal source for some other lines of Prior's: “Through Seas of knowledge, we our course advance, / Discovering still new worlds of Ignorance / And these Discoveries make us all confess / That sublunary Science is but guess” (ibid., p. 195). Prior wrote in Solomon: “Forc'd by reflective Reason I confess, / That human Science is uncertain Guess” (Poems, p. 283). For the attitude toward hypotheses, see, for example, Thomas Baker: “The most plausible Theory … is only built upon an Hypothesis … how this Theory should be more certain, than the Hypothesis it goes upon, is past my Understanding” (Reflections upon Learning [London, 1708], pp. 100–1). Prior owned two copies of this book (#743, #1883).

28 Op. cit., pp. 33-4.

29 Creech's and Evelyn's English translations (#1182, #1181); Creech's edition (#1466); two French translations (#1665, #1535); French, Dutch, and English editions dating from 1631 to 1712 (#254, #1276, #1313, #1344, #1355, #1388, #1406, #1465, #1632, #1633, #1634, #1875). Prior owned the same number of editions or translations of Virgil; the only writer of whose works he owned a greater number (twenty) was his favorite Horace.

30 For example: attacking Creech, “He should be kept from waging War with Words: / Words which at first like Atoms did advance / To the just Measure of a tuneful Dance, / And jumpt to form, as did his Worlds, by Chance” (Dialogues, p. 50); “all Jumbled, all Pindaric, all like Lucretius world” (Ibid., p. 237); “He builds his Schemes in the Lucretian way; / Atoms their motions into forms convey: / And Chance may rule in wit, as well as play” (ibid., p. 339).

31 Principally in Alma, Poems, pp. 213 ff. See ELH xm (1946), 277, 283.

32 In A Satire on the Modern Translators (written 1685) Prior attacked Dryden's translations, fit to “more debauch what loose Lucretius writ” (Dialogues, p. 48), and Creech's translation and its effect: “This pleas'd the Genius of the vicious Town; / The Wits con-firm'd his Labours with Renown, / And swear the early Atheist for their own” (ibid., p. 50). In the Epistle to Fleetwood Shephard (1689) he remarks, “Your crabbed Rogues, that read LUCRETIUS, / Are against Gods, You know …” (Poems, p. 12). In Alma Prior ridicules Lucretius for invoking Venus, yet saying, contradictorily, that the gods are indifferent to men (ibid., pp. 220-1).

33 See T. F. Mayo, Epicurus in England (1650–1725) (Dallas, 1934), chapters xii and xiii.

34 For discussion of this prevailing attitude toward Newton, see Mayo, ch. xiii; Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse, ch. i et passim; A. D. McKillop, The Background of Thompson's Seasons (Minneapolis, 1942).

35 Mayo, p. 206. See also Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse, p. 66, for comment on Blackmore's Newtonianism.

36 Cf. Montaigne, “Le soing de s'augmenter en sagesse et en science, ce fut la premiere ruine du genre humain” (ii, 330). On various conceptions of “forbidden fruit”, see Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (London, 1934), pp. 31 ff.

37 See my study of Alma, ELE, xiii (1946), 276–8, 283. On the relationship between ancient and modern atomists, see C. T. Harrison, “Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle, and the Ancient Atomists”, Barvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, xv (1933), 191–218; G. K. Chalmers, “Three Terms of the Corpuscularian Philosophy”, MP, xxxiii (1936), 243-60.

38 Op. cit., p. 38.

39 For example, in Solomon, after a fine passage recounting the evils of even the happiest life, Prior speculates: “Esteem We these, my Friends, Event and Chance, / Produc'd as Atoms form their flutt'ring Dance? / Or higher yet their Essence may We draw …” (Poems, p. 321). At the beginning of The Ladle, he says that the “Scepticks” (meaning, apparently, Epicureans) think that the gods no longer intervene in human affairs, but having once “set this Whirligig a Spinning” remain supine in their heaven, and leave men to act “As Matter, and as Motion jumble” (ibid., p. 93). The description applies equally to the “First Cause” conception of modern scientists.

40 The Leibniz-Clarke correspondence may have suggested this image to Prior: “Man's Soul may be compared to a Balance, wherein Reasons and Inclinations are in the place of Weights … the Will of Man is like a Balance, which stands always unmoved when the Weights in both Scales are equal” (A Collection of Papers, Which passed between the late Learned Mr. Leibnitz and Dr. Clarke, in the Years 1715 and 1716. Relating to the Principles of Natural Philosophy and Religion [London, 1717], p. 383).

41 “There is never any such thing as an Indijerence in aequilibrio … 'Tis true, if the Case (of the Ass standing between Two Green Fields, and equally liking Both of them) was possible, we must say he would suffer himself to be starved to Death” (ibid., p. 385). Prior may also have recalled this passage in Montaigne: “C'est une plaisante imagination de concevoir un esprit balancé justement entre-deux pareilles envyes. Car il est indubitable qu'il ne prendra jamais party … et qui nous logeroit entre la bouteille et le jambon, avec égal appetit de boire et de menger, il n'y auroit sans doute remède que de mourir de soif et de fain” (π, 557).

42 “Attraction” was the common term for Newton's law of gravitation. For a burlesque parallel, see Dick's argument, later in the poem, that the “Goings of this Clock-work, Man” are determined by his diet (pp. 245–6).

43 Cf. the long discussion of the nature of angels, whether material or spiritual, Poems, pp. 279–80.

44 The very simplified account here presented is intended only to serve as minimum background for Prior's references to these matters. For discussion of the history and significance of the doctrine of the ether, see E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (New York, 1932), pp. 263-80; A. J. Snow, Matter and Gravity in Newton's Physical Philosophy (Oxford, 1936); Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse, pp. 64 ff.

45 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, ed. Fl. Cajori (Berkeley, 1934), p. 547. This General Scholium, as Cajori notes (p. 668), was partly inspired by the criticisms of Berkeley and Leibniz. Prior owned the 1713 edition of the Principia (#1768).

46 Opticks, ed. E. Whittaker (New York, 1931), p. 349. Newton sometimes suggests that functions usually ascribed to the ether are due to the direct operation of God (cf. Burtt, p. 284); Bentley and Clarke develop this conception, and both regard the ether as a non-material force witnessing the immediate providence of God (cf. Snow, pp. 189-92).

47 “Descartes in the middle of the Joy he felt when he was certain he doubted of every thing, and only knew his own Ignorance; was just in the same piteous Estate Pyrrho found himself Two thousand Years before: And when he gave Us his subtil matter, he only new Christned Aristotles Materia prima, Gassendi and Rohault, are but Epicurus and Lucretius revived” (Dialogues, pp. 240–1). In Alma, following the passage discussed in the text, Prior writes: “Your Chiefs in Sciences and Arts, / Have great Contempt of ALMA'S Parts. / They find, She giddy is, or dull; / She doubts, if Things are void, or full” (Poems, p. 240). Solomon remarks that the wise send forth their laboring thought, and it returns laden with empty notions “Of airy Columns every Moment broke, / Of circling Whirlpools, and of Spheres of Smoke” (ibid., p. 276).

48 A Collection of Papers … (London, 1717). For comment, see Ernst Cassirer, “Newton and Leibniz”, Philosophical Review, lii (1943), 366-91; J. T. Baker, “Space, Time, and God: A Chapter in Eighteenth-Century English Philosophy”, Philosophical Review, xli (1932), 581-3; J“. T. Baker, ”The Emergence of Space and Time in English Philosophy,“ Studies in the History of Ideas, in (1935), 273-93.

49 Op. cit., p. 366.

50 “The full authenticity of the Clarke papers is proved by the fact that the outlines of Clarke's replies have been found among Newton's manuscripts” (Cassirer, p. 366 n.).

51 A Collection of Papers …, p. 115.

52 Ibid., p. 151. Leibniz replied, “He might as well have added, inexplicable, unintelligible, precarious, groundless …” (p. 271).

53 Ibid., p. 327. Leibnitz considers this to be a representation of God as an imperfect mechanic, who must mend his watch from time to time; he denies such “natural” miracles, and argues that God created the universe perfect, and does not need to intervene.

54 Ibid., pp. 121, 131.

55 Eves, p. 284; J. M. Hone and M. M. Rossi, Bishop Berkeley. Bis Life, Writings, and Philosophy (London, 1931), p. 89. For Berkeley's specific attack on Newtonian “attraction” and absolute Space, see especially sections 103-18 of Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). It is interesting to note that Swift shows a general suspicion of “attraction”: “Gassendi … and the Vortices of Descartes were equally exploded. He predicted the same fate to Attraction, whereof the present Learned are such zealous Asserters” (Gulliver, ed. H. Williamson [London, 1926], p. 273); Thomas Baker curiously says that Newton “seems to resolve all into Attraction; which tho it may be true and pious withal, perhaps will not be thought so philosophical” (op. cil., p. 103).

56 Newton accepted, in general, the Cartesian account of the mind as confined within the brain and perceiving mediately through the nerves; as we have seen, he explains the interaction of mind and body by means of the ether, which has an obvious affinity to the Cartesian “animal spirits.” In his controversy with Clarke, Leibniz pointed out the difficulties involved in this conception, and argued for the pre-established harmony of mind and body, and for his mirroring monads (A Collection of Papers …, pp. 237–41).

57 The Pyrrhonist philosophy obviously is based on one kind of epistemological dualism: the distinction between sense-impressions, which vary with each individual, and ultimate reality, which is unknowable; appearances vary, and there is no way of determining which is true. Prior's Dialogue represents, in a sense, an undermining of Locke's philosophy by pushing his epistemological principles to their logical conclusion: “… it may happen I say, that if no Mans Ideas be perfectly the same, Locks Human Understanding may be fit only for the Meditation of Lock himself” (Dialogues, p. 246). Thomas Baker, examining the “Notion of perceiving things by Idea's”, argues, like Prior, that we cannot arrive thus at truth because “Men's Idea's about the same Objects hapned to be so vastly different”, and there is no way of telling which is true (op. cit., pp. 74–5).

58 Poems, pp. 211–2; for discussion, see my study of Alma. Cf. also Dialogues, p. 243, where the scientific account of perception is again ridiculed. Prior exhibits a sublime indifference to the question of the innateness of ideas: “Whether these Idea's were implanted in our Minds by Nature at our Birth, or arrive from the impressions made by the first Objects we behold, we will refer at present to the Metaphysicians” (ibid., p. 200).

59 Prior states the same idea in the Locke and Montaigne dialogue, remarking that it is taken from Bacon (Dialogues, p. 23S). The idea that the principles of science are not necessarily those of universal nature, and that science cannot explain the essential nature of things, was expressed by many writers of sceptical tendency: see, e.g., Glanvill's Vanity of Dogmatizing, ch. xx; Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser (Oxford, 1894), ii, 64, 217–8; Sir William Temple, Works (London, 1814), iii, 474–5; Thomas Baker, op. cit., pp. 93 ff.

60 The basic idea goes back to the ninth trope of Sextus Empiricus. Montaigne applies it to Christian miracles: “Les miracles sont selon l'ignorance en quoy nous sommes de la nature, non selon l'estre de la nature. L'assuefaction endort la veuë de nostre jugement” (i, 207). Clarke used the same argument in his controversy with Leibniz: “I affirmed that, with regard to God, no one Possible thing is more miraculous than another; and that there fore a Miracle does not consist in any Difficulty in the Nature of the Thing to he Done, but merely in the Usualness of God's doing it” (A Collection of Papers …, p. 149). To which Leibniz replied that this would make everything “either equally natural, or equally miraculous. Will Divines like the former, or Philosophers the latter?” (ibid., p. 265).

61 Newton's statement, Opticks (ed. cit.), pp. 402-3; for comment, see Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse, pp. 99 ff. This was, of course, a part of the wider argument based on the structure of human bodies; Bentley, for example, entitled his third Boyle Lecture “A Confutation of Atheism from the Structure and Origin of Human Bodies.”

62 Op. cit., p. 40: “Of all the poets studied in these pages, he is the first… in whom modern science has plainly helped to produce the view of life expressed in his epigram: ‘What trifling coil do we poor mortals keep; / Wake, eat, and drink, evacuate, and sleep.‘ ”