ed the founder of the Royal
Society. Sprat's real preface to his History is Cowley's famous ode. The
poet speaks of philosophy--_i.e._, natural philosophy, as the captive
and slave of Authority and Words, set free by Bacon: its followers he
likens to the Children of Israel wandering aimlessly from one desert to
another till Moses brought them to the border of the promised land. The
stately lines may well be quoted here:--

"From these and all long errors of the way
In which our wandering predecessors went,
And like th' old Hebrews many years did stray
In desarts but of small extent,
Bacon like Moses led us forth at last,
The barren Wilderness he past,
Did on the very Border stand
Of the blest promised land,
And from the Mountain Top of his Exalted Wit
Saw it himself and shew'd us it.
But Life did never to one Man allow
Time to discover Worlds and conquer too;
Nor can so short a line sufficient be
To fadome the vast depths of Nature's sea."

Like all human institutions, the Royal Society was criticised, feared,
misunderstood, and ridiculed. There is evidence of this in Sprat's
anxiety to show that experiments "are not dangerous to the Universities
nor to the Church of England," a contention which now would be admitted
or denied if the term "experiments" were first defined. He labours, too,
to show that they are not dangerous to the Christian religion, either
its belief or practice. His remarks on this question are of great
interest and value, and are strangely modern. He pleads that
"experiments will be beneficial to our wits and writers." Alas! the wits
at least benefited in a way which Sprat did anticipate. Shadwell in his
'Virtuoso' found material for profane merriment in some of the
unquestionably absurd inquiries made or suggested by the natural
philosophers. "Science was then only just emerging from the Mists of
Superstition." Astrology and Alchemy still infected Astronomy,
Chemistry, and Medicine. A Fellow of the Royal Society, along with the
Puritan, made a ridiculous figure on the stage. But Puritanism and
Natural Philosophy both survived the "test of truth," and were better
for the ordeal.[3]

In 1668, through the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, Wilkins was
made Bishop of Chester. The position of a Bishop in some ways resembles
that of the Head of a College: Fellows are like canons and archdeacons;
undergraduates are the