acquire knowledge than the Royal Society, or
all the present age had, or could have, for this definitive reason,
"because Aristotle did, _totam peragrare Asiam_." Besides, in the Chew
philosophy, where novelty was treason, improvements or discoveries
could never exist. Here the Aristotelian made his stand; and at
length, gently hooking Glanvill between the horns of a dilemma, the
entrapped virtuoso threw himself into an unguarded affirmation; at
which the Vicar of Great Chew, shouting in triumph, with a sardonic
grin, declared that Glanvill and his Royal Society had now avowed
themselves to be atheistical! This made an end of the interview, and a
beginning of the quarrel.[262]

Glanvill addressed an expostulatory letter to the inhuman Aristotelian,
who only replied by calling it a recantation, asserting that the affair
had finished with the conviction.

On this, Glanvill produced his "Plus Ultra,"[263] on the modern
improvements of knowledge. The quaint title referred to that Asian
argument which placed the boundaries of knowledge at the ancient
limits fixed by Aristotle, like the pillars of Hercules, on which was
inscribed _Ne plus ultra_, to mark the extremity of the world. But
Glanvill asserted we might advance still further--_plus ultra_! To
this book the Aristotelian replied with such rancour, that he could
not obtain a licence for the invective either at Oxford or London.
Glanvill contrived to get some extracts, and printed a small number of
copies for his friends, under the sarcastic title of "The Chew
Gazette,"--a curiosity, we are told, of literary scolding, and which
might now, among literary trinkets, fetch a Roxburgh prize.

Cross, maddened that he could not get his bundle of peripatetic
ribaldries printed, wrote ballads, which he got sung as it chanced.
But suppressed invectives and eking rhymes could but ill appease so
fierce a mastiff: he set on the poor F.R.S. an animal as rabid, but
more vigorous than himself--both of them strangely prejudiced against
the modern improvements of knowledge; so that, like mastiffs in the
dark, they were only the fiercer.

This was Dr. Henry Stubbe, a physician of Warwick--one of those ardent
and versatile characters, strangely made up of defects as strongly
marked as their excellences. He was one of those authors who, among
their numerous remains, leave little of permanent value; for their
busy spirits too keenly delight in temporary controversy, and they
waste the ef