rotestants beyond sea. But the reason he (Sprat) gives
why the establishment of the Royal Society of experimentators equals
the most renowned actions of the best princes, is such a pitiful one
as Guzman de Alfarache never met with in the whole extent of the
_Hospital of Fools_--'To increase the power, by new arts, of conquered
nations!' These consequences are twisted like the _cordage of Ocnus_,
the God of Sloth, in hell, which are fit for nothing but _to fodder
asses with_. If our historian means by _every little invention to
increase the powers of mankind_, as an enterprise of such renown, he
is deceived; this glory is not due to such as go about with a dog and
a hoop, nor to the practicers of legerdemain, or upon the high or low
rope; not to every mountebank and his man Andrew; all which, with many
other mechanical and experimental philosophers, do in some sort
increase the powers of mankind, and differ no more from some of the
virtuosi, than _a cat in a hole_ doth from _a cat out of a hole_;
betwixt which that inquisitive person ASDRYASDUST TOSSOFFACAN found a
very great resemblance. 'Tis not the increasing of the _powers of
mankind_ by a pendulum watch, nor spectacles whereby divers may see
under water, nor the new ingenuity of apple-roasters, nor every petty
discovery or instrument, must be put in comparison, much less
preferred, before _the protection and enlargement of empires_."[276]

Had Stubbe's death not occurred, this warfare had probably continued.
He insisted on a complete victory. He had forced the Royal Society to
disclaim their own works, by an announcement that they were not
answerable, as a body, for the various contributions which they gave
the world: an advertisement which has been more than once found
necessary to be renewed. As for their historian Sprat, our intrepid
Stubbe very unexpectedly offered to manifest to the parliament that
this courtly adulator, by his book, was chargeable with high treason;
if they believed that the Royal Society were really engaged so deeply
as he averred in the portentous Caesarean Popery of Campanella.
Glanvill, who had "insulted all university learning," had been
immolated at the pedestal of Aristotle. "I have done enough," he adds,
"since my animadversions contain more than they all knew; and that
these have shown that the _virtuosi_ are very great impostors, or men
of little reading;" alluding to the various discoveries which they
promulgated as novelties, but w