Note 256 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 2)

Evelyn, whose elegant mind, one would have imagined, had been little susceptible of such vehement anger, in the preface to his “Sylva,” scolds at no common rate: “Well-meaning people are led away by the noise of a few ignorant and comical buffoons, who, with an insolence suitable to their understanding, are still crying out, What have the Society done?” He attributes all the opposition and ridicule the Society encountered to a personage not usual to be introduced into a philosophical controversy—“The Enemy of Mankind.” But it was well to denounce the devil himself, as the Society had nearly lost the credit of fearing him. Evelyn insists that “next to the propagation of our most holy faith,” that of the new philosophy was desirable both for the king and the nation; “for,” he adds, “it will survive the triumphs of the proudest conquerors; since, when all their pomp and noise is ended, they are those little things in black, whom now in scorn they term philosophers and fops, to whom they must be obliged for making their names outlast the pyramids, whose founders are as unknown as the heads of the Nile.” Why Evelyn designates the philosophers as little things in black, requires explanation. Did they affect a dress of this colour in the reign of Charles II., or does he allude to the dingy appearance of the chemists?