A Learn'd Society of late,
The Glory of a foreign State,
Agreed, upon a Summer's Night,
To search the Moon by her own Light;
The Glory of a foreign State,
Agreed, upon a Summer's Night,
To search the Moon by her own Light;
- ↑ This Poem was intended by the Author for a Satyr upon the Royal Society, which, according to his Opinion, at least, ran too much at that Time into the Virtuoso Taste, and a whimsical Fondness for surprizing and wonderful Stories in natural History. It was founded upon a Fact mentioned in a Note upon Hudibras's Heroical Epistle to Sidrophel, where the Annotator observing, that one Sir Paul Neale, a conceited Virtuoso, and Member of the Royal Society, was probably characterised under the Person of Sidrophel, adds———"This was the Gentleman who, I am told, made a great Discovery of an Elephant in the Moon, which upon Examination, proved to be no other than a Mouse, which had mistaken its Way and got into his Telescope." See Greys Hudibras, vol. ii. p. 105.
Butler was a profest Enemy to the Method of Philosophizing in fashion in his Time, as appears not only from his Works, which are already printed, but from those which I have in Manuscript.—To ridicule this, he introduced into his Hudibras the Character of Sidrophel, which I can assure the Reader, upon the Poet's own Authority, was intended for a Picture of Sir Paul Neal; and, indeed one must own, notwithstanding the many useful Labours of the Royal Society, that at their first setting out, even as it is represented by their learned and florid Panegyrist the Bishop of Rochester, they did justly lay themselves open to the Lashes of Wit and Satyr.
To
