A prior study of mine demonstrated how poets and scientists during the long eighteenth century discovered for their respective endeavors a new significance in the keyword care. Whereas I judged and presented these developments as largely unrelated, reading such material heightened my interest in the same era's science poetry. As a result, the following pages analyze the work of four Augustan science poets discussed in chronological order, one chapter apiece. I focus on this quartet because each member has a distinctive profile, best understood in relation to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society (1667). The resultant compass points illustrate especially well both the opportunities and pitfalls of writing science poetry, at least during the Augustan era.

In an account published just five years after the Royal Society's chartering, Sprat recognized that he wrote “not altogether in the way of a plain History, but somtimes of an Apology,” aiming to counter the “Objections and Cavils” raised by two groups of “Detractors.” “While some over-zealous Divines do reprobate Natural Philosophy, as a carnal knowledge, and a too much minding worldly things,” he explained, “the men of the World, and business on the other side, esteem it meerly as an idle matter of Fancy, and as that which disables us, from taking right measures in humane affairs.” As the phrase “carnal knowledge” might suggest, the Royal Society's founding gave fresh impetus to the sort of grumbling exemplified by an entry that Samuel Butler made in his commonplace book (ca. 1665– 77): “Adam might have liv’d still in Paradice, if he could have been contented, to know no more, then God and Nature had allow’d him.” But the same author in his unfinished [Satyr on the Royal Society] also captures the predominant tenor of antagonism toward this institution, listing among self-evidently absurd investigations “To measure Wind, and weigh the Air.” Swift, Pope and many others both had and created great fun mocking the ludicrous antics of miscellaneous experimenters and collectors of curiosities. The claim that rejecters “of Fancy” proved far more prominent and numerous than “over-zealous Divines” will perhaps seem incredible in light of the sweeping change documented by Richard Westfall: “In 1600, Western civilization found its focus in the Christian religion; by 1700, modern natural viscience had displaced religion from its central position.”