VILLARS,
Sept. 1, 1720
SIR: —
The ladies at Villars are quite spoiled by reading your “Treatise of the Plurality of Worlds.” We could have wished it had rather been by your “Pastorals,” for we would much rather have seen them shepherdesses than philosophers. They spend time in contemplating the stars which they might employ to much greater advantage; and as our taste is regulated by theirs, love for them has made us all turn natural philosophers.
Each night on beds by nature made,
Whose verdure trees o’erarching shade,
Which seem by nature’s self designed,
For meetings of another kind;
We out of order put the skies,
Venus seems Mercury to our eyes;
For we no telescopes have here
To bring the wandering planets near,
But to behold them we apply
Our opera-glasses to the eye.
As we pass the whole night in taking a view of the stars, we very much neglect the sun, to which we rarely pay a visit till he has run one-half of his course. We were informed a while ago, that he looked bloody the whole morning: that afterward, without the air being any way obscured, he, by insensible degrees, was deprived both of his magnitude and his light; this information we did not receive till five o’clock in the evening. We thereupon looked out at the window, and we took the sun for the moon on account of his paleness. We have no doubt you have seen the same phenomenon at Paris.
On this occasion, sir, we address you as our master. You know how to make those things pleasing which are scarcely made intelligible by other philosophers, and such a man as you was necessary in France, and indeed, in all Europe, to inform the literati, and inspire the ignorant with a taste for the sciences.
Say, Fontenelle, who took thy flight
With rapid wings above all height,
Who with Dædalean art could pierce
Each corner of the universe;
And many spheres immortal view,
Seen by St. Paul as well as you,
Where beauties never seen before
He saw, but of them says no more.
Of the sun, which you know so well,
Can you not mortals something tell?
Why did he red as blood appear
In entering on his career?
Why did he tremble and turn pale?
Why lessen? why did his light fail?
Upon a sight so full of dread
What by Boulainvilliers is said?
To many nations will he cry
That their destruction’s drawing nigh.
Shall we behold incursions new,
Edicts or war’s dire terrors view?
Shall imposts over France increase,
Or branches of revenue cease?
When once upon the verdant plain
You tuned your reed, a simple swain,
Had you beheld the god of day,
A change so great to view display,
You’d thought some change must then have rise
In your nymph’s heart as in the skies.
But since your Phœbus left the plains
And all the rural joys of swains,
For those important truths made known
By Euclid and by Varignon;
Since you at length have laid aside
The ribbons, Celadon’s gay pride,
To take the astrolabe in hand,
You’ll speak what few can understand:
You’ll puzzle us with calculation,
Talk of refraction and equation.
But if you graciously should deign
These difficulties to explain,
Whenever you the truth make known,
Use the poetic style alone;
For us bright fancy more engages
Than five score deeply learned pages.
Feb. 21, 1747
PARIS,
Signor Algarotti
Algarotti, Signor