only ones who have given evidence of an acquaintance with Whiston's opinions. On the contrary, both in England and on the Continent his Astronomical Principles of Religion and his A New Theory of Earth were widely read and discussed in the course of the eighteenth century. As an indication of the widespread interest in these and other works of his it will suffice to state that Whiston is further referred to, favorably or unfavorably, by writers of such diverse talents and interests as Sterne, James Kirkpatrick, Patrick Cockburn, J. Collyer, Buffon, A. Kästner, Dusch, Wieland, Herder, Lessing, Goethe, Schönaich, and Heyne; also by Sulzer, Bodmer and others both in their correspondence and elsewhere.2 The list could easily be expanded. 3 For Bodmer the two Whistonian works mentioned above proved a most welcome source, and eagerly did he seize upon some of the astronomical theories set forth within their pages. In the circumstances quite apart from his penchant for literary borrowing this was natural enough, since being himself deficient in astronomical lore and nevertheless desiring to account for the Noachian deluge in as plausible a manner as possible, he was perforce dependent upon such information as he could derive from others. Besides Whiston, I may add here, Newton and Sulzer furnished him with ideas in this particular matter. Bodmer, like Whiston, makes the near approach of the comet the physical cause of the Flood by representing the earth as becoming involved in the comet's tail and atmosphere. Though this Cf. Sterne: Tristram Shandy, II, 9; Kirkpatrick: The Sea Piece, p. 137; Cockburn: Enquiry into the Truth and Certainty of the Mosaic Deluge, pp. 247 ff., 253, 299, 308 f., 311, 325, 332; Collyer's English version of the Noah, p. xv and elsewhere; Buffon: Histoire Naturelle, second edition 1750, vol. 1, p. 66 and elsewhere; Kästner: Gedicht von dem · Kometen; Dusch: Vermischte Gedichte, p. 238, note; Wieland: Die Natur der Dinge, v, 483; Herder: Werke (edited by Suphan), vol. 13, p. 471 and elsewhere; Lessing: Schriften (edited by Muncker), vol. 5, p. 207 f.; Goethe: Werke (Weimar edition), IV, 108; Schönaich: Neologisches Wörterbuch, p. 291; Heyne: Werke (exact reference has been mislaid). * Price in his English-German Literary Influences makes no mention of Whiston. 'Whiston's view was attacked from several quarters, notably by Patrick Cockburn in his Enquiry into the Truth and Certainty of the Mosaic Deluge (London, 1750). point is of sufficient importance to be referred to at the outset, I shall not here cite the corresponding English and German passages which deal with the parallel ideas, since I shall, a few pages further on, have occasion to return to this matter in another connection. When in the Noah, page 192, we read: Also sehet ihr diesen (sc. Kometen), vielleicht des zornigen Gottes Lange verordneten Knecht, der kommt den Erdball zu strafen,“ we note the resemblance with the following passage in Whiston: 5 ... [The comets] seem fit to cause vast mutations in the planets, particularly in bringing on them deluges ; and so seem capable of being the instruments of divine vengeance upon the wicked inhabitants of the worlds." Among other factors it was, no doubt, such a note of confidence as we meet in a passage like the following that determined Bodmer to turn to Whiston for specific hints during the execution of the ambitious task which he had set himself as the author of the Noah. In the same work of Whiston we read: Indeed the solution of this most remarkable phenomenon of an universal deluge, with its most numerous and eminent circumstances, as described in the Mosaic history, which till this age could no way be solved in a natural way. is now, I think, become so plain, evident, and certain from the phenomena of comets, with their atmospheres and tails, now fully discovered, that I own I cannot but be myself very much surprised and satisfied with it, and equally surprised and satisfied with that strong confirmation it affords to the sacred records, in one of the least probable, or most exceptionable branches thereof." To the volume, I may here state, there is appended a chapter of some fourteen pages entitled The Cause of the Deluge Demonstrated. This, however, need not concern us at present, as we shall have occasion to refer to it later. Unless otherwise indicated the passages from the Noah are quoted from the edition of 1765. • Cf. his Astronomical Principles of Religion (1717), page 23. It is the popular notion that comets are presages of evil which Bayle pronounced a remnant of pagan superstition. Cf. his Pensées sur la comète, Section LXXIX. 7 Cf. Astronomical Principles, page 146 f. Turning to Whiston's larger work, A New Theory of the Earth, of which Bodmer likewise availed himself, we come, on page 373, upon the following passage: .. if we consider that the outward regions of its [sc. a comet's] atmosphere are plain vapors . . . and that withal such a comet is capable of passing so close by the body of the earth as to involve it in its atmosphere and tail for some time, and leave prodigious quantities of the same condensed and expanded vapors upon its surface; we shall see that a deluge of waters is by no means an impossible thing. This passage left its imprint upon the following lines in the Noah. Diese verheerende Flut liegt vielleicht in dem Schweife des Sternes, A similar, likewise reminiscent passage reads: (Noah, p. 200.) Damals war jene Hälfte der Erd' unglücklich genötigt, (Noah, p. 228.) Bodmer for these two passages not only accepted a suggestion from Whiston but, it is interesting to note, did so against a friend's positive advice as we shall now see. On September 27th, 1749 Sulzer in a letter to Bodmer wrote: "Ich komme noch einmal auf Ihren Noah. . . . Neulich habe ich in Whistons New Theory of the Earth gelesen." And, to be sure, after referring to a certain passage therein he adds: "Da die Sache sehr wahrscheinlich gemacht wird, so hätte diese Sage Ihnen vielleicht auch dienen können." 8 But later he cautions his friend thus: Was den Kometen anlangt, so würd' ich Ihnen sehr davon abraten, wenn Sie nicht ein Gedicht schrieben; und auch in dem Gedichte selbst bitte ich Sie, nur nicht alles von Whiston anzunehmen. . . . Sie können ... unmöglich den Kometen der Erde ganz nahe kommen lassen; denn wenn er infra regionem lunarem kommt, so muss er entweder mit der Erde in Einen Klumpen zusammengehn, oder er musz ein Trabant der Erde, oder Cf. Körte: Briefe der Schweizer Bodmer, Sulzer, Geszner, p. 113 f. diese ein Trabant des Kometen werden; die einmal etablierten Gesetze der Bewegung bringen dies notwendig mit sich." Though, as we have seen, Sulzer's well-meant advice was not heeded, his dissuasive letter itself, it is interesting to note, contributed suggestions to the following two passages in the Noah, first Von weit entlegenen Welten Kam auf dem Rückzug ein glühender Stern ins Reich des Arcturus, (Noah, p. 71 f.) and secondly, the passage where Bodmer, referring to the struggle between the comet's atmosphere and the earth, says mit Arbeit und Müh rang jedes von ihnen (Noah, p. 230.) On page 10 of the appendix to his Astronomical Principles, already referred to above, Whiston quotes from Halley as follows: No comet has hitherto threatened the earth with a nearer appulse than that of 1680. For by calculation I find . . . that comet was not above a semidiameter of the sun . . . to the northwards of the way of the earth. At which time, had the earth been there, the comet would, I think, have had a parallax equal to that of the moon. . . . .. But what might be the consequences of so near an appulse or of a contact, or lastly of a collision 10 In another letter dealing with the question of the comet (cf. Briefe der Schweizer, p. 124) Sulzer writes to Bodmer ". . . die Schweife der Kometen (sind) so subtil, dasz man gar die Sterne dadurch sehen kann,” whereof there is obviously a reminiscence in Bodmer's "und siehe! da stand der Komete An dem Horizont auf . . und hinter ihm flammten Nordens Gestirne durch sein durchsichtig Geschlepp unverfinstert." (Noah, p. 199.) Thus, though Sulzer, upon reading the Noah, could not fail to note that his warning against certain ideas of Whiston had gone unheeded, he would nevertheless have the satisfaction of finding a number of his own suggestions incorporated in the epic. Cf. also note 12 below. of these celestial bodies (which are none of them impossible) I leave to be discussed by the philosophers. Here Bodmer found, apart from a general suggestion, also a specific one which, to suit his purpose, he modified as follows: Als der Komet den Grenzen der Erde so nahe gekommen, (Noah, p. 229.) "The other main cause of the Deluge," Whiston writes in the New Theory,11" was the breaking up of the fountains of the great abyss, or the causing such chaps and fissures in the upper earth, as might permit the waters contained in the bowels of it, when violently pressed and squeezed upwards, to ascend, and so add to the quantity of those which the rains produced." 12 In the Noah we come upon the following reminiscence of this passage: in einer durchgängigen Sündflut, Die der Herr aus den Kammern der Tief' in die Höhe gezogen, In attempting to account for the "draining of the waters of the Deluge off the surface of the earth," Whiston declares: 13 "As soon therefore as the waters ceased to ascend upwards through the breaches, they must, to be sure, descend downwards by the same." This passage Bodmer elaborates for his purpose as follows: Durch die Künste der Allmacht, die ihm bekannt sind, geschahe, Tat unzählige Mündungen auf, um sie in die Klüfte 11 Cf. p. 376. (Noah, p. 312.) 13 We meet a somewhat similar passage in Sulzer's letter to Bodmer of January 26th, 1750: " "Wenn Sie auch setzten, dasz die Erde dort eingesunken, so können Sie das unterirdische Wasser mit heftiger Gewalt ausbrechen lassen." (Cf. Körte: Briefe der Schweizer, p. 125.) Sulzer's "dasz die Erde dort eingesunken " probably suggested Bodmer's "die eingefallnen Schalen der Erde" in a passage cited below. 13 Cf. New Theory, p. 399. |