The Classical Silva and the Generic Development of Scientific Writing in Seventeenth-Century England

Abstract

In this paper I propose to explore some aspects of the development of scientific and technical writing in seventeenth- and eighteenth century England, in particular its relation to preexisting literary genres. These generic affiliations comprise numerous strands, including the aphorism, the essay, the georgic, the letter, and the silva.1 The latter form, largely unknown and unpracticed today, will be the primary focus in the discussion that follows. The silva is a genre, a miscellaneous poetic form of classical origin which enjoyed a great vogue in the Renaissance and early eighteenth century. The best-known practitioner of the form in ancient times was the Roman poet Statius, who produced a collection of thirty-two occasional poems en tided Silvae. The Latin word silva literally means wood or forest, but its use as a literary term plays on several metaphorical meanings the word acquired over time, especially pieces of raw and material for construc tion. The sanction the silva provides for literary forms of mixed character and content was to prove of the greatest importance to those who composed scientific treatises or edited and contributed to early scientific journals. One might well ask at the outset why a critical investigation of emergent scientific writing and its genres should focus on a minor classical form practised by a lesser-known poet of Rome's silver age. The simplest answer is that some great innovators in the history of science consciously invoked the silva as a model for their texts and referred to it in their critical reflections on the nature of scientific writing.2 A prominent instance of this is Francis Bacon, whose Sylva Sylvarum: or a Natural History (1627) parades its literary pedigree on its title page. Equally noteworthy is John Evelyn, a founding member of the Royal Society, who published Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest Trees in 1664. As late as 1765, the poet and gentleman agriculturist Walter Harte recom mended the title Sylvae to the youthful Arthur Young for a collection of miscellaneous essays on agriculture he had previously published in the periodical Museum Rusticum. At the same time, the silva enjoyed a revival