ESSAY-REVIEW 



THE SISTER OP SCIENCE, by Sir Ronald Ross: on 



Sonnets and Poems, by John Masefield. [Pp. 52.] (The Garden City 

 Press, Ltd. Price $s. 6d.) And 



A Book of Homage to Shakespeare, 1916, edited by Israel Gollancz, 

 Litt.D. [Pp. xxvi + 553.] (Oxford University Press. Price ?is. net.) 



In spite of our Gradgrinds and Grammarians, Science and 

 Poetry are twin sisters, whose office it is to seek and to sum. 

 Twice blessed he who is inspired by both ; for the man of 

 science should be a poet and the poet a man of science — not 

 prepensely perhaps, but in caste. The one sister gives the 

 flame without which seeking is seldom successful ; and the 

 other, such reality as will keep the mind from losing itself in the 

 clouds. Thus the goddesses walk ever hand in hand — pure 

 spirits lifting the mind of man, or, indeed, making it. 



On Easter morning 191 3 (Greek style) I was in the Valley 

 of the Muses on Mount Helikon, among the tumbled columns 

 and ruined pavements which are all that remain of their famous 

 temple. The birthplace of Hesiod was on one side ; and from 

 the summit of the hill on the other side ran Hippocrene, past the 

 deserted ruins and through the uninhabited valley — the stream 

 which flowed from the hoof-stroke of Pegasus ; and the twin 

 peaks of Parnassus appeared between certain clefts of the 

 mountain. There, in the old days, I thought, men were wise 

 enough to worship, not this Muse or another, but all the Muses ; 

 for their temple was one, and, really, the worship of them is 

 one. . . . After all, polytheism is the true faith. Let us there- 

 fore not sink to the condition of the present monotheistic occu- 

 pants of that divine valley : huge fat black people, grunting 

 after the roots of the earth ; or lean, long-eared eloquent people, 

 braying their wisdom at the eternal hills ; or great tortoises 

 sunning themselves into life upon the broken marbles of the 

 past. Let the lovers of art spare roses for the altar of science, 

 and the lovers of science lilies for the shrines of the arts ; and 

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