58 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Amazement should we see it under us like an open Hell, or a wide 

 bottomless Pit ? So deep, and hollow, and vast ; so broken, and con 

 fused, so every way deformed and monstrous. This would ef 

 fectually waken our imagination, and make us enquire how such a 

 thing came in Nature; from what Causes, by what Force or En 

 gines could the Earth be torn in this prodigious Manner? Did 

 they dig the Sea with Spades and carry out the Molds in Hand- 

 baskets?" 139 



Burnet has accomplished these things in his futile attempt to 

 found a new system on the fragments of the old: I. He has 

 shown that new scientific facts can be so infused with imagination 

 as to become poetic. 2. He has secured the effects of Miltonic 

 and Aeschylean imagery out of the solid material of this world. 

 3. He has been led through scientific interest to observe with clear 

 ness and enthusiasm the objects of nature. 



The final assault upon classical authority found its best literary 

 expression in Swift's Tale of a Tub and Battle of the Books. Here 

 again the quarrel reached far beyond the new science. In so far, 

 however, as the ancient scientists are defended against the moderns 

 we are concerned. How Wotton persuaded Dr. Bentley to print 

 his Essay on Phalaris as an appendix to his own Reflections Upon 

 Ancient and Modern Learning is sufficiently familiar. 140 It was this 

 that precipitated the fight for supremacy between the old classical 

 literature and the modern. But another quarrel that began in 

 France between Fontonelle and Perrault on the one hand and 

 Boileau on the other 141 was caught up in England by Sir William 

 Temple, who published in 1690, among other miscellanies, An 

 Essay Upon Ancient and Modern Learning. One part of this 

 Essay was aimed directly against the claims of the new philoso 

 phers for the great progress of modern science both in discoveries 

 and inventions, and particularly against their bold defiance of 

 ancient authority. To this Essay William Wotton made reply, 



188 Ibid. vol. I, p. 163-4. 



140 Dyce, Alex., Works of Richard Bentley, Preface. 



141 See Fontonelle and Perrault, Biographie universelle. Here belongs that remark 

 able man, Pierre Bayle, with his Letter (1682) and his "Learned notes" in the Dictionary 

 (1697). The Letter begins with an attack on Astrology, but quickly passes over into 

 Theology; the notes are a "scientific scrutiny" of history and classical lore. Elton, 

 Oliver, The Augustan Ages, p. 24. 



