140 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



"Think, should this curtain of Omniscience rise, 



Think of the sight! and think of the surprise! 



Scenes inconceivable, essential, new, 



Whelm 'd on our soul, and lightning on our view". 142 

 The poetic inspiration of astronomy found its fullest expres 

 sion in Edward Young's Night Thoughts. The poet had left far 

 behind him the satiric contempt of the Universal Passion, al 

 though even yet man is not a noble being. In the sustained and 

 lofty eloquence of this poem, his fellow-beings forgotten, Young 

 finds the new heavens of science a source of genuine poetic fervor. 

 The firmament is for him "the garden of the Diety", 143 the 

 study of which demands a religious spirit. 



"Devotion! daughter of astronomy! 



An undevout astronomer is mad". 144 



Young's primary purpose is to overthrow scepticism and this 

 effort occupies the greater proportion of his work, but at times 

 the poet overpowers the discursive theologian and looks with naked 

 eyes upon "an infinite of floating worlds on yonder azure field", 

 and with the microscope of imagination beholds "these twinkling 

 multitudes of little life". It is in these passages that Young meets 

 the new science and accepts from those whom he before had scorned 

 the gratuitous riches of new ideas. Consciously or unconsciously, 

 also, he accepts their point of view, 



' ' Mankind was sent into the world to see ; 



Sight gives the science needful to their peace". 145 

 Once again has piety led a poet into an appreciation of science. 

 The horizon, inconceivably enlarged by the telescope, has revealed 

 not a god-less universe, as feared at first, but new beauty, new 

 reason for belief in a Creator, new cause to "fall prostrate and 

 adore". "Through the roof of the little theatre on which the 

 drama of man's history had been enacted, men began to see the 

 eternal stars shining in silent contempt upon their petty imagin 

 ings". 146 This inspiring idea dawns upon Young's midnight mus 

 ings. He says of our earth, 



iBk. V, 153-6. 



148 Bk. IX. 



i^Bk. IX. 



"OBk. IX. 



146 Stephens, Leslie, History of English Thought in the 18th Cent. I, 82. 



