146 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should 

 ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the rela 

 tions under which they are contemplated by the followers of these 

 respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to 

 us as enjoying and suffering beings". 170 The comic and satiric 

 representation of the new philosopher as a foolish, whimsical be 

 ing, pursuing a kind of knowledge that was not "manifestly and 

 palpably material ' ' to the lives of men, no doubt delayed a genuine 

 appreciation of the value of scientific work. 



Furthermore, the poetry of this period is conspicuously emo 

 tionless. Poets looked into their heads, not into their hearts, when 

 they wrote. They could not, therefore, be expected to understand 

 and interpret "the deepest convictions of their age". This is the 

 obvious reason that the great bulk of the verse of this time has 

 become a dead letter; for "the imaginative literature of an age 

 must express the genuine feelings of that age, or it will perish 

 still-born". 171 And, finally, there is always a temperamental ele 

 ment of discord, among the poets, between imagination and the 

 scientific spirit. 



170 Wordsworth, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1815. 



171 Stephens, Leslie, Hist, of Eng. Thought in 18th Cent., vol. II, p. 348. 



