184 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



us as a necessary part of our existence, our natural and inalienable 

 inheritance ; the other is a personal and individual acquisition, slow 

 to come to us, and by no habitual and direct sympathy connecting 

 us with our fellow-beings. The Man of Science seeks truth as a 

 remote and unknown benefactor, he cherishes it and loves it in 

 solitude ; the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join 

 with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and 

 hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all 

 knowledge ; it is the impassioned expression which is in the counte 

 nance of all science ..... Poetry is the first and last of all 

 knowledge it is as immortal as the heart of man. If the labours 

 of the Men of Science should ever create any material revolution, 

 direct or indirect, in our condition, and the impressions which we 

 habitually receive, the Poet will sleep then no more than at pres 

 ent ; he will be ready to follow the steps of the Man of Science, not 

 only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, 

 carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the science it 

 self. The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or 

 the Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the 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 relations 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. If the time should ever come when what is now 

 called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, 

 as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine 

 spirit to aid the transfiguration and will welcome the Being thus 

 produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man. ' ' 10 

 Tennyson, writing out of a period strikingly similar in some 

 respects to the Restoration in that new scientific discoveries were 

 revolutionizing human thought, asked of himself and of all poets, 

 "Is this 



A time to sicken and swoon, 



When Science reaches forth her arms 



To feel from world to world, and charms 



Her secret from the latest moon?" 11 



10 Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1815; cf. also The Prelude. 

 u Tennyson, In Memoriam. 



