THE REVIVAL OF SCIENCE 103 



practically useless" yet he used his great 

 talents, his high position, to enforce upon the 

 world a new method of wrenching from nature 

 her secrets and, with tireless patience and un- 

 tiring passion, impressed upon his contem- 

 poraries the conviction that there was "a new 

 unexplored Kingdom of Knowledge within 

 the reach and grasp of man, if he will be 

 humble enough, and patient enough, and 

 truthful enough to occupy it." 



The most sublime of English poets survived 

 our period by a few years. A comparison 

 between Dante's and Milton's great epics af- 

 fords some indication of the advance in knowl- 

 edge of this world and in the outlook on a 

 future state which measures the progress made 

 between the Middle Ages and the seventeenth 

 century. As a poet (and, indeed, often in 

 other activities of his life) Milton stood above, 

 or at least, outside, the stream of tendency of 

 the times through which he lived. Yet, in his 

 poems (not in his political tractates the most 

 ephemeral of all literature) we see effects of 

 the rising tide of science on literature. 



Milton, one must never forget and indeed, 



