ENGLISH LITERATURE AND OTHER SCIENCES 405 



the poet to get his material and refresh his style from the results 

 of scientific discovery. In 1824 Sainte-Beuve noticed a book by 

 Ferdinand Denis, Scenes de la Nature sous les Tropiques, de leur 

 influence sur la poes.ie, intended, as the critic says, to serve 

 poets and to "open new sources for their inspiration." This praise- 

 worthy cause, however, had been for some time the care of sundry 

 English writers who formed a little school of their own, and who, 

 while they failed in their practical ends, did no small service to the 

 cause of a more scientific study of literature. Dissenters by creed, 

 physicians, ministers, and the like by profession, they were cut off 

 from university training, and treated classical traditions with any- 

 thing but respect. Their actually scientific papers 1 gave place now 

 and then to a scientific discussion of literature. To this group be- 

 longs the credit of Aikin's somewhat tiresome essay, On the Appli- 

 cation of Natural History to Poetry; 2 it suggests more modern 

 subjects for the poet and more accurate description for his method. 

 Take the "migration of birds," says Aikin, and the "calabash tree," 

 and " that enormous gigantic serpent of Africa, which a poet might 

 employ with striking effect." Dr. Percivalurges 3 "the alliance of 

 natural history and philosophy with poetry," recommending even a 

 knowledge of medicine. Addison, in his deistic enthusiasm, had long 

 before advised poets to seek inspiration in these things; and even 

 Coleridge seems to have heard advice of this sort, probably from some 

 of his Unitarian friends. At any rate, he attended certain lectures 

 on chemistry in order "to increase his stock of metaphors." But the 

 Ancient Mariner relied on no such expedients; it was honest Erasmus 

 Darwin who made the supreme effort of this school, forgotten now 

 save for one title, the Loves of the Plants. 4 Whatever the scientific 

 poet may do, and he may do much, the poetry of science has not 

 yet become the poetry of poetry. 



It is the scientific spirit in literary studies which claims our atten- 

 tion here. Vico made a foothold for the precise formula and the 

 general principle; but more exact dealings with certain problems of 

 literature had begun before his day. Accuracy of observation, and 

 collection of related facts, took the field primarily in the study of 

 language as means of literary expression. Kircher I suppose him 

 to be the man whom Archbishop Usher, talking with Evelyn in 

 August. IGoo. called a mountebank and cited as instance that the 

 "Italians" of that day "understood but little (ireeke" - Kircher 

 touches this exact method in his Musiirtjin Univcrsalix, a not quite 

 unreadable book; it correlates poetry with song, gives musical 



1 Sen the Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. 



2 Warrington. 1777. 



3 Moral and Literary Dissertations, Warrinffton, 17S4. the sixth essav. 



4 Goethe's Metamorphose dcr Pjlanzni has more to say on the subject: Init it 

 is after all a tour de force. 



