34 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Browne had been thoroughly converted to the new scientific at- 

 titude, and that he must have relinquished many an old theory 

 which could not adjust itself to experience and reason. And yet 

 to the last he clung to certain old beliefs that were rapidly yield 

 ing before the attack of the new science. Concerning astrology he 



wrote ; — "We do not hereby reject a sober regulated astrology 



We do not deny the influence of the stars ".^^ He still held to the 

 Ptolemaic system; — "And first we can not pass over His Provi- 

 dence, in that the sun moveth at all, for if it stood still, and were 

 fixed like the earth, there had been then no distinction of time, 

 either of day or year, of Spring, of Autumn, of Summer, of Win- 

 ter ".^° He continued to believe in omens and portents, and in 

 general evaded the whole Copernican Theory.^^ 



Sir Thomas Browne has been treated with some minuteness be- 

 cause he represents so clearly the struggle between the old and the 

 new beliefs during this transitional period. He was, in the first 

 place, a physician and was brought by his profession into close 

 contact with the new scientific inquiries. In the second place, ho 

 was gifted with imagination and felt an impulse to give literary 

 expression to what he thought and felt. His experience will serve 

 as a type in prose for this early period, — the transition from the 

 old science to the new, the breaking doMTi of vulgar errors such as 

 traditions, superstitions and "romantic stories", and the establish- 

 ing of a new system of truth founded on the two great pillars, 

 experience and reason. 



Across the minds of the poets who were brought into direct con- 

 tact with the new philosophy, there fell the sudden light of the 

 new discoveries. * ' Every atom became a standing miracle ' ' through 

 the lenses of the microscope; and the old heaven and the old earth 

 passed away before the telescope. The old physical imagery grew 

 obsolete; the conceptions of the old science became outworn. In 

 this period, "when the traditions of the ancient faith met in full 

 encounter with the forces of the new philosophy", poetic imagina- 

 tion was struggling to adjust itself to new conditions. This liter- 

 ary phenomenon is illustrated in the work of Cowley, Waller, Den- 



*» Vulgar Errors, vol. II, p. 200. 



»«Ibid. p. 318. 



»Ibid. vol. II, p. 194; vol. II, p. 318. 



