36 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



his widening of tlie physical and intellectual horizon, but "his 

 candid stile". Bacon's style, however, influenced him only in his 

 "Montaigne-like" essays.^^ 



Harvey's physiological discoveries aroused Cowley's admiration 

 which found a somewhat awkward expression in an Ode to Dr. 

 Harvey. There is in these lines a curious attempt to adapt the 

 old classical imagery to these new scientific ideas. The effect is 

 almost grotesque. Harvey's search for truth in nature is compared 

 to the pursuit of Daphne and to Jason's journey after the golden 

 fleece; his great discovery of the circulation of the blood is the 

 capture of a modern Proteus; — "Held the slippery Proteus in 

 chain ".^* The clearest and strongest lines in the poem describe 

 the new process of investigation. — 



"Thus Harvey sought for truth in truth's own book, 



The Creatures, which by God himself was writ; 



And Avisely thought 'twas fit. 



Not to read Comments only upon it, 



But on the Original itself to look",^'^ 

 All in all, it is a poor showing that the new science makes in 

 Cowley's verse. "Where an attempt is made to give poetic ex- 

 pression to the new ideas the lines become awkward and "un- 

 navigable", or else they are conventional, and classical imagery 

 obscures them. No new vision of the heavens has come to him 

 through the telescope; the "crowds of golden globes on high",^^ 

 the milky way, the falling meteors, "gilding the passage as they 

 flie", were all beheld by poets before the advent of the new science. 

 Cowley's mind was fettered by classical and out-worn imagery, 

 but clearly also his imagination was struggling to harmonize that 

 "painful discord" with reason. The sum of his expression of the 

 new philosophy, "the great and only heir of all the Ages", is the 

 encouragement of interest and enthusiasm, a few awkward at- 

 tempts at literary expression, and a scant half dozen new images. 



Three other poets belong in the same group with Cowley. They, 

 too, held over from the old regime and came late to the new point 



» Gosse, Edmund, History of 18th Century Lit., p. 77. 



•* Ode to Dr. Harvey, st. 2. 



»' Ibid. 



*• Cf. Ode to the Royal Society, Clad in White, Reason, Maidenhead. 



