56 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



efficiency of these Exceptions''/^^ But the question of its validity- 

 has long since passed and its influence has been swallowed up in 

 that of Paradise Lost, against which Huxley found it necessary 

 to direct his attack instead of against the Mosaic account. Here 

 it needs only to be pointed out that another literary mind has 

 been brought into close contact with these new scientific ideas; 

 here is another genius who has devoted his energy to a losing cause, 

 and his attempts to adjust the accepted beliefs to the new knowl- 

 edge, to harmonize the "painful discord" between imagination and 

 reason, have found literary expression. 



Burnet, like Glanvil, found new possibilities for literary ex- 

 pression in the new learning. Frequently he was as sublime as 

 Milton himself, but his imagery belonged to this earth; he dealt 

 with the "sublunary world" which he saw. In his hypothesis the 

 earth was assumed to have arisen out of "original chaos", so that 

 he could keep himself firmly planted on the solid ground. He at- 

 tempted to give a strictly scientific account, ' ' always guided by rea- 

 g^jj" 133 g^^ there were certain points where he could not restrain 

 his aroused imagination. In the description of the deluge there is 

 such a passage ; ' ' Thus the Flood came to its height ; and 'tis not 

 easy to represent to ourselves this strange Scene of Things, when 

 the Deluge was in its Fury and Extremity; when the Earth was 

 broken and swallowed in the Abyss, whose raging Waters rose 

 higher than the Mountains, and fill'd the Air with broken Waves, 

 with an Unusual Mist, and with thick Darkness, so as Nature 

 seem'd to be in a second Chaos; and upon this Chaos did ride 

 the distressed Ark, that bore the small remains of Mankind. No 

 sea was ever so tumultuous as this. Nor is there anything in pres- 

 ent Nature to be compared with the Disorder of these Waters; 

 All the Poetry, and all the Hyperboles that are used in the Des- 

 cription of storms and raging Seas, were literally true in this, if 

 not beneath it."^'^* 



To him ' ' the greatest Objects of Nature were the most pleasing 

 to behold". Next to the great concave of the heavens, "there is 

 nothing that I look upon with more Pleasure than the wide Sea 



^'<^ Sacred Theory, vol. II, p. 440. 



i»Ibid. vol. I, p. 122. 



^^ Sacred Theory, vol, I, p. 122. 



