134 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



and more as the poem progresses and the poet less and less. "When 

 the circulation of the blood is completed, he takes up the process 

 of digestion and proposes to ''pursue this theme as far as the 

 learned observers know".^^® "What Blackmore understood of the 

 new science he appreciated. To this he gave such poetic expres- 

 sion as lie could. The spirit of the man was appreciatively willing, 

 but he was poetically weak. 



Pomfret, in Reason and The Divine Attributes, grows enthus- 

 iastic over the extended bounds of the sky. In the former poem 

 there is a vigorous expression of an idea fundamental to the new 

 scientific attitude : 



''Does not that foolish deference we pay 

 To men that liv'd long since, our passage stay. 

 What odd, preposterous paths at first we tread, 

 And learn to walk by stumbling on the dead ! ' '"'' 



In the religious lyrics of Isaac "Watts there is generally the 

 astronomy of the Old Testament scriptures. The Creator is repre- 

 sented as sitting on "an awful throne", "whirling the planets 

 round the poles ".^^^ The "tuneful spheres roll through the 

 heavens"; the sun moves round the earth. And yet, even here, 

 there is the new spirit, the new conception of space: — "earth's but 

 an atom". In Free Philosophy, especially, there is the new spirit 

 of inquiry. "I hate these shackles of the mind", he declares, 

 "Thoughts should be as free as fire and wind". Clearly, then, 

 not even this pious man could escape some tincture of the new 

 philosophy. 



The Ecstasy, by John Hughes, is after the same manner. It is 

 a poem filled with unbounded enthusiasm for the Newtonian dis- 

 coveries. The poet sends his spirit through vast space, beholds 

 the system of the world as Newton described it, draws near enough 

 to the moon to identify her lakes, mountains, and groves, looks 

 back to discover the earth itself turned to a moon, "her seas shad- 

 owy spots, her land a milky white". He inspects Jove's four 

 moons, Saturn's rings, — 



"And other suns, that rule by other laws, 

 Hither their bordering realms extend". 



"«p. 373. 

 "■^ Reason. 

 "8 Jo Mr. C. and S. Fleetwood. 



