138 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



of a first-hand, intimate knowledge. Through all of his verse 

 there is evidence of careful, interested observation and of varied 

 experience. Somerville had the intellectual attitude of the scien- 

 tist combined with the feeling of a poet. 



Into this school of Thomsonian poetry has entered the new scien- 

 tific spirit. It is not claimed that these poets were primarily in- 

 spired by the new science, but clearly enough their habits of mind 

 were in accord with it. Their eyes were opened to see the won- 

 drous things in commonplace life. Interest in bugs and mites was 

 not to be despised by them ; in the sheep-fold, in the kennel, in the 

 orchard, there was the subject-matter of philosophy and poetry. 

 In them was science becoming the handmaiden of literature. 



With Richard Savage's The Wanderer (1729) began that strain 

 of oriental mysticism inspired by the night and the stars. The 

 rapt poet wanders alone in the dark and with feelings of ecstasy, 

 ' ' Sees, round new countless suns, new systems roll ; 

 Sees God in all! and magnifies the whole !""° 

 He is enraptured by the wonderful northern lights, the fleeting 

 comets where "half-circling glories shoot in rays of gold". To 

 "Fancy's eye" these are the "sanguine ensigns" of encountering 

 armies in the sky ; to " the weak vulgar ' ' these are the portents of 

 dreadful visitants; but to the poet, under the influence of the new 

 science, there is awe inspired of beauty. Fear has been cast out 

 .by knowledge. 



' ' The learned-one, curious, eyes it from afar. 

 Sparkling through night, a new illustrious star ! "^^^ 

 To him the colors of the rainbow are no longer an accepted mys- 

 tery but a phenomenon explained by science, yet none the less 

 marvelously beautiful.^^- The great philosophers are not to him 

 fools and knaves but men of transcendent genius; Bacon, Locke, 

 Halley, and Newton are highly praised. This science, "from 

 Liberty sprung", after years of misrepresentation, is at last com- 

 ing into its own, — 



"See Learning range yon broad aetherial plain. 

 From world to world, and God-like Science gain! 



»» Canto I. 

 1" Canto III. 

 i» Canto VL 



