142 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the new ideas, and piety first met astronomy on friendly terms. 

 Slowly the new science was remoulding the poet's world; the 

 humble creatures of earth were raised into dignity; and imagina- 

 tion fii-st began to discover the marvelous that lurks in the common- 

 place. While appreciation is far less in bulk than satire, there 

 is apparent a sure indication of the new attitude that was to come, 

 when ' ' the remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or the 

 Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the Poet's art as any 

 upon which it can be employed"/^" 



III 



Another form in which science, old and new, enters into litera- 

 ture is in allusion and imagery. Obviously this is not a fair means 

 to prove its rejection or to test the progress of its acceptance, for 

 the out-worn figures cling to poetry long after belief has fallen 

 away, but the gradual disappearance of the old and the steady 

 growth of the new can be traced with tolerable clearness. This 

 literary phenomenon will be illustrated here. 



One finds the outgrown belief of the old science running through 

 the years. References to healing by sympathy extend from Sir 

 Kenelm Digby to Pope;^^^ the malignant stars shed their astrolo- 

 gical influence through the same period ;^^^ and the sun moves 

 round the earth even in Pope's Pastorals}^^ The "lawless comets" 

 and the "meteor's fire" shine in countless lines; no poet failed to 

 call attention to this striking natural phenomenon. But gradual- 

 ly men lost their superstitious fear, and when mathematics cal- 

 culated the comets' course and the telescope identified them as 

 stars, the old belief wholly died away, — 



"Till from a comet she a star did rise. 

 Not to affright, but please, our wondering eyes"."* 

 The music of the spheres was most difficult to silence, and sounded 

 on long after belief had faded from the minds of both poet and 



150 Wordsworth, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1815. 



151 Barker, Jane, To my Uncle C — , To Mr. C. B. Congreve, Epigram; Pope, Pas- 

 torals, Wks., vol. I, p. 28. 



1® Wycherley, To a Handsome Woman, On Chloris Rowe, The Fair Penitent, 

 Act I, 8C. 1.; Lady Winchelsea, The Hurricane, etc. 



I's* Cf . Blackmore, Prince Arthur; Shenstone, Elegy, XI; Pope, Pastorals, vol. 

 I, p. 23. 



^^ Lee, Nathaniel, Panegyric on J. Dryden's Plays. 



