THE NEW SCIENCE AND POETRY 145 



The physician was usually associated with the apothecary as two 

 rogues of a kind. As in comedy, the doctor vaunts the powers he 

 does not possess. The literary men who were in the profession, 

 such as Arbuthnot and Akenside, are silent regarding him. Samuel 

 Garth is satirically resentful of the selfishness shown by the mem- 

 bers of his own professional fraternity. But Blair, a layman, see- 

 ing men and women dying around him in spite of the professed 

 powers of cure, writes defiantly. — 



"Where is thy boasted implements of art? 



nor fly nor insect, 



Nor writhy snake, escaped thy deep research. 

 But why this apparatus ? why this cost ? 

 Tell us, doughty keepers from the grave. 

 Where are thy recipes and cordials now. 

 With the long list of vouchers for thy cures ? 

 Alas ! thou speakest not, — the bold impostor 

 Looks not more silly when the cheat's found out".^^^ 

 Of the scientists themselves the only one to whom the references 

 are consistently laudatory is Newton. Lower, Sloane, Flamsteed, 

 Lister, and Boyle are mentioned rarely. But it is to Newton that 

 science was indebted for much of its dignity. The character of 

 this great man was irreproachable, — indeed, commanded respect 

 and honor. Even the spiteful Pope, who alone dared to cast a 

 slur upon him, said, — 



"Nature and Nature's Laws lay hid in Night; 

 God said. Let Newton be ! and all was Light. ' '^^^ 



IV 



Clearly the new philosophy did not find a ready or a full inter- 

 pretation among the poets. The reasons for this are not readily 

 discovered. In a sense poets are conservative ; the poetic imagina- 

 tion cherishes the idols after they have been disowned by the phil- 

 osophers. The raw, new facts of scientific discovery are not quick- 

 ly surrounded by the necessary associations for a direct poetic 

 expression of emotion. "The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, 

 the Botanist, or the Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the 



i«8Tfte Orave. 



»»Pope, Epitaphs, XII. 



