306 STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 



For who on things remote can fix his sight, 

 That's alwayes in a Triumph, or a Fight ? " 



Donne, who, like Cowley, indulged in quaint 

 poetical conceits and who founded a new school 

 of poetry, abjuring classical conventions and 

 classical characters, and treating of topics and 

 objects of everyday life, was not afraid of realism. 

 " Upon common objects/' Dr. Johnson tells us, 

 he was " unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle." 

 Time limits us to one quotation : 



" Marke but this flea, and marke in this, 

 How little that which thou deny'st me is 

 It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, 

 And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee." 



Donne did not of course foresee the appalling 

 part that these insects, by the habits he men- 

 tions, play in the spread of such diseases as bubonic 

 plague and many epizootics in animals. 



The dramatists of the Stewart period hardly 

 afford us the help we need in estimating the 

 position occupied by science and by men of 

 science in the world of the seventeenth century. 

 The astrologer and the alchemist were the 

 stock characters of the drama of everyday life, 

 just as the company promoter and the multi- 

 millionaire are now. " The Gentlemen of Trinity 



