298 



not be familiar,* so Milton was not ashamed to understand 

 astronomy, which knowledge he has in some passages 

 turned to much account. Nor were philosophers unstudi- 

 ous of, or inattentive to, the graces of diction, so Raleigh 

 was a poet. But from that time in our language, these two 

 departments of intellect seem to have been at feud with 

 each other, to their mutual injury. The consequence of 

 this has been, that the literature of the day deals with 

 passion and not with knowledge, and that science is 

 loosing its attractions and becoming repulsive and stern. 

 To show that is not too fanciful a supposition let us no- 

 tice a few of the exhibitions of this contrariety. 



In an English Review of a few years back, which I 

 am not able now to refer to. Professor Playfair is com- 

 plimented for having been able to write elegantly on an 

 abstruse subject; a compliment which the Professor cer- 

 tainly deserved, but not for the reason that an abstruse 

 subject may not always be clearly explained. We all 

 remember Butler's account of the elephant in the moon, 

 said to have been discovered at one of the first meetings 

 of the Royal Society, a lampoon which proves nothing 

 but the poet's ignorance of the science of optics. The 

 moon story of New-York is still fresh in our recollection, 

 and was upon the whole a much better affair than that 

 got up by the author of Hudibras. But of heavier au- 

 thors the sarcasms upon science have been just as de- 

 cidedly pronounced. Gibbon, who devoted some of his 

 earlier years to mathematics and philosophy, congratu- 

 lates himself that he had escaped from such uncongenial 

 pursuits before his mind had been hardened by the habit 

 of rigid demonstration so destructive to the finer feelings 

 of moral evidence." It is nevertheless, not impossible 

 that Gibbon may have derived some of the piquancy of 

 his style from the early studies of which he speaks so 

 disrespectfully, or that by a more continued application 

 to them his moral susceptibilities might not have been 

 rendered more acute than th ey were. To be convinced 

 * See Note 17. 



