CVI To the Royal Society
Philosophy! the great and only heir
Of all that human knowledge which has been
Unforfeited by man’s rebellious sin,
Though full of years he do appear,
(Philosophy! I say, and call it He, 5
For whatsoe’er the painter’s fancy be,
It a male virtue seems to me)
Has still been kept in nonage till of late,
Nor managed or enjoyed his vast estate.
Three or four thousand years, one would have thought, 10
To ripeness and perfection might have brought
A science so well bred and nursed,
And of such hopeful parts, too, at the first;
But oh! the guardians and the tutors then,
(Some negligent, some ambitious men) 15
Would ne’er consent to set him free,
Or his own natural powers to let him see,
Lest that should put an end to their authority.
That his own business he might quite forget,
They’ amused him with the sports of wanton wit; 20
With the deserts of poetry they fed him,
Instead of solid meats to’ increase his force;
Instead of vigorous exercise they led him
Into the pleasant labyrinths of ever-fresh discourse:
Instead of carrying him to see 25
The riches which do hoarded for him lie
In Nature’s endless treasury,
They chose his eye to entertain
(His curious, but not covetous, eye)
With painted scenes and pageants of the brain. 30
Some few exalted spirits this latter age has shown,
That laboured to assert the liberty
(From guardians who were now usurpers grown)
Of this old minor still, captived Philosophy;
But ’twas rebellion called, to fight 35
For such a long-oppressèd right.
Bacon, at last, a mighty man! arose,
Whom a wise King and Nature chose
Lord Chancellor of both their laws,
And boldly undertook the injured pupil’s cause. 40
Authority, which did a body boast,
Though ’twas but air condensed, and stalked about
Like some old giant’s more gigantic ghost,
To terrify the learnèd rout,
With the plain magic of true reason’s light 45
He chased out of our sight,
Nor suffered living men to be misled
By the vain shadows of the dead:
To graves, from whence it rose, the conquered phantom fled.
He broke that monstrous god which stood, 50
In midst of the orchard, and the whole did claim,
Which with a useless scythe of wood,
And something else not worth a name,
(Ridiculous and senseless terrors!) made
Children and superstitious men afraid. 55
The orchard’s open now, and free:
Bacon has broke that scarecrow deity:
Come, enter all that will,
Behold the ripened fruit, come, gather now your fill!
Yet still, methinks, we fain would be 60
Catching at the forbidden tree;
We would be like the Deity;
When truth and falsehood, good and evil, we
Without the senses’ aid within ourselves would see;
For ’tis God only who can find 65
All nature in his mind.
From words, which are but pictures of the thought
(Though we our thoughts from them perversely drew,)
To things, the mind’s right object, he it brought;
Like foolish birds to painted grapes we flew. 70
He sought and gathered for our use the true;
And when on heaps the chosen bunches lay,
He pressed them wisely the mechanic way,
Till all their juice did in one vessel join,
Ferment into a nourishment divine, 75
The thirsty soul’s refreshing wine.
Who to the life an exact piece would make,
Must not from others’ work a copy take;
No, not from Rubens or Vandyck;
Much less content himself to make it like 80
The ideas and the images which lie
In his own fancy or his memory:
No, he before his sight must place
The natural and the living face;
The real object must command 85
Each judgment of his eye and motion of his hand.
From these, and all long errors of the way,
In which our wandering predecessors went,
And, like the old Hebrews, many years did stray
In deserts, but of small extent, 90
Bacon! like Moses, led us forth at last;
The barren wilderness he passed,
Did on the very border stand
Of the blessed Promised Land,
And from the mountain’s top of his exalted wit, 95
Saw it himself, and showed us it.
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds, and conquer too;
Nor can so short a line sufficient be
To fathom the vast deeps of Nature’s sea: 100
The work he did we ought to admire,
And were unjust if we should more require
From his few years, divided ’twixt the excess
Of low affliction and high happiness:
For who on things remote can fix his sight, 105
That’s always in a triumph or a fight?
From you, great champions! we expect to get
These spacious countries but discovered yet;
Countries where yet, instead of Nature, we
Her images and idols worshipped see: 110
These large and wealthy regions to subdue,
Though Learning has whole armies at command,
Quartered about in every land,
A better troop she ne’er together drew.
Methinks, like Gideon’s little band, 115
God with design has picked out you,
To do these noble wonders by a few.
When the whole host He saw, they are, said He,
Too many to o’ercome for Me:
And now He chooses out his men, 120
Much in the way that He did then:
Not those many, whom He found
Idly extended on the ground,
To drink, with their dejected head,
The stream, just so as by their mouths it fled: 125
No; but those few who took the waters up,
And made of their laborious hands the cup.
Thus you prepared, and in the glorious fight
Their wondrous pattern too you take:
Their old and empty pitchers first they brake, 130
And with their hands then lifted up the light.
Iö! sound too the trumpets here!
Already your victorious lights appear;
New scenes of heaven already we espy,
And crowds of golden worlds on high, 135
Which from the spacious plains of earth and sea
Could never yet discovered be
By sailor’s or Chaldean’s watchful eye.
Nature’s great works no distance can obscure,
No smallness her near objects can secure: 140
You’ have taught the curious sight to press
Into the privatest recess
Of her imperceptible littleness:
You’ have learned to read her smallest hand,
And well begun her deepest sense to understand. 145
Mischief and true dishonour fall on those
Who would to laughter or to scorn expose
So virtuous and so noble a design,
So human for its use, for knowledge so divine.
The things which these proud men despise, and call 150
Impertinent, and vain, and small,
Those smallest things of nature let me know,
Rather than all their greatest actions do.
Whoever would deposèd truth advance
Into the throne usurped from it, 155
Must feel at first the blows of ignorance,
And the sharp points of envious wit.
So when, by various turns of the celestial dance,
In many thousand years
A star, so long unknown, appears, 160
Though heaven itself more beauteous by it grow,
It troubles and alarms the world below,
Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show.
With courage and success you the bold work begin;
Your cradle has not idle been; 165
None e’er but Hercules and you would be
At five years’ age worthy a history:
And ne’er did fortune better yet
The historian to the story fit.
As you from all old errors free 170
And purge the body of Philosophy,
So from all modern follies he
Has vindicated eloquence and wit:
His candid style like a clean stream does slide,
And his bright fancy all the way 175
Does, like the sunshine, in it play;
It does like Thames, the best of rivers, glide,
Where the god does not rudely overturn,
But gently pour, the crystal urn,
And with judicious hand does the whole current guide.
’T has all the beauties Nature can impart, 181
And all the comely dress, without the paint, of Art.
Abraham Cowley.