With the desserts of poetry they fed him, Instead of vigorous exercise, they led him Into the pleasant labyrinths of ever-fresh discourse; Instead of carrying him to see The riches which do hoarded for him lie In Nature's endless treasury, (His curious but not covetous eye) With painted scenes and pageants of the brain. (From guardians who were now usurpers grown) Bacon at last, a mighty man, arose (Whom a wise king, and Nature, chose, Lord chancellor of both their laws), And boldly undertook the injur'd pupil's cause. Authority-which did a body boast, Though 't was but air condens'd, and stalk'd about, Like some old giant's more gigantick ghost, To terrify the learned rout With the plain magick of true Reason's light He chac'd out of our sight; Nor suffer'd living men to be misled By the vain shadows of the dead; To graves, from whence it rose, the conquer'd phan tom fled. He broke that monstrous God which stood In midst of th' 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 Behold the ripen'd fruit, come gather now your fill! We would be like the Deity } When truth and falsehood, good and evil, we, Without the senses' aid, within ourselves would see; For 't is God only who can find All Nature in his mind. From words, which are but pictures of the thought } Who to the life an exact piece would make, No, not from Rubens or Vandyke; No, he before his sight must place The natural and living face; The real object must command Each judgment of his eye and motion of his hand. From these and all long errors of the way, Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last : The barren wilderness he past; Did on the very border stand Of the blest promis'd land; And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit, Saw it himself, and shew'd 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 depths of Nature's sea. From you, great champions! we expect to get A better troop she ne'er together drew: To do those 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, Much in the way that he did then ; To drink with their dejected head The stream, just so as by their mouths it fled: Thus you prepar'd, and in the glorious fight Which from the spacious plains of earth and sea Nature's great works no distance can obscure, Of her imperceptible littleness! Y' have learn'd to read her smallest hand, Mischief and true dishonour fall on those } } So human for its use, for knowledge so divine. The things which these proud men despise, and call Impertinent, and vain, and small, Those smallest things of nature let me know, So, when, by various turns of the celestial dance, A star, so long unknown, appears, Though heaven itself more beauteous by it grow, Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show. } |