'There is nothing more simple. The vision of the poet is slow, long-drawn out, gradual in development, glorious. The vision of the man of science is instantaneously complete. The visions of "Allegro" and "Penseroso" dawned gradually on Milton. The images did not all rush in upon him at one moment. Do you not agree with me?'
'Yes. He thought of one and then he thought of another. Then he put them all together in a treasure-house, and made a present of a treasure-house to each member of posterity down to the last heart-beat of the last man.'
Osborne's face flushed as his heart rose up in gratitude to the poet.
'_But_,' said Parkinson, with strong emphasis on the word, 'when that intellectual giant, Newton, sat in his garden at Woolsthorpe watching from the earth, saw the great arm of gravitation dart his apples, he the great hand seize the apples and drag them to the ground. Then he saw other arms stretching from satellite to planet, from planet to sun, from sun to sun, until the whole firmament was traversed by arms, and all the heavenly bodies swung in secure order. _After_ this vision he took up mathematics, and optics, and astronomy, to prove the vision true; but he _saw_ before he tried to prove.'
'This is new to me--very new to me,' said Osborne, out of a profound reverie.
'I have not the poetic instinct; I can never fly, I must walk along on the sober earth. If I had the poetic faculty I should invent theories, discover facts.'
'The greatest. I think he was the most marvellous philosopher the world ever saw. Bacon invented a noble philosophy, which some men were afraid of at the time--which some men are afraid of yet. Newton invented modern science, which some men were afraid of then--which no man is afraid of now, except--'
'Poets.' Osborne finished the sentence for him.
'Poets! Why should poets be afraid of modern science? Believe me, there was never a greater mistake than to fancy modern science can hurt poetry. In fact, it is opening up new fields for the poet. What gigantic solar landscapes are unfolded to view! Fancy--for you have the temperament of a poet, if you have not the art--fancy gold and iron now blazing in the sun, and mountains of flaming hydrogen springing two thousand miles into space! Fancy the history of the world as now read by science, compared with the history of the world read by our grandfathers! Why, sir, they lived on the crust of the earth, with only a day and a night of history revealed to them, with souls that only wondered at the stars, and eyes that saw no further into earth than a mole will burrow. In one hundred years we have cloven the earth in two, and spelled out of its rind the syllables of its prodigious history. With the prism we have built scaffolding among the fixed stars, to serve for those who come after us as platforms of observation. Do you recollect those familiar words spoken by Newton, not long before he laid down the wisdom and knowledge of eighty-three years in the grave? "I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble, or a prettier shell, than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Newton was right. The vulgar call this a piece of sublime modesty. Not at all. It was sublimer than any mere personal human virtue; it was truth. Reverting to what I said a few moments ago about the poetic faculty and science, are not these words I have quoted poetical?'