Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.

To the Royal Society

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)

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,

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 manag’d or enjoy’d his vast estate:

Three or four thousand years one would have thought,

To ripeness and perfection might have brought

A science so well bred and nurst,

And of such hopeful parts too at the first.

But, oh, the guardians and the tutors then,

(Some negligent, and some ambitious men)

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;

With the desserts 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

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.

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, captiv’d philosophy;

But ’twas rebellion call’d to fight

For such a long-oppressed 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 injur’d pupil’s cause.

Authority, which did a body boast,

Though ’twas but air condens’d and stalked about,

Like some old giant’s more gigantic ghost,

To terrify the learned rout

With the plain magic of true reason’s light,

He chased out of our sight;

Nor suffer’d living man to be misled

By the vain shadows of the dead:

To graves, from whence it rose, the conquer’d phantom 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,

(Both vast for shew, yet neither fit

Or to defend, or to beget;

Ridiculous and senseless terrors!) made

Children and superstitious men afraid.

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

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

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;

He sought and gather’d 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,

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 Van Dyke;

Much less content himself to make it like

Th’ ideas and the images which lie

In his own fancy, or his memory.

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,

In which our wandering predecessors went,

And, like th’ old Hebrews, many years did stray

In deserts but of small extent,

Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last;

The barren wilderness he past;

Did on the very border stand

Of the blest promised 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:

The work he did we ought t’ admire,

And were unjust if we should more require

From his few years, divided ’twixt th’ excess

Of low affliction, and high happiness.

For who on things remote can fix his sight,

That’s always in a triumph, or a fight?

From you, great champions, we expect to get

These spacious countries but discover’d yet;

Countries where yet instead of nature, we

Her images and idols worship’d see:

These large and wealthy regions to subdue,

Though learning has whole armies at command,

Quarter’d about in every land,

A better troop she ne’er together drew.

Methinks, like Gideon’s little band,

God with design has pick’d out you,

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:

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:

No, but those few who took the waters up,

And made of their laborious hands the cup.

Thus you prepar’d; and in the glorious fight

Their wondrous pattern too you take;

Their old and empty pitchers first they brake,

And with their hands then lifted up the light.

Io! Sound too the trumpets here!

Already your victorious lights appear;

New scenes of heaven already we espy,

And crowds of golden worlds on high;

Which from the spacious plains of earth and sea

Could never yet discover’d be,

By sailors’ or Chaldeans’ watchful eye.

Nature’s great works no distance can obscure

No smallness her near objects can secure;

Y’have taught the curious sight to press

Into the privatest recess

Of her imperceptible littleness.

Y’have learn’d to read her smallest hand,

And well begun her deepest sense to understand.

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

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 usurp’d from it,

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,

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:

None e’er but Hercules and you could be

At five years’ age worthy a history.

And ne’er did fortune better yet

Th’ historian to the story fit:

As you from all old errors free

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

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,

And all the comely dress, without the paint, of art.