Meditation on this passage must persuade any one that Keats had grasped the principle that is the foundation of all liberal views, the belief that there is, through all the sin and sorrow and accident of life, a determining purpose, a forward progress, a developing perfection. This advance is due to an inherent order in the universe, a cosmic harmony:

'tis the eternal law

That first in beauty should be first in might.

What Keats meant here by beauty is shown in the specific characterization of the gods overthrown and those who overthrew them. Saturn's sheer might lacks beauty, because he is too imperiously personal, self-absorbed; Hyperion's strength and elemental energy appeal too much to physical dread and awe, it is not yet the appeal of glorious intelligence and fine appreciation of values for the spirit. Both gods fail from excess of egotism and from lack of thinking. They have not learned to keep the balance between emotion and intellect, between personal ardor and generous objectivity. Oceanus however, has

that severe content

Which comes of thought and musing,

and having seen his own dispossessor, "with such a glow of beauty in his eyes" is content to yield his own prestige, his all to this being with such potency of appeal to mind and sentiment. One asks, in what periods of history has spiritual growth been promoted by Beauty and one thinks at once of the Age of Pericles, the Renaissance, the period of Romanticism. In each epoch, the study of beauty, the effort to achieve beauty is undeniably the chief provocative source of that powerful development which makes each of these ages one of glory and lasting influence.

The interpretation of beauty from the lips of Oceanus is received with prophetic assent by his daughter Clymene," who describes her sight of the radiant young Apollo whose music transcends her own and preludes the coming of a beauty as yet unknown. Her sensitiveness and delicacy of perception are contrasted with the ponderous uproar of the crude and unconvinced Enceladus, a vigorously symbolized figure, the god of the volcano, who still depends upon

Ovid made Clymene and Apollo parents of Phaeton. Did Keats have this in mind?

physical force to achieve results, and who reminds the Council that Hyperion is still in power. Hyperion advancing in the dawn reveals by his light the dismay of the Titan forces who in turn see even the powerful god of light dejected and silent, before impending surrender to an unknown power.

The third book has not the sustained grandeur of style found in the other two books, but in theme is as arresting. This is a picture of young Apollo, god of light, music, and poetry; here Keats is endeavoring to give a central interpretation of the origin, the growth, and the destiny of a poet. Apollo's skill in melody has already been described by Clymene. This skill must belong to the poet, must be his most obvious and first remarked characteristic. Second, the poet's initial source of inspiration is Nature, considered in lines 32 to 41. But Nature, alone, is insufficient to inspire great verse; the sentient, the animate is the poet's chief domain. He must

In fearless yet in aching ignorance

long for acquaintance with the deeper aspect of humanity's history; and from intent study of Mnemosyne (Memory, mother of the Muses), learn

A wondrous lesson in thy silent face:

Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.

Names, deeds, grey legends, dire events, rebellions,

Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,

Creations and destroyings, all at once

Pour into the wide hollows of my brain

And deify me.

A few lines farther on Keats paused. He said in a Letter, Sept. 22, 1819: "I have given up Hyperion-there are too many Miltonic inversions in it." Another reason for his pausing may be that he recognized the fact that he had become expository rather than dramatic, that he had turned to analysis. He had, in the speech of Oceanus, expressed his motif; to follow that monologue by scenes intended to give dramatic verification of the philosophy of Oceanus would have been a severe anti-climax. The Fall of Hyperion is even more devoted to an attempted study of the poet's place in life. The drama of love and change and ascendancy of beauty could not be achieved by Keats in a fashion that satisfied his now keenly critical mood. Disease impaired his powers, and he abandoned both forms of Hyperion.

Incomplete as the poem is, it nevertheless will endure as long as men seek to penetrate the mystery of their immortality. Keats has interpreted, in magnificent figures, the impotence of resistance against the laws of eternal growth. Tennyson balanced, "Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos!" somewhat fearfully, giving his adherence to the second, but Keats, in the splendor of his youth, had no hesitation in declaring, with all the vigor of his "imaginative will," his faith in the Principle of Beauty.

Wellesley College.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY

SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT

BY ALMONTE C. HOWELL

I

To the average student of literature Sir Thomas Browne is known chiefly as a writer of sonorous latinized sentences about death and urns and other curious and out-of-the-way subjects. A host of critics have written on his style, and traced his influence on the prose of the succeeding centuries, even down to the time of Stevenson. As an antiquarian and as a stylist, there are accounts enough; but to put him down merely as a stylist, or as a collector of urns and coins, is to give but a partial account of his versatile genius; we should also realize his enormous curiosity, the range of his interest, his enthusiasm for the New Science, and the eager and earnest scepticism which he shows in his attempts to combat error and establish truth.

His interests were as wide as those of the Royal Society itself. Later in his life, when it was founded, he manifested a keen interest in all of its work,2 though he never seems to have been a member. In his most important scientific work, the Vulgar Errors, he attempts to establish the truth concerning hundreds of popular beliefs ranging through the animal, vegetable, mineral, and human kingdoms, and discusses fallacies, as he says, "Cosmographical, geographical and historical." In his writings he shows an acquaintance with physics, chemistry, mineralogy, zoology, botany, geography, cosmography, astronomy, meteorology, philology, medicine, and anatomy, besides an insight into historical research and an enormous reading knowledge of the classics, the medievals and the writers of his own time. He was a collector of the rare and curious in art, in nature, and even in the realms of superstition and error. In antiquarian matters, he was looked up to as an

1 More, Paul Elmer, “Shelburne Essays," VII Series, has just such a paper, though he does touch on the thought-content of Browne's Vulgar Errors. Lytton Strachey has a very typical paper in "Books and Characters," which goes to great lengths to show Browne's latinizing tendency. In several of his letters to Edward he mentions the Transactions of the Royal Society.

authority. Even alchemy, astrology, and witchcraft were not beyond the realm of his interests. In this he was not greatly different from the majority of scientific men of his time, for the seventeenth century scientist was seldom able to differentiate the truly scientific from the pseudo-scientific, and was apt to give as much credence to a Sir Kenelm Digby as to a Robert Boyle. Thus it is clear that Browne was well equipped for his task of combating popular error.

In general Browne has the true sceptical attitude and shows himself a worthy disciple of Bacon and Descartes. It is quite possible that Bacon's statement in the Advancement of Learning 3 in regard to a calendar of doubts may have suggested to Browne the first idea of the Vulgar Errors. Bacon says

To which Kalendar of doubts or problems, I advise be annexed another Kalendar, as much or more material, which is a Kalendar of popular errors; I mean chiefly in natural history, such as pass in speech and conceit, and are nevertheless apparently detected and convicted of untruth; that man's knowledge be not weakened by such dross and vanity.

This is exactly what Browne tried to do in the Vulgar Errors, and he, too, laid special emphasis on the errors that "pass in speech and conceit." Browne writes,*

And first we crave exceeding pardon in the audacity of the attempt; humbly acknowledging a work of such concernment unto truth, and difficulty in itself, did well deserve the conjunction of many heads. And surely more advantageous had it been unto truth, to have fallen into the endeavors of some coöperative advancers that might have performed it to the life, and added authority thereto.

He is using Bacon's very title, Advancement of Learning, and one of his pet ideas, that of coöperative research.

It is possible to show that Browne used practically every one of Bacon's errors, or "peccant humors " and " diseases of learning" in his first book of the Vulgar Errors. Besides this, he is indebted to Bacon for the underlying thought of the book, which he took from Bacon's famous passage in the Advancement of Learning, on the idols of the tribe, cave, and marketplace. This is indicated

Book II, Ellis-Spedding-Heath Edition of Bacon's Works, Vol. II, p. 364. Introduction to the Reader, Vulgar Errors.