effort to destroy the religious views of the people of his time. In other places, Browne mentions,28

the indifferency of my behavior in matters of religion, neither violently defending one, nor with that common ardour and contention opposing another.

29

The seventeenth century generally could not separate science and religion, and could scarcely conceive of a scientist who was not an atheist, so that Browne was eminently justified in steering a middle course on the dangerous straits of cosmographical theory.2 The Royal Society was rather loath to discuss cosmography openly, and many of its members, including Boyle and Wren, were either wholly opposed to the new theory, or in great doubt as to its truth.

It is possible that Browne had the Ptolemaics, such as Dean Wren, in mind when he wrote in the Introduction to the Reader, We cannot expect the frown of theology herein; nor can they which behold the present state of things (1645) and controversy of points so long received in divinity, condemn our sober enquiries in the doubtful appertinences of arts and receptaries of philosophies.

Lastly, we may get a better idea of what Browne's attitude toward the Copernican Theory was, if we take the present-day parallel of the feeling of the average man of culture and training with regard to the theory of Einstein. We still go on talking and writing in terms of the old gravitational theory, although we are familiar with the most important postulates of the new theory. We are in a state of uncertainty as to just what we do believe, but we are not rabidly opposed to the new, nor yet eager adherents to it. Such, it appears, was Browne's position on the Copernican theory. Certainly he does not lead the careful reader to believe that he was thoroughly convinced that Copernicus and Galileo were wrong, nor is he sure that Ptolemy (though he makes frequent use of the Ptolemaic conception in his writings) was completely right.

Thus it is clear that Browne was interested in the New Science at every turn, an ardent disciple of Bacon and Descartes, making

28 Religio Medici, I, I.

29 Sir Kenelm Digby's note on this very passage in the Religio Medici strengthens this view. He says, "The vulgar lay not the imputation of atheism only upon physicians, but upon philosophers in general. . . . .”

careful use of their philosophical ideas in his studies, and working by a method which was essentially scientific; eager, curious, somewhat hesitant and at times wrong, but always sceptical, and above all, open to conviction rather than hostile to new developments in science. A note in Robert Hooke's dedication of his Micrographia, some twenty years after the first publication of the Vulgar Errors, sums up Browne's attitude. Hooke says,

The rules you have prescribed yourselves in your philosophical progress do seem the best that have ever yet been practiced. And particularly that of avoiding dogmatizing, and the espousal of any hypothesis not sufficiently grounded and confirmed by experiments.

Such an hypothesis, in the mind of Browne, was that of Copernicus; more than that, it was dangerous, being a religious question; and finally, it was not only not generally received, but he himself was not familiar enough with it to discuss its postulates authoritatively. Certainly he would never have dreamed of the Ptolemaic theory as a vulgar error.

As a scientist, Browne can hardly be ranked with Boyle or Hooke, or any of the other great seventeenth century pioneers; and his contributions are hardly to be compared in importance with theirs, nor with those of Bacon and Descartes. His peculiar contribution to the scientific thought of the century, however, was just as valuable in its place. He was the popularizer of science. The Micrographia, or the Dissertation on the Spring of Air were hardly popular and were not read outside of a very few select circles; but the Vulgar Errors was on every bookshelf and was a sort of Popular Science magazine of its day.30 It was spicy, curious, humorous in spots, and with its vein of scepticism, its large tolerance, and its perfectly orthodox attitude at least on the surface, it was admirably fitted to create in the popular mind a scepticism and an

30 Johnson says (ed. cit., vol. I, p. xvii) of this book, in 1756, when he was writing a life of Browne, "It might be proper, had not the favor with which it was at first received filled the kingdom with copies, to reprint it with notes . . . . and correct those mistakes which the author has committed, not by idleness or negligence, but for want of Boyle's and Newton's philosophy." Wilkins in his preface notes its popularity and lists seven editions and three translations of it in the Seventeenth Century alone.

interest in things scientific which made possible the success of the Royal Society, and the work of a Hooke and a Newton.

Browne, then, with his quaint and delightful scepticism, his broad and varied interests, and his perfect orthodoxy, did much to pave the way for the downfall of medieval superstition and the advancement of modern scientific thought.

University of North Carolina.

METAPHYSICAL POETS" DURING THE AGE OF JOHNSON AND THE

"ROMANTIC REVIVAL"

BY ARTHUR H. NETHERCOT

In addition to popularizing the title "Metaphysical Poets" (applied to such writers as Donne, Cowley, Cleveland, Carew, Crashaw, Herbert, Vaughan, and Quarles),' what part did Samuel Johnson play in determining the attitude of later readers towards the poets themselves? How far were his opinions original, and how far were they merely reflections of the judgments of his predecessors and contemporaries? How much part did the "Metaphysical Poets" play in the early Romantic Revival-especially that phase of it which concerns a renewed interest in the works of the first two-thirds of the seventeenth century? What light does the study of the reputation of these poets throw on the conflict of the old and the new literary principles and tastes during the latter part of the eighteenth century? How general were the recognition and acceptance of a "Metaphysical" school? These are the most important of the questions which the following article will endeavor to answer.

This answer may best be found by taking Johnson's Lives of the English Poets as a point of focus-but particularly his "Life of Cowley," which appeared in 1779,-and by tracing the lines of opinion which lead into this point and out from it again to see if, and how, any of these may have been diverted from the course they would naturally have taken if Johnson had not written.

66

I. FROM THE DEATH OF POPE TO JOHNSON's Lives

The seventeenth century (especially its middle quarters) was of course the period of the Metaphysicals' greatest reputation.2 The Age of Pope," on the other hand, saw this reputation decline, although the decline was neither so low nor so rapid as most critics and scholars have imagined. People from 1744 to 1779, the first

1 For Johnson's part in fixing the name, see my article, "The Term Metaphysical Poets' before Johnson," M. L. N., xxxvIII (1922), 11-17. * See my article, “The Reputation of the 'Metaphysical Poets' during the Seventeenth Century," Jour. Engl. Ger. Phil., XXIII (1924), 173-98. * See my forthcoming article, "The Reputation of the 'Metaphysical Poets' during the Age of Pope," Phil. Quart.

period of the present study, based many of their ideas on the foundations laid during both these earlier periods, and so the conflict between admirers and foes may first be observed here, with the balance inclining somewhat toward the latter group.

One such older work containing criticism of the Metaphysicals and now exercising some influence was Lord Clarendon's Life, first printed from his manuscript in 1759, although written about 1668-70. The Annual Register for 1759 selected the passage on Carew as one of the most noteworthy, and reprinted the section dealing with his "pleasant and facetious wit" and his " “many poems (especially in the amorous way) which for the sharpness of the fancy, and the elegancy of the language, in which that fancy was spread, were at least equal, if not superior to any of that time." 4 Similarly, it reprinted a comparison of Cowley and Jonson, which told how Cowley had "made a flight beyond all men."

995

Bishop Sprat's panegyrical biography of his friend Cowley (1668) also survived-for Cowley was always the center of the discussion, in spite of Donne's historical position and greater ability as a poet. Goldsmith's eighth Bee (Nov. 24, 1759), for instance, mentioned Sprat, as did Lord Lyttleton, in a dialogue (1765) between Pope and Boileau, in which Boileau referred to Sprat's adulation of Cowley."

Addison's utterances were naturally well remembered, too. For example, the Critical Review for August, 1767, applied to a contemporary poet whose works it considered "too recherche" the line on Cowley in Addison's juvenile "Account of the Greatest English Poets": "He more had pleas'd us, had he pleas'd us less." This was in general the criticism which Addison had later developed in his famous sixty-second Spectator (1711), on "Mixt Wit," using Cowley as his chief illustration.

B

Ann. Reg. (1759), p. 313.

Ib., p. 310. The latter passage was also printed by the Crit. Rev., VII (1759), 540.

For a separate treatment of Cowley's reputation and importance, see my article, "The Reputation of Abraham Cowley, 1660-1800," P. M. L. A., XXXVIII (1923), 588-641.

'Lyttleton, Works (London, 1776), ï, 204.

Crit. Rev., XXIV (1767), 124.