————“What bounds old ocean’s tides;
What, through the various year, the seasons guides:
Whether the stars, by their own proper force,
Or foreign pow’r, pursue their wand’ring course:
Why shadows darken the pale Queen of Night;
Whence she renews her orb, and spreads her light.”
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Virgil seemed willing to renounce every other study, in order that he
might devote himself to the wonders of astronomy. In the second book of
his Georgics, he says:
“Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musæ,
Quarum sacra fero, ingenti perculsus amore,
Accipiant; cælique vias et sidera monstrent,
Defectus Solis varius, Lunæque labores;
Unde tremor terris, quâ vi maria alta tumescant
Obicibus ruptis, rursusque in se ipsa residant;
Quid tantum oceano properent se tingere soles
Hyberni, vel quæ tardis mora noctibus obstet—
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.”[39]
l. 475 and seq.
And, in addition to these classical writers, a modern poet (Mr.
Voltaire) appears, by a letter written in the year 1738, to have
participated in the regrets expressed by Virgil; and to have been
desirous of directing all his faculties towards the sciences. He
produced, on the philosophy of Newton, a work which has contributed to
the expansion of genius; and, in his epistle to the Marchioness du
Chatelet, he pays that great man a very exalted compliment, in these
poetic lines:
“Confidens du Tres Haut, substances eternelles,
Qui parez de vos feux, qui couvrez de vos ailes
Le trône oú votre Maitre est assis parmi vous;
Parlez: Du grand Newton n’étiez-vous point jaloux?”[40]
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Footnote 39: