y" and goodness
from them.

It is too generally assumed that to know a thing scientifically is to
divest it of all touching beauty, of all romantic glamour, of all
spiritual suggestion,--to make it, in fact, incapable of yielding
poetry. We can, indeed, no longer call the sun a god and construct myths
of Phoebus, nor can we seriously picture the moon descending to dally
with Endymion. We can no longer see Hamadryads in the oaks or Naiads in
the streams. We do not hear Zeus or Thor in the thunderclap, nor
recognize in volcanic eruptions the struggles of imprisoned Titans
breathing flame. But what of that? Does the essence of poetry lie at all
in myths and superstitions? Because we know of what the sun is made, and
how many miles distant he is, do we find his risings and settings less
moving in their endless splendours? Do we less marvel at the stupendous
order of the solar and astral circles? Do we feel less awe before the
infinitude of space and the insignificance of our own selves? Do
waterfalls "haunt us like a passion" any the less because the water is
chemically known as H_2O and because we believe no longer in nymphs and
water-sprites? On the contrary, if there is one fact in the history of
literature more certain than another, it is the fact that the passion
for natural beauty and the emotions it evokes are things of very modern
date. In France Rousseau, in England Wordsworth, are practically the
first to give to them that loving rapture of expression into which we of
this scientific age enter so naturally.

It is true that Keats, in a moment of that petulance which is one of his
less happy characteristics, writes like this:--

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven;
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air and gnomed mine,
Unweave a rainbow.

But assuredly it was in his haste that Keats let slip those lines. To
him at least, loving as he did the "principle of beauty in all things,"
to him, to whom a "thing of beauty is a joy for ever," the rainbow was
not given in the dull catalogue of common things. Nor is it to us,
though we might render ever so scientifically accurate an account of the
origin of rainbows.

Shelley, who had dabbled in chemistry for the love of science, knew