Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/101

 men, and Others." "Newtonianisme pour les Dames" was advertised in France in the forties. By 1738 when Pope wrote the Universal Prayer:

"Yet not to earth's contracted span
 * Thy goodness let me bound

Or think thee Lord alone of man,
 * When thousand worlds are round,"

the Copernican-Newtonian astronomy had become a commonplace to most well-educated people in England. To be sure, the great John Wesley (1770) considered the systems of the universe merely "ingenious conjectures," but then, he doubted whether "more than Probabilities we shall ever attain in regard to things at so great a distance from us."

The old phraseology, however, did recur occasionally, especially in poetry and in hymns. For instance, a hymnal (preface dated 1806) contains such choice selections as:

"Before the pondr'ous earthly globe
 * In fluid air was stay'd,

Before the ocean's mighty springs
 * Their liquid stores display'd"—

and:

"Who led his blest unerring hand
 * Or lent his needful aid

When on its strong unshaken base
 * The pondr'ous earth was laid?"

But too much importance should not be attributed to such passages; though poetry and astronomy need not conflict, as Keble illustrated:

"Ye Stars that round the Sun of Righteousness
 * In glorious order roll." …

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