men, and Others."[1] "Newtonianisme pour les Dames" was advertised in France in the forties.[2] 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."[3]
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?"[4]
But too much importance should not be attributed to such passages; though poetry and astronomy need not conflict, as Keble illustrated:[5]
"Ye Stars that round the Sun of Righteousness
In glorious order roll." …
93
