Chorus. With ravished ears The monarch hears, Etc. etc. etc. The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung, He shows his honest face; Now give the hautboys breath: he comes! he comes! Drinking joys did first ordain; Sweet the pleasure; Sweet is pleasure after pain. Chorus. Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, Drinking is the soldier's pleasure: Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain; Fought all his battles o'er again; And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain. His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes; Soft pity to infuse: He sung Darius great and good, By too severe a fate Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, And welt'ring in his blood; On the bare earth exposed he lies, The various turns of chance below; Chorus. Revolving in his altered soul The various turns of chance below; The mighty master smiled to see For pity melts the mind to love. Softly sweet, in Lydian measures, Never ending, still beginning, Lovely Thais sits beside thee, Take the good the gods provide thee! The many rend the skies with loud applause; So Love was crowned, but Music won the cause. The prince, unable to conceal his pain, Gazed on the fair Who caused his care, And sighed and looked, sighed and looked, Sighed and looked, and sighed again: At length, with love and wine at once oppressed, The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast. Chorus. The prince, unable to conceal his pain, Gazed on the fair Etc. etc. etc. Now strike the golden lyre again: A louder yet, and yet a louder strain. And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder. Has raised up his head! As awaked from the dead, And amazed, he stares around. See the snakes that they rear, And the sparkles that flash from their eyes! Each a torch in his hand! Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain, And unburied remain Inglorious on the plain: To the valiant crew! Behold how they toss their torches on high, And glittering temples of their hostile gods!' The princes applaud, with a furious joy, And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy; Thais led the way To light him to his prey, And, like another Helen, fired another Troy. Chorus. And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy; Thais led the way Etc. etc. etc. Thus, long ago, Ere heaving bellows learned to blow, While organs yet were mute, Timotheus, to his breathing flute And sounding lyre, Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire. Inventress of the vocal frame; The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, And added length to solemn sounds, With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before. Or both divide the crown; Grand Chorus. At last divine Cecilia came, The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, Enlarged the former narrow bounds, And added length to solemn sounds, Or both divide the crown; LESSON 37. THE PROSE LITERATURE. "I have said that towards the end of Elizabeth's reign men settled down to think and inquire. Intellectual had succeeded to active life. We have seen this in the poetry of the time; and the great work of BACON, which was then begun, represents the same thing in prose. He worked at not only all subjects of inquiry but also at the right method of enquiry. The Advancement of Learning and Novum Organum did not fulfil all he aimed at, but they did stir the whole of English intelligence into activity. In Science, the impulse he gave was only partly right, and the work of Science in England was behind that of the Continent. The religious and the political struggle absorbed the country, and it was not till after the Restoration, with two exceptions, that scientific discovery advanced so far as to claim recognition in a history of Literature. The Royal Society was embodied in 1662, and astronomy, experimental chemistry, medicine, mineralogy, zoology, botany, vegetable physiology were all founded as studies and their literature begun in the age of the Restoration. One man's work was so great in science as to merit his name's being mentioned among the literary men of England. In 1671 ISAAC NEWTON, 1642–1727, laid his Theory of Light before the Royal Society; in the year before the Revolution, his Principia established with its proof of the theory of gravitation the true system of the universe. It was in political and religious knowledge, however, that the intellectual inquiry of the nation was most shown. When the thinking spirit succeeds the active and adventurous in a people, the first thing they will think upon is the true method and grounds of government, both divine and human. Two sides will be taken, the side of Authority and the side of Reason in Religion; the side of Authority and the side of Individual Liberty in Politics. The Theological Literature of those who declared that reason was supreme as a test of truth, arose with some men who met at Lord Falkland's just before the civil war, and especially with JOHN HALES and WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH. With them Jeremy Taylor pleaded, as we have seen, the cause of religious liberty and toleration, and of rightness of life as more important than a correct theology. After the Restoration and Revolution, their work was carried on by BISHOP BURNET, ROBERT BOYLE, the philosopher, ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON, and BISHOP BUTLER, whose Sermons and Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, 1736, endeavor to make peace between Authority and Reason. Many other divines of the English Church took one side or another, or opposed the growing Deism. ISAAC BARROW is to be mentioned for his sedate, ROBERT SOUTH for his fierce and witty, eloquence, and in them and in men like EDWARD STILLINGFLEET and WILLIAM SHERLOCK, English theological prose took form. |