32
science. It is not without evidence of some power of imagination. Scarcely a false rhyme or incorrect measure, or even a harsh sounding line, occurs throughout. Yet it is almost equally without a spark of poetic genius. The "mens divinior," the Olympic gift, which comes not with any toil and is created by no strongest force of will, is wanting. Many scientists, like Sir Humphry Davy, have begun life with poetic aspirations; but no born poet, except Goethe, ever contributed important and permanent original gifts to science.[1] Still less, perhaps, ought we to look for the fire of genius where the whole character of a man's productions is that of great accumulation rather than of creation. Let us, then, without further criticism, accept on behalf of this epic, whose subject was the Miltonic one of the Fall of Man, and the scenes that followed it during the life-time of Adam and Eve, some of Dr. Wood's own earlier lines, written in the album of a friend, in 1831:
"What tho' no fire celestial glows
Along the burning line;
Nor stream of sweetest music flows,
Nor gems of fancy shine;
"And even should my hand untaught
Fail from the string to wrest
A note responsive to the thought
That dwells within my breast;
- ↑ The scientific mind has been more often associated with artistic than with poetic genius; as, very remarkably, in the case of Leonardo da Vinci. In our own times, Charles Kingsley and O. W. Holmes have been the most notable instances of the combination of attainments in science with great literary success.
