He plunged in with all the ardor of a naturalist,
not using the microscope as a mere toy, but doing good hard work with it.
I think I can detect in his work after this time, -- as well
as in his letters, -- many little touches which show the influence
this study of nature had upon his mind."*
--
* Letter to the author.
--
So he had little patience with "those timorous souls who believe
that science, in explaining everything, -- as they singularly fancy, --
will destroy the possibility of poetry, of the novel,
in short of all works of the imagination: the idea seeming to be
that the imagination always requires the hall of life to be darkened
before it displays its magic, like the modern spiritualistic seance-givers
who can do nothing with the rope-tying and the guitars unless the lights
are put out."* And again: "Here are thousands upon thousands
of acute and patient men to-day who are devoutly gazing into
the great mysteries of Nature and faithfully reporting what they see.
These men have not destroyed the fairies: they have preserved them
in more truthful and solid shape."
--
* `The English Novel', p. 28.
--
But while he estimated at its proper value the development of
modern physical science, he saw it in its proper relation to music, poetry,
and religion. "The scientific man," he says in his "Legend of St. Leonor",
"is merely the minister of poetry. He is cutting down
the Western Woods of Time; presently poetry will come there
and make a city and gardens.
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