With firm but pliant virtue, forward still
To urge his course. Him for the studious shade
Kind Nature form'd, deep, comprehensive, clear, 1535
Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul,
Plato, the Stagyrite, and Tully join'd.
The great deliverer he! who from the gloom
Of cloister'd monks, and jargon-teaching schools,
Led forth the true philosophy, there long 1540
Held in the magic chain of word and forms,
And definitions void: he led her forth,
Daughter of Heaven! that, slow-ascending still,
Investigating sure the chain of things,
With radiant finger points to Heaven again. 1545
The generous [1]Ashley thine, the friend of Man;
Who scann'd his Nature with a brother's eye,
His weakness prompt to shade, to raise his aim,
To touch the finer movements of the mind,
And with the moral beauty charm the heart. 1550
Why need I name thy Boyle, whose pious search
Amid the dark recesses of his works,
The great Creator sought? and why thy Locke,
Who made the whole internal world his own?
Let Newton, pure Intelligence, whom God 1555
To mortals lent, to trace his boundless works
From laws sublimely simple, speak thy fame
In all philosophy. For lofty sense,
Creative fancy, and inspection keen
Thro' the deep windings of the human heart 1560
Is not wild Shakespeare thine and Nature's boast?
Is not each great, each amiable Muse
Of classic ages in thy Milton met?
A genius universal as his theme,
Astonishing as chaos, as the bloom 1565
Of blowing Eden fair, as heaven sublime.
- ↑ Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury.
