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and of the long succession of events with which it was crowded[1].
It is curious to remember that three of the poets whom I have singled out as illustrations of the influence of our lowland, upland, and highland scenery upon our literature have held up the geologist to ridicule. Cowper put that votary of science into the pillory among the irreligious crowd, about whose ears the poet loved to 'crack the satiric thong[2].' Wordsworth treated the geological enthusiast with withering scorn[3]. Scott, in
- ↑ Sedgwick did his best to enlighten the poet by his famous Four Letters on the Geology of the Lake District; but these came too late. They were published at Kendal in 1846, and Wordsworth died in 1850.
- ↑ Some drill and bore
The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn,
That He who made it, and revealed its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age.—'The Task,' bk. iii. 150. - ↑ You may trace him oft
By scars which his activity has left
Beside our roads and pathways, though, thank Heaven!
This covert nook reports not of his hand—
He who with pocket-hammer smites the edge
Of luckless rock or prominent stone, disguised
In weather-stains or crusted o'er by Nature
With her first growths, detaching by the stroke
A chip or splinter—to resolve his doubts;
And, with that ready answer satisfied.
The substance classes by some barbarous name,
And hurries on; or from the fragments picks
His specimen, if but haply interveined
With sparkling mineral, or should crystal cube
Lurk in its cells—and thinks himself enriched,
Wealthier, and doubtless wiser, than before!
'The Excursion,' bk. iii.
