still better--for the poet seized the essential point of Bacon's
labours--a hymn on the liberation of the human mind from the yoke of
Authority.

Bacon has broke that scar-crow Deity.


Dryden himself, in the Annus Mirabilis, had turned aside from his
subject, the defeat of the Dutch and England's mastery of the seas,
to pay a compliment to the Society, and to prophesy man's mastery of
the universe.

Instructed ships shall sail to rich commerce,
By which remotest regions are allied;
Which makes one city of the universe,
Where some may gain and all may be supplied.


Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky,
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry.


[Footnote: It may be noted that John Wilkins (Bishop of Chester)
published in 1638 a little book entitled Discovery of a New World,
arguing that the moon is inhabited. A further edition appeared in
1684. He attempted to compose a universal language (Sprat, Hist. of
Royal Society, p. 251). His Mercury or the Secret and Swift
Messenger (1641) contains proposals for a universal script (chap.