He is reflecting the conviction of his age, and ours, that progress-measured mainly by advances in science-and poetry are at odds. Macaulay pronounces this judgment on poetry in a famous appreciation of Milton, written in 1825 partly to praise Milton for having escaped the poet’s regress into childhood. aspires to be a great poet must first become a little child (156). Reflecting on the place of poetry in an enlightened and literary society, Thomas Macaulay remarks that He who. The long-standing unease with which poetry and science have tended to eye each other is easily illustrated. Does the modern man object that all this is poetry and not science? Yes, truly it is poetry-the mere words stir one like a Beethoven symphony-but who among us is entitled to say where science ends and poetry begins, in matters about which we are so supremely ignorant? May not the poetic vision be sometimes as far in advance of the scientific as the scientific is in advance of the ordinary commonplace mortal?
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