What Forced by Fire: Concerning Some Influences of Chemical Thought and Practice Upon English Poetry

REFERENCES

• J. Keats, Poetical Works, ed. H. W. Garrod, Oxford U.P., 1956, p. 471. The full text runs to six lines.
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• For example C. A. Browne, Ambix, 2, 129–37, 1946; 3, 15–25, 1948; F. Sherwood Taylor, ibid. 2, 148–76, 177–81, 1946; C. H. Josten, ibid. 4, 1–33, 1949. Indeed E. J. Holmyard says of Sherwood Taylor in an obituary notice, ibid, 5, 57–8, 1956 that he "became attracted to the study of alchemy through his enthusiasm for such poetical mystics as Jan de Ruysbrook, Thomas Vaughan and William Blake".
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• J. Bronowski, Nature, 209, 1171-3, 1966.
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• E. Pound, Selected Poems, Faber, 1969, pp. 86–7. Since metaphor is acceptable in poetry, the form may have legitimized alchemical obscurity, a charge certainly brought against the adepts by Ben Jonson (see "The Alchemist", in Three Comedies, Penguin, /966, Act II, Sc. ii, 11.202–6.)
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• Chaucer's language is worth mastering, but Nevil Coghill's modern version makes a lively intro-duction. The Canterbury Tales, Penguin Classics, revised edn., 1960. His rendering of "The Canones Yeoman's Tales" contains a few anachronisms such as "gas" and "lead protoxide".
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• See ref. 4.
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• Printed in The Albatross Anthology of Living Verse, ed. L. Untermeyer, Coffins, 2nd edn. 1960, p. 154.
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• Thomas Middleton, "The Golden Age", Penguin Book of Elizabethan Verse, ed. E. Lucie-Smith, 1965, p. 197.
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• J. Donne, one of the Divine Poems, "To E. of D., with six holy sonnets". The Poems of John Donne, Oxford, 1945, p. 288.
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• "An Anatomie of the World: the first Anniversary", 11.179-82, ibid., p. 213.
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• "The Dampe", ibid., p. 57.
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• Ibid., pp. 213–14,11.205–8.
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• "Paracelsus", see editions of the collected works. Ezra Pound, who had picked up a trick or two from Browning, made his comment on Paracelsus mercifully short. See "Paracelsus in Excelsis", ref. 4, p. 57.
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• G. M. Hopkins A selection of his poems and prose, ed. W. H. Gardner, Penguin, 1953, PP. 3–4.
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• J. Webster The Devil's Law Case, Act III, Sc. ii, 11.43-4. This is accessible as one of Three Plays by Webster published by Penguin, 1972.
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• Duchess of Mal fi, in Three Plays (15), Act I, Sc. ii, 1.39 . Cf. Shelley's "Letter to Marion Gisbourne" in which he describes floating a paper boat in a bowl of Mercury.
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• White Devil, in Three Plays (r5), Act IV, sc. ii, 11.97–8.
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• Devil's Law Case. Act III sc. ii 11.6-7. Similarly Donne writes "As gold falls sick being stung with mercury" (ref. zo 1.345).
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• White Devil, Act I, sc. ii, 11.27–35.
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• Duchess of Malfi, Act IV, Sc. ii, 11.83–4.
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• White Devil, Act II, Sc. i, 1.289.
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• Ibid., Act II, sc. i, 1.60.
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• Ibid., Act I, Sc. ii, 1.280.
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• Ibid., Act II, Sc. i, 1.37.
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• Duchess of Mal fi, Act I, Sc. i, 11.5r-r5.
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• Ibid., Act I, sc. i, 11. 75–6.
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• From "Nosce Teipsum", which may be found in G. Bullett, Silver Poets of the Sixteenth Century, Everyman, 1947, p. 361.
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• S. Johnson, chapter on "Milton" in The Lives of the English Poets, 1779–85. There are various modern editions.
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• From "A Vale of Tears", 11.69-72, The Poems of Robert Southwell, S. J., ed. J. H. McDonald and N. P. Brown, Oxford, 1967, p. 43.
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• E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, London, 1943 (Penguin, reprint). He devotes much attention to Shakespeare, which renders discussion here unnecessary.
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• Southwell (29), "Saint Peters Complaint", 11.411–14.
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• Ibid., ll. 455–20.
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• S. Johnson, from the play "Irene", Act I, sc. ii, 11. 62–5, Complete Poems, Penguin, 1971, p. 55.
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• See ref. x, p. 351.
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• Southwell (24). This is the poem of Southwell's most often included in anthologies. It was admired by Ben Jonson.
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• The poem is the final one of the Four Quartets, Faber, 5959,11.1-12.
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• Ibid., 11.70–77.
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• Ibid., 11.144–6.
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• Ibid., 11.256–9.
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• "Tradition and the individual talent". Published originally in 1919 (the Contact Process had come into effective industrial use at the turn of the century) the essay is reprinted in T. S. Eliot, Selected Prose, ed. J. Hayward, Penguin, 1953. See pp. 26–7. The idea expressed is close to that found in the following lines from Thomas Middleton's play "The Changeling" (ca 1623, Act III, sc. iii, II. 129–134):
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• B. Wiley, The Seventeenth Century Background, London, 1934 (Penguin reprint), ch. ro, "The heroic poem in a scientific age".
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• D. Davie, The Language of Science and the Language of Literature, 1700–1740, Sheed and Ward, 1963.
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• J. Donne "A Feaver", 11.21-2, (ref. 9, p. 20).
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• M. Nicholson, Newton Demands the Muse, Princetown/Oxford U.P., 1966.
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• Tennyson, who took more than a passing interest in science, made a narrative poem of the legend that Lucretius took his own life after being driven mad by a love-philtre administered by his wife: "Lucretius".
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• From a poem "Creation" by Richard Blackmore, publ. early r8th century and quoted by Nicholson, (44), P. 57.
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• S. T. Coleridge, from "Quae Nocent Docent"; see the Selection of his poems and prose, ed. K. Raine, Penguin 1957, p. 27.
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• Letter to John Thelwall, ibid., p. 121.
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• Letter to Joseph Cottle, ibid., p. 123.
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• J. L. Lowes, The Road to Xanadu, 2nd edn. 1930, reprinted Vintage Books, N.Y., 1959, pp. 69–71.
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• For a short account of the Bristol circle in which they moved at this time, see Sir H. Hartley, Humphry Davy, 2nd edn., 1971, S.R. Publishers, ch. 3.
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• The joint production of Coleridge and Wordsworth, this was the manifesto for the romantic move-ment in poetry.
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• Letter to Thomas Poole, ref. 47, p. 126. Of course, this was not a just appreciation of Newton's understanding of God's 'relationship to his creation; see D. Kubrin "Newton and the cyclical cosmos", J. Hist. Ideas, 28, 325–46,1967.
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• Light had been listed by Lavoisier as one of the chemical elements in his Traité élémentaire de Chimie (1789) and the book had made a great impression upon the young Davy. As already stated, the verse of the period was often literally enlightened. A good example of Davy's imagery is quoted by Hartley, (51), p. 143. The definitve study of Davy's verse is by J. Z. Fullmer, Chymia, 6, 102ff, 1960.
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• Coleridge (47) from "Frost at Midnight" 11.13–16.
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• Opening lines of the sonnet "To R.B." (Robert Bridges), ref. 14, p. 68. 57, S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1817, ch. 18 (p. zoo in the Everyman edn., 1906).
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• D. King-Hele, Shelley, his thought and work, 2nd edn., Macmillan 1971.
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• For example see F. H. Ludlum, "The meteorology of Shelley's Ode" (i.e., "Ode to the West Wind"), Times Literary Supplement, 1972, September 1st, pp. 1015–16.
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• O. See F. W. Gibbs, "Itinerant Lecturers in Natural Philosophy", Ambix, 8, xx 1—x7, 1960. My attention was drawn to this article by Dr. W. A. Smeaton.
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• This did not prevent him from lifting its ideas, see R. E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham, Oxford U.P. 1963, p. 210. Unfortunately Coleridge, for all his genius, was prone to build up bad debts to other writers, see N. Fruman, Coleridge, the damaged archangel, Braziller ,1971, particularly ch. 12, pp– 121–34.
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• From P. B. Shelley, A defence of poetry, 1821. It is reprinted in Revolutions, 1775–1830, ed. M. Williams, Penguin 1971, p. 589. Elsewhere in the same essay (p. 591) he says of poetry that".. . its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life. ."
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• From the "Ode to heaven", 1. 17. See editions of Shelley's collected verse.
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• From "Adonais", 11. 179–80.
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• Bullett (27), p. 346.
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• The full poem is included in The Metaphysical Poets, ed. H. Gardner, Penguin, 2nd edn., 1966, p. 128.
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• Ibid., p. 127.
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• From his letter (17.3.1817) to John Hamilton Reynolds, reprinted in The Complete Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton-Forman, Glasgow, Igor, Vol. IV, p. 13.
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• Letter (3.5.1818) to Reynolds, ibid., p. 106.
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• "Ode on Melancholy", see ref. r, p. 219.
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• Letter (24.3.1818) to James Price, ref. 68, p. 93.
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• "Lamia", Part I, 11. 191–6 and Part II, 11. 229–30. See ref. r, pp. /65-6, 176.
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• Part II, 1. 233, ibid., p. 177.
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• As shown by his poem "Mock on, Mock on . . ." where he regards "The atoms of Democritus/And Newton's Particles of Light" as sand flung in mockery by Voltaire and Rousseau against the invincible wind of the Spirit. See William Blake, selected poems and letters, ed. J. Bronowski, Penguin 1958, p. 67.
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• Opening lines of the poem, see W. H. Auden, a selection by the author, Penguin, 1958, p. 129.
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• Robert Graves, poems selected by himself, Penguin, 1957, p. 89.
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• The sixth stanza of "The Human Form Divine", The Pythoness, 1949, reprinted in A Book of Science Verse, ed. W. Eastwood, Macmillan 1961, p. 231.
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• The fourth stanza and final couplet of "Word made flesh", Penguin Modern Poets 17, 1970, p. /38.
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