To what a low state knowledge of the most obvious and important phenomena had sunk, is evident from the style in which Dryden has executed a description of Night in one of his Tragedies, and Pope his translation of the celebrated moonlight scene in the _Iliad_.

A blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him, might easily depict these appearances with more truth.

Dryden's lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless;[9] those of Pope, though he had Homer to guide him, are throughout false and contradictory.

The verses of Dryden, once highly celebrated, are forgotten; those of Pope still retain their hold upon public estimation,--nay, there is not a passage of descriptive poetry, which at this day finds so many and such ardent admirers.

Strange to think of an enthusiast, as may have been the case with thousands, reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity!--If these two distinguished writers could habitually think that the visible universe was of so little consequence to a poet, that it was scarcely necessary for him to cast his eyes upon it, we may be assured that those passages of the elder poets which faithfully and poetically describe the phenomena of nature, were not at that time holden in much estimation, and that there was little accurate attention paid to those appearances.
Wonder is the natural product of Ignorance; and as the soil was _in such good condition_ at the time of the publication of the _Seasons_ the crop was doubtless abundant.