We search among the dead
For treasure burièd,
Whilst still the liberal earth does hold
So many virgin mines of undiscovered gold.’
Dryden in some remarkable lines addressed to Dr. Charleton expresses the same sense of the freedom with which Bacon had set free the study of nature, and the bondage from which he had delivered it:
‘The longest tyranny that ever swayed,
Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed
Their freeborn reason to the Stagirite,
And made his torch their universal light.
So truth, while only one supplied the State,