"Pictoribus atque poetis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas."
An equal licence ever was accorded
To poet as to painter, that he might
The boldest sweeps of fancy still essay!
As for men of science, they would not have condescended to honour even with a smile such strange and fantastic words.
Let us suppose, now, that our poetical astronomer, thus contemned, had addressed his scientific censors in some such language as the following:—
Do not think, illustrious sirs, that it is by a purely poetical licence I call the firmament a mirror in which the earth may be seen reflected. Only, to prevent all equivoque, we must understand one another. The mirror to which I am alluding does not reflect light, but movement. It is in a particular movement of the stars that the true figure of our planet is reflected, is revealed to us. But before the human mind can appreciate this movement,—especially before it can discover the cause,—we must be prepared to devote ourselves to centuries of assiduous effort. In this long interval, philosophers of every class will allow unrestricted scope to their imagination.
Shall we, then, recall some of these opinions,—some of these truly poetical licences?
Homer and Hesiod represented the earth as a disc, or as a flat rondel, surrounded on all sides by a winding river which they called the Ocean, and which, in the extreme East, communicated with the Phasis, in Colchis. Above this terrestrial disc the outspread sky was arched like a vast dome; a dome supported by two massive pillars, resting on the shoulders of the god Atlas.