Four Augustan Science Poets: Abraham Cowley, James Thomson, Henry Brooke, Erasmus Darwin

Richard Hillyer teaches literature and composition as a tenured professor at the University of South Alabama, USA. He has published books and articles on Thomas Hobbes, Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, Edmund Waller, W. H. Auden, the Royal Society and the keyword “care.”

• Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. “Scientifick Versification”; 2. “The Sage- Instructed Eye”; 3. “Wondrous Facts”; 4. “The Mind of Man”; Works Cited; Index.

“Hillyer focuses on four poetic approaches to the ‘sublime’ discoveries of science in relation to religion: the apologetic, the illicit, the perverse and the atheistic. This tightly reasoned study sharply differentiates the responses of the Augustan science poets Cowley, Thomson, Brooke and Darwin to the tensions between science, religion and the poetic imagination.” —Martin Priestman, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Roehampton, UK