Note 260 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. (continued 2)
Reading edition
He presided over wit by his Rhetoric and Poetics, and gave proofs by his Physics that he had "conquered nature." Pope's panegyric on the dominion exercised by Aristotle is far inferior to Dryden's celebration of the deliverance from it.
The longest tyranny that ever swayed Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite, And made his torch their universal light. Had we still paid that homage to a name, Which only God and nature justly claim, The western seas had been our utmost bound, Where poets still might dream the sun was drowned, And all the stars that shine in southern skies Had been admired by none but savage eyes.