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But renders words they first began to con,
The end of all that 's after to be known,
And sets the help of education back,

Worse than, without it, man could ever lack;
Who, therefore, finds the artificial'st fools
Have not been chang'di' th' cradle, but the schools,
Where errour, pedantry, and affectation,
Run them behind-hand with their education,
And all alike are taught poetic rage,
When hardly one 's fit for it in an age.

No sooner are the organs of the brain
Quick to receive, and stedfast to retain,
Best knowledges, but all 's laid out upon
Retrieving of the curse of Babylon;
To make confounded languages restore
A greater drudgery than it barr'd before:
And therefore those imported from the East,
Where first they were incurr'd, are held the best,
Although convey'd in worse Arabian pothooks
Than gifted tradesmen scratch in sermon note books;
Are really but pains and labour lost,

And not worth half the drudgery they cost,
Unless, like rarities, as they 've been brought
From foreign climates, and as dearly bought,
When those, who had no other but their own,
Have all succeeding eloquence outdone:

As men that wink with one eye see more true,
Aud take their aim much better, than with two:
For, the more languages a man can speak,
His talent has but sprung the greater leak;
And, for the industry he 'as spent upon 't,
Must full as much some other way discount.
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac,
Do, like their letters, set men's reason back,
And turn their wits, that strive to understand it,
(Like those that write the characters) left-handed:
Yet he, that is but able to express.
No sense at all in several languages,
Will pass for learneder than he, that's known
To speak the strongest reason in his own.

These are the modern arts of education,
With all the learned of mankind in fashion,
But practis'd only with the rod and whip,
As riding-schools inculcate horsemanship;
Or Romish penitents let out their skins,
To bear the penalties of others' sins:
When letters, at the first, were meant for play,
And only us'd to pass the time away;

When th' ancient Greeks and Romans had no name
To express a school and playhouse, but the same,
And in their languages, so long agone,
To study or be idle was all one;

For nothing more preserves men in their wits,
Than giving of them leave to play by fits,
In dreams to sport, and ramble with all fancies,
And waking, little less extravagances,
The rest and recreation of tir'd thought,
When 'tis run down with care and overwrought,
Of which whoever does not freely take
His constant share, is never broad awake;
And, when he wants an equal competence
Of both recruits, abates as much of sense.
Nor is their education worse design'd
Than Nature (in her province) proves unkind:
The greatest inclinations with the least
Capacities are fatally possest,

Condemn'd to drudge, and labour, and take pains,
Without an equal competence of brains;
While those she has indulg'd in soul and body
Are most averse to industry and study,

And th' activ'st fancies share as loose alloys,
For want of equal weight to counterpoise.
But when those great conveniences meet,
Of equal judgment, industry, and wit,
The one but strives the other to divert,
While Fate and Custom in the feud take part,
And scholars, by preposterous over-doing,
And under-judging, all their projects ruin
Who, though the understanding of mankind
Within so strait a compass is confin'd,
Disdain the limits Nature sets to bound
The wit of man, and vainly rove beyond.
The bravest soldiers scorn, until they re got
Close to the enemy, to make a shot;
Yet great philosophers delight to stretch
Their talents most at things beyond their reach,
And proudly think t' unriddle every cause
That Nature uses, by their own by-laws;
When 'tis not only impertinent, but rude,
Where she denies adinission, to intrudę;
And all their industry is but to err,
Unless they have free quarantine from her;
Whence 'tis the world the less has understood,
By striving to know more than 'tis allow'd."
For Adam, with the loss of Paradise, —
Bought knowledge at too desperate a price,
And ever since that miserable fate

Learning did never cost an easier rate;
For though the most divine and sovereign good
That Nature has upon mankind bestow'd,
Yet it has prov'd a greater hinderance
To th' interest of truth than ignorance,
And therefore never bore so high a value,
As when 'twas low, contemptible, and shallow;
Had academies, schools, and colleges,
Endow'd for its improvement and increase;
With pomp and show was introduc'd with maces,
More than a Roman magistrate had fasces;
Impower'd with statute, privilege, and mandate,
T'assume an art, and after understand it;
Like bills of store for taking a degree,
With all the learning to it custom-free;
And own professions, which they never took
So much delight in as to read one book:
Like princes, had prerogative to give
Convicted malefactors a reprieve;
And, having but a little paltry wit
More than the world, reduc'd and govern'd it,
But scorn'd, as soon as 'twas but understood,
As better is a spiteful foe to good,
And now has nothing left for its support,
But what the darkest times provided for 't.
Man has a natural desire to know,
But th' one half is for interest, th' other show:
As scriv'ers take more paius to learn the sleight
Of making knots, than all the hands they write:
So all his study is not to extend

The bounds of knowledge, but some vainer end;
Tappear and pass for learned, though his claim
Will hardly reach beyond the empty name:
For most of those that drudge and labour hard
Furnish their understandings by the yard,
As a French library by the whole is,
So much an ell for quartos and for folios;
To which they are but indexes themselves,
And understand no further than the shelves;
But smatter with their titles and editions,
And place them in their classical partitions;
When all a student knows of what he reads
Is not in 's own, but under general heads

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Of common-places, not in his own power,
But, like a Dutchman's money, i' th' cantore,
Where all he can make of it, at the best,
Is hardly three per cent for interest;
And whether he will ever get it out,
Into his own possession, is a doubt:
Affects all books of past and modern ages,
But reads no further than the title-pages,
Only to con the authors' names by rote,

Or, at the best, those of the books they quote,
Enough to challenge intimate acquaintance
With all the learned moderns and the ancients.
As Roman noblemen were wont to greet,
And compliment the rabble in the street,
Had nomenclators in their trains, to claim
Acquaintance with the meanest by his name,
And, by so mean contemptible a bribe,
Trepann'd the suffrages of every tribe;
So learned men, by authors' names unknown,
Have gain'd no small improvement to their own,
And he 's esteem'd the learned'st of all others,
That has the largest catalogue of authors.

Exil'd himself, and all his followers,
Notorious poets, only bating verse.
The Stagyrite, unable to expound
The Euripus, leapt into 't, and was drown'd:
So he that put his eyes out, to consider
And contemplate on natural things the steadier,
Did but himself for idiot convince,
Though reverenc'd by the learned ever since.
Empedocles, to be esteem'd a god,
Leapt into Etna, with his sandals shod,
That being blown out, discover'd what an ass
The great philosopher and juggler was,
That to his own new deity sacrific'd,
And was himself the victim and the priest.
The Cynic coin'd false money, and, for fear
Of being hang'd for 't, turn'd philosopher;
Yet with his lantern went, by day, to find
One honest man i' th' heap of all mankind;
An idle freak he needed not have done,

If he had known himself to be but one.
With swarms of maggots of the self-same rate,
The learned of all ages celebrate

Things that are properer for Knightsbridge college,
Than th' authors and originals of knowledge;
More sottish than the two fanatics, trying

To mend the world by laughing, or by crying;

FRAGMENTS OF AN INTENDED SECOND PART OF Or he that laugh'd until he chok'd his whistle,

THE FOREGOING SATIRE.

MEN's talents grow more bold and confident,
The further they 're beyond their just extent,
As smatterers prove more arrogant and pert,
The less they truly understand an art;
And, where they 've least capacity to doubt,
Are wont t' appear most percipt'ry and stout;
While those that know the mathematic lines,
Where Nature all the wit of man confines,
And when it keeps within its bounds, and where
It acts beyond the limits of its sphere,
Enjoy an absoluter free command
O'er all they have a right to understand,
Than those that falsely venture to encroach
Where Nature has deny'd them all approach,
And still, the more they strive to understand,
Like great estates, run furthest behind-hand;
Will undertake the universe to fathom,
From infinite down to a single atom;
Without a geometric instrument,
To take their own capacity's extent;
Can tell as easy how the world was made,
As if they had been brought up to the trade,
And whether Chance, Necessity, or Matter,
Contriv'd the whole establishment of Nature;}
When all their wits to understand the world
Can never tell why a pig's tail is curl'd,
Or give a rational account why fish,
That always use to drink, do never piss.

WHAT mad fantastic gambols have been play'd
By th' ancient Greek forefathers of the trade,
That were not much inferior to the freaks
Of all our lunatic fanatic sects!

The first and best philosopher of Athens

Was crackt, and ran stark-staring mad with patience,
And had no other way to show his wit,
But when his wife was in her scolding fit;
Was after in the Pagan inquisition,
And suffer'd martyrdom for no religion.
Next him, his scholar, striving to expel
All poets his poetic commonweal,

To rally on an ass, that ate a thistle;

That th' antique sage, that was gallant t' a goose,

A fitter mistress could not pick and choose,
Whose tempers, inclinations, sense, and wit,
Like two indentures, did agree so fit.

THE ancient Sceptics constantly deny'd What they maintain'd, and thought they justify'd; For when they affirm'd, that nothing 's to be known, They did but what they said before disown; And, like Polemics of the Post, pronounce The same thing to be true and false at once.

These follies had such influence on the rabble, As to engage them in perpetual squabble; Divided Rome and Athens into clans

Of ignorant mechanic partisans ;

That, to maintain their own hypotheses,

Broke one another's blockheads, and the peace;

Were often set by officers i' th' stocks

For quarrelling about a paradox:

When pudding-wives were launcht in cock-quean stools,

For falling foul on oyster-women's schools,
No herb-women sold cabbages or onions,
But to their gossips of their own opinions.
A Peripatetic cobbler scorn'd to sole

A pair of shoes of any other school;

And porters of the judgment of the Stoics,
To go an errand of the Cyrenaics;
That us'd t' encounter in athletic lists,

With beard to beard, and teeth and nails to fists,
Like modern kicks and cuffs among the youth
Of academics, to maintain the truth.
But in the boldest feats of arms the Stoc

And Epicureans were the most heroic,
That stoutly ventur'd breaking of their necks,
To vindicate the interests of their sects,
And still behav'd themselves as resolute
In waging cuffs and bruises, as dispute,
Until, with wounds and bruises which th' had got,
Some hundreds were kill'd dead upon the spot;
When all their quarrels, rightly understood,
Were but to prove disputes the sovereign good.

DISTINCTIONS, that had been at first design'd
To regulate the errours of the mind,

By being too nicely overstrain'd and vext,
Have made the comment harder than the text,
And do not now, like carving, hit the joint,
But break the bones in pieces, of a point,
And with impertinent evasions force
The clearest reason from its native course→
That argue things s' uncertain, 'tis no matter
Whether they are, or never were in nature;
And venture to demonstrate, when they 've slurr'd,
And palm'd a fallacy upon a word.

For disputants (as swordsmen use to fence

With blunted foils) engage with blunted sense;
And, as they 're wont to falsify a blow,
Use nothing else to pass upon the foe;
Or, if they venture further to attack,

Like bowlers, strive to beat away the jack;

And, when they find themselves too hardly prest on,
Prevaricate, and change the state o' th' quest'on;
The noblest science of defence and art

In practice now with all that controvert,
And th' only mode of prizes, from Bear-garden
Down to the schools, in giving blows, or warding.

As old knights-errant in their harness fought As safe as in a castle or redoubt, Gave one another desperate attacks, To storm the counterscarps upon their backs; So disputants advance, and post their arms, To storm the works of one another's terms; Fall foul on some extravagant expression, But ne'er attempt the main design and reason— So some polemics use to draw their swords Against the language only and the words; As he who fought at barriers with Salmasius, Engag'd with nothing but his style and phrases, Way'd to assert the murder of a prince, The author of false Latin to convince; But laid the merits of the cause aside, By those that understood them to be try'd; And counted breaking Priscian's head a thing More capital than to behead a king;

For which he 'as been admir'd by all the learn'd, Of knaves concern'd, and pedants unconcern'd.

JUDGMENT is but a curious pair of scales, That turns with th' hundredth part of true or false, And still, the more 'tis us'd, is wont t' abate The subtlety and niceness of its weight, Until 'tis false, and will not rise nor fall, Like those that are less artificial;

And therefore students, in their ways of judging,

Are fain to swallow many a senseless gudgeon,,

And by their over-understanding lose

Its active faculty with too much use;
For reason, when too curiously 'tis spun,
Is but the next of all remov'd from none-
It is Opinion governs all mankind,
As wisely as the blind that leads the blind :
For, as those surnames are esteem'd the best
That signify in all things else the least,
So men pass fairest in the world's opinion,
That have the least of truth and reason in them.
Truth would undo the world, if it possest
The meanest of its right and interest;
Is but a titular princess, whose authority
Is always under age, and in minority;
Has all things done, and carried in its name,
But most of all where it can lay no claim;

As far from gaiety and complaisance,
As greatness, insolence, and ignorance;
And therefore has surrendered her dominion
O'er all mankind to barbarous Opinion,
That in her right usurps the tyrannies
And arbitrary government of lies-

As no tricks on the rope but those that break, Or come most near to breaking of a neck," Are worth the sight, so nothing goes for wit But nonsense, or the next of all to it: For nonsense, being neither false nor true, A little wit to any thing may screw; And, when it has a while been us'd, of course Will stand as well in virtue, power, and force, And pass for sense, t' all purposes as good, As if it had at first been understood: For nonsense has the amplest privileges, And more than all the strongest sense obliges; That furnishes the schools with terms of art, The mysteries of science to impart ; Supplies all seminaries with recruits Of endless controversies and disputes; For learned nonsense has a deeper sound Than easy sense, and goes for more profound.

;

FOR all our learned authors now compile At charge of nothing but the words and style, And the most curious critics or the learned Believe themselves in nothing else concerned For, as it is the garniture and dress, That all things wear in books and languages, (And all men's qualities are wont t' appear According to the habits that they wear) 'Tis probable to be the truest test Of all the ingenuity o' th' rest. The lives of trees lie only in the barks, And in their styles the wit of greatest clerks; Hence 'twas the ancient Roman politicians Went to the schools of foreign rhetoricians, To learn the art of patrons, in defence Of interest and their clients' eloquence; When consuls, censors, senators, and pretors, With great dictators, us'd to apply to rhetors, To hear the greater magistrate o' th' school Give sentence in his haughty chair-curule, And those, who mighty nations overcame, Were fain to say their lessons, and declaim.

Words are but pictures, true or false design'd,
To draw the lines and features of the mind;
The characters and artificial draughts,
T'express the inward images of thoughts;
And artists say a picture may be good,
Although the moral be not understood;
Whence some infer they may admire a style,
Though all the rest be e'er so mean and vile;
Applaud th' outsides of words, but never mind
With what fantastic tawdry they are lin'd.

So orators, enchanted with the twang
Of their own trillos, take delight t' harangue:
Whose science, like a juggler's box and balls,
Conveys and counterchanges true and false;
Casts mists before an audience's eyes,
To pass the one for th' other in disguise;
And, like a morrice-dancer dress'd with bells,
Only to serve for noise, and nothing else,
Such as a carrier makes his cattle wear,
And hangs for pendents in a horse's ear;
For, if the language will but bear the test,
No matter what becomes of all the rest :

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The ablest orator, to save a word,
Would throw all sense and reason overboard.
Hence 'tis that nothing else but eloquence
Is ty'd to such a prodigal expense;
That lays out half the wit and sense it uses
Upon the other half's, as vain excuses:
For all defences and apologies

Are but specifies t' other frauds and lies;
And th' artificial wash of eloquence

Is daub'd in vain upon the clearest sense,
Only to stain the native ingenuity
Of equal brevity and perspicuity;

Whilst all the best and soberest things he does,
Are when he coughs, or spits, or blows his nose;
Handles no point so evident and clear
(Besides his white gloves) as his handkercher;
Unfolds the nicest scruple so distinct,
As if his talent had been wrapt up in 't
Unthriftily, and now he went about
Henceforward to improve and put it out.

THE pedants are a mongrel breed, that sojourn
Among the ancient writers and the modern;
And, while their studies are between the one
And th' other spent, have nothing of their own;
Like spunges, are both plants and animals,
And equally to both their natures false:
For, whether 'tis their want of conversation,
Inclines them to all sorts of affectation;
Their sedentary life and melancholy,
The everlasting nursery of folly;

Their poring upon black and white too subtly
Has turn'd the insides of their brains to motley;
Or squandering of their wits and time upon
Too many things, has made them fit for none;
Their constant overstraining of the mind
Distorts the brain, as horses break their wind;
Or rude confusions of the things they read
Get up,
like noxious vapours, in the head,
Until they have their constant wanes, and fulls,
And changes, in the insides of their sculls;
Or venturing beyond the reach of wit
Has render'd them for all things else unfit;
But never bring the world and books together,
And therefore never rightly judge of either;
Whence multitudes of reverend men and critics
Have got a kind of intellectual rickets,
And, by th' immoderate excess of study,
Have found the sickly head t' outgrow the body.
For pedantry is but a corn or wart,
Bred in the skin of Judgment, Sense, and Art,
A stupify'd excrescence, like a wen,
Fed by the peccant humours of learn'd men,
That never grows from natural defects
Of downright and untutor'd intellects,
But from the over-curious and vain
Distempers of an artificial brain-

So he, that once stood for the learned'st man,
Had read out Little Britain and Duck-lane;
Worn out his reason, and reduc'd his body
And brain to nothing with perpetual study;
Kept tutors of all sorts, and virtuosis,

To read all authors to him with their glosses,
And made his lacquies, when he walk'd, bear folios
Of dictionaries, lexicons, and scholias,
To be read to him every way the wind
Should chance to sit, before him or behind;
Had read out all th' imaginary duels

That had been fought by consonants and vowels;

Had crackt his scull, to find out proper places
To lay up all memoirs of things in cases;
And practis'd all the tricks upon the charts,
To play with packs of sciences and arts,
That serve t' improve a feeble gamester's study,
That ventures at grammatic beast, or noddy;
Had read out all the catalogues of wares,
That come in dry vats o'er from Frankfort fairs,
Whose authors use t' articulate their surnames
With scraps of Greek more learned than theGermans;
Was wont to scatter books in every room,
Where they might best be seen by all that come,
And lay a train that naturally should force
What he design'd, as if it fell of course;
And all this with a worse success than Cardan,
Who bought both books and learning at a bargain,
When, lighting on a philosophic spell,

Of which he never knew one syllable,
Presto, be gone, h' unriddled all he read,
As if he had to nothing else been bred.

UPON

AN HYPOCRITICAL NONCONFORMIST,

A PINDARIC ODE.

THERE's nothing so absurd, or vain,
Or barbarous, or inhumane,
But, if it lay the least pretence
To piety and godliness,
Or tender-hearted conscience,
And zeal for gospel-truths profess,
Does sacred instantly commence ;
And all that dare but question it, are straight
Pronounc'd the uncircumcis'd and reprobate:
As malefactors, that escape and fly
Into a sanctuary for defence,

Must not be brought to justice thence,

Although their crimes be ne'er so great and high; And he that dares presume to do 't,

Is sentenc'd and deliver'd up

To Satan, that engag'd him to 't,

For venturing wickedly to put a stop
To his immunities and free affairs,

Or meddle saucily with theirs

That are employ'd by him, while he and they
Proceed in a religious and a holy way.

And, as the Pagans heretofore
Did their own handyworks adore,
And made their stone and timber deities,
Their temples and their altars, of one piece;
The same outgoings seem t' inspire
Our modern self-will'd Edifier,

That, out of things as far from sense, and more,
Contrives new light and revelation,

The creatures of th' imagination,
To worship and fall down before;

Of which his crack'd delusions draw
As monstrous images and rude,
As ever Pagan, to believe in, hew'd,
Or madman in a vision saw;
Mistakes the feeble impotence,
And vain delusions of his mind,
For spiritual gifts and offerings,
Which Heaven to present him brings;
And still, the further 'tis from sense,
Believes it is the more refin'd,

And ought to be receiv'd with greater reverence.

But, as all tricks, whose principles
Are false, prove false in all things else,
The dull and heavy hypocrite

Is but in pension with his conscience,
That pays him for maintaining it
With zealous rage and impudence;
And, as the one grows obstinate,
So does the other rich and fat;
Disposes of his gifts and dispensations,
Like spiritual foundations

Endow'd to pious uses, and design'd

To entertain the weak, the lame, and blind;

But still divers them to as bad, or worse,
Than others are by unjust governors:
For, like our modern publicans,

He still puts out all dues

He owes to Heaven to the Devil to use,

And makes his godly interest great gains;
Takes all the brethren (to recruit
The spirit in him) contribute,

And, to repair and edify his spent

And broken-winded outward man, present

For painful holding-forth against the government.

The subtle spider never spins,

But on dark days, his slimy gins;

Nor does our engineer much care to plant
His spiritual machines,

Unless among the weak and ignorant,
Th' inconstant, credulous, and light,
The vain, the factious, and the slight,
That in their zeal are most extravagant ;
For trouts are tickled best in muddy water:
And still the muddier he finds their brains,
The more he 's sought and follow'd after,
And greater ministrations gains:
For talking idly is admir'd,

And speaking nonsense held inspir'd;
And still, the flatter and more dull

His gifts appear, is held more powerful :
For blocks are better cleft with wedges,
Than tools of sharp and subtle edges;
And dullest nonsense has been found,

Nor left at large, nor be restrain'd,

But where there's something to be gain'd;
And, that being once reveal'd, defies
The law, with all its penalties,

And is convinc'd no pale

O' th' church can be so sacred as a jail :
For, as the Indians' prisons are their mines,
So he has found are all restraints

To thriving and free-conscienc'd saints;
For the same thing enriches that confines;
And like to Lully, when he was in hold,
He turns his baser metals into gold;
Receives returning and retiring fees
For holding forth, and holding of his peace;
And takes a pension to be advocate

And standing counsel 'gainst the church and state
For gall'd and tender consciences;
Commits himself to prison to trepan,
Draw in, and spirit all he can ;
For birds in cages have a call,
To draw the wildest into nets,
More prevalent and natural

Than all our artificial pipes and counterfeits.

His slippery conscience has more tricks
Than all the juggling empirics,

And every one another contradicts;
All laws of Heaven and Earth can break,
And swallow oaths, and blood, and rapine easy,
And yet is so infirm and weak,

"Twill not endure the gentlest check,

But at the slightest nicety grows queasy;
Disdains control, and yet can be

No where, but in a pron, free;
Can force itself, in spite of God,

Who makes it free as thought at home,

A slave and villain to become,

To serve its interests abroad:

And, though no Pharisee was e'er so cunning
At tithing mint and cummin,

No dull idolater was e'er so flat

In things of deep and solid weight,
Pretends to charity and holiness,

By some, to be the solid'st and the most profound. But is implacable to peace,

A great apostle once was said

With too much learning to be mad;

But our great saint becomes distract,

And only with too little crackt;

Cries moral truths and human learning down,

And will endure no reason but his own:

For 'tis a drudgery and task,
Not for a saint, but pagan oracle,
To answer all men can object or ask ;
But to be found impregnable,

And with a sturdy forehead to hold out,
In spite of shame or reason resolute,
Is braver than to argue and confute;
As he that can draw blood, they say,
From witches, takes their magic power away,
So he that draws blood int' a brother's face,
Takes all his gifts away, and light, and grace:
For, while he holds that nothing is so damn'd
And shameful as to be asham'd,

He never can b' attack'd,

But will come off; for Confidence, well back'd,
Among the weak and prepossess'd,

Has often Truth, with all her kingly power, oppress'd.
It is the nature of late zeal,
"Twill not be subject, nor rebel,

And out of tenderness grows obstinate.

And, though the zeal of God's house ate a prince And prophet up (he says) long since,

His cross-grain'd peremptory zeal

Would eat up God's house, and devour it at a meal.

He does not pray, but prosecute,
As if he went to law, his suit;
Summons his Maker to appear
And answer what he shall prefer;
Returns him back his gift of prayer,
Not to petition, but declare;
Exhibits cross complaints

Against him for the breach of covenants,
And all the charters of the saints;
Pleads guilty to the action, and yet stands
Upon high terms and bold demands;
Excepts against him and his laws,
And will be judge himself in his own cause;
And grows more saucy and severe
Than th' heathen emperor was to Jupiter,
And sometimes would speak softly in his ear
That us'd to wrangle with him and dispute,
And sometimes loud, and rant, and tear,
And threaten, if he did not grant his suit.

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