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Ecclesiastical and civil,

Shall be sent packing to the Devil.

Philosophy, whose grasping hands
Spit tythe pigs, seize upon glebe lands,
Rob churchmen of their Christmas pye,
Dispatch their brawn and rosemary;

Beneath the cloyster's hallow'd floor
Burrow, to sap their cellar door,

*

And broach their casks of mellow'd juices,
Long set apart for pious uses.-
Philosophy, of Gallic climes,

Parent of unexampled crimes!
Philosophy, who, while she clouds
Bright Revelation's day, unshrouds
Dark-lantern of Regeneration,

That Will-o'-wisp of the Great Nation,

* Rosemary made a part of the ancient decoration of the brawn's or boar's head, as appears from the subsequent stanza of an old Christmas caroll, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, A. D. 1521.

"Caput apri defero,

"Reddens laudes Domino.

"The bore's heed in hande bring I
"With garlands gay and rosemary,

"I pray you all sing merely,

"Qui estis in convivio."

Whose glimmering sparkles emanate
From rotten pediment o' the state;
Just as stale fish and carrion trash is
Known to emit electric flashes.

But if perception's door be shut,
And density of occiput

Chance to make inadmissible

Her Gallic Darkness Visible,

Philosophy shall crack the pate
To let it in at any rate;

And all who dare to shut their eyes
'Gainst its dim gleam Septemberize,
Or guillotine the dogs by shoals
Only for being blind as moles;

Or, if they venture to beseech

Her pity, drown 'em all and each;

Or cut the varlets throats, or gibbet 'em

On Tree of Liberty ad libitum,

Where influence blest of Gallic sky

Their dark Aristocratic dye

May bleach to pure Democracy.

PHILOSOPHERS! ye grand empirics!

Had I the gift, in sounding lyrics,

I'd spread your praise from clime to clime,
And soar above this scurvy rhyme;
Who fractious patients bring to reason
By quaint incisions of the weazon:
Who dose with Exile to Guiana,
Instead of Ipecacuanha,

To cleanse from contumacious matter

The vitals of the Legislature:

Administer, to cure all ills,

Your grand specific, leaden pills,
Which purge us of Aristocrats,

Had they as many lives as cats,
And unconcern'd to Charon's steerage
Consign our hierarchy and peerage;

Send them, where-, hous'd in their last home,
The Kings of Brentford and of Rome,

Where Numa, Romulus, and Ancus,

Hippocrates and Saltinbancoes,

Where vermin catchers, law expounders,
Retailers of stale jokes and flounders,
And those incorrigible curs,

Conveyancing Biographers,

And knight's o' the pad who rob and stop men, Mayors, marquisses, and Monmouth shop-men,

Tapsters, and conventicle praters,
Gospel, and gin-sophisticators;

Quest mongers and quodlibetarians,

Varlets who set mankind at variance;
Numskulls, and critics sharp as needles,
Phlebotomists, and parish beadles,
Gallic director, and dog stealer,

Bear leader, brawn and sturgeon dealer,
Chiropodist and Cambrian squire

All toast their cheese at the same fire.*

There

your Whitehaven collier's soul
Must find itself at home t' a hole,
Who to the Lord has sworn allegiance
O' the secular infernal regions; †
Serv'd an apprenticeship to night,
And darkness chose rather than light,
Since, deep as it may chance to go,
He's still but in the Shades Below.

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Ενδ ̓ ἰῇ τιμῇ Ἶρος κρείων Αγαμεμνων, Θερσίτη δ ̓ ἴσω Θέτιδα- παῖς κϋκόμοιο. + The Earl of Lonsdale.

Homer.

There, from terrestrial stage dismiss'd,
Bravo descends, and pugilist;

And not unsuitably with thém mix
The sable corps of fierce Polemics,
For, though the sacred statutes warn all
'Gainst putting trust in weapons carnal.
Sturdy Polemics care not three-pence,
But fight with pens, their carnal weapons.
No mortal blood these weapons drink
'Tis true, but charge of mortal ink,
That black combustible, let fly

I' the cause of type or mystery;
And those who wield 'em, not content
To maim th' opposer's argument,
Traduce his character, call names,
And doom him to eternal flames.-

*What rage impels grave theologiaus To loggerheads like Greeks and Trojans !

*Tantæne animis Cœlestibus Iræ!

The learned and pious Sir Henry Wooton desired these words might be inscribed on his monument,

Hic jacet hujus Sententiæ primus Auctor:

"PRURITUS DISPUTANDI SCABIES ECCLESIÆ."

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