For if a brave man, that preserv'd from death One citizen, was honour'd with a wreath, He, that more gallantly got three or four, In reason must deserve a great deal more. Then, if those glorious worthies of old Rome, That civiliz'd the world they 'ad overcome, And taught it laws and learning, found this way The best to save their empire from decay,
Why should not these, that borrow all the worth They have from them, not take this lesson forth- Get children, friends, and honour too, and money, By prudent managing of matrimony?
For, if 'tis honourable by all confest, Adultery must be worshipful at least,
When no indictment justly lies,
But where the theft will bear a price.
For though wit never can be learn'd, It may b' assum'd, and own'd, and earn'd, And, like our noblest fruits, improv'd, By being transplanted and remov'd; And, as it bears no certain rate, Nor pays one penny to the state, With which it turns no more t' account Than virtue, faith, and merit 's wont; Is neither moveable nor rent, Nor chattle, goods, nor tenement, Nor was it ever pass'd b' entail, Nor settled upon heirs-male;
And these times great, when private men are come Or if it were, like ill-got land,
Up to the height and politic of Rome. All by-blows were not only free-born then, But, like John Lilburn, free-begotten men; Had equal right and privilege with these, That claim by title right of the four seas: For, being in marriage born, it matters not After what liturgy they were begot; And if there be a difference, they have Th' advantage of the chance in proving brave, By being engender'd with more life and force, Than those begotten the dull way of course. The Chinese place all piety and zeal la serving with their wives the commonweal; Fix all their hopes of merit and salvation Upon their women's supererogation:
With solemn vows their wives and daughters bind, Like Eve in Paradise, to all mankind;
And those that can produce the most gallants, Are held the preciousest of all their saints;
Wear rosaries about their necks, to con
Their exercises of devotion on;
That serve them for certificates, to show With what vast numbers they have had to do: Before they're marry'd make a conscience Tonit no duty of incontinence;
And she, that has been oftenest prostituted, Is worthy of the greatest match reputed. But, when the conquering Tartar went about To root this orthodox religion out,
They stood for conscience, and resolv'd to die, Rather than change the ancient purity Of that religion, which their ancestors And they had prosper'd in so many years; You'd to their gods to sacrifice their lives,
And die their daughters' martyrs, and their wives', Before they would commit so great a sin
Against the faith they had been bred up in.
SATIRE UPON PLAGIARIES. Way should the world be so averse To plagiary privateers,
That all men's sense and fancy seize, And make free prize of what they please? As if, because they huff and swell, Like pilferers, full of what they steal, Others might equal power assume, To pay them with as hard a doom; To shut them up, like beasts in pounds, For breaking into others' grounds! Mark them with characters and brands, Like other forgers of men's hands; And in effigie hang and draw The poor delinquents by club-law, VOL VIIL
Did never fall t' a second hand; So 'tis no more to be engross'd Than sunshine, or the air enclos'd,
Or to propriety contin'd,
Than th' uncontrol'd and scatter'd wind. For why should that which Nature meant To owe its being to its vent, That has no value of its own, But as it is divulg'd and known,
Is perishable and destroy'd, As long as it lies unenjoy'd, Be scanted of that liberal use,
Which all mankind is free to choose, And idly hoarded where 'twas bred, Instead of being dispers'd and spread? And, the more lavish and profuse, 'Tis of the nobler general use;
As riots, though supply'd by stealth, Are wholesome to the commonwealth, And men spend freelier what they win, Than what they 'ave freely coming in. The world's as full of curious wit, Which those that father never writ, As 'tis of bastards, which the sot And cuckold owns, that ne'er begot; Yet pass as well as if the one And th' other by-blow were their own For why should be that 's impotent To judge, and fancy, and invent, For that impediment be stopt To own, and challenge, and adopt, At least th' expos'd and fatherless Poor orphans of the pen and press, Whose parents are obscure, or dead, Or in far countries born and bred ?
As none but kings have power to raise levy, which the subject pays, And though they call that tax a loan, Yet when 'tis gather'd 'tis their own; So he that 's able to impose
A wit-excise on verse or prose,
And still, the abler authors are
Can make them pay the greater share,
Is prince of poets of his time,
And they his vassals that supply him; Can judge more justly o' what he takes Than any of the best he makes, And more impartially conceive
What 's fit to choose, and what to leave. For men reflect more strictly 'pon The sense of others than their own; And wit, that 's made of wit and sleight,
Is richer than the plain downright:
As salt, that 's made of salt, 's more fine, Than when it first came from the brine;
And spirits of a nobler nature Drawn from the dull ingredient matter. Hence mighty Virgil 's said of old, From dung to have extracted gold; (As many a lout and silly clown By his instructions since have done) And grew more lofty by that means, Than by his livery-oats and beans, When from his carts and country farms He rose a mighty man at arms; To whom th' Heroics ever since Have sworn allegiance, as their prince, And faithfully have all in times Observ'd his customs in their rhymes. 'Twas counted learning once, and wit, To void but what some author writ, And what men understood by rote, By as implicit sense to quote: Then many a magisterial clerk
Was taught, like singing-birds, i' th' dark, And understood as much of things, As th' ablest blackbird what it sings; And yet was honour'd and renown'd For grave, and solid, and profound. Then why should those, who pick and choose The best of all the best compose, And join it by Mosaic art, In graceful order, part to part, To make the whole in beauty suit, Not merit as complete repute
As those who, with less art and pains, Can do it with their native brains, And make the homespun business fit As freely with their mother wit; Since, what by Nature was deny'd, By Art and Industry 's supply'd,
Both which are more our own, and brave, Than all the alms that Nature gave? For that w' acquire by pains and art Is only due t' our own desert; While all th' endowments she confers Are not so much our own as her's, That, like good fortune, unawares Fall not t' our virtue, but our shares, And all we can pretend to merit We do not purchase, but inherit.
Thus all the great'st inventions, when They first were found out, were so mean, That th' authors of them are unknown, As little things they scorn'd to own; Until by men of nobler thought
Th' were to their full perfection brought. This proves that Wit does but rough-hew, Leaves Art to polish and review; And that a wit at second-hand Has greatest interest and command; For to improve, dispose, and judge, Is nobler than t' inveut and drudge. Invention's humorous and nice, And never at command applies; Disdains t' obey the proudest wit, Unless it chance t' be in the fit; (Like prophecy, that can presage Successes of the latest age, Yet is not able to tell when It next shall prophesy again)
Makes all her suitors course and wait, Like a proud minister of state,
And, when she 's serious, in some freak, Extravagant, and vain, and weak,
Attend her silly lazy pleasure, Until she chance to be at leisure; When 'tis more easy to steal wit: To clip, and forge, and counterfeit, Is both the business and delight, Like hunting sports, of those that writes For thievery is but one sort, The learned say, of hunting sport.
Hence 'tis that some, who set up first, As raw, and wretched, and unverst, And open'd with a stock as poor As a healthy beggar with one sore; That never writ in prose or verse, But pick'd, or cut it, like a purse, And at the best could but commit The petty-larceny of wit;
To whom to write was to purloin, Aud printing but to stamp false coin, Yet, after long and sturdy endeavours Of being painful wit-receivers, With gathering rags and scraps of wit, As paper 's made on which 'tis writ, Have gone forth authors, and acquir'd The right-or wrong-to be admir'd; And, arm'd with confidence, incurr'd The fool's good luck, to be preferr'd. For, as a banker can dispose Of greater sums he only owes, Than he who honestly is known To deal in nothing but his own, So, whosoe'er can take up most, May greatest fame and credit boast,
UPON THE IMPERFECTION AND ABUSE OF
HUMAN LEARNING.
It is the noblest act of human reason, To free itself from slavish prepossession, Assume the legal right to disengage From all it had contracted under age, And not its ingenuity and wit,
To all it was imbued with first, submit; Take true or false for better or for worse, To have or to hold indifferently of course.
For Custom, though but usher of the school, Where Nature breeds the body and the soul, Usurps a greater power and interest
O'er man, the heir of Reason, than brute beast, That by two different instincts is led,
Born to the one, and to the other bred,
And trains him up with rudiments more false Than Nature does her stupid animals;
And that's one reason why more care 's bestow'd Upon the body, than the soul's allow'd, That is not found to understand and know So subtly, as the body 's found to grow. Though children, without study, pains, or thought Are languages and vulgar notions taught, Improve their natural talents without care, And apprehend before they are aware, Yet as all strangers never leave the tones They have been us'd of children to pronounce, So most men's reason never can outgrow
The discipline it first receiv'd to know,
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'd i' 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, And 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 admission, to intrude; 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'ners take more pains 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; T' appear 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
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.
FRAGMENTS OF AN INTENDED SECOND PART OF 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 perempt'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,
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, discoverd 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; Or he that laugh'd until he chok'd his whistle, 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
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 Stoic
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, War'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, Tatil '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
Is 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, Somen pass fairest in the world's opinion, That have the least of truth and reason in them. Trath would undo the world, if it possest The meanest of its right and interest; ls 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 y ords, 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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