Classic Poem

OF AN INTENDED SECOND PART OF THE FOREGOING SATIRE .

M EN'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 'ave least capacity to doubt,
Are wont to' 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 denied 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 p—ss.

What mad fantastic gambols have been play'd
By the' 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 Ætna, with his sandles shod,
And bring 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' the' 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 the' 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 the' 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.

T HE ancient sceptics constantly denied
What they maintain'd, and thought they justified;
For when th' 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 block-heads, and the peace;
Were often set by officers i' the' stocks
For quarrelling about a paradox:
When pudding-wives were launcht in cucking-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 to' 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.

D ISTINCTIONS , that had been at first design'd
To regulate the errors of the mind,
By b'ing 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 so' uncertain, 'tis no matter
Whether they are, or never were in nature;
And venture to demonstrate when they 've slur'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' the' question.
The noblest science of defence and art
In practice now with all that controvert;
And the' 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;
Wav'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 tried;
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.

J UDGMENT is but a curious pair of scales,
That turns with the hundredth part of true or false,
And still the more 'tis us'd is wont to' 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 'em.
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 surrender'd 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, pow'r, and force,
And pass for sense to' 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.

F OR all our learned authors now compile
At charge of nothing, but the words and style;
And the most curious critics of 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 to' appear
According to the habits that they wear)
'Tis probable to be the truest test
Of all the ingenuity o' the' 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 pations, in defence
Of interest and their clients' eloquence;
When consuls, censors, senators, and prætors,
With great dictators, us'd to' apply to rhetors,
To hear the greater magistrate o' the' 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,
To' 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;
Appland the' outsides of words, but never mind
With what fantastic tawdry they are lin'd.
 So orators, inchanted with the twang
Of their own trillos, take delight to' harangue;
Whose science, like a jugglers box and balls,
Conveys and counterchanges true and false;
Casts mists before an audience's eyes,
To pass the one for t' 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:
The ablest orator, to save a word,
Would throw all sense and reason overboard.
 Hence 'tis, that nothing else but eloquence
Is tied 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 specifics to' other frauds and lies;
And the' 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.

T HE pedants are a mongrel breed, that sojourn
Among the ancient writers and the modern;
And, while their studies are between the one
And t' other spent, have nothing of their own;
Like sponges, 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 fulis,
And changes, in the insides of their skulls;
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 the' immoderate excess of study
Have found the sickly head to' outgrow the body.
 For pedantry is but a corn or wart,
Bred in the skin of judgment; sense, and art,
A stupified 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 vertuosis,
To read all authors to him with their glosses,
And made his lackies, 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 the' imaginary duels
That had been fought by consonants and vowels;
Had crack'd his skull, 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 to' 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 fats o'er from Francfort fairs,
Whose authors use to' articulate their surnames
With scraps of Greek more learned than the Germans;
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 , he' unriddled all he read,
As if he had to nothing else been bred.