Satires and miscellaneous poetry and prose :: :: University of Virginia Library

Who, like a Skilful Rhetorician,
Knew how to order his Transition
So Cunningly, the Quickest Sense
Could nere unriddle his Pretence,
Nor what he went about Discover,
Untill the whole Design was over.

For Truth and Falshood, like a Gun, that's shot
Make æquall Noyses, tho they hit, or Not:
And some still growe the worse, the more they Reade
As Elks (they say) Go Backwards, when they feed.

The New Divice of Fiddle strings, to Rayse
Above the Mean, or Tenor-Part; the Base:
For when two Strings are straind t' an unison
(A greater and a less) and stil straind on
(Both æqually) the greater wilbe found,
B'ing straind before, to have the Higher sound.

402

A wondrous Hard Invention to unriddle
The Natrall Reason of, upon the Fiddle,
Which Gallileo shew'd himself an Ass
To take no Notice of, but overpas.

So those that by the Oracle had been
Infallibly Declard the wisest Men,
Were but affected Humorists and Drols,
That might have past as wel for Errant Fooles,
That held it wisdom freely to commit
All sorts of madnes, when the Magot Bit.
Which some were faine to counterfet and Act,
T' avoyd the Law, that favours the Distract;
And one of them, made statutes, that concern
The Regulating al that Teach, or Learne.
Did not omit Proviso's for their Play,
But put it, in a Legislative way,
That nobody could play at Trap, or Ball,
Unless it were allowd Juridicall,
With Peremptory Injunctions, and Commands
About the Managment of Clokes, and Bands,
Mad[e] Rules to spit, and after tread it out
More Regular then ever had been taught,
Made Politique Provisos, to Put off
Their Breaking winde with sneeres, or a Coffe;
That Tully (had he lived then) had abstained
To rub his face so often with his Hand.

For those that valew things too cheap, or Deare,
More then the Standard of the world wil Beare:
Mistake Th' Intrinsique Rate, and put their Talents,
And Inclinations, only in the Ballance:
And those, to whom the Hardest things are cleare,
Will make the Plaine as Difficult appeare;
When all the Antients fancyd of the Trick
Was but a Stoiques Earthen Candle-stick,
That to some Pædants of his Tribe was Sold,
And Purchacd for its weight in Ready Gold.

So he, that sainted Queen Elizabeth
So many Scores of yeares, before her Death,
And cald her Diva, Th' Antients nere allowd
To any Prince, till Dead, and made a God.
And, tho the Learnedst of our Antiquarys,
Let such a Blemish on her Commentarys.

The sturdy Gaul bore Cæsar, like a Sack,
H' had Loaded Prisner ore his Horses Back,
A Greater Captive then the Roman Foe,
Who had been taken Prisner, by a Crow.

403

Extravagances wil not Pass in Nature
On those that live so many Ages After,
Tho all the world indeavors to excuse
The most Prodigious Custome of their use,
Like Boys, and Girles Implicitly held best
To Gather in their Spices, in the East.
Or that Blind Moor that smelling to a Clod
Led on the Caravan upon the Road,
As one that is of Classical Esteeme
Relates the Story, and the Rest from him.
If any have so feeble a Beliefe
To credit such a monstrous Narrative.

For men that are in Greatest want of Sense
Have all and more supplyd by confidence;
And, as some Printers have (among the Popish)
Been Hangd for Printing truer then their Copies,
It is a Dangrous thing, for those that write
All sorts of Truths, to bee too much i' th' Right.

Like him that usd to stand al Day and night
Congeald into a Posture bolt upright,
A Deep occult Philosopher and Scribe,
The Lutum Sapientiae of his Tribe.

For those that take most Pains to under[stan]d,
Like great Estates Run furthest behind hand,
Retaine the measure, which at School they took,
When only for the words, they read a book.
And all their freest thoughts, can never leave
What Custome first Ingagd 'em to receive;
Who still the more, they Toyle in Books and Drudge,
Are found the more untowardly to Judge,
Resolve i' th' Dark of Matters ere so Hard,
Like Jury men of Fire, and Light debard:
That many a Learned Metaphysique Clarke
Has been bred-up, Like Singing Birds, i' th' Dark.

Chaldeans brag th' have been Astrologers,
Before the Moon, so many Thousand years:
But could not Cast their own Nativitys,
For want of her, without so many Lyes;
Yet those, that can Put down Astrologers
And outly those five thousand Falkoners,
And Huntsmen, which the Macedonian youth
Allowd his Tutor, only to write Truth,
The Learnd wil pas for tru, and Current all,
If th' Authors have but Past for Classical.

404

[Philosophers]
That crack their brains to find out by what trade
The fabrick of the world at first was made;
Who drew the model of it, and what sect
Produc'd the philosophick architect;
Or whether chance, necessity, or matter
Contriv'd the whole establishment of nature;
That all the antique poets were not mad
And crackt enough to do it half so bad,
Until the deep and learneder Wiseacres
Philosophers became the undertakers,
Who more stupendiously perform'd the fact,
And prov'd themselves more exquisitely crackt;
That when the moon's at full a Madman's dreams
Are sob'rer than their wisest theorems.

Make one man's teeth grow in another's chops,
And brew, with ginger, beere, instead of hops;
Make silk of canvace, and Virginia grasses,
And grind on flakes of ice new burning glasses;
Make prawns and crawfish, and all shellfish else
With sympathetick powder of their shells;
Make chips of Elm produce the largest trees
And sowing saw-dust furnish nurseries.

For sentences have greater latitude
To quibble in, than single words, allowd,
The new rhetorick figure clinch and pun,
To make two diff'rent senses pass for one,
The dear delight of reverend men, whose wit
Is grown no further back than childhood yet,
And therefore may b' allow'd to play its wild
Vagaries in its journey down to child,
To jumble contradictions, and make good
And bad in the same subject understood,
Force wet and dry t' ingage, and hot and cold
Like nature in another Chaos hold,
A more ingenious and absurd device
Then grinding burning-glasses upon ice,
Which th' Irish prophet us'd so long ago
To light a fire, and burn great heaps of snow,
And ought to pass for modish, since the French
Have not outgrown Carwichet yet and clench,
But use to make the rime and equivoc
The sole ingredients of a witty Book;
And if they can by chance but make the fadge,
Believe th' have gotten ground of all the age,
And laugh at all the ignorant liefhebbers,
And witless virtuosos of their neighbours.

405

For those that treat of ------ are wont
To write down all that authours say upon't,
But have no further prospect in their thoughts
Of reason and invention then their notes;
And when they have been laid by and forgot,
Admire their parts anew, and put it out:
As he that wrote a sturdy musick book,
And never knew a note but those he took,
Discover'd nations to be brave or base
By their pronouncing I's and O's, and A's,
Determin'd poetry only by the feet,
No matter for the fancy, sense, and wit,
Came over to instruct the English nation,
And was not only paid with admiration,
But for his pains had all he would but ask for,
As Merchants Sell glass-beads at Madagascar,
And th' Indian-company for paultry trinkets
Bring over Orient pearles, and pretious ingots.

Whence writers of the later times produc'd
A list of all the Authors names they us'd,
That alphabetically trac'd begun
With Appian, and reach'd to Xenophon;
And tho' they never read one syllable
Of any one, their names prevail as well
To make them pass the publick test instead
Of learned men profound and deeply read.

And like their Books in Librarys, their Braines
Are always tyd up, where they were in Chains:
For Scholle[r]s have no way to make a Thesis
Hold-out, untill th' have taken it to Pieces,
And when they would Determine False, or Tru;
'Tis but because Some other things are so.
And all their Art to make obscure things good
Depends on nothing but similitude.
A vanity that's not the least Ingredient
In th' Hotch-potch composition of a Pedant.

T' invent's a faculty that's given
By th' absolute free grace of heaven;
Which nature keeps in her disposing;
And all the arts of virtuosing
By industry can ne're attain to
By any human non obstante.

Whence some have found out, how a Separate Ghost
In Furious Stormes, and Hurricans, is Tost.
Know what they use to Drink, and what they Eate
And what they suffer in the Cold, or Heate.

406

That use to write Stupendious Narrative[s]
Of all th' Adventures of their After-Lives;
Know what makes Form, and Matter stick together
As Boys weights with Sope, and Scraps of Leather,
Or two Stones ground with æqual Superficies
Are Difficultly to be Drawn to Pieces:
All which Demonstrated by D.E.F.
Among the Learned never miss Belief.

Learning and devotion
Adord when both were lesse then nothing
Had Colleges and Monasterys
Erected for their Seminaries,
But Scornd as soon as understood,
For Better's a Curst Fo to good,
And owe their Present maintenance
To former Ages of Ignorance.

In Sciences have Just enough
To talk impertinently of.
Like Virtuosos and Industrious
The more their Aimes Appear Preposterous.

Men are not Dumb, for want of Tongues, but Eares;
For nature lets none Speak, before he Heares:
To make them learne Good Manners, at th' expence
Of such a wonderful Convenience.
For Those that take (against her will) a Course
T' extend their Latitudes, grow worse, and worse,
A Crime as great, as to Remove the Bounds
That have been set to th' Property of Grounds.