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 denied
By art and industry's supplied,

Both which are more our own, and brave,
Than all the alms that Nature gave?
For what we' acquire by pains and art
Is only due to our own desert;
While all the' endowments she confers,
Are not so much our own as her's,
That, like good fortune, unawares
Fall not to' our virtue, but our shares ;
And all we can pretend to merit
We do not purchase, but inherit.

Thus all the greatest inventions, when
They first were found out, were so mean,
That the' authors of them are unknown,
As little things they scorn'd to own;
Until by men of nobler thought

They' 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 to' invent and drudge.
Invention's humorous and nice,
And never at command applies;
Disdains to' obey the proudest wit,
Unless it chance to 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 write;
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 unvers'd,
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,
And 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 acquired
The right-or wrong-to be admired;
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.

SATIRE,

IN TWO PARTS,

UPON THE

IMPERFECTION AND ABUSE OF HUMAN LEARNING.

PART I.

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 used of children to pronounce, So most men's reason never can outgrow The discipline it first received 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 changed i'the' cradle, but the Where error, pedantry, and affectation, [schools, 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-
Are really but pains and labour lost, [books;
And not worth half the drudgery they cost,
Unless, like rarities, as they 'ave 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' has 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 practised 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 used to pass the time away; [name

When the' ancient Greeks and Romans had no To' express a school and playhouse, but the same,