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 tired 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 possess'd.
Condemn'd to drudge, and labour, and take pains,
Without an equal competence of brains;
While those she has indulged in soul and body,
Are most averse to industry and study,
And the' activest 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 straight a compass is confined,
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 to' unriddle every cause
That Nature uses, by their own bye-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 proved a greater hinderance
To the' interest of truth than ignorance.
And therefore never bore so high a value
As when 'twas low, contemptible, and shallow;
Had academics, schools, and colleges,
Endow'd for its improvement and increase;
With pomp
and show was introduced with maces,
More than a Roman magistrate had fasces;
Impower'd with statute, privilege, and mandate,
To' 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, reduced 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 the' one half is for interest, the' other show:
As scriveners 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;
To' 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' the' 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
Trepan'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 'ave least capacity to doubt,
Are wont to appear most peremptory 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,
Contrived 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 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 crack'd, and ran stark-staring mad with pa-
tience,
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,
Exiled himself and all his followers,
Notorious poets, only bating verse.
The Stagyrite, unable to expound
The Euripus, leap'd 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 reverenced by the learned ever since.
Empedocles to be esteem'd a god,
Leap'd into Ætna, with his sandals shod,
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