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RIC LIBE

ASTUR, LENOX ANT BILDEN FOUNDATION:

Learn'd he was in med'c'nal lore,

For by his side a pouch he wore,
Replete with strange hermetic powder,3

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That wounds nine miles point-blank would solder;*
By skilful chymist, with great cost,
Extracted from a rotten post ;5

But of a heav'nlier influence

Than that which mountebanks dispense;

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Tho' by Promethean fire made,

As they do quack that drive that trade.
For as when slovens do amiss

At others' doors, by stool or piss,
The learned write, a red-hot spit
B'ing prudently apply'd to it,

Will convey mischief from the dung
Unto the part that did the wrong;

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Replete with strange hermetic powder,] Hermetic, i. e. chymical, from Hermes, Mercury; or perhaps so called from Hermes Trismegistus, a famous Egyptian philosopher.

♦ That wounds nine miles point-blank would solder;] Meaning to banter the sympathetic powder, which was to effect the cure of wounds at a distance. It was much in fashion in the reign of James the first. See Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourse touching the cure of wounds by the powder of sympathy, translated from the French by R. White, gent. and printed 1658-Point-blank is a term in gunnery, signifying an horizontal level.

• Extracted from a rotten post ;] Useless powders in medicine, are called powders of post.

:

Tho' by Promethean fire made,] That is, heat of the sun so in Canto iii. v. 628. Promethean powder, that is, powder calcined by the sun, for the chief ingredient in sympathetic powder was calcined by the sun.

Will convey mischief from the dung] Still ridiculing the sympa

So this did healing, and as sure

As that did mischief, this would cure.
Thus virtuous Orsin was endu'd
With learning, conduct, fortitude
Incomparable; and as the prince
Of poets, Homer, sung long since,
A skilful leech is better far,

་་་་

Than half a hundred men of war;8
So he appear'd, and by his skill,

No less than dint of sword, cou'd kill.
The gallant Bruin march'd next him,
With visage formidably grim,

And rugged as a Saracen,

Or Turk of Mahomet's own kin,"

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thetic powder. See the treatise above-mentioned, where the poet's story of the spit is seriously told.

Of poets, Homer, sung long since,

A skilful leech is better far,

Than half a hundred men of war ;]

Ἰητρὸς γὰρ ἀνὴρ πολλῶν ἀντάξιος ἄλλων

Ιούς τ ̓ ἐκτάμνειν, ἐπὶ τ ̓ ἤπια φάρμακα πάσσειν.

Homer. Iliad. b. xi. 1. 514.

Leech is the old Saxon term for physician, derived from laec, lac, munus, reward; Chaucer uses the word leechcraft, to express the skill of a physician, and at this day we are accustomed to hear of beast leech, cow leech, &c. The glossary annexed to Gawin Douglas's Virgil says, Leiche, a physician or surgeon, Scot. Leech from the A. S. laec, lyce, lack, Isl. laeknare, Goth. leik, medicus, A. S. laenian, laecinian, sanare, curare: laikinon, Belg.

9 And rugged as a Saracen,

Or Turk of Mahomet's own kin,] Mr. George Sandys, in his book of Travels, observes, that the Turks are generally well complexioned, of good stature, and the women of elegant beauty, except

Of rough, impenetrable fur;
And in his nose, like Indian king,
He wore, for ornament, a ring;
About his neck a threefold gorget,
As rough as trebled leathern target;
Armed, as heralds cant, and langued,
Or, as the vulgar say, sharp-fanged:1
For as the teeth in beasts of prey
Are swords, with which they fight in fray,
So swords, in men of war, are teeth,
Which they do eat their vittle with.
He was, by birth, some authors write,
A Russian, some a Muscovite,

And 'mong the Cossacks had been bred,
Of whom we in diurnals read,

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That serve to fill up pages here,

As with their bodies ditches there.

Scrimansky was his cousin-german,2

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With whom he serv'd, and fed on vermin;

Mahomet's kindred, who are the most ill-favoured people upon earth, branded, perhaps, by God (says he) for the sin of their seducing

ancestor.

Armed, as heralds cant, and langued,

Or, as the vulgar say, sharp-fanged:] Our author here banters the heralds, as he had before rallied the lawyers and physicians.

2

Scrimansky was his cousin-german,] Some favourite bear perhaps. Two of the Roman emperors, Maximilian and Valentinian, gave names to bears, which they kept for the daily pleasure of seeing them devour their subjects. The names of the executioners to Valentinian were Mica Aurea, and Innocentia. Amm. Marcellin, xxix. 3. et Lactant. de mort. persecutorum, cap. 21. The word scrimatur is