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And nigh an ancient obelisk

Was rais'd by him, found out by Fisk,
On which was written, not in words,
But hieroglyphic mute of birds,
Many rare pithy saws, concerning
The worth of astrologic learning:
From top of this there hung a rope,
To which he fasten'd telescope,
The spectacles with which the stars
He reads in smallest characters.
It happen'd as a boy, one night,
Did fly his tassel of a kite,

The strangest long-wing'd hawk that flies,
That, like a bird of Paradise,

Or herald's martlet, has no legs,

Nor hatches young ones, nor lays eggs;
His train was six yards long, milk-white,
At th' end of which there hung a light,
Inclos'd in lantern made of paper,
That far off like a star did appear:
This Sidrophel by chance espy'd,
And with amazement staring wide,

Bless us, quoth he, what dreadful wonder
Is that appears in Heaven yonder?
A comet, and without a beard!
Or star that ne'er before appear'd!
I'm certain 'tis not in the scroll

Of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl,
With which, like Indian plantations,
The learned stock the constellations;
Nor those that drawn for signs have been
To th' houses where the planets inn.
It must be supernatural,
Unless it be that cannon-ball

That, shot i' th' air point blank upright,
Was borne to that prodigious height
That, learn'd philosophers maintain,
It ne'er came backwards down again,
But in the airy region yet
Hangs, like the body of Mahomet:
For if it be above the shade

That by the earth's round bulk is made,
"Tis probable it may, from far,
Appear no bullet, but a star.

UPON CRITICS

WHO JUDGE OF MODERN PLAYS PRECISELY BY THE RULES OF THE ANCIENTS.

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More false and nice than weighing of the weather

To th' hundredth atom of the lightest feather,

Or measuring of air upon Parnassus,
With cylinders of Torricellian glasses;
Reduce all Tragedy, by rules of art,
Back to its antique theatre, a cart,

And make them thenceforth keep the beaten roads
Of rev'rend chorusses and episodes ;
Reform and regulate a puppet play,
According to the true and ancient way,
That not an actor shall presume to squeak,
Unless he have a licence for 't in Greek;
Nor Whittington henceforward sell his cat in
Plain vulgar English, without mewing Latin:
No pudding shall be suffer'd to be witty,
Unless it be in order to raise pity;
Nor devil in the puppet-play b' allow'd
To roar and spit fire, but to fright the crowd,
Unless some god or demon chanced t' have piques
Against an ancient family of Greeks;
That other men may tremble and take warning,
How such a fatal progeny they're born in ;

For none but such for tragedy are fitted,
That have been ruin'd only to be pity'd;
And only those held proper to deter,

Who 've had th' ill luck against their wills to err;
Whence only such as are of middling sizes,
Between morality and venial vices,
Are qualified to be destroy'd by Fate,
For other mortals to take warning at.
As if the antique laws of Tragedy
Did with our own municipal agree,
And served, like cobwebs, t' ensnare the weak,
And give diversion to the great to break;
To make a less delinquent to be brought
To answer for a greater person's fault,
And suffer all the worst the worst approver
Can, to excuse and save himself, discover.
No longer shall Dramatics be confined
To draw true images of all mankind;
To punish in effigy criminals,
Reprieve the innocent, and hang the false;
But a club-law to execute and kill,

For nothing, whomsoe'er they please, at will,
To terrify spectators from committing

The crimes they did, and suffer'd for, unwitting.
These are the reformations of the Stage,
Like other reformations of the age,

On purpose to destroy all wit and sense,
As th' other did all law and conscience;
No better than the laws of British plays,

Confirm'd in th' ancient good King Howell's days,
Who made a general council regulate
Men's catching women by the-you know what,
And set it in the rubric at what time

It should be counted legal, when a crime,
Declare when 'twas, and when 'twas not a sin,
And on what days it went out or came in.

An English poet should be try'd b' his peers,
And not by pedants and philosophers,
Incompetent to judge poetic fury,
As butchers are forbid to be of a jury;

Besides the most intolerable wrong

To try their matters in a foreign tongue,
By foreign jurymen, like Sophocles,
Or tales falser than Euripides;

When not an English native dares appear
To be a witness for the prisoner;

When all the laws they use t' arraign and try
The innocent and wrong'd delinquent by,
Were made b' a foreign lawyer, and his pupils,
To put an end to all poetic scruples,
And by th' advice of virtuosi Tuscans,
Determin'd all the doubts of socks and buskins;
Gave judgment on all past and future plays,
As is apparent by Speroni's case,
Which Lope Vega first began to steal,
And after him the French filou Corneille;
And since our English plagiaries nim,
And steal their far-fet criticisms from him,
And by an action falsely laid of Trover,
The lumber for their proper goods recover;
Enough to furnish all the lewd impeachers
Of witty Beaumont's poetry, and Fletcher's,
Who for a few misprisions of wit,

Are charg'd by those who ten times worse commit;
And for misjudging some unhappy scenes,
Are censured for 't with more unlucky sense;
When all their worst miscarriages delight,
And please more than the best that pedants write.

SATIRE UPON THE LICENTIOUS AGE
OF CHARLES II.

'Tis a strange age we've lived in, and a lewd,
As e'er the sun in all his travels view'd;
An age as vile as ever Justice urg'd,
Like a fantastic letcher to be scourg'd;
Nor has it 'scap'd, and yet has only learn'd,
The more 'tis plagued, to be the less concern'd.
Twice have we seen two dreadful judgments rage,
Enough to fright the stubborn'st-hearted age;
The one to mow vast crowds of people down,
The other (as then needless) half the town;
And two as mighty miracles restore
What both had ruin'd and destroy'd before;
In all as unconcern'd as if they 'ad been
But pastimes for diversion to be seen,
Or, like the plagues of Egypt, meant a curse,
Not to reclaim us, but to make us worse.

(head)

Twice have men turn'd the world (that silly blockThe wrong side outward, like a juggler's pocket, Shook out hypocrisy as fast and loose

As e'er the dev'l could teach, or sinners use,
And on the other side at once put in

As impotent iniquity and sin;

As skulls that have been crack'd are often found
Upon the wrong side to receive the wound;
And like tobacco-pipes at one end hit,
To break at th' other still that's opposite;
So men, who one extravagance would shun,
Into the contrary extreme have run;
And all the difference is, that as the first
Provokes the other freak to prove the worst,

So, in return, that strives to render less
The last delusion, with its own excess,
And, like two unskill'd gamesters, use one way,
With bungling t' help out one another's play.
For those who heretofore sought private holes,
Securely in the dark to damn their souls,
Wore vizards of hypocrisy, to steal
And slink away in masquerade to hell,
Now bring their crimes into the open sun,
For all mankind to gaze their worst upon,
As eagles try their young against his rays,
To prove if they 're of gen'rous breed or base;
Call heav'n and earth to witness how they've aim'd,
With all their utmost vigour, to be damn'd,
And by their own examples in the view

Of all the world, strived to damn others too;
On all occasions sought to be as civil
As possibly they could t' his grace the Devil,
To give him no unnecessary trouble,
Nor in small matters use a friend so noble,
But with their constant practice done their best
T'improve and propagate his interest:

For men have now made vice so great an art,
The matter of fact's become the slightest part;
And the debauched'st actions they can do,
Mere trifles to the circumstance and shew.
For 'tis not what they do that's now the sin,
But what they lewdly affect and glory in,
As if prepost'rously they would profess
A forced hypocrisy of wickedness;
And affectation, that makes good things bad,
Must make affected shame accurs'd and mad;
For vices for themselves may find excuse,
But never for their complement and shews;
That if there ever were a mystery
Of moral secular iniquity,

And that the churches may not lose their due
By being encroach'd upon, 'tis now, and new :
For men are now as scrupulous and nice,
And tender-conscienc'd of low paltry vice,
Disdain as proudly to be thought to have
To do in any mischief but the brave,
As the most scrup'lous zealot of late times
T' appear in any but the horrid'st crimes;
Have as precise and strict punctilios
Now to appear, as then to make no shews,
And steer the world by disagreeing force
Of diff'rent customs 'gainst her natʼral course:
So pow'rful 's ill example to encroach,
And Nature, spite of all her laws, debauch;
Example, that imperious dictator

Of all that's good or bad to human nature,
By which the world's corrupted and reclaim'd,
Hopes to be saved, and studies to be damn'd;
That reconciles all contrarieties,
Makes wisdom foolishness, and folly wise,
Imposes on divinity, and sets

Her seal alike on truths and counterfeits ;
Alters all characters of virtue' and vice,
And passes one for th' other in disguise ;
Makes all things, as it pleases, understood,
The good received for bad, and bad for good;

That slily counterchanges wrong and right,
Like white in fields of black, and black in white;
As if the laws of Nature had been made
On purpose only to be disobey'd;

Or man had lost his mighty interest,

By having been distinguish'd from a beast;
And had no other way but sin and vice,
To be restored again to Paradise.

How copious is our language lately grown,
To make blaspheming wit, and a jargon!
And yet how expressive and significant,

In damme, at once to curse, and swear, and rant!
As if no way express'd men's souls so well,
As damning of them to the pit of hell;
Nor any assev'ration were so civil,
As mortgaging salvation to the devil;

Or that his name did add a charming grace,
And blasphemy a purity to our phrase.
For what can any language more enrich,
Than to pay souls for vitiating speech;

When the great'st tyrant in the world made those
But lick their words out that abused his prose ?
What trivial punishments did then protect
To public censure a profound respect,
When the most shameful penance, and severe,
That could b' inflicted on a Cavalier
For infamous debauchery, was no worse
Than but to be degraded from his horse,
And have his livery of oats and hay,
Instead of cutting spurs off, ta'en away!
They held no torture then so great as shame,
And that to slay was less than to defame;
For just so much regard as men express
To th' censure of the public, more or less,
The same will be return'd to them again,
In shame or reputation, to a grain ;
And how perverse soe'er the world appears,
'Tis just to all the bad it sees and hears;
And for that virtue strives to be allow'd
For all the injuries it does the good.

How silly were the sages heretofore,
To fright their heroes with a syren whore !
Make 'em believe a water-witch, with charms,
Could sink their men of war as easy as storms,
And turn their mariners, that heard them sing,
Into land porpoises, and cod, and ling;
To terrify those mighty champions,
As we do children now with Bloody bones;
Until the subtlest of their conjurers
Seal'd up the label to his soul his ears,
And tyed his deafen'd sailors (while he past
The dreadful lady's lodgings) to the mast,
And rather venture drowning than to wrong
The sea-pugs' chaste ears with a bawdy song:
To b' out of countenance, and, like an ass,
Not pledge the lady Circe one beer-glass;
Unmannerly refuse her treat and wine,
For fear of being turn'd into a swine,
When one of our heroic advent'rers now,
Would drink her down, and turn her int' a sow.

So simple were those times, when a grave sage Could with an old wife's tale instruct the age,

Teach virtue more fantastic ways and nice,
Than ours will now endure t' improve in vice,
Made a dull sentence, and a moral fable,
Do more than all our holdingsforth are able ;
A forced obscure mythology convince,
Beyond our worst inflictions upon sins:
When an old proverb, or an end of verse,
Could more than all our penal laws coerce,
And keep men honester than all our furies
Of jailors, judges, constables, and juries;
Who were converted then with an old saying,
Better than all our preaching now, and praying.
What fops had these been, had they lived with us,
Where the best reason's made ridiculous,
And all the plain and sober things we say,
By raillery are put beside their play!

For men are grown above all knowledge now,
And what they 're ignorant of disdain to know;
Engross truth (like fanatics) underhand,
And boldly judge before they understand;
The self-same courses equally advance
In spiritual and carnal ignorance.
And, by the same degrees of confidence,
Become impregnable against all sense;
For as they outgrew ordinances then,
So would they now morality again,
Though Drudgery and Knowledge are of kin,
And both descended from one parent, Sin,
And therefore seldom have been known to part,
In tracing out the ways of Truth and Art,
Yet they have north-west passages to steer
A short way to it, without pains or care:
For as implicit faith is far more stiff
Than that which understands its own belief,
So those that think and do but think they know,
Are far more obstinate than those that do,
And more averse than if they 'd ne'er been taught
A wrong way, to a right one to be brought;
Take boldness upon credit beforehand,
And grow too positive to understand;
Believe themselves as knowing and as famous,
As if their gifts had gotten a mandamus,
A bill of store to take up a degree,
With all the learning to it, custom-free:
And look as big for what they bought at Court,
As if they 'ad done their exercises for 't.

SATIRE UPON THE ABUSE OF HUMAN
LEARNING.

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 t' hold indifferently of course.

For Custom, though but usher of the school
Where Nature breeds the body and the soul,
Usurps a greater pow'r 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.

Tho' children, without study, pains, or thought,
Are languages and vulgar notions taught,
Improve their natʼral 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' th' cradle, but the schools,
Where error, pedantry, and affectation,
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 drudg'ry than it barr'd before:
And therefore those imported from the East
Where first they were incurr'd, are held the best,
Although conveyed in worse Arabian pothooks
Than gifted tradesmen scratch in sermon notebooks;
Are really but pains and labour lost,
And not worth half the drudgery they cost,
Unless, like rarities, as they've 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 us'd to pass the time away,

When th' ancient Greeks and Romans had no name
T'express a school and playhouse but the same,
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,

To rest and recreation of tir'd 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 possest,

Condemn'd to drudge, and labour, and take pains,
Without an equal competence of brains;
While those she has indulg'd in soul and body,
Are most averse to industry and study,
And th' activ'st 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 prepost'rous overdoing,
And under-judging, all their projects ruin;
Who, though the understanding of mankind
Within so straight a compass is confin'd,
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 t' unriddle ev'ry 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 sov'reign good
That Nature has upon mankind bestow'd,
Yet it has prov'd a greater hinderance
To th' interest of truth than ignorance,
And therefore never bore so high a value
As when 'twas low, contemptible, and shallow;
Had academies, schools, and colleges,
Endow'd for it's improvement and increase;
With pomp and show was introduc'd with maces,
More than a Roman magistrate had fasces;

Empower'd with statute, privilege, and mandate,
Tassume 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 male factors a reprieve;
And having but a little paltry wit

More than the world, reduced and governed 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 th' one half is for inter'st, th' other shew:
As scriv'ners 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;
T'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 pow'r,
But, like a Dutchman's money, in 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 their 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
Trepann'd the suffrages of ev'ry 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.

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