And, while their studies are between the one
And th' other spent, have nothing of their own;
Like sponges, are both plants and animals,
And equally to both their natures false:
For whether 'tis their want of conversation
Inclines them to all sorts of affectation,
Their sedentary life and melancholy,
The everlasting nursery of folly;
Their poring upon black and white too subtly
Has turned the insides of their brains to motley;
Or squandering of their wits and time upon
Too many things has made them fit for none;
Their constant overstraining of the mind
Distorts the brain, as horses break their wind;
Or rude confusions of the things they read
Get up, like noxious vapours, in the head,
Until they have their constant wanes, and fulls,
And changes in the insides of their skulls:
Or venturing beyond the reach of wit
Has rendered them for all things else unfit;
But never bring the world and books together,
And, therefore, never rightly judge of either;
Whence multitudes of reverend men and critics
Have got a kind of intellectual rickets,
And by th' immoderate excess of study
Have found the sickly head t' outgrow the body.
For pedantry is but a corn, or wart,
Bred in the skin of judgment, sense, and art;
A stupified excrescence, like a wen,
Fed by the peccant humours of learned men,
That never grows from natural defects
Of downright and untutored intellects,
But from the over-curious and vain
Distempers of an artificial brain—
So he, that once stood for the learned'st man, Had read out Little Britain and Duck Lane,*
* Little Britain, and Duck-lane (now Duke-street), were chiefly inhabited by publishers and vendors of second-hand books.
Worn out his reason, and reduced his body
And brain to nothing with perpetual study;
Kept tutors of all sorts, and virtuosos,
To read all authors to him with their glosses,
And made his lacqueys, when he walked, bear folios
Of dictionaries, lexicons, and scolias,
To be read to him, every way the wind
Should chance to sit, before him or behind;
Had read out all th' imaginary duels,
That had been fought by consonants and vowels;
Had cracked his skull, to find out proper places,
To lay up all memoirs of things in cases;
And practised all the tricks upon the charts,
To play with packs of sciences and arts,
That serve t' improve a feeble gamester's study,
That ventures at grammatic beast, or noddy;*
Had read out all the catalogues of wares,
That come in dry fats o'er from Frankfort fairs,
Whose authors use t' articulate their surnames
With scraps of Greek more learned than the Germans;
Was wont to scatter books in every room,
Where they might best be seen by all that come;
And lay a train, that naturally should force
What he designed, as if it fell of course;
And all this with a worse success than Cardan,
Who bought both books and learning at a bargain,
When lighting on a philosophic spell,
Of which he never knew one syllable,
Presto, be gone! h' unriddled all he read,
As if he had to nothing else been bred.t
† See vol. ii. p. 48, note t. The last editor of the Remains suggests that the reference is to the miraculous way in which Cardan pretended to have received a knowledge of Latin and other languages. The following extract from Cardan's extraordinary autobiography explains the allusion. Who could he be who came up to me, when, if I recollect right, I was about twenty years of age, and sold me an Apuleius in Latin, and instantly departed? I, however, though at that time I had never even been in a school except once, and who had no knowledge of the Latin language, and had only bought the book
UPON THE WEAKNESS AND MISERY OF MAN.
WHO would believe that wicked earth,
Where nature only brings us forth
To be found guilty, and forgiven,
Should be a nursery for heaven;
When all we can expect to do,
Will not pay half the debt we owe,
And yet more desperately dare,
As if that wretched trifle were
Too much for the eternal powers,
Our great and mighty creditors,
Not only slight what they enjoin,
But
pay
it in the adulterate coin?
We only in their mercy trust,
To be more wicked and unjust;
All our devotions, vows, and prayers
Are our own interest, not theirs;
Our offerings, when we come t'adore,
But begging presents, to get more;
The purest business of our zeal
Is but to err, by meaning well,
And make that meaning do more harm,
Than our worst deeds, that are less warm:
without thought for the sake of its gilt binding, the next day found myself as good a Latin scholar as I am at this day. The Greek also I learnt at once, and the French and the Spanish, only so, however, as to be able to read them, and not to hold conversations in them, being ignorant of the pronunciation and all their rules of grammar.'—De Vitâ Propria. It is in this singular book that Cardan says he was constantly attended by a spirit, whose counsel regulated all his actions.
Mr. Thyer supposes it probable that the character here drawn, and compared to Cardan, was written in ridicule of Selden; and he adds that, though they were once friends, they afterwards quarrelled.' It is to be regretted that Mr. Thyer did not favour us with the grounds upon which he made this latter statement, which is certainly not sustained by any evidence that has come to light. There is no contemporary authority in support of the supposition that a particular friendship existed at any time between them, or that they ever quarrelled.See vol. i. p. 13, note *. Nor is it credible that Butler intended to satirize Selden in this passage, which few persons will agree with Mr. Thyer in thinking applicable enough to a scholar of his class.'
For the most wretched and perverse
Does not believe himself, he errs.
Our holiest actions have been
Th' effects of wickedness and sin;
Religious houses made compounders
For th' horrid actions of the founders;
Steeples, that tottered in the air,
By lechers sinned into repair;
As if we had retained no sign,
Nor character of the divine
And heavenly part of human nature,
But only the coarse earthy matter.
Our universal inclination
Tends to the worst of our creation,
As if the stars conspired t' imprint,
In our whole species, by instinct,
A fatal brand, and signature
Of nothing else, but the impure.
The best of all our actions tend
To the preposterousest end;
And, like to mongrels, we're inclined
To take most to th' ignobler kind,
Or monsters, that have always least
Of th' human parent, not the beast.
Hence 'tis we've no regard at all
Of our best half original;
But, when they differ, still assert
The interest of th' ignobler part;
Spend all the time we have upon
The vain capriches of the one,
But grudge to spare one hour, to know
What to the better part we owe.
As in all compound substances
The greater still devours the less:
So, being born and bred up near
Our earthy gross relations here,
Far from the ancient nobler place
Of all our high paternal race,
We now degenerate, and grow
As barbarous, and mean, and low,
As modern Grecians are, and worse,
To their brave nobler ancestors.
Yet, as no barbarousness beside
Is half so barbarous as pride,
Nor any prouder insolence
Than that, which has the least pretence,
We are so wretched, to profess
A glory in our wretchedness;
To vapour sillily, and rant
Of our own misery, and want,
And grow vain-glorious on a score,
We ought much rather to deplore,
Who, the first moment of our lives,
Are but condemned, and given reprieves;
And our great'st grace is not to know,
When we shall pay 'em back, nor how,
Begotten with a vain caprich,
And live as vainly to that pitch.
Our pains are real things, and all
Our pleasures but fantastical;
Diseases of their own accord,
But cures come difficult and hard;
Our noblest piles, and stateliest rooms,
Are but outhouses to our tombs;
Cities, though e'er so great and brave,
But mere warehouses to the grave;
Our bravery's but a vain disguise,
To hide us from the world's dull eyes,
The remedy of a defect,
With which our nakedness is decked;
Yet makes us swell with pride, and boast,
As if w' had gained by being lost.
All this is nothing to the evils, Which men, and their confederate devils Inflict, to aggravate the curse
On their own hated kind, much worse;
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