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 nat'ral 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 Bloodybones;
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.
And turn their wits that strive to understand it, SATIRE UPON THE ABUSE OF HUMAN (Like those that write the characters) left-handed; HUMAN
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.
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,
Though children, without study, pains, or thought, Of which whoever does not freely take
Are languages and vulgar notions taught,
Improve their nat'ral 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,
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,
T'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 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.
SIR JOHN DENHAM-A. D. 1615-1668.
COOPER'S HILL.
SURE there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those,
And as courts make not kings, but kings the court,
So where the Muses and their train resort,
Parnassus stands; if I can be to thee
A poet, thou Parnassus art to me.
Nor wonder if (advantag'd in my flight,
By taking wing from thy auspicious height)
Through untrac'd ways and airy paths I fly,
More boundless in my fancy than my eye;
My eye, which swift as thought contracts the space
That lies between, and first salutes the place
Crown'd with that sacred pile, so vast, so high,
That whether 'tis a part of earth or sky
Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud
Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud;
Paul's, the late theme of such a Muse, whose flight
Has bravely reach'd and soar'd above thy height;
Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time, or fire,
Or zeal, more fierce than they, thy fall conspire,
Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings,
Preserv'd from ruin by the best of kings.
Under his proud survey the city lies,
And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise,
Nor can he call it choice, when what we choose
Folly or blindness only could refuse.
A crown of such majestic towers doth grace
The Gods' great mother, when her heav'nly race
Do homage to her; yet she cannot boast,
Among that numerous and celestial host,
More heroes than can Windsor; nor doth Fame's
Immortal book record more noble names.
Not to look back so far, to whom this isle
Owes the first glory of so brave a pile,
Whether to Cæsar, Albanact, or Brute,
The British Arthur, or the Danish C'nute;
(Though this of old no less contest did move
Than when for Homer's birth seven cities strove)
(Like him in birth, thou should'st be like in fame,
As thine his fate, if mine had been his flame)
But whosoe'er it was, Nature design'd
First a brave place, and then as brave a mind.
Not to recount those sev'ral kings to whom
It gave a cradle, or to whom a tomb;
But thee, great Edward! and thy greater son,
(The lilies which his father wore he won);
And thy Bellona, who the consort came
Not only to thy bed but to thy fame;
She to thy triumph led one captive king,
And brought that son which did the second bring;
Then didst thou found that order (whether love
Or victory the royal thoughts did move);
Whose state and wealth, the bus'ness and the crowd, Each was a noble cause, and nothing less
Seems at this distance but a darker cloud,
And is, to him who rightly things esteems,
No other in effect than what it seems;
Than the design has been the great success,
Which foreign kings and emperors esteem
The second honour to their diadem.
Where, with like haste, though several ways, they run, Had thy great destiny but given thee skill
Some to undo, and some to be undone;
While luxury and wealth, like war and peace,
Are each the other's ruin and increase;
As rivers lost in seas some secret vein
Thence reconveys, there to be lost again.
Oh! happiness of sweet retir'd content!
To be at once secure and innocent.
Windsor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells,
Beauty with strength) above the valley swells
Into my eye, and doth itself present
With such an easy and unforc'd ascent,
That no stupendous precipice denies
Access, no horror turns away our eyes;
But such a rise as doth at once invite
A pleasure and a rev'rence from the sight:
Thy mighty master's emblem, in whose face
Sat meekness, heighten'd with majestic grace;
Such seems thy gentle height, made only proud
To be the basis of that pompous load,
Than which a nobler weight no mountain bears,
But Atlas only, which supports the spheres.
When Nature's hand this ground did thus advance,
'Twas guided by a wiser power than Chance;
Mark'd out for such a use, as if 'twere meant
T' invite the builder, and his choice prevent;
To know, as well as power to act her will,
That from those kings, who then thy captives were,
In after-times should spring a royal pair,
Who should possess all that thy mighty power,
Or thy desires more mighty, did devour;
To whom their better fate reserves whate'er
The victor hopes for or the vanquish'd fear:
That blood which thou and thy great grandsire shed,
And all that since these sister nations bled,
Had been unspilt, and happy Edward known
That all the blood he spilt had been his own.
When he that patron chose in whom are join'd
Soldier and martyr, and his arms confin'd
Within the azure circle, he did seem
But to foretel and prophesy of him
Who to his realms that azure round hath join'd,
Which Nature for their bound at first design'd;
That bound which to the world's extremest ends,
Endless itself, its liquid arms extends.
Nor doth he need those emblems which we paint,
But is himself the soldier and the saint.
Here should my wonder dwell, and here my praise,
But my fix'd thoughts my wand'ring eye betrays,
Viewing a neighb'ring hill, whose top of late
A chapel crown'd, till in the common fate
Th' adjoining abbey fell. (May no such storm
Fall on our times, where ruin must reform!)
Tell me, my Muse! what monstrous dire offence,
What crime could any Christian king incense
To such a rage? Was 't luxury or lust?
Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just ?. [more:
Were these their crimes? they were his own much
But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor,
Who having spent the treasures of his crown,
Condemns their luxury to feed his own;
And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame
Of sacrilege, must bear devotion's name.
No crime so bold but would be understood
A real, or at least a seeming good.
Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.
Thus he the church at once protects and spoils;
But princes' swords are sharper than their styles:
And thus to th' ages past he makes amends,
Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did Religion in a lazy cell,
In empty airy contemplations dwell,
And like the block unmoved lay; but ours,
As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temp'rate region can be known
Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone?
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,
But to be restless in a worse extreme?
And for that lethargy was there no cure
But to be cast into a calenture?
Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance
So far, to make us wish for ignorance?
And rather in the dark to grope our way
Than led by a false guide to err by day?
Who sees those dismal heaps but would demand
What barbarous invader sack'd the land?
But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did bring
This desolation, but a Christian king;
When nothing but the name of zeal appears
'Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs ;
What does he think our sacrilege would spare,
When such th' effects of our devotion are?
Parting from thence, 'twixt anger, shame, and fear,
Those for what's past, and this for what's too near;
My eye descending from the Hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton vallies strays.
Thames! the most loved of all the Ocean's sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.
Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold:
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore,
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,
And hatches plenty for the ensuing spring;
Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers which their infants overlay;
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.
No unexpected inundations spoil
The mower's hopes, or mock the ploughman's toil;
But Godlike his unweary'd bounty flows;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does.
Nor are his blessings to his banks confin'd,
But free and common as the sea or wind:
When he to boast or to disperse his stores,
Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,
Visits the world, and in his flying towers
Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours;
Finds wealth where 'tis, bestows it where it wants,
Cities in deserts, woods in cities, plants.
So that to us no thing, no place, is strange,
While his fair bosom is the world's exchange.
O could I flow like thee! and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme;
Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
Heaven her Eridanus no more shall boast,
Whose fame in thine, like lesser currents, 's lost:
Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes,
To shine among the stars, and bathe the gods.
Here Nature, whether more intent to please
Us or herself with strange varieties,
(For things of wonder give no less delight
To the wise Maker's than beholder's sight;
Though these delights from several causes move,
For so our children, thus our friends, we love)
Wisely she knew the harmony of things,
As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.
Such was the discord which did first disperse
Form, order, beauty, through the universe;
While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists,
All that we have, and that we are, subsists;
While the steep horrid roughness of the wood
Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood,
Such huge extremes when Nature doth unite,
Wonder from thence results, from thence delight.
The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear,
That had the self-enamour'd youth gaz'd here,
So fatally deceiv'd he had not been,
While he the bottom, not his face, had seen.
But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat;
The common fate of all that's high or great.
Low at his foot a spacious plain is plac'd,
Between the mountain and the stream embrac'd,
Which shade and shelter from the Hill derives,
While the kind river wealth and beauty gives,
And in the mixture of all these appears
Variety, which all the rest endears.
This scene had some bold Greek or British bard
Beheld of old, what stories had we heard
Of Fairies, Satyrs, and the Nymphs their dames,
Their feasts, their revels, and their am'rous flames!
'Tis still the same, although their airy shape
All but a quick poetic sight escape.
There Faunus and Sylvanus keep their courts,
And thither all the horned host resorts
To graze the ranker mead; that noble herd
On whose sublime and shady fronts is rear'd
Nature's great masterpiece, to shew how soon
Great things are made, but sooner are undone.
Here have I seen the King, when great affairs
Gave leave to slacken and unbend his cares,
Attended to the chase, by all the flow'r
Of youth, whose hopes a noble prey devour;
Pleasure with praise and danger they would buy,
And wish a foe that would not only fly.
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