THE PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR.



SATIRE is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover 
everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that 
kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are 
offended with it.  But, if it should happen otherwise, the danger 
is not great; and I have learned from long experience never to 
apprehend mischief from those understandings I have been able to 
provoke:  for anger and fury, though they add strength to the 
sinews of the body, yet are found to relax those of the mind, and 
to render all its efforts feeble and impotent.

There is a brain that will endure but one scumming; let the owner 
gather it with discretion, and manage his little stock with 
husbandry; but, of all things, let him beware of bringing it under 
the lash of his betters, because that will make it all bubble up 
into impertinence, and he will find no new supply.  Wit without 
knowledge being a sort of cream, which gathers in a night to the 
top, and by a skilful hand may be soon whipped into froth; but once 
scummed away, what appears underneath will be fit for nothing but 
to be thrown to the hogs.




CHAPTER I - A FULL AND TRUE ACCOUNT
OF THE
BATTLE FOUGHT LAST FRIDAY
BETWEEN THE
ANCIENT AND THE MODERN BOOKS
IN SAINT JAMES'S LIBRARY.



WHOEVER examines, with due circumspection, into the annual records 
of time, will find it remarked that War is the child of Pride, and 
Pride the daughter of Riches:- the former of which assertions may 
be soon granted, but one cannot so easily subscribe to the latter; 
for Pride is nearly related to Beggary and Want, either by father 
or mother, and sometimes by both:  and, to speak naturally, it very 
seldom happens among men to fall out when all have enough; 
invasions usually travelling from north to south, that is to say, 
from poverty to plenty.  The most ancient and natural grounds of 
quarrels are lust and avarice; which, though we may allow to be 
brethren, or collateral branches of pride, are certainly the issues 
of want.  For, to speak in the phrase of writers upon politics, we 
may observe in the republic of dogs, which in its original seems to 
be an institution of the many, that the whole state is ever in the 
profoundest peace after a full meal; and that civil broils arise 
among them when it happens for one great bone to be seized on by 
some leading dog, who either divides it among the few, and then it 
falls to an oligarchy, or keeps it to himself, and then it runs up 
to a tyranny.  The same reasoning also holds place among them in 
those dissensions we behold upon a turgescency in any of their 
females.  For the right of possession lying in common (it being 
impossible to establish a property in so delicate a case), 
jealousies and suspicions do so abound, that the whole commonwealth 
of that street is reduced to a manifest state of war, of every 
citizen against every citizen, till some one of more courage, 
conduct, or fortune than the rest seizes and enjoys the prize:  
upon which naturally arises plenty of heart-burning, and envy, and 
snarling against the happy dog.  Again, if we look upon any of 
these republics engaged in a foreign war, either of invasion or 
defence, we shall find the same reasoning will serve as to the 
grounds and occasions of each; and that poverty or want, in some 
degree or other (whether real or in opinion, which makes no 
alteration in the case), has a great share, as well as pride, on 
the part of the aggressor.

Now whoever will please to take this scheme, and either reduce or 
adapt it to an intellectual state or commonwealth of learning, will 
soon discover the first ground of disagreement between the two 
great parties at this time in arms, and may form just conclusions 
upon the merits of either cause.  But the issue or events of this 
war are not so easy to conjecture at; for the present quarrel is so 
inflamed by the warm heads of either faction, and the pretensions 
somewhere or other so exorbitant, as not to admit the least 
overtures of accommodation.  This quarrel first began, as I have 
heard it affirmed by an old dweller in the neighbourhood, about a 
small spot of ground, lying and being upon one of the two tops of 
the hill Parnassus; the highest and largest of which had, it seems, 
been time out of mind in quiet possession of certain tenants, 
called the Ancients; and the other was held by the Moderns.  But 
these disliking their present station, sent certain ambassadors to 
the Ancients, complaining of a great nuisance; how the height of 
that part of Parnassus quite spoiled the prospect of theirs, 
especially towards the east; and therefore, to avoid a war, offered 
them the choice of this alternative, either that the Ancients would 
please to remove themselves and their effects down to the lower 
summit, which the Moderns would graciously surrender to them, and 
advance into their place; or else the said Ancients will give leave 
to the Moderns to come with shovels and mattocks, and level the 
said hill as low as they shall think it convenient.  To which the 
Ancients made answer, how little they expected such a message as 
this from a colony whom they had admitted, out of their own free 
grace, to so near a neighbourhood.  That, as to their own seat, 
they were aborigines of it, and therefore to talk with them of a 
removal or surrender was a language they did not understand.  That 
if the height of the hill on their side shortened the prospect of 
the Moderns, it was a disadvantage they could not help; but desired 
them to consider whether that injury (if it be any) were not 
largely recompensed by the shade and shelter it afforded them.  
That as to the levelling or digging down, it was either folly or 
ignorance to propose it if they did or did not know how that side 
of the hill was an entire rock, which would break their tools and 
hearts, without any damage to itself.  That they would therefore 
advise the Moderns rather to raise their own side of the hill than 
dream of pulling down that of the Ancients; to the former of which 
they would not only give licence, but also largely contribute.  All 
this was rejected by the Moderns with much indignation, who still 
insisted upon one of the two expedients; and so this difference 
broke out into a long and obstinate war, maintained on the one part 
by resolution, and by the courage of certain leaders and allies; 
but, on the other, by the greatness of their number, upon all 
defeats affording continual recruits.  In this quarrel whole 
rivulets of ink have been exhausted, and the virulence of both 
parties enormously augmented.  Now, it must be here understood, 
that ink is the great missive weapon in all battles of the learned, 
which, conveyed through a sort of engine called a quill, infinite 
numbers of these are darted at the enemy by the valiant on each 
side, with equal skill and violence, as if it were an engagement of 
porcupines.  This malignant liquor was compounded, by the engineer 
who invented it, of two ingredients, which are, gall and copperas; 
by its bitterness and venom to suit, in some degree, as well as to 
foment, the genius of the combatants.  And as the Grecians, after 
an engagement, when they could not agree about the victory, were 
wont to set up trophies on both sides, the beaten party being 
content to be at the same expense, to keep itself in countenance (a 
laudable and ancient custom, happily revived of late in the art of 
war), so the learned, after a sharp and bloody dispute, do, on both 
sides, hang out their trophies too, whichever comes by the worst.  
These trophies have largely inscribed on them the merits of the 
cause; a full impartial account of such a Battle, and how the 
victory fell clearly to the party that set them up.  They are known 
to the world under several names; as disputes, arguments, 
rejoinders, brief considerations, answers, replies, remarks, 
reflections, objections, confutations.  For a very few days they 
are fixed up all in public places, either by themselves or their 
representatives, for passengers to gaze at; whence the chiefest and 
largest are removed to certain magazines they call libraries, there 
to remain in a quarter purposely assigned them, and thenceforth 
begin to be called books of controversy.

In these books is wonderfully instilled and preserved the spirit of 
each warrior while he is alive; and after his death his soul 
transmigrates thither to inform them.  This, at least, is the more 
common opinion; but I believe it is with libraries as with other 
cemeteries, where some philosophers affirm that a certain spirit, 
which they call BRUTUM HOMINIS, hovers over the monument, till the 
body is corrupted and turns to dust or to worms, but then vanishes 
or dissolves; so, we may say, a restless spirit haunts over every 
book, till dust or worms have seized upon it - which to some may 
happen in a few days, but to others later - and therefore, books of 
controversy being, of all others, haunted by the most disorderly 
spirits, have always been confined in a separate lodge from the 
rest, and for fear of a mutual violence against each other, it was 
thought prudent by our ancestors to bind them to the peace with 
strong iron chains.  Of which invention the original occasion was 
this:  When the works of Scotus first came out, they were carried 
to a certain library, and had lodgings appointed them; but this 
author was no sooner settled than he went to visit his master 
Aristotle, and there both concerted together to seize Plato by main 
force, and turn him out from his ancient station among the divines, 
where he had peaceably dwelt near eight hundred years.  The attempt 
succeeded, and the two usurpers have reigned ever since in his 
stead; but, to maintain quiet for the future, it was decreed that 
all polemics of the larger size should be hold fast with a chain.

By this expedient, the public peace of libraries might certainly 
have been preserved if a new species of controversial books had not 
arisen of late years, instinct with a more malignant spirit, from 
the war above mentioned between the learned about the higher summit 
of Parnassus.

When these books were first admitted into the public libraries, I 
remember to have said, upon occasion, to several persons concerned, 
how I was sure they would create broils wherever they came, unless 
a world of care were taken; and therefore I advised that the 
champions of each side should be coupled together, or otherwise 
mixed, that, like the blending of contrary poisons, their malignity 
might be employed among themselves.  And it seems I was neither an 
ill prophet nor an ill counsellor; for it was nothing else but the 
neglect of this caution which gave occasion to the terrible fight 
that happened on Friday last between the Ancient and Modern Books 
in the King's library.  Now, because the talk of this battle is so 
fresh in everybody's mouth, and the expectation of the town so 
great to be informed in the particulars, I, being possessed of all 
qualifications requisite in an historian, and retained by neither 
party, have resolved to comply with the urgent importunity of my 
friends, by writing down a full impartial account thereof.

The guardian of the regal library, a person of great valour, but 
chiefly renowned for his humanity, had been a fierce champion for 
the Moderns, and, in an engagement upon Parnassus, had vowed with 
his own hands to knock down two of the ancient chiefs who guarded a 
small pass on the superior rock, but, endeavouring to climb up, was 
cruelly obstructed by his own unhappy weight and tendency towards 
his centre, a quality to which those of the Modern party are 
extremely subject; for, being light-headed, they have, in 
speculation, a wonderful agility, and conceive nothing too high for 
them to mount, but, in reducing to practice, discover a mighty 
pressure about their posteriors and their heels.  Having thus 
failed in his design, the disappointed champion bore a cruel 
rancour to the Ancients, which he resolved to gratify by showing 
all marks of his favour to the books of their adversaries, and 
lodging them in the fairest apartments; when, at the same time, 
whatever book had the boldness to own itself for an advocate of the 
Ancients was buried alive in some obscure corner, and threatened, 
upon the least displeasure, to be turned out of doors.  Besides, it 
so happened that about this time there was a strange confusion of 
place among all the books in the library, for which several reasons 
were assigned.  Some imputed it to a great heap of learned dust, 
which a perverse wind blew off from a shelf of Moderns into the 
keeper's eyes.  Others affirmed he had a humour to pick the worms 
out of the schoolmen, and swallow them fresh and fasting, whereof 
some fell upon his spleen, and some climbed up into his head, to 
the great perturbation of both.  And lastly, others maintained 
that, by walking much in the dark about the library, he had quite 
lost the situation of it out of his head; and therefore, in 
replacing his books, he was apt to mistake and clap Descartes next 
to Aristotle, poor Plato had got between Hobbes and the Seven Wise 
Masters, and Virgil was hemmed in with Dryden on one side and 
Wither on the other.

Meanwhile, those books that were advocates for the Moderns, chose 
out one from among them to make a progress through the whole 
library, examine the number and strength of their party, and 
concert their affairs.  This messenger performed all things very 
industriously, and brought back with him a list of their forces, in 
all, fifty thousand, consisting chiefly of light-horse, heavy-armed 
foot, and mercenaries; whereof the foot were in general but sorrily 
armed and worse clad; their horses large, but extremely out of case 
and heart; however, some few, by trading among the Ancients, had 
furnished themselves tolerably enough.

While things were in this ferment, discord grew extremely high; hot 
words passed on both sides, and ill blood was plentifully bred.  
Here a solitary Ancient, squeezed up among a whole shelf of 
Moderns, offered fairly to dispute the case, and to prove by 
manifest reason that the priority was due to them from long 
possession, and in regard of their prudence, antiquity, and, above 
all, their great merits toward the Moderns.  But these denied the 
premises, and seemed very much to wonder how the Ancients could 
pretend to insist upon their antiquity, when it was so plain (if 
they went to that) that the Moderns were much the more ancient of 
the two.  As for any obligations they owed to the Ancients, they 
renounced them all.  "It is true," said they, "we are informed some 
few of our party have been so mean as to borrow their subsistence 
from you, but the rest, infinitely the greater number (and 
especially we French and English), were so far from stooping to so 
base an example, that there never passed, till this very hour, six 
words between us.  For our horses were of our own breeding, our 
arms of our own forging, and our clothes of our own cutting out and 
sewing."  Plato was by chance up on the next shelf, and observing 
those that spoke to be in the ragged plight mentioned a while ago, 
their jades lean and foundered, their weapons of rotten wood, their 
armour rusty, and nothing but rags underneath, he laughed loud, and 
in his pleasant way swore, by -, he believed them.

Now, the Moderns had not proceeded in their late negotiation with 
secrecy enough to escape the notice of the enemy.  For those 
advocates who had begun the quarrel, by setting first on foot the 
dispute of precedency, talked so loud of coming to a battle, that 
Sir William Temple happened to overhear them, and gave immediate 
intelligence to the Ancients, who thereupon drew up their scattered 
troops together, resolving to act upon the defensive; upon which, 
several of the Moderns fled over to their party, and among the rest 
Temple himself.  This Temple, having been educated and long 
conversed among the Ancients, was, of all the Moderns, their 
greatest favourite, and became their greatest champion.

Things were at this crisis when a material accident fell out.  For 
upon the highest corner of a large window, there dwelt a certain 
spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of 
infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the 
gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some 
giant.  The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and 
palisadoes, all after the modern way of fortification.  After you 
had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein you might 
behold the constable himself in his own lodgings, which had windows 
fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out upon all occasions 
of prey or defence.  In this mansion he had for some time dwelt in 
peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from 
above, or to his palace by brooms from below; when it was the 
pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose 
curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in 
he went, where, expatiating a while, he at last happened to alight 
upon one of the outward walls of the spider's citadel; which, 
yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down to the very foundation.  
Thrice he endeavoured to force his passage, and thrice the centre 
shook.  The spider within, feeling the terrible convulsion, 
supposed at first that nature was approaching to her final 
dissolution, or else that Beelzebub, with all his legions, was come 
to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects whom his 
enemy had slain and devoured.  However, he at length valiantly 
resolved to issue forth and meet his fate.  Meanwhile the bee had 
acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted securely at some 
distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them 
from the ragged remnants of the cobweb.  By this time the spider 
was adventured out, when, beholding the chasms, the ruins, and 
dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wit's end; 
he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he was ready 
to burst.  At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely 
gathering causes from events (for they know each other by sight), 
"A plague split you," said he; "is it you, with a vengeance, that 
have made this litter here; could not you look before you, and be 
d-d?  Do you think I have nothing else to do (in the devil's name) 
but to mend and repair after you?"  "Good words, friend," said the 
bee, having now pruned himself, and being disposed to droll; "I'll 
give you my hand and word to come near your kennel no more; I was 
never in such a confounded pickle since I was born."  "Sirrah," 
replied the spider, "if it were not for breaking an old custom in 
our family, never to stir abroad against an enemy, I should come 
and teach you better manners."  "I pray have patience," said the 
bee, "or you'll spend your substance, and, for aught I see, you may 
stand in need of it all, towards the repair of your house."  
"Rogue, rogue," replied the spider, "yet methinks you should have 
more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much 
your betters."  "By my troth," said the bee, "the comparison will 
amount to a very good jest, and you will do me a favour to let me 
know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful 
a dispute."  At this the spider, having swelled himself into the 
size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true 
spirit of controversy, with resolution to be heartily scurrilous 
and angry, to urge on his own reasons without the least regard to 
the answers or objections of his opposite, and fully predetermined 
in his mind against all conviction.

"Not to disparage myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a 
rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without 
stock or inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair 
of wings and a drone-pipe.  Your livelihood is a universal plunder 
upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the 
sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet.  Whereas 
I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within 
myself.  This large castle (to show my improvements in the 
mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials 
extracted altogether out of my own person."

"I am glad," answered the bee, "to hear you grant at least that I 
am come honestly by my wings and my voice; for then, it seems, I am 
obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my music; and Providence 
would never have bestowed on me two such gifts without designing 
them for the noblest ends.  I visit, indeed, all the flowers and 
blossoms of the field and garden, but whatever I collect thence 
enriches myself without the least injury to their beauty, their 
smell, or their taste.  Now, for you and your skill in architecture 
and other mathematics, I have little to say:  in that building of 
yours there might, for aught I know, have been labour and method 
enough; but, by woeful experience for us both, it is too plain the 
materials are naught; and I hope you will henceforth take warning, 
and consider duration and matter, as well as method and art.  You 
boast, indeed, of being obliged to no other creature, but of 
drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we 
may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you 
possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; 
and, though I would by no means lesson or disparage your genuine 
stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged, for an 
increase of both, to a little foreign assistance.  Your inherent 
portion of dirt does not fall of acquisitions, by sweepings exhaled 
from below; and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to 
destroy another.  So that, in short, the question comes all to 
this:  whether is the nobler being of the two, that which, by a 
lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride, 
feeding, and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and 
venom, producing nothing at all but flybane and a cobweb; or that 
which, by a universal range, with long search, much study, true 
judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax."

This dispute was managed with such eagerness, clamour, and warmth, 
that the two parties of books, in arms below, stood silent a while, 
waiting in suspense what would be the issue; which was not long 
undetermined:  for the bee, grown impatient at so much loss of 
time, fled straight away to a bed of roses, without looking for a 
reply, and left the spider, like an orator, collected in himself, 
and just prepared to burst out.

It happened upon this emergency that AEsop broke silence first.  He 
had been of late most barbarously treated by a strange effect of 
the regent's humanity, who had torn off his title-page, sorely 
defaced one half of his leaves, and chained him fast among a shelf 
of Moderns.  Where, soon discovering how high the quarrel was 
likely to proceed, he tried all his arts, and turned himself to a 
thousand forms.  At length, in the borrowed shape of an ass, the 
regent mistook him for a Modern; by which means he had time and 
opportunity to escape to the Ancients, just when the spider and the 
bee were entering into their contest; to which he gave his 
attention with a world of pleasure, and, when it was ended, swore 
in the loudest key that in all his life he had never known two 
cases, so parallel and adapt to each other as that in the window 
and this upon the shelves.  "The disputants," said he, "have 
admirably managed the dispute between them, have taken in the full 
strength of all that is to be said on both sides, and exhausted the 
substance of every argument PRO and CON.  It is but to adjust the 
reasonings of both to the present quarrel, then to compare and 
apply the labours and fruits of each, as the bee has learnedly 
deduced them, and we shall find the conclusion fall plain and close 
upon the Moderns and us.  For pray, gentlemen, was ever anything so 
modern as the spider in his air, his turns, and his paradoxes? he 
argues in the behalf of you, his brethren, and himself, with many 
boastings of his native stock and great genius; that he spins and 
spits wholly from himself, and scorns to own any obligation or 
assistance from without.  Then he displays to you his great skill 
in architecture and improvement in the mathematics.  To all this 
the bee, as an advocate retained by us, the Ancients, thinks fit to 
answer, that, if one may judge of the great genius or inventions of 
the Moderns by what they have produced, you will hardly have 
countenance to bear you out in boasting of either.  Erect your 
schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the 
materials be nothing but dirt, spun out of your own entrails (the 
guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a 
cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders' webs, 
may be imputed to their being forgotten, or neglected, or hid in a 
corner.  For anything else of genuine that the Moderns may pretend 
to, I cannot recollect; unless it be a large vein of wrangling and 
satire, much of a nature and substance with the spiders' poison; 
which, however they pretend to spit wholly out of themselves, is 
improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and vermin 
of the age.  As for us, the Ancients, we are content with the bee, 
to pretend to nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice:  
that is to say, our flights and our language.  For the rest, 
whatever we have got has been by infinite labour and search, and 
ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is, that, 
instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to till our hives 
with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of 
things, which are sweetness and light."

It is wonderful to conceive the tumult arisen among the books upon 
the close of this long descant of AEsop:  both parties took the 
hint, and heightened their animosities so on a sudden, that they 
resolved it should come to a battle.  Immediately the two main 
bodies withdrew, under their several ensigns, to the farther parts 
of the library, and there entered into cabals and consults upon the 
present emergency.  The Moderns were in very warm debates upon the 
choice of their leaders; and nothing less than the fear impending 
from their enemies could have kept them from mutinies upon this 
occasion.  The difference was greatest among the horse, where every 
private trooper pretended to the chief command, from Tasso and 
Milton to Dryden and Wither.  The light-horse were commanded by 
Cowley and Despreaux.  There came the bowmen under their valiant 
leaders, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes; whose strength was such 
that they could shoot their arrows beyond the atmosphere, never to 
fall down again, but turn, like that of Evander, into meteors; or, 
like the cannon-ball, into stars.  Paracelsus brought a squadron of 
stinkpot-flingers from the snowy mountains of Rhaetia.  There came 
a vast body of dragoons, of different nations, under the leading of 
Harvey, their great aga:  part armed with scythes, the weapons of 
death; part with lances and long knives, all steeped in poison; 
part shot bullets of a most malignant nature, and used white 
powder, which infallibly killed without report.  There came several 
bodies of heavy-armed foot, all mercenaries, under the ensigns of 
Guicciardini, Davila, Polydore Vergil, Buchanan, Mariana, Camden, 
and others.  The engineers were commanded by Regiomontanus and 
Wilkins.  The rest was a confused multitude, led by Scotus, 
Aquinas, and Bellarmine; of mighty bulk and stature, but without 
either arms, courage, or discipline.  In the last place came 
infinite swarms of calones, a disorderly rout led by L'Estrange; 
rogues and ragamuffins, that follow the camp for nothing but the 
plunder, all without coats to cover them.

The army of the Ancients was much fewer in number; Homer led the 
horse, and Pindar the light-horse; Euclid was chief engineer; Plato 
and Aristotle commanded the bowmen; Herodotus and Livy the foot; 
Hippocrates, the dragoons; the allies, led by Vossius and Temple, 
brought up the rear.

All things violently tending to a decisive battle, Fame, who much 
frequented, and had a large apartment formerly assigned her in the 
regal library, fled up straight to Jupiter, to whom she delivered a 
faithful account of all that passed between the two parties below; 
for among the gods she always tells truth.  Jove, in great concern, 
convokes a council in the Milky Way.  The senate assembled, he 
declares the occasion of convening them; a bloody battle just 
impendent between two mighty armies of ancient and modern 
creatures, called books, wherein the celestial interest was but too 
deeply concerned.  Momus, the patron of the Moderns, made an 
excellent speech in their favour, which was answered by Pallas, the 
protectress of the Ancients.  The assembly was divided in their 
affections; when Jupiter commanded the Book of Fate to be laid 
before him.  Immediately were brought by Mercury three large 
volumes in folio, containing memoirs of all things past, present, 
and to come.  The clasps were of silver double gilt, the covers of 
celestial turkey leather, and the paper such as here on earth might 
pass almost for vellum.  Jupiter, having silently read the decree, 
would communicate the import to none, but presently shut up the 
book.

Without the doors of this assembly there attended a vast number of 
light, nimble gods, menial servants to Jupiter:  those are his 
ministering instruments in all affairs below.  They travel in a 
caravan, more or less together, and are fastened to each other like 
a link of galley-slaves, by a light chain, which passes from them 
to Jupiter's great toe:  and yet, in receiving or delivering a 
message, they may never approach above the lowest step of his 
throne, where he and they whisper to each other through a large 
hollow trunk.  These deities are called by mortal men accidents or 
events; but the gods call them second causes.  Jupiter having 
delivered his message to a certain number of these divinities, they 
flew immediately down to the pinnacle of the regal library, and 
consulting a few minutes, entered unseen, and disposed the parties 
according to their orders.

Meanwhile Momus, fearing the worst, and calling to mind an ancient 
prophecy which bore no very good face to his children the Moderns, 
bent his flight to the region of a malignant deity called 
Criticism.  She dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova 
Zembla; there Momus found her extended in her den, upon the spoils 
of numberless volumes, half devoured.  At her right hand sat 
Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age; at her left, 
Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper herself 
had torn.  There was Opinion, her sister, light of foot, hood-
winked, and head-strong, yet giddy and perpetually turning.  About 
her played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, 
Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners.  The goddess herself had 
claws like a cat; her head, and ears, and voice resembled those of 
an ass; her teeth fallen out before, her eyes turned inward, as if 
she looked only upon herself; her diet was the overflowing of her 
own gall; her spleen was so large as to stand prominent, like a dug 
of the first rate; nor wanted excrescences in form of teats, at 
which a crew of ugly monsters were greedily sucking; and, what is 
wonderful to conceive, the bulk of spleen increased faster than the 
sucking could diminish it.  "Goddess," said Momus, "can you sit 
idly here while our devout worshippers, the Moderns, are this 
minute entering into a cruel battle, and perhaps now lying under 
the swords of their enemies? who then hereafter will ever sacrifice 
or build altars to our divinities?  Haste, therefore, to the 
British Isle, and, if possible, prevent their destruction; while I 
make factions among the gods, and gain them over to our party."

Momus, having thus delivered himself, stayed not for an answer, but 
left the goddess to her own resentment.  Up she rose in a rage, 
and, as it is the form on such occasions, began a soliloquy:  "It 
is I" (said she) "who give wisdom to infants and idiots; by me 
children grow wiser than their parents, by me beaux become 
politicians, and schoolboys judges of philosophy; by me sophisters 
debate and conclude upon the depths of knowledge; and coffee-house 
wits, instinct by me, can correct an author's style, and display 
his minutest errors, without understanding a syllable of his matter 
or his language; by me striplings spend their judgment, as they do 
their estate, before it comes into their hands.  It is I who have 
deposed wit and knowledge from their empire over poetry, and 
advanced myself in their stead.  And shall a few upstart Ancients 
dare to oppose me?  But come, my aged parent, and you, my children 
dear, and thou, my beauteous sister; let us ascend my chariot, and 
haste to assist our devout Moderns, who are now sacrificing to us a 
hecatomb, as I perceive by that grateful smell which from thence 
reaches my nostrils."

The goddess and her train, having mounted the chariot, which was 
drawn by tame geese, flew over infinite regions, shedding her 
influence in due places, till at length she arrived at her beloved 
island of Britain; but in hovering over its metropolis, what 
blessings did she not let fall upon her seminaries of Gresham and 
Covent-garden!  And now she reached the fatal plain of St. James's 
library, at what time the two armies were upon the point to engage; 
where, entering with all her caravan unseen, and landing upon a 
case of shelves, now desert, but once inhabited by a colony of 
virtuosos, she stayed awhile to observe the posture of both armies.

But here the tender cares of a mother began to fill her thoughts 
and move in her breast:  for at the head of a troup of Modern 
bowmen she cast her eyes upon her son Wotton, to whom the fates had 
assigned a very short thread.  Wotton, a young hero, whom an 
unknown father of mortal race begot by stolen embraces with this 
goddess.  He was the darling of his mother above all her children, 
and she resolved to go and comfort him.  But first, according to 
the good old custom of deities, she cast about to change her shape, 
for fear the divinity of her countenance might dazzle his mortal 
sight and overcharge the rest of his senses.  She therefore 
gathered up her person into an octavo compass:  her body grow white 
and arid, and split in pieces with dryness; the thick turned into 
pasteboard, and the thin into paper; upon which her parents and 
children artfully strewed a black juice, or decoction of gall and 
soot, in form of letters:  her head, and voice, and spleen, kept 
their primitive form; and that which before was a cover of skin did 
still continue so.  In this guise she marched on towards the 
Moderns, indistinguishable in shape and dress from the divine 
Bentley, Wotton's dearest friend.  "Brave Wotton," said the 
goddess, "why do our troops stand idle here, to spend their present 
vigour and opportunity of the day? away, let us haste to the 
generals, and advise to give the onset immediately."  Having spoke 
thus, she took the ugliest of her monsters, full glutted from her 
spleen, and flung it invisibly into his mouth, which, flying 
straight up into his head, squeezed out his eye-balls, gave him a 
distorted look, and half-overturned his brain.  Then she privately 
ordered two of her beloved children, Dulness and Ill-manners, 
closely to attend his person in all encounters.  Having thus 
accoutred him, she vanished in a mist, and the hero perceived it 
was the goddess his mother.

The destined hour of fate being now arrived, the fight began; 
whereof, before I dare adventure to make a particular description, 
I must, after the example of other authors, petition for a hundred 
tongues, and mouths, and hands, and pens, which would all be too 
little to perform so immense a work.  Say, goddess, that presidest 
over history, who it was that first advanced in the field of 
battle!  Paracelsus, at the head of his dragoons, observing Galen 
in the adverse wing, darted his javelin with a mighty force, which 
the brave Ancient received upon his shield, the point breaking in 
the second fold . . . HIC PAUCA
. . . . DESUNT

They bore the wounded aga on their shields to his
chariot . . . 
DESUNT . . . 
NONNULLA. . . . 

Then Aristotle, observing Bacon advance with a furious mien, drew 
his bow to the head, and let fly his arrow, which missed the 
valiant Modern and went whizzing over his head; but Descartes it 
hit; the steel point quickly found a defect in his head-piece; it 
pierced the leather and the pasteboard, and went in at his right 
eye.  The torture of the pain whirled the valiant bow-man round 
till death, like a star of superior influence, drew him into his 
own vortex INGENS HIATUS . . . .
HIC IN MS. . . . . 
.  . .  . when Homer appeared at the head of the cavalry, mounted 
on a furious horse, with difficulty managed by the rider himself, 
but which no other mortal durst approach; he rode among the enemy's 
ranks, and bore down all before him.  Say, goddess, whom he slew 
first and whom he slew last!  First, Gondibert advanced against 
him, clad in heavy armour and mounted on a staid sober gelding, not 
so famed for his speed as his docility in kneeling whenever his 
rider would mount or alight.  He had made a vow to Pallas that he 
would never leave the field till he had spoiled Homer of his 
armour:  madman, who had never once seen the wearer, nor understood 
his strength!  Him Homer overthrew, horse and man, to the ground, 
there to be trampled and choked in the dirt.  Then with a long 
spear he slew Denham, a stout Modern, who from his father's side 
derived his lineage from Apollo, but his mother was of mortal race.  
He fell, and bit the earth.  The celestial part Apollo took, and 
made it a star; but the terrestrial lay wallowing upon the ground.  
Then Homer slew Sam Wesley with a kick of his horse's heel; he took 
Perrault by mighty force out of his saddle, then hurled him at 
Fontenelle, with the same blow dashing out both their brains.

On the left wing of the horse Virgil appeared, in shining armour, 
completely fitted to his body; he was mounted on a dapple-grey 
steed, the slowness of whose pace was an effect of the highest 
mettle and vigour.  He cast his eye on the adverse wing, with a 
desire to find an object worthy of his valour, when behold upon a 
sorrel gelding of a monstrous size appeared a foe, issuing from 
among the thickest of the enemy's squadrons; but his speed was less 
than his noise; for his horse, old and lean, spent the dregs of his 
strength in a high trot, which, though it made slow advances, yet 
caused a loud clashing of his armour, terrible to hear.  The two 
cavaliers had now approached within the throw of a lance, when the 
stranger desired a parley, and, lifting up the visor of his helmet, 
a face hardly appeared from within which, after a pause, was known 
for that of the renowned Dryden.  The brave Ancient suddenly 
started, as one possessed with surprise and disappointment 
together; for the helmet was nine times too large for the head, 
which appeared situate far in the hinder part, even like the lady 
in a lobster, or like a mouse under a canopy of state, or like a 
shrivelled beau from within the penthouse of a modern periwig; and 
the voice was suited to the visage, sounding weak and remote.  
Dryden, in a long harangue, soothed up the good Ancient; called him 
father, and, by a large deduction of genealogies, made it plainly 
appear that they were nearly related.  Then he humbly proposed an 
exchange of armour, as a lasting mark of hospitality between them.  
Virgil consented (for the goddess Diffidence came unseen, and cast 
a mist before his eyes), though his was of gold and cost a hundred 
beeves, the other's but of rusty iron.  However, this glittering 
armour became the Modern yet worsen than his own.  Then they agreed 
to exchange horses; but, when it came to the trial, Dryden was 
afraid and utterly unable to mount. . . ALTER HIATUS
. . . . IN MS.

Lucan appeared upon a fiery horse of admirable shape, but 
headstrong, bearing the rider where he list over the field; he made 
a mighty slaughter among the enemy's horse; which destruction to 
stop, Blackmore, a famous Modern (but one of the mercenaries), 
strenuously opposed himself, and darted his javelin with a strong 
hand, which, falling short of its mark, struck deep in the earth.  
Then Lucan threw a lance; but AEsculapius came unseen and turned 
off the point.  "Brave Modern," said Lucan, "I perceive some god 
protects you, for never did my arm so deceive me before:  but what 
mortal can contend with a god?  Therefore, let us fight no longer, 
but present gifts to each other."  Lucan then bestowed on the 
Modern a pair of spurs, and Blackmore gave Lucan a bridle. . . . 
PAUCA DESUNT. . . .
. . . . 

Creech:  but the goddess Dulness took a cloud, formed into the 
shape of Horace, armed and mounted, and placed in a flying posture 
before him.  Glad was the cavalier to begin a combat with a flying 
foe, and pursued the image, threatening aloud; till at last it led 
him to the peaceful bower of his father, Ogleby, by whom he was 
disarmed and assigned to his repose.

Then Pindar slew -, and - and Oldham, and -, and Afra the Amazon, 
light of foot; never advancing in a direct line, but wheeling with 
incredible agility and force, he made a terrible slaughter among 
the enemy's light-horse.  Him when Cowley observed, his generous 
heart burnt within him, and he advanced against the fierce Ancient, 
imitating his address, his pace, and career, as well as the vigour 
of his horse and his own skill would allow.  When the two cavaliers 
had approached within the length of three javelins, first Cowley 
threw a lance, which missed Pindar, and, passing into the enemy's 
ranks, fell ineffectual to the ground.  Then Pindar darted a 
javelin so large and weighty, that scarce a dozen Cavaliers, as 
cavaliers are in our degenerate days, could raise it from the 
ground; yet he threw it with ease, and it went, by an unerring 
hand, singing through the air; nor could the Modern have avoided 
present death if he had not luckily opposed the shield that had 
been given him by Venus.  And now both heroes drew their swords; 
but the Modern was so aghast and disordered that he knew not where 
he was; his shield dropped from his hands; thrice he fled, and 
thrice he could not escape.  At last he turned, and lifting up his 
hand in the posture of a suppliant, "Godlike Pindar," said he, 
"spare my life, and possess my horse, with these arms, beside the 
ransom which my friends will give when they hear I am alive and 
your prisoner."  "Dog!" said Pindar, "let your ransom stay with 
your friends; but your carcase shall be left for the fowls of the 
air and the beasts of the field."  With that he raised his sword, 
and, with a mighty stroke, cleft the wretched Modern in twain, the 
sword pursuing the blow; and one half lay panting on the ground, to 
be trod in pieces by the horses' feet; the other half was borne by 
the frighted steed through the field.  This Venus took, washed it 
seven times in ambrosia, then struck it thrice with a sprig of 
amaranth; upon which the leather grow round and soft, and the 
leaves turned into feathers, and, being gilded before, continued 
gilded still; so it became a dove, and she harnessed it to her 
chariot. . . .
. . . . HIATUS VALDE DE-
. . . . FLENDUS IN MS.


THE EPISODE OF BENTLEY AND WOTTON.


Day being far spent, and the numerous forces of the Moderns half 
inclining to a retreat, there issued forth, from a squadron of 
their heavy-armed foot, a captain whose name was Bentley, the most 
deformed of all the Moderns; tall, but without shape or comeliness; 
large, but without strength or proportion.  His armour was patched 
up of a thousand incoherent pieces, and the sound of it, as he 
marched, was loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of 
lead, which an Etesian wind blows suddenly down from the roof of 
some steeple.  His helmet was of old rusty iron, but the vizor was 
brass, which, tainted by his breath, corrupted into copperas, nor 
wanted gall from the same fountain, so that, whenever provoked by 
anger or labour, an atramentous quality, of most malignant nature, 
was seen to distil from his lips.  In his right hand he grasped a 
flail, and (that he might never be unprovided of an offensive 
weapon) a vessel full of ordure in his left.  Thus completely 
armed, he advanced with a slow and heavy pace where the Modern 
chiefs were holding a consult upon the sum of things, who, as he 
came onwards, laughed to behold his crooked leg and humped 
shoulder, which his boot and armour, vainly endeavouring to hide, 
were forced to comply with and expose.  The generals made use of 
him for his talent of railing, which, kept within government, 
proved frequently of great service to their cause, but, at other 
times, did more mischief than good; for, at the least touch of 
offence, and often without any at all, he would, like a wounded 
elephant, convert it against his leaders.  Such, at this juncture, 
was the disposition of Bentley, grieved to see the enemy prevail, 
and dissatisfied with everybody's conduct but his own.  He humbly 
gave the Modern generals to understand that he conceived, with 
great submission, they were all a pack of rogues, and fools, and 
confounded logger-heads, and illiterate whelps, and nonsensical 
scoundrels; that, if himself had been constituted general, those 
presumptuous dogs, the Ancients, would long before this have been 
beaten out of the field.  "You," said he, "sit here idle, but when 
I, or any other valiant Modern kill an enemy, you are sure to seize 
the spoil.  But I will not march one foot against the foe till you 
all swear to me that whomever I take or kill, his arms I shall 
quietly possess."  Bentley having spoken thus, Scaliger, bestowing 
him a sour look, "Miscreant prater!" said he, "eloquent only in 
thine own eyes, thou railest without wit, or truth, or discretion.  
The malignity of thy temper perverteth nature; thy learning makes 
thee more barbarous; thy study of humanity more inhuman; thy 
converse among poets more grovelling, miry, and dull.  All arts of 
civilising others render thee rude and untractable; courts have 
taught thee ill manners, and polite conversation has finished thee 
a pedant.  Besides, a greater coward burdeneth not the army.  But 
never despond; I pass my word, whatever spoil thou takest shall 
certainly be thy own; though I hope that vile carcase will first 
become a prey to kites and worms."

Bentley durst not reply, but, half choked with spleen and rage, 
withdrew, in full resolution of performing some great achievement.  
With him, for his aid and companion, he took his beloved Wotton, 
resolving by policy or surprise to attempt some neglected quarter 
of the Ancients' army.  They began their march over carcases of 
their slaughtered friends; then to the right of their own forces; 
then wheeled northward, till they came to Aldrovandus's tomb, which 
they passed on the side of the declining sun.  And now they 
arrived, with fear, toward the enemy's out-guards, looking about, 
if haply they might spy the quarters of the wounded, or some 
straggling sleepers, unarmed and remote from the rest.  As when two 
mongrel curs, whom native greediness and domestic want provoke and 
join in partnership, though fearful, nightly to invade the folds of 
some rich grazier, they, with tails depressed and lolling tongues, 
creep soft and slow.  Meanwhile the conscious moon, now in her 
zenith, on their guilty heads darts perpendicular rays; nor dare 
they bark, though much provoked at her refulgent visage, whether 
seen in puddle by reflection or in sphere direct; but one surveys 
the region round, while the other scouts the plain, if haply to 
discover, at distance from the flock, some carcase half devoured, 
the refuse of gorged wolves or ominous ravens.  So marched this 
lovely, loving pair of friends, nor with less fear and 
circumspection, when at a distance they might perceive two shining 
suits of armour hanging upon an oak, and the owners not far off in 
a profound sleep.  The two friends drew lots, and the pursuing of 
this adventure fell to Bentley; on he went, and in his van 
Confusion and Amaze, while Horror and Affright brought up the rear.  
As he came near, behold two heroes of the Ancient army, Phalaris 
and AEsop, lay fast asleep.  Bentley would fain have despatched 
them both, and, stealing close, aimed his flail at Phalaris's 
breast; but then the goddess Affright, interposing, caught the 
Modern in her icy arms, and dragged him from the danger she 
foresaw; both the dormant heroes happened to turn at the same 
instant, though soundly sleeping, and busy in a dream.  For 
Phalaris was just that minute dreaming how a most vile poetaster 
had lampooned him, and how he had got him roaring in his bull.  And 
AEsop dreamed that as he and the Ancient were lying on the ground, 
a wild ass broke loose, ran about, trampling and kicking in their 
faces.  Bentley, leaving the two heroes asleep, seized on both 
their armours, and withdrew in quest of his darling Wotton.

He, in the meantime, had wandered long in search of some 
enterprise, till at length he arrived at a small rivulet that 
issued from a fountain hard by, called, in the language of mortal 
men, Helicon.  Here he stopped, and, parched with thirst, resolved 
to allay it in this limpid stream.  Thrice with profane hands he 
essayed to raise the water to his lips, and thrice it slipped all 
through his fingers.  Then he stopped prone on his breast, but, ere 
his mouth had kissed the liquid crystal, Apollo came, and in the 
channel held his shield betwixt the Modern and the fountain, so 
that he drew up nothing but mud.  For, although no fountain on 
earth can compare with the clearness of Helicon, yet there lies at 
bottom a thick sediment of slime and mud; for so Apollo begged of 
Jupiter, as a punishment to those who durst attempt to taste it 
with unhallowed lips, and for a lesson to all not to draw too deep 
or far from the spring.

At the fountain-head Wotton discerned two heroes; the one he could 
not distinguish, but the other was soon known for Temple, general 
of the allies to the Ancients.  His back was turned, and he was 
employed in drinking large draughts in his helmet from the 
fountain, where he had withdrawn himself to rest from the toils of 
the war.  Wotton, observing him, with quaking knees and trembling 
hands, spoke thus to himself:  O that I could kill this destroyer 
of our army, what renown should I purchase among the chiefs! but to 
issue out against him, man against man, shield against shield, and 
lance against lance, what Modern of us dare? for he fights like a 
god, and Pallas or Apollo are ever at his elbow.  But, O mother! if 
what Fame reports be true, that I am the son of so great a goddess, 
grant me to hit Temple with this lance, that the stroke may send 
him to hell, and that I may return in safety and triumph, laden 
with his spoils.  The first part of this prayer the gods granted at 
the intercession of his mother and of Momus; but the rest, by a 
perverse wind sent from Fate, was scattered in the air.  Then 
Wotton grasped his lance, and, brandishing it thrice over his head, 
darted it with all his might; the goddess, his mother, at the same 
time adding strength to his arm.  Away the lance went hizzing, and 
reached even to the belt of the averted Ancient, upon which, 
lightly grazing, it fell to the ground.  Temple neither felt the 
weapon touch him nor heard it fall:  and Wotton might have escaped 
to his army, with the honour of having remitted his lance against 
so great a leader unrevenged; but Apollo, enraged that a javelin 
flung by the assistance of so foul a goddess should pollute his 
fountain, put on the shape of -, and softly came to young Boyle, 
who then accompanied Temple:  he pointed first to the lance, then 
to the distant Modern that flung it, and commanded the young hero 
to take immediate revenge.  Boyle, clad in a suit of armour which 
had been given him by all the gods, immediately advanced against 
the trembling foe, who now fled before him.  As a young lion in the 
Libyan plains, or Araby desert, sent by his aged sire to hunt for 
prey, or health, or exercise, he scours along, wishing to meet some 
tiger from the mountains, or a furious boar; if chance a wild ass, 
with brayings importune, affronts his ear, the generous beast, 
though loathing to distain his claws with blood so vile, yet, much 
provoked at the offensive noise, which Echo, foolish nymph, like 
her ill-judging sex, repeats much louder, and with more delight 
than Philomela's song, he vindicates the honour of the forest, and 
hunts the noisy long-eared animal.  So Wotton fled, so Boyle 
pursued.  But Wotton, heavy-armed, and slow of foot, began to slack 
his course, when his lover Bentley appeared, returning laden with 
the spoils of the two sleeping Ancients.  Boyle observed him well, 
and soon discovering the helmet and shield of Phalaris his friend, 
both which he had lately with his own hands new polished and gilt, 
rage sparkled in his eyes, and, leaving his pursuit after Wotton, 
he furiously rushed on against this new approacher.  Fain would he 
be revenged on both; but both now fled different ways:  and, as a 
woman in a little house that gets a painful livelihood by spinning, 
if chance her geese be scattered o'er the common, she courses round 
the plain from side to side, compelling here and there the 
stragglers to the flock; they cackle loud, and flutter o'er the 
champaign; so Boyle pursued, so fled this pair of friends:  finding 
at length their flight was vain, they bravely joined, and drew 
themselves in phalanx.  First Bentley threw a spear with all his 
force, hoping to pierce the enemy's breast; but Pallas came unseen, 
and in the air took off the point, and clapped on one of lead, 
which, after a dead bang against the enemy's shield, fell blunted 
to the ground.  Then Boyle, observing well his time, took up a 
lance of wondrous length and sharpness; and, as this pair of 
friends compacted, stood close side by side, he wheeled him to the 
right, and, with unusual force, darted the weapon.  Bentley saw his 
fate approach, and flanking down his arms close to his ribs, hoping 
to save his body, in went the point, passing through arm and side, 
nor stopped or spent its force till it had also pierced the valiant 
Wotton, who, going to sustain his dying friend, shared his fate.  
As when a skilful cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with 
iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings 
close pinioned to the rib; so was this pair of friends transfixed, 
till down they fell, joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; 
so closely joined that Charon would mistake them both for one, and 
waft them over Styx for half his fare.  Farewell, beloved, loving 
pair; few equals have you left behind:  and happy and immortal 
shall you be, if all my wit and eloquence can make you.

And now. . . . 

DESUNT COETERA.



CHAPTER II - A MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK.



ACCORDING TO THE STYLE AND MANNER OF THE HON. ROBERT BOYLE'S 
MEDITATIONS.

THIS single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that 
neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest.  
It was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs; but now in 
vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying 
that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at 
best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside-down, the 
branches on the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled 
by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a 
capricious kind of fate, destined to make other things clean, and 
be nasty itself; at length, worn to the stumps in the service of 
the maids, it is either thrown out of doors or condemned to the 
last use - of kindling a fire.  When I behold this I sighed, and 
said within myself, "Surely mortal man is a broomstick!"  Nature 
sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, 
wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this 
reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off 
his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to 
art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural 
bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his 
head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the 
scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered 
with dust, through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we 
should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity.  Partial judges 
that we are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!

But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree 
standing on its head; and pray what is a man but a topsy-turvy 
creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, 
his head where his heels should be, grovelling on the earth?  And 
yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and 
corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, rakes into every 
slut's corner of nature, bringing hidden corruptions to the light, 
and raises a mighty dust where there was none before, sharing 
deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to 
sweep away.  His last days are spent in slavery to women, and 
generally the least deserving; till, worn to the stumps, like his 
brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to 
kindle flames for others to warm themselves by.



CHAPTER III - PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708.

WHEREIN THE MONTH, AND DAY OF THE MONTH ARE SET DOWN, THE PERSONS 
NAMED, AND THE GREAT ACTIONS AND EVENTS OF NEXT YEAR PARTICULARLY 
RELATED AS WILL COME TO PASS.

WRITTEN TO PREVENT THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND FROM BEING FARTHER IMPOSED 
ON BY VULGAR ALMANACK-MAKERS.

BY ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, ESQ.




I HAVE long considered the gross abuse of astrology in this 
kingdom, and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not 
possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors 
who set up to be the artists.  I know several learned men have 
contended that the whole is a cheat; that it is absurd and 
ridiculous to imagine the stars can have any influence at all upon 
human actions, thoughts, or inclinations; and whoever has not bent 
his studies that way may be excused for thinking so, when he sees 
in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean 
illiterate traders between us and the stars, who import a yearly 
stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer 
to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from 
no greater a height than their own brains.

I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of 
this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification at 
present than that it hath been in all ages defended by many learned 
men, and among the rest by Socrates himself, whom I look upon as 
undoubtedly the wisest of uninspired mortals:  to which if we add 
that those who have condemned this art, though otherwise learned, 
having been such as either did not apply their studies this way, or 
at least did not succeed in their applications, their testimony 
will not be of much weight to its disadvantage, since they are 
liable to the common objection of condemning what they did not 
understand.

Nor am I at all offended, or think it an injury to the art, when I 
see the common dealers in it, the students in astrology, the 
Philomaths, and the rest of that tribe, treated by wise men with 
the utmost scorn and contempt; but rather wonder, when I observe 
gentlemen in the country, rich enough to serve the nation in 
Parliament, poring in Partridge's Almanack to find out the events 
of the year at home and abroad, not daring to propose a hunting-
match till Gadbury or he have fixed the weather.

I will allow either of the two I have mentioned, or any other of 
the fraternity, to he not only astrologers, but conjurers too, if I 
do not produce a hundred instances in all their almanacks to 
convince any reasonable man that they do not so much as understand 
common grammar and syntax; that they are not able to spell any word 
out of the usual road, nor even in their prefaces write common 
sense or intelligible English.  Then for their observations and 
predictions, they are such as will equally suit any age or country 
in the world.  "This month a certain great person. will be 
threatened with death or sickness."  This the newspapers will tell 
them; for there we find at the end of the year that no month passes 
without the death of some person of note; and it would be hard if 
it should be otherwise, when there are at least two thousand 
persons of note in this kingdom, many of them old, and the 
almanack-maker has the liberty of choosing the sickliest season of 
the year where lie may fix his prediction.  Again, "This month an 
eminent clergyman will be preferred;" of which there may be some 
hundreds, half of them with one foot in the grave.  Then "such a 
planet in such a house shows great machinations, plots, and 
conspiracies, that may in time be brought to light:" after which, 
if we hear of any discovery, the astrologer gets the honour; if 
not, his prediction still stands good.  And at last, "God preserve 
King William from all his open and secret enemies, Amen."  When if 
the King should happen to have died, the astrologer plainly 
foretold it; otherwise it passes but for the pious ejaculation of a 
loyal subject; though it unluckily happened in some of their 
almanacks that poor King William was prayed for many months after 
he was dead, because it fell out that he died about the beginning 
of the year.

To mention no more of their impertinent predictions:  what have we 
to do with their advertisements about pills and drink for disease? 
or their mutual quarrels in verse and prose of Whig and Tory, 
wherewith the stars have little to do?

Having long observed and lamented these, and a hundred other abuses 
of this art, too tedious to repeat, I resolved to proceed in a new 
way, which I doubt not will be to the general satisfaction of the 
kingdom.  I can this year produce but a specimen of what I design 
for the future, having employed most part of my time in adjusting 
and correcting the calculations I made some years past, because I 
would offer nothing to the world of which I am not as fully 
satisfied as that I am now alive.  For these two last years I have 
not failed in above one or two particulars, and those of no very 
great moment.  I exactly foretold the miscarriage at Toulon, with 
all its particulars, and the loss of Admiral Shovel, though I was 
mistaken as to the day, placing that accident about thirty-six 
hours sooner than it happened; but upon reviewing my schemes, I 
quickly found the cause of that error.  I likewise foretold the 
Battle of Almanza to the very day and hour, with the lose on both 
sides, and the consequences thereof.  All which I showed to some 
friends many months before they happened - that is, I gave them 
papers sealed up, to open at such a time, after which they were at 
liberty to read them; and there they found my predictions true in 
every article, except one or two very minute.

As for the few following predictions I now offer the world, I 
forbore to publish them till I had perused the several almanacks 
for the year we are now entered on.  I find them all in the usual 
strain, and I beg the reader will compare their manner with mine.  
And here I make bold to tell the world that I lay the whole credit 
of my art upon the truth of these predictions; and I will be 
content that Partridge, and the rest of his clan, may hoot me for a 
cheat and impostor if I fail in any single particular of moment.  I 
believe any man who reads this paper will look upon me to be at 
least a person of as much honesty and understanding as a common 
maker of almanacks.  I do not lurk in the dark; 1 am not wholly 
unknown in the world; I have set my name at length, to be a mark of 
infamy to mankind, if they shall find I deceive them.

In one thing I must desire to be forgiven, that I talk more 
sparingly of home affairs.  As it will be imprudence to discover 
secrets of State, so it would be dangerous to my person; but in 
smaller matters, and that are not of public consequence, I shall be 
very free; and the truth of my conjectures will as much appear from 
those as the others.  As for the most signal events abroad, in 
France, Flanders, Italy, and Spain, I shall make no scruple to 
predict them in plain terms.  Some of them are of importance, and I 
hope I shall seldom mistake the day they will happen; therefore I 
think good to inform the reader that I all along make use of the 
Old Style observed in England, which I desire he will compare with 
that of the newspapers at the time they relate the actions I 
mention.

I must add one word more.  I know it hath been the opinion of 
several of the learned, who think well enough of the true art of 
astrology, that the stars do only incline, and not force the 
actions or wills of men, and therefore, however I may proceed by 
right rules, yet I cannot in prudence so confidently assure the 
events will follow exactly as I predict them.

I hope I have maturely considered this objection, which in some 
cases is of no little weight.  For example:  a man may, by the 
influence of an over-ruling planet, be disposed or inclined to 
lust, rage, or avarice, and yet by the force of reason overcome 
that bad influence; and this was the case of Socrates.  But as the 
great events of the world usually depend upon numbers of men, it 
cannot be expected they should all unite to cross their 
inclinations from pursuing a general design wherein they 
unanimously agree.  Besides, the influence of the stars reaches to 
many actions and events which are not any way in the power of 
reason, as sickness, death, and what we commonly call accidents, 
with many more, needless to repeat.

But now it is time to proceed to my predictions, which I have begun 
to calculate from the time that the sun enters into Aries.  And 
this I take to be properly the beginning of the natural year.  I 
pursue them to the time that he enters Libra, or somewhat more, 
which is the busy period of the year.  The remainder I have not yet 
adjusted, upon account of several impediments needless here to 
mention.  Besides, I must remind the reader again that this is but 
a specimen of what I design in succeeding years to treat more at 
large, if I may have liberty and encouragement.

My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to show 
how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own 
concerns.  It relates to Partridge, the almanack-maker.  I have 
consulted the stars of his nativity by my own rules, and find he 
will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at 
night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, 
and settle his affairs in time.

The month of APRIL will be observable for the death of many great 
persons.  On the 4th will die the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop 
of Paris; on the 11th, the young Prince of Asturias, son to the 
Duke of Anjou; on the 14th, a great peer of this realm will die at 
his country house; on the 19th, an old layman of great fame for 
learning, and on the 23rd, an eminent goldsmith in Lombard Street.  
I could mention others, both at home and abroad, if I did not 
consider it is of very little use or instruction to the reader, or 
to the world.

As to public affairs:  On the 7th of this month there will be an 
insurrection in Dauphiny, occasioned by the oppressions of the 
people, which will not be quieted in some months.

On the 15th will be a violent storm on the south-east coast of 
France, which will destroy many of their ships, and some in the 
very harbour.

The 11th will be famous for the revolt of a whole province or 
kingdom, excepting one city, by which the affairs of a certain 
prince in the Alliance will take a better face.

MAY, against common conjectures, will be no very busy month in 
Europe, but very signal for the death of the Dauphin, which will 
happen on the 7th, after a short fit of sickness, and grievous 
torments with the strangury.  He dies less lamented by the Court 
than the kingdom.

On the 9th a Marshal of France will break his leg by a fall from 
his horse.  I have not been able to discover whether he will then 
die or not.

On the 11th will begin a most important siege, which the eyes of 
all Europe will be upon:  I cannot be more particular, for in 
relating affairs that so nearly concern the Confederates, and 
consequently this kingdom, I am forced to confine myself for 
several reasons very obvious to the reader.

On the 15th news will arrive of a very surprising event, than which 
nothing could be more unexpected.

On the 19th three noble ladies of this kingdom will, against all 
expectation, prove with child, to the great joy of their husbands.

On the 23rd a famous buffoon of the playhouse will die a ridiculous 
death, suitable to his vocation.

JUNE.  This month will be distinguished at home by the utter 
dispersing of those ridiculous deluded enthusiasts commonly called 
the Prophets, occasioned chiefly by seeing the time come that many 
of their prophecies should be fulfilled, and then finding 
themselves deceived by contrary events.  It is indeed to be admired 
how any deceiver can be so weak to foretell things near at hand, 
when a very few months must of necessity discover the impostor to 
all the world; in this point less prudent than common almanack-
makers, who are so wise to wonder in generals, and talk dubiously, 
and leave to the reader the business of interpreting.

On the 1st of this month a French general will be killed by a 
random shot of a cannon-ball.

On the 6th a fire will break out in the suburbs of Paris, which 
will destroy above a thousand houses, and seems to be the 
foreboding of what will happen, to the surprise of all Europe, 
about the end of the following month.

On the 10th a great battle will be fought, which will begin at four 
of the clock in the afternoon, and last till nine at night with 
great obstinacy, but no very decisive event.  I shall not name the 
place, for the reasons aforesaid, but the commanders on each left 
wing will be killed.  I see bonfires and hear the noise of guns for 
a victory.

On the 14th there will be a false report of the French king's 
death.

On the 20th Cardinal Portocarero will die of a dysentery, with 
great suspicion of poison, but the report of his intention to 
revolt to King Charles will prove false.

JULY.  The 6th of this month a certain general will, by a glorious 
action, recover the reputation he lost by former misfortunes.

On the 12th a great commander will die a prisoner in the hands of 
his enemies.

On the 14th a shameful discovery will be made of a French Jesuit 
giving poison to a great foreign general; and when he is put to the 
torture, will make wonderful discoveries.

In short, this will prove a month of great action, if I might have 
liberty to relate the particulars.

At home, the death of an old famous senator will happen on the 15th 
at his country house, worn with age and diseases.

But that which will make this month memorable to all posterity is 
the death of the French king, Louis the Fourteenth, after a week's 
sickness at Marli, which will happen on the 29th, about six o'clock 
in the evening.  It seems to be an effect of the gout in his 
stomach, followed by a flux.  And in three days after Monsieur 
Chamillard will follow his master, dying suddenly of an apoplexy.

In this month likewise an ambassador will die in London, but I 
cannot assign the day.

AUGUST.  The affairs of France will seem to suffer no change for a 
while under the Duke of Burgundy's administration; but the genius 
that animated the whole machine being gone, will be the cause of 
mighty turns and revolutions in the following year.  The new king 
makes yet little change either in the army or the Ministry, but the 
libels against his grandfather, that fly about his very Court, give 
him uneasiness.

I see an express in mighty haste, with joy and wonder in his looks, 
arriving by break of day on the 26th of this month, having 
travelled in three days a prodigious journey by land and sea.  In 
the evening I hear bells and guns, and see the blazing of a 
thousand bonfires.

A young admiral of noble birth does likewise this month gain 
immortal honour by a great achievement.

The affairs of Poland are this month entirely settled; Augustus 
resigns his pretensions which he had again taken up for some time:  
Stanislaus is peaceably possessed of the throne, and the King of 
Sweden declares for the emperor.

I cannot omit one particular accident here at home:  that near the 
end of this month much mischief will be done at Bartholomew Fair by 
the fall of a booth.

SEPTEMBER.  This month begins with a very surprising fit of frosty 
weather, which will last near twelve days.

The Pope, having long languished last month, the swellings in his 
legs breaking, and the flesh mortifying, will die on the 11th 
instant; and in three weeks' time, after a mighty contest, be 
succeeded by a cardinal of the Imperial faction, but native of 
Tuscany, who is now about sixty-one years old.

The French army acts now wholly on the defensive, strongly 
fortified in their trenches, and the young French king sends 
overtures for a treaty of peace by the Duke of Mantua; which, 
because it is a matter of State that concerns us here at home, I 
shall speak no farther of it.

I shall add but one prediction more, and that in mystical terms, 
which shall be included in a verse out of Virgil -


ALTER ERIT JAM TETHYS, ET ALTERA QUAE VEHAT ARGO
DELECTOS HEROAS.


Upon the 25th day of this month, the fulfilling of this prediction 
will be manifest to everybody.

This is the farthest I have proceeded in my calculations for the 
present year.  I do not pretend that these are all the great events 
which will happen in this period, but that those I have set down 
will infallibly come to pass.  It will perhaps still be objected 
why I have not spoken more particularly of affairs at home, or of 
the success of our armies abroad, which I might, and could very 
largely have done; but those in power have wisely discouraged men 
from meddling in public concerns, and I was resolved by no means to 
give the least offence.  This I will venture to say, that it will 
be a glorious campaign for the Allies, wherein the English forces, 
both by sea and land, will have their full share of honour; that 
Her Majesty Queen Anne will continue in health and prosperity; and 
that no ill accident will arrive to any in the chief Ministry.

As to the particular events I have mentioned, the readers may judge 
by the fulfilling of them, whether I am on the level with common 
astrologers, who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pothooks for 
planets, to amuse the vulgar, have, in my opinion, too long been 
suffered to abuse the world.  But an honest physician ought not to 
be despised because there are such things as mountebanks.  I hope I 
have some share of reputation, which I would not willingly forfeit 
for a frolic or humour; and I believe no gentleman who reads this 
paper will look upon it to be of the same cast or mould with the 
common scribblers that are every day hawked about.  My fortune has 
placed me above the little regard of scribbling for a few pence, 
which I neither value nor want; therefore, let no wise man too 
hastily condemn this essay, intended for a good design, to 
cultivate and improve an ancient art long in disgrace, by having 
fallen into mean and unskilful hands.  A little time will determine 
whether I have deceived others or myself; and I think it is no very 
unreasonable request that men would please to suspend their 
judgments till then.  I was once of the opinion with those who 
despise all predictions from the stars, till in the year 1686 a man 
of quality showed me, written in his album, that the most learned 
astronomer, Captain H-, assured him, he would never believe 
anything of the stars' influence if there were not a great 
revolution in England in the year 1688.  Since that time I began to 
have other thoughts, and after eighteen years' diligent study and 
application, I think I have no reason to repent of my pains.  I 
shall detain the reader no longer than to let him know that the 
account I design to give of next year's events shall take in the 
principal affairs that happen in Europe; and if I be denied the 
liberty of offering it to my own country, I shall appeal to the 
learned world, by publishing it in Latin, and giving order to have 
it printed in Holland.



CHAPTER IV - THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE FIRST OF MR. BICKERSTAFF'S 
PREDICTIONS;

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF MR. PARTRIDGE
THE ALMANACK-MAKER, UPON THE 29TH INSTANT.
IN A LETTER TO A PERSON OF HONOUR; WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1708.



MY LORD, - In obedience to your lordship's commands, as well as to 
satisfy my own curiosity, I have for some days past inquired 
constantly after Partridge the almanack-maker, of whom it was 
foretold in Mr. Bickerstaff's predictions, published about a month 
ago, that he should die the 29th instant, about eleven at night, of 
a raging fever.  I had some sort of knowledge of him when I was 
employed in the Revenue, because he used every year to present me 
with his almanack, as he did other gentlemen, upon the score of 
some little gratuity we gave him.  I saw him accidentally once or 
twice about ten days before he died, and observed he began very 
much to droop and languish, though I hear his friends did not seem 
to apprehend him in any danger.  About two or three days ago he 
grew ill, was confined first to his chamber, and in a few hours 
after to his bed, where Dr. Case and Mrs. Kirleus were sent for, to 
visit and to prescribe to him.  Upon this intelligence I sent 
thrice every day one servant or other to inquire after his health; 
and yesterday, about four in the afternoon, word was brought me 
that he was past hopes; upon which, I prevailed with myself to go 
and see him, partly out of commiseration, and I confess, partly out 
of curiosity.  He knew me very well, seemed surprised at my 
condescension, and made me compliments upon it as well as he could 
in the condition he was.  The people about him said he had been for 
some time delirious; but when I saw him, he had his understanding 
as well as ever I knew, and spoke strong and hearty, without any 
seeming uneasiness or constraint.  After I had told him how sorry I 
was to see him in those melancholy circumstances, and said some 
other civilities suitable to the occasion, I desired him to tell me 
freely and ingenuously, whether the predictions Mr. Bickerstaff had 
published relating to his death had not too much affected and 
worked on his imagination.  He confessed he had often had it in his 
head, but never with much apprehension, till about a fortnight 
before; since which time it had the perpetual possession of his 
mind and thoughts, and he did verily believe was the true natural 
cause of his present distemper:  "For," said he, "I am thoroughly 
persuaded, and I think I have very good reasons, that Mr. 
Bickerstaff spoke altogether by guess, and knew no more what will 
happen this year than I did myself."  I told him his discourse 
surprised me, and I would be glad he were in a state of health to 
be able to tell me what reason he had to be convinced of Mr. 
Bickerstaff's ignorance.  He replied, "I am a poor, ignorant 
follow, bred to a mean trade, yet I have sense enough to know that 
all pretences of foretelling by astrology are deceits, for this 
manifest reason, because the wise and the learned, who can only 
know whether there be any truth in this science, do all unanimously 
agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant 
vulgar give it any credit, and that only upon the word of such 
silly wretches as I and my fellows, who can hardly write or read."  
I then asked him why he had not calculated his own nativity, to see 
whether it agreed with Bickerstaff's prediction, at which he shook 
his head and said, "Oh, sir, this is no time for jesting, but for 
repenting those fooleries, as I do now from the very bottom of my 
heart."  "By what I can gather from you," said I, "the observations 
and predictions you printed with your almanacks were mere 
impositions on the people."  He replied, "If it were otherwise I 
should have the less to answer for.  We have a common form for all 
those things; as to foretelling the weather, we never meddle with 
that, but leave it to the printer, who takes it out of any old 
almanack as he thinks fit; the rest was my own invention, to make 
my almanack sell, having a wife to maintain, and no other way to 
get my bread; for mending old shoes is a poor livelihood; and," 
added he, sighing, "I wish I may not have done more mischief by my 
physic than my astrology; though I had some good receipts from my 
grandmother, and my own compositions were such as I thought could 
at least do no hurt."

I had some other discourse with him, which now I cannot call to 
mind; and I fear I have already tired your lordship.  I shall only 
add one circumstance, that on his death-bed he declared himself a 
Nonconformist, and had a fanatic preacher to be his spiritual 
guide.  After half an hour's conversation I took my leave, being 
half stifled by the closeness of the room.  I imagined he could not 
hold out long, and therefore withdrew to a little coffee-house hard 
by, leaving a servant at the house with orders to come immediately 
and tell me, as nearly as he could, the minute when Partridge 
should expire, which was not above two hours after, when, looking 
upon my watch, I found it to be above five minutes after seven; by 
which it is clear that Mr. Bickerstaff was mistaken almost four 
hours in his calculation.  In the other circumstances he was exact 
enough.  But, whether he has not been the cause of this poor man's 
death, as well as the predictor, may be very reasonably disputed.  
However, it must be confessed the matter is odd enough, whether we 
should endeavour to account for it by chance, or the effect of 
imagination.  For my own part, though I believe no man has less 
faith in these matters, yet I shall wait with some impatience, and 
not without some expectation, the fulfilling of Mr. Bickerstaff's 
second prediction, that the Cardinal do Noailles is to die upon the 
4th of April, and if that should be verified as exactly as this of 
poor Partridge, I must own I should be wholly surprised, and at a 
loss, and should infallibly expect the accomplishment of all the 
rest.



CHAPTER V - BAUCIS AND PHILEMON.
IMITATED FROM THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID.



IN ancient times, as story tells,
The saints would often leave their cells,
And stroll about, but hide their quality,
To try good people's hospitality.
It happened on a winter night,
As authors of the legend write,
Two brother hermits, saints by trade,
Taking their tour in masquerade,
Disguised in tattered habits, went
To a small village down in Kent;
Where, in the strollers' canting strain,
They begged from door to door in vain;
Tried every tone might pity win,
But not a soul would let them in.
Our wandering saints in woeful state,
Treated at this ungodly rate,
Having through all the village passed,
To a small cottage came at last,
Where dwelt a good honest old yeoman,
Called, in the neighbourhood, Philemon,
Who kindly did these saints invite
In his poor hut to pass the night;
And then the hospitable Sire
Bid goody Baucis mend the fire;
While he from out the chimney took
A flitch of bacon off the hook,
And freely from the fattest side
Cut out large slices to be fried;
Then stepped aside to fetch 'em drink,
Filled a large jug up to the brink,
And saw it fairly twice go round;
Yet (what is wonderful) they found
'Twas still replenished to the top,
As if they ne'er had touched a drop
The good old couple were amazed,
And often on each other gazed;
For both were frightened to the heart,
And just began to cry, - What art!
Then softly turned aside to view,
Whether the lights were burning blue.
The gentle pilgrims soon aware on't,
Told 'em their calling, and their errant;
"Good folks, you need not be afraid,
We are but saints," the hermits said;
"No hurt shall come to you or yours;
But, for that pack of churlish boors,
Not fit to live on Christian ground,
They and their houses shall be drowned;
Whilst you shall see your cottage rise,
And grow a church before your eyes."
They scarce had spoke; when fair and soft,
The roof began to mount aloft;
Aloft rose every beam and rafter,
The heavy wall climbed slowly after.
The chimney widened, and grew higher,
Became a steeple with a spire.
The kettle to the top was hoist,
And there stood fastened to a joist;
But with the upside down, to show
Its inclination for below.
In vain; for a superior force
Applied at bottom, stops its coarse,
Doomed ever in suspense to dwell,
'Tis now no kettle, but a bell.
A wooden jack, which had almost
Lost, by disuse, the art to roast,
A sudden alteration feels,
Increased by new intestine wheels;
And what exalts the wonder more,
The number made the motion slower.
The flyer, though 't had leaden feet,
Turned round so quick, you scarce could see 't;
But slackened by some secret power,
Now hardly moves an inch an hour.
The jack and chimney near allied,
Had never left each other's side;
The chimney to a steeple grown,
The jack would not be left alone;
But up against the steeple reared,
Became a clock, and still adhered;
And still its love to household cares
By a shrill voice at noon declares,
Warning the cook-maid not to burn
That roast meat which it cannot turn.
The groaning chair began to crawl,
Like a huge snail along the wall;
There stuck aloft in public view;
And with small change a pulpit grew.
The porringers, that in a row
Hung high, and made a glittering show,
To a less noble substance changed,
Were now but leathern buckets ranged.
The ballads pasted on the wall,
Of Joan of France, and English Moll,
Fair Rosamond, and Robin Hood,
The Little Children in the Wood,
Now seemed to look abundance better,
Improved in picture, size, and letter;
And high in order placed, describe
The heraldry of every tribe.
A bedstead of the antique mode,
Compact of timber, many a load,
Such as our ancestors did use,
Was metamorphosed into pews:
Which still their ancient nature keep,
By lodging folks disposed to sleep.
The cottage, by such feats as these,
Grown to a church by just degrees,
The hermits then desired their host
To ask for what he fancied most.
Philemon having paused a while,
Returned 'em thanks in homely style;
Then said, "My house is grown so fine,
Methinks I still would call it mine:
I'm old, and fain would live at ease,
Make me the Parson, if you please."
He spoke, and presently he feels
His grazier's coat fall down his heels;
He sees, yet hardly can believe,
About each arm a pudding sleeve;
His waistcoat to a cassock grew,
And both assumed a sable hue;
But being old, continued just
As thread-bare, and as full of dust.
His talk was now of tithes and dues;
He smoked his pipe and read the news;
Knew how to preach old sermons next,
Vamped in the preface and the text;
At christenings well could act his part,
And had the service all by heart;
Wished women might have children fast,
And thought whose sow had farrowed last
Against Dissenters would repine,
And stood up firm for Right divine.
Found his head filled with many a system,
But classic authors, - he ne'er missed 'em.
Thus having furbished up a parson,
Dame Baucis next they played their farce on.
Instead of home-spun coifs were seen
Good pinners edg'd with colberteen;
Her petticoat transformed apace,
Became black satin flounced with lace.
Plain Goody would no longer down,
'Twas Madam, in her grogram gown.
Philemon was in great surprise,
And hardly could believe his eyes,
Amazed to see her look so prim;
And she admired as much at him.
Thus, happy in their change of life,
Were several years this man and wife;
When on a day, which proved their last,
Discoursing o'er old stories past,
They went by chance amidst their talk,
To the church yard to take a walk;
When Baucis hastily cried out,
"My dear, I see your forehead sprout!"
"Sprout," quoth the man, "what's this you tell us?
I hope you don't believe me jealous,
But yet, methinks, I feel it true;
And really, yours is budding too -
Nay, - now I cannot stir my foot;
It feels as if 'twere taking root."
Description would but tire my Muse;
In short, they both were turned to Yews.
Old Goodman Dobson of the green
Remembers he the trees has seen;
He'll talk of them from noon till night,
And goes with folks to show the sight;
On Sundays, after evening prayer,
He gathers all the parish there,
Points out the place of either Yew:
Here Baucis, there Philemon grew,
Till once a parson of our town,
To mend his barn, cut Baucis down;
At which, 'tis hard to be believed
How much the other tree was grieved,
Grow scrubby, died a-top, was stunted:
So the next parson stubbed and burnt it.



CHAPTER VI - THE LOGICIANS REFUTED.



LOGICIANS have but ill defined
As rational, the human kind;
Reason, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it, if they can.
Wise Aristotle and Smiglesius,
By ratiocinations specious,
Have strove to prove with great precision,
With definition and division,
HOMO EST RATIONE PRAEDITUM;
But, for my soul, I cannot credit 'em.
And must, in spite of them, maintain
That man and all his ways are vain;
And that this boasted lord of nature
Is both a weak and erring creature.
That instinct is a surer guide
Than reason-boasting mortals pride;
And, that brute beasts are far before 'em,
DEUS EST ANIMA BRUTORUM.
Whoever knew an honest brute,
At law his neighbour prosecute,
Bring action for assault and battery,
Or friend beguile with lies and flattery?
O'er plains they ramble unconfined,
No politics disturb their mind;
They eat their meals, and take their sport,
Nor know who's in or out at court.
They never to the levee go
To treat as dearest friend a foe;
They never importune his grace,
Nor ever cringe to men in place;
Nor undertake a dirty job,
Nor draw the quill to write for Bob.
Fraught with invective they ne'er go
To folks at Paternoster Row:
No judges, fiddlers, dancing-masters,
No pickpockets, or poetasters
Are known to honest quadrupeds:
No single brute his fellows leads.
Brutes never meet in bloody fray,
Nor cut each others' throats for pay.
Of beasts, it is confessed, the ape
Comes nearest us in human shape;
Like man, he imitates each fashion,
And malice is his ruling passion:
But, both in malice and grimaces,
A courtier any ape surpasses.
Behold him humbly cringing wait
Upon the minister of state;
View him, soon after, to inferiors
Aping the conduct of superiors:
He promises, with equal air,
And to perform takes equal care.
He, in his turn, finds imitators,
At court the porters, lacqueys, waiters
Their masters' manners still contract,
And footmen, lords, and dukes can act.
Thus, at the court, both great and small
Behave alike, for all ape all.



CHAPTER VII - THE PUPPET SHOW.



THE life of man to represent,
And turn it all to ridicule,
Wit did a puppet-show invent,
Where the chief actor is a fool.

The gods of old were logs of wood,
And worship was to puppets paid;
In antic dress the idol stood,
And priests and people bowed the head.

No wonder then, if art began
The simple votaries to frame,
To shape in timber foolish man,
And consecrate the block to fame.

From hence poetic fancy learned
That trees might rise from human forms
The body to a trunk be turned,
And branches issue from the arms.

Thus Daedalus and Ovid too,
That man's a blockhead have confessed,
Powel and Stretch the hint pursue;
Life is the farce, the world a jest.

The same great truth South Sea hath proved
On that famed theatre, the ally,
Where thousands by directors moved
Are now sad monuments of folly.

What Momus was of old to Jove
The same harlequin is now;
The former was buffoon above,
The latter is a Punch below.

This fleeting scene is but a stage,
Where various images appear,
In different parts of youth and age
Alike the prince and peasant share.

Some draw our eyes by being great,
False pomp conceals mere wood within,
And legislators rang'd in state
Are oft but wisdom in machine.

A stock may chance to wear a crown,
And timber as a lord take place,
A statue may put on a frown,
And cheat us with a thinking face.

Others are blindly led away,
And made to act for ends unknown,
By the mere spring of wires they play,
And speak in language not their own.

Too oft, alas! a scolding wife
Usurps a jolly fellow's throne,
And many drink the cup of life
Mix'd and embittered by a Joan.

In short, whatever men pursue
Of pleasure, folly, war, or love,
This mimic-race brings all to view,
Alike they dress, they talk, they move.

Go on, great Stretch, with artful hand,
Mortals to please and to deride,
And when death breaks thy vital band
Thou shalt put on a puppet's pride.

Thou shalt in puny wood be shown,
Thy image shall preserve thy fame,
Ages to come thy worth shall own,
Point at thy limbs, and tell thy name.

Tell Tom he draws a farce in vain,
Before he looks in nature's glass;
Puns cannot form a witty scene,
Nor pedantry for humour pass.

To make men act as senseless wood,
And chatter in a mystic strain,
Is a mere force on flesh and blood,
And shows some error in the brain.

He that would thus refine on thee,
And turn thy stage into a school,
The jest of Punch will ever be,
And stand confessed the greater fool.



CHAPTER VIII - CADENUS AND VANESSA.

WRITTEN ANNO 1713.



THE shepherds and the nymphs were seen
Pleading before the Cyprian Queen.
The counsel for the fair began
Accusing the false creature, man.
The brief with weighty crimes was charged,
On which the pleader much enlarged:
That Cupid now has lost his art,
Or blunts the point of every dart;
His altar now no longer smokes;
His mother's aid no youth invokes -
This tempts free-thinkers to refine,
And bring in doubt their powers divine,
Now love is dwindled to intrigue,
And marriage grown a money-league.
Which crimes aforesaid (with her leave)
Were (as he humbly did conceive)
Against our Sovereign Lady's peace,
Against the statutes in that case,
Against her dignity and crown:
Then prayed an answer and sat down.

The nymphs with scorn beheld their foes:
When the defendant's counsel rose,
And, what no lawyer ever lacked,
With impudence owned all the fact.
But, what the gentlest heart would vex,
Laid all the fault on t'other sex.
That modern love is no such thing
As what those ancient poets sing;
A fire celestial, chaste, refined,
Conceived and kindled in the mind,
Which having found an equal flame,
Unites, and both become the same,
In different breasts together burn,
Together both to ashes turn.
But women now feel no such fire,
And only know the gross desire;
Their passions move in lower spheres,
Where'er caprice or folly steers.
A dog, a parrot, or an ape,
Or some worse brute in human shape
Engross the fancies of the fair,
The few soft moments they can spare
From visits to receive and pay,
From scandal, politics, and play,
From fans, and flounces, and brocades,
From equipage and park-parades,
From all the thousand female toys,
From every trifle that employs
The out or inside of their heads
Between their toilets and their beds.
In a dull stream, which, moving slow,
You hardly see the current flow,
If a small breeze obstructs the course,
It whirls about for want of force,
And in its narrow circle gathers
Nothing but chaff, and straws, and feathers:
The current of a female mind
Stops thus, and turns with every wind;
Thus whirling round, together draws
Fools, fops, and rakes, for chaff and straws.
Hence we conclude, no women's hearts
Are won by virtue, wit, and parts;
Nor are the men of sense to blame
For breasts incapable of flame:
The fault must on the nymphs be placed,
Grown so corrupted in their taste.
The pleader having spoke his best,
Had witness ready to attest,
Who fairly could on oath depose,
When questions on the fact arose,
That every article was true;
NOR FURTHER THOSE DEPONENTS KNEW:
Therefore he humbly would insist,
The bill might be with costs dismissed.
The cause appeared of so much weight,
That Venus from the judgment-seat
Desired them not to talk so loud,
Else she must interpose a cloud:
For if the heavenly folk should know
These pleadings in the Courts below,
That mortals here disdain to love,
She ne'er could show her face above.
For gods, their betters, are too wise
To value that which men despise.
"And then," said she, "my son and I
Must stroll in air 'twixt earth and sky:
Or else, shut out from heaven and earth,
Fly to the sea, my place of birth;
There live with daggled mermaids pent,
And keep on fish perpetual Lent."
But since the case appeared so nice,
She thought it best to take advice.
The Muses, by their king's permission,
Though foes to love, attend the session,
And on the right hand took their places
In order; on the left, the Graces:
To whom she might her doubts propose
On all emergencies that rose.
The Muses oft were seen to frown;
The Graces half ashamed look down;
And 'twas observed, there were but few
Of either sex, among the crew,
Whom she or her assessors knew.
The goddess soon began to see
Things were not ripe for a decree,
And said she must consult her books,
The lovers' Fletas, Bractons, Cokes.
First to a dapper clerk she beckoned,
To turn to Ovid, book the second;
She then referred them to a place
In Virgil (VIDE Dido's case);
As for Tibullus's reports,
They never passed for law in Courts:
For Cowley's brief, and pleas of Waller,
Still their authority is smaller.
There was on both sides much to say;
She'd hear the cause another day;
And so she did, and then a third,
She heard it - there she kept her word;
But with rejoinders and replies,
Long bills, and answers, stuffed with lies
Demur, imparlance, and essoign,
The parties ne'er could issue join:
For sixteen years the cause was spun,
And then stood where it first begun.
Now, gentle Clio, sing or say,
What Venus meant by this delay.
The goddess, much perplexed in mind,
To see her empire thus declined,
When first this grand debate arose
Above her wisdom to compose,
Conceived a project in her head,
To work her ends; which, if it sped,
Would show the merits of the cause
Far better than consulting laws.
In a glad hour Lucina's aid
Produced on earth a wondrous maid,
On whom the queen of love was bent
To try a new experiment.
She threw her law-books on the shelf,
And thus debated with herself:-
"Since men allege they ne'er can find
Those beauties in a female mind
Which raise a flame that will endure
For ever, uncorrupt and pure;
If 'tis with reason they complain,
This infant shall restore my reign.
I'll search where every virtue dwells,
From Courts inclusive down to cells.
What preachers talk, or sages write,
These I will gather and unite,
And represent them to mankind
Collected in that infant's mind."
This said, she plucks in heaven's high bowers
A sprig of Amaranthine flowers,
In nectar thrice infuses bays,
Three times refined in Titan's rays:
Then calls the Graces to her aid,
And sprinkles thrice the now-born maid.
From whence the tender skin assumes
A sweetness above all perfumes;
From whence a cleanliness remains,
Incapable of outward stains;
From whence that decency of mind,
So lovely in a female kind.
Where not one careless thought intrudes
Less modest than the speech of prudes;
Where never blush was called in aid,
The spurious virtue in a maid,
A virtue but at second-hand;
They blush because they understand.
The Graces next would act their part,
And show but little of their art;
Their work was half already done,
The child with native beauty shone,
The outward form no help required:
Each breathing on her thrice, inspired
That gentle, soft, engaging air
Which in old times adorned the fair,
And said, "Vanessa be the name
By which thou shalt be known to fame;
Vanessa, by the gods enrolled:
Her name on earth - shall not be told."
But still the work was not complete,
When Venus thought on a deceit:
Drawn by her doves, away she flies,
And finds out Pallas in the skies:
Dear Pallas, I have been this morn
To see a lovely infant born:
A boy in yonder isle below,
So like my own without his bow,
By beauty could your heart be won,
You'd swear it is Apollo's son;
But it shall ne'er be said, a child
So hopeful has by me been spoiled;
I have enough besides to spare,
And give him wholly to your care.
Wisdom's above suspecting wiles;
The queen of learning gravely smiles,
Down from Olympus comes with joy,
Mistakes Vanessa for a boy;
Then sows within her tender mind
Seeds long unknown to womankind;
For manly bosoms chiefly fit,
The seeds of knowledge, judgment, wit,
Her soul was suddenly endued
With justice, truth, and fortitude;
With honour, which no breath can stain,
Which malice must attack in vain:
With open heart and bounteous hand:
But Pallas here was at a stand;
She know in our degenerate days
Bare virtue could not live on praise,
That meat must be with money bought:
She therefore, upon second thought,
Infused yet as it were by stealth,
Some small regard for state and wealth:
Of which as she grew up there stayed
A tincture in the prudent maid:
She managed her estate with care,
Yet liked three footmen to her chair,
But lest he should neglect his studies
Like a young heir, the thrifty goddess
(For fear young master should be spoiled)
Would use him like a younger child;
And, after long computing, found
'Twould come to just five thousand pound.
The Queen of Love was pleased and proud
To we Vanessa thus endowed;
She doubted not but such a dame
Through every breast would dart a flame;
That every rich and lordly swain
With pride would drag about her chain;
That scholars would forsake their books
To study bright Vanessa's looks:
As she advanced that womankind
Would by her model form their mind,
And all their conduct would be tried
By her, as an unerring guide.
Offending daughters oft would hear
Vanessa's praise rung in their ear:
Miss Betty, when she does a fault,
Lets fall her knife, or spills the salt,
Will thus be by her mother chid,
"'Tis what Vanessa never did."
Thus by the nymphs and swains adored,
My power shall be again restored,
And happy lovers bless my reign -
So Venus hoped, but hoped in vain.
For when in time the martial maid
Found out the trick that Venus played,
She shakes her helm, she knits her brows,
And fired with indignation, vows
To-morrow, ere the setting sun,
She'd all undo that she had done.
But in the poets we may find
A wholesome law, time out of mind,
Had been confirmed by Fate's decree;
That gods, of whatso'er degree,
Resume not what themselves have given,
Or any brother-god in Heaven;
Which keeps the peace among the gods,
Or they must always be at odds.
And Pallas, if she broke the laws,
Must yield her foe the stronger cause;
A shame to one so much adored
For Wisdom, at Jove's council-board.
Besides, she feared the queen of love
Would meet with better friends above.
And though she must with grief reflect
To see a mortal virgin deck'd
With graces hitherto unknown
To female breasts, except her own,
Yet she would act as best became
A goddess of unspotted fame;
She knew, by augury divine,
Venus would fail in her design:
She studied well the point, and found
Her foe's conclusions were not sound,
From premises erroneous brought,
And therefore the deduction's nought,
And must have contrary effects
To what her treacherous foe expects.
In proper season Pallas meets
The queen of love, whom thus she greets
(For Gods, we are by Homer told,
Can in celestial language scold),
"Perfidious Goddess! but in vain
You formed this project in your brain,
A project for thy talents fit,
With much deceit, and little wit;
Thou hast, as thou shalt quickly see,
Deceived thyself instead of me;
For how can heavenly wisdom prove
An instrument to earthly love?
Know'st thou not yet that men commence
Thy votaries, for want of sense?
Nor shall Vanessa be the theme
To manage thy abortive scheme;
She'll prove the greatest of thy foes,
And yet I scorn to interpose,
But using neither skill nor force,
Leave all things to their natural course."
The goddess thus pronounced her doom,
When, lo, Vanessa in her bloom,
Advanced like Atalanta's star,
But rarely seen, and seen from far:
In a new world with caution stepped,
Watched all the company she kept,
Well knowing from the books she read
What dangerous paths young virgins tread;
Would seldom at the park appear,
Nor saw the play-house twice a year;
Yet not incurious, was inclined
To know the converse of mankind.
First issued from perfumers' shops
A crowd of fashionable fops;
They liked her how she liked the play?
Then told the tattle of the day,
A duel fought last night at two
About a lady - you know who;
Mentioned a new Italian, come
Either from Muscovy or Rome;
Gave hints of who and who's together;
Then fell to talking of the weather:
Last night was so extremely fine,
The ladies walked till after nine.
Then in soft voice, and speech absurd,
With nonsense every second word,
With fustian from exploded plays,
They celebrate her beauty's praise,
Run o'er their cant of stupid lies,
And tell the murders of her eyes.
With silent scorn Vanessa sat,
Scarce list'ning to their idle chat;
Further than sometimes by a frown,
When they grew pert, to pull them down.
At last she spitefully was bent
To try their wisdom's full extent;
And said, she valued nothing less
Than titles, figure, shape, and dress;
That merit should be chiefly placed
In judgment, knowledge, wit, and taste;
And these, she offered to dispute,
Alone distinguished man from brute:
That present times have no pretence
To virtue, in the noble sense
By Greeks and Romans understood,
To perish for our country's good.
She named the ancient heroes round,
Explained for what they were renowned;
Then spoke with censure, or applause,
Of foreign customs, rites, and laws;
Through nature and through art she ranged,
And gracefully her subject changed:
In vain; her hearers had no share
In all she spoke, except to stare.
Their judgment was upon the whole,
 - That lady is the dullest soul -
Then tipped their forehead in a jeer,
As who should say - she wants it here;
She may be handsome, young, and rich,
But none will burn her for a witch.
A party next of glittering dames,
From round the purlieus of St. James,
Came early, out of pure goodwill,
To see the girl in deshabille.
Their clamour 'lighting from their chairs,
Grew louder, all the way up stairs;
At entrance loudest, where they found
The room with volumes littered round,
Vanessa held Montaigne, and read,
Whilst Mrs. Susan combed her head:
They called for tea and chocolate,
And fell into their usual chat,
Discoursing with important face,
On ribbons, fans, and gloves, and lace:
Showed patterns just from India brought,
And gravely asked her what she thought,
Whether the red or green were best,
And what they cost?  Vanessa guessed,
As came into her fancy first,
Named half the rates, and liked the worst.
To scandal next - What awkward thing
Was that, last Sunday, in the ring?
I'm sorry Mopsa breaks so fast;
I said her face would never last,
Corinna with that youthful air,
Is thirty, and a bit to spare.
Her fondness for a certain earl
Began, when I was but a girl.
Phyllis, who but a month ago
Was married to the Tunbridge beau,
I saw coquetting t'other night
In public with that odious knight.
They rallied next Vanessa's dress;
That gown was made for old Queen Bess.
Dear madam, let me set your head;
Don't you intend to put on red?
A petticoat without a hoop!
Sure, you are not ashamed to stoop;
With handsome garters at your knees,
No matter what a fellow sees.
Filled with disdain, with rage inflamed,
Both of herself and sex ashamed,
The nymph stood silent out of spite,
Nor would vouchsafe to set them right.
Away the fair detractors went,
And gave, by turns, their censures vent.
She's not so handsome in my eyes:
For wit, I wonder where it lies.
She's fair and clean, and that's the most;
But why proclaim her for a toast?
A baby face, no life, no airs,
But what she learnt at country fairs.
Scarce knows what difference is between
Rich Flanders lace, and Colberteen.
I'll undertake my little Nancy,
In flounces has a better fancy.
With all her wit, I would not ask
Her judgment, how to buy a mask.
We begged her but to patch her face,
She never hit one proper place;
Which every girl at five years old
Can do as soon as she is told.
I own, that out-of-fashion stuff
Becomes the creature well enough.
The girl might pass, if we could get her
To know the world a little better.
(TO KNOW THE WORLD! a modern phrase
For visits, ombre, balls, and plays.)
Thus, to the world's perpetual shame,
The queen of beauty lost her aim,
Too late with grief she understood
Pallas had done more harm than good;
For great examples are but vain,
Where ignorance begets disdain.
Both sexes, armed with guilt and spite,
Against Vanessa's power unite;
To copy her few nymphs aspired;
Her virtues fewer swains admired;
So stars, beyond a certain height,
Give mortals neither heat nor light.
Yet some of either sex, endowed
With gifts superior to the crowd,
With virtue, knowledge, taste, and wit,
She condescended to admit;
With pleasing arts she could reduce
Men's talents to their proper use;
And with address each genius hold
To that wherein it most excelled;
Thus making others' wisdom known,
Could please them and improve her own.
A modest youth said something new,
She placed it in the strongest view.
All humble worth she strove to raise;
Would not be praised, yet loved to praise.
The learned met with free approach,
Although they came not in a coach.
Some clergy too she would allow,
Nor quarreled at their awkward bow.
But this was for Cadenus' sake;
A gownman of a different make.
Whom Pallas, once Vanessa's tutor,
Had fixed on for her coadjutor.
But Cupid, full of mischief, longs
To vindicate his mother's wrongs.
On Pallas all attempts are vain;
One way he knows to give her pain;
Vows on Vanessa's heart to take
Due vengeance, for her patron's sake.
Those early seeds by Venus sown,
In spite of Pallas, now were grown;
And Cupid hoped they would improve
By time, and ripen into love.
The boy made use of all his craft,
In vain discharging many a shaft,
Pointed at colonels, lords, and beaux;
Cadenus warded off the blows,
For placing still some book betwixt,
The darts were in the cover fixed,
Or often blunted and recoiled,
On Plutarch's morals struck, were spoiled.
The queen of wisdom could foresee,
But not prevent the Fates decree;
And human caution tries in vain
To break that adamantine chain.
Vanessa, though by Pallas taught,
By love invulnerable thought,
Searching in books for wisdom's aid,
Was, in the very search, betrayed.
Cupid, though all his darts were lost,
Yet still resolved to spare no cost;
He could not answer to his fame
The triumphs of that stubborn dame,
A nymph so hard to be subdued,
Who neither was coquette nor prude.
I find, says he, she wants a doctor,
Both to adore her, and instruct her:
I'll give her what she most admires,
Among those venerable sires.
Cadenus is a subject fit,
Grown old in politics and wit;
Caressed by Ministers of State,
Of half mankind the dread and hate.
Whate'er vexations love attend,
She need no rivals apprehend
Her sex, with universal voice,
Must laugh at her capricious choice.
Cadenus many things had writ,
Vanessa much esteemed his wit,
And called for his poetic works!
Meantime the boy in secret lurks.
And while the book was in her hand,
The urchin from his private stand
Took aim, and shot with all his strength
A dart of such prodigious length,
It pierced the feeble volume through,
And deep transfixed her bosom too.
Some lines, more moving than the rest,
Struck to the point that pierced her breast;
And, borne directly to the heart,
With pains unknown, increased her smart.
Vanessa, not in years a score,
Dreams of a gown of forty-four;
Imaginary charms can find,
In eyes with reading almost blind;
Cadenus now no more appears
Declined in health, advanced in years.
She fancies music in his tongue,
Nor farther looks, but thinks him young.
What mariner is not afraid
To venture in a ship decayed?
What planter will attempt to yoke
A sapling with a falling oak?
As years increase, she brighter shines,
Cadenus with each day declines,
And he must fall a prey to Time,
While she continues in her prime.
Cadenus, common forms apart,
In every scene had kept his heart;
Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ,
For pastime, or to show his wit;
But time, and books, and State affairs,
Had spoiled his fashionable airs,
He now could praise, esteem, approve,
But understood not what was love.
His conduct might have made him styled
A father, and the nymph his child.
That innocent delight he took
To see the virgin mind her book,
Was but the master's secret joy
In school to hear the finest boy.
Her knowledge with her fancy grew,
She hourly pressed for something new;
Ideas came into her mind
So fact, his lessons lagged behind;
She reasoned, without plodding long,
Nor ever gave her judgment wrong.
But now a sudden change was wrought,
She minds no longer what he taught.
Cadenus was amazed to find
Such marks of a distracted mind;
For though she seemed to listen more
To all he spoke, than e'er before.
He found her thoughts would absent range,
Yet guessed not whence could spring the change.
And first he modestly conjectures,
His pupil might be tired with lectures,
Which helped to mortify his pride,
Yet gave him not the heart to chide;
But in a mild dejected strain,
At last he ventured to complain:
Said, she should be no longer teased,
Might have her freedom when she pleased;
Was now convinced he acted wrong,
To hide her from the world so long,
And in dull studies to engage
One of her tender sex and age.
That every nymph with envy owned,
How she might shine in the GRANDE-MONDE,
And every shepherd was undone,
To see her cloistered like a nun.
This was a visionary scheme,
He waked, and found it but a dream;
A project far above his skill,
For Nature must be Nature still.
If she was bolder than became
A scholar to a courtly dame,
She might excuse a man of letters;
Thus tutors often treat their betters,
And since his talk offensive grew,
He came to take his last adieu.
Vanessa, filled with just disdain,
Would still her dignity maintain,
Instructed from her early years
To scorn the art of female tears.
Had he employed his time so long,
To teach her what was right or wrong,
Yet could such notions entertain,
That all his lectures were in vain?
She owned the wand'ring of her thoughts,
But he must answer for her faults.
She well remembered, to her cost,
That all his lessons were not lost.
Two maxims she could still produce,
And sad experience taught her use;
That virtue, pleased by being shown,
Knows nothing which it dare not own;
Can make us without fear disclose
Our inmost secrets to our foes;
That common forms were not designed
Directors to a noble mind.
Now, said the nymph, I'll let you see
My actions with your rules agree,
That I can vulgar forms despise,
And have no secrets to disguise.
I knew by what you said and writ,
How dangerous things were men of wit;
You cautioned me against their charms,
But never gave me equal arms;
Your lessons found the weakest part,
Aimed at the head, but reached the heart.
Cadenus felt within him rise
Shame, disappointment, guilt, surprise.
He know not how to reconcile
Such language, with her usual style:
And yet her words were so expressed,
He could not hope she spoke in jest.
His thoughts had wholly been confined
To form and cultivate her mind.
He hardly knew, till he was told,
Whether the nymph were young or old;
Had met her in a public place,
Without distinguishing her face,
Much less could his declining age
Vanessa's earliest thoughts engage.
And if her youth indifference met,
His person must contempt beget,
Or grant her passion be sincere,
How shall his innocence be clear?
Appearances were all so strong,
The world must think him in the wrong;
Would say he made a treach'rous use.
Of wit, to flatter and seduce;
The town would swear he had betrayed,
By magic spells, the harmless maid;
And every beau would have his jokes,
That scholars were like other folks;
That when Platonic flights were over,
The tutor turned a mortal lover.
So tender of the young and fair;
It showed a true paternal care -
Five thousand guineas in her purse;
The doctor might have fancied worst, -
Hardly at length he silence broke,
And faltered every word he spoke;
Interpreting her complaisance,
Just as a man sans consequence.
She rallied well, he always knew;
Her manner now was something new;
And what she spoke was in an air,
As serious as a tragic player.
But those who aim at ridicule,
Should fix upon some certain rule,
Which fairly hints they are in jest,
Else he must enter his protest;
For let a man be ne'er so wise,
He may be caught with sober lies;
A science which he never taught,
And, to be free, was dearly bought;
For, take it in its proper light,
'Tis just what coxcombs call a bite.
But not to dwell on things minute,
Vanessa finished the dispute,
Brought weighty arguments to prove,
That reason was her guide in love.
She thought he had himself described,
His doctrines when she fist imbibed;
What he had planted now was grown,
His virtues she might call her own;
As he approves, as he dislikes,
Love or contempt her fancy strikes.
Self-love in nature rooted fast,
Attends us first, and leaves us last:
Why she likes him, admire not at her,
She loves herself, and that's the matter.
How was her tutor wont to praise
The geniuses of ancient days!
(Those authors he so oft had named
For learning, wit, and wisdom famed).
Was struck with love, esteem, and awe,
For persons whom he never saw.
Suppose Cadenus flourished then,
He must adore such God-like men.
If one short volume could comprise
All that was witty, learned, and wise,
How would it be esteemed, and read,
Although the writer long were dead?
If such an author were alive,
How all would for his friendship strive;
And come in crowds to see his face?
And this she takes to be her case.
Cadenus answers every end,
The book, the author, and the friend,
The utmost her desires will reach,
Is but to learn what he can teach;
His converse is a system fit
Alone to fill up all her wit;
While ev'ry passion of her mind
In him is centred and confined.
Love can with speech inspire a mute,
And taught Vanessa to dispute.
This topic, never touched before,
Displayed her eloquence the more:
Her knowledge, with such pains acquired,
By this new passion grew inspired.
Through this she made all objects pass,
Which gave a tincture o'er the mass;
As rivers, though they bend and twine,
Still to the sea their course incline;
Or, as philosophers, who find
Some fav'rite system to their mind,
In every point to make it fit,
Will force all nature to submit.
Cadenus, who could ne'er suspect
His lessons would have such effect,
Or be so artfully applied,
Insensibly came on her side;
It was an unforeseen event,
Things took a turn he never meant.
Whoe'er excels in what we prize,
Appears a hero to our eyes;
Each girl, when pleased with what is taught,
Will have the teacher in her thought.
When miss delights in her spinnet,
A fiddler may a fortune get;
A blockhead, with melodious voice
In boarding-schools can have his choice;
And oft the dancing-master's art
Climbs from the toe to touch the heart.
In learning let a nymph delight,
The pedant gets a mistress by't.
Cadenus, to his grief and shame,
Could scarce oppose Vanessa's flame;
But though her arguments were strong,
At least could hardly with them wrong.
Howe'er it came, he could not tell,
But, sure, she never talked so well.
His pride began to interpose,
Preferred before a crowd of beaux,
So bright a nymph to come unsought,
Such wonder by his merit wrought;
'Tis merit must with her prevail,
He never know her judgment fail.
She noted all she ever read,
And had a most discerning head.
'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That vanity's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.
So when Cadenus could not hide,
He chose to justify his pride;
Construing the passion she had shown,
Much to her praise, more to his own.
Nature in him had merit placed,
In her, a most judicious taste.
Love, hitherto a transient guest,
Ne'er held possession in his breast;
So long attending at the gate,
Disdain'd to enter in so late.
Love, why do we one passion call?
When 'tis a compound