And all alike are taught poetic rage,
When hardly one 's fit for it in an age.

No fooner are the organs of the brain
Quick to receive, and ftedfaft to retain,
Best knowledges, but all 's laid out upon
Retrieving of the curfe of Babylon ;
To make confounded languages: reftore
A greater drudgery than it barr'd before:

40

And therefore those imported from the East,
Where first they were incurr'd, are held the best,
Although convey'd in worse Arabian pothooks

45

Than gifted tradesmen fcratch in fermon note-books ; Are really but pains and läbour lost,

And not worth half the drudgery they cost,

50

Unless, like rarities, as they 've been brought

From foreign climates, and as dearly bought,
When those who had no other but their own,
Have all fucceeding eloquence outdone;
As men that wink with one eye see more true,

55

And take their am much better, than with two:

For, the more languages a man can speak,

His talent has but sprung the greater leak;
And, for the industry he 'as spent upon 't,
Muft full as much fome other way difcount.
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac,

60

Do, like their letters, fet men's reafon back,
And turn their wits, that strive to understand it
(Like thofe that write the characters) left-handed :

Yet he that is but able to express

No sense at all in several languages,

+65

Will pafs for learneder than he that 's known
To speak the strongest reafon in his own.

Thefe are the modern arts of education,
With all the learned of mankind in fashion,
But practis'd only with the rod and whip,
A's riding-schools inculcate horfemanship;
Or Romish penitents let out their skins,
To bear the penalties of others' fins:

When letters, at the first, were meant for play,

75

And only us'd to pafs the time away;

When th' ancient Greeks and Romans had no name

To express a school and playhouse, but the fame,
And in their languages, fo long agone,

To ftudy or be idle was all one;

80

For nothing more preserves men in their wits,

Than giving of them leave to play by fits,

In dreams to fport, and ramble with all fancies,
And waking, little less extravagances,

The reft and recreation of tir'd thought,

85

When 'tis run down with care and overwrought,
Of which whoever does not freely take
His constant share, is never broad awake,
And, when he wants an equal competence
Of both recruits, abates as much of sense.
Nor is their education worse defign'd

Than Nature (in her province) proves unkind":
The greatest inclinations with the leaft

Capacities are fatally poffeft,

go

Condemn'd to drudge, and labour, and take pains, 95 Without an equal competence of brains ;;

3

While

While thofe she has indulg'd in foul and body,
Are most averse to industry and study,
And th' activ't fancies hare as loofe alloys,
For want of equal weight to counterpoise.
But when those great conveniencies meet,
Of equal judgment, industry, and wit,
The one but ftrives the other to divert,

While Fate and Custom in the feud take part,
And scholars, by prepofterous over-doing,
And under-judging, all their projects ruin;
Who, though the understanding of mankind
Within fo ftrait a compafs is confin'd,
Difdain the limits Nature fets to bound

The wit of man, and vainly rove beyond.
The braveft foldiers fcorn, until they're got
Close to the enemy, to make a fhot;
Yet great philofophers delight to stretch

Their talents most at things beyond their reach,
And proudly think t' unriddle every cause
That Nature uses, by their own bye-laws;
When 'tis not only' impertinent, but rude,
Where the denies admiffion, to intrude;
And all their industry is but to err,

Unless they have free quarantine from her;
Whence 'tis the world the less has understood,
By striving to know more than 'tis allow'd.

For Adam, with the loss of Paradise
Bought knowledge at too defperate a price,
And ever fince that miferable fate

Learning did never coft an easier rate;

For, though the most divine and fovereign good

That Nature has upon mankind bestow'd,
Yet it has prov'd a greater hinderance

To th' interest of truth than ignorance,

130

And therefore never bore fo high a value

As when 'twas low, contemptible, and shallow;
Had academies, fchools, and colleges,

Endow'd for its improvement and increase;

With pomp and fhew was introduc'd with maces, 135
More than a Roman magiftrate had fasces ;

Impower'd with ftatute, privilege, and mandate,
T' affume an art, and after understand it;
Like bills of store for taking a degree,
With all the learning to it custom-free ;
And own profeffions which they never took

140

So much delight in as to read one book:
Like princes, had prerogative to give
Convicted malefactors a reprieve;
And, having but a little paltry wit

145

More than the world, reduc'd and govern'd it,

But fcorn'd, as foon as 'twas but understood,

As better is a spiteful foe to good,

And now has nothing left for its support,

But what the darkeft times provided for 't.

150

Man has a natural defire to know,

But th' one half is for intereft, th' other fhow:
As fcriveners take more pains to learn the fleight
Of making knots, than all the hands they write :
So all his ftudy is not to extend

The bounds of knowledge, but fome vainer end;

155

T' appear

T'appear and pass for learned, though his claim
Will hardly reach beyond the empty name :
For most of those that drudge and labour hard,
Furnish their understandings by the yard,.
As a French library by the whole is,

So much an ell for quarto's and for folios 3.
To which they are but indexes themselves,
And understand no further than the shelves;,
But fmatter with their titles and editions,
And place them in their Claffical partitions;
When all a ftudent knows of what he reads
Is not in 's own, but under general heads
Of common-places, not in his own power,
But, like a Dutchman's money, i' th' cantore,
Where all he can make of it at the best,
Is hardly three per cent. for interest;
And whether he will ever get it out,
Into his own poffeffion, is a doubt:
Affects all books of paft and modern ages,

But reads no further than the title-pages,

Only to con the authors' names by rote,
Or, at the best, those of the books they quote,
Enough to challenge intimate acquaintance

160

165

170

375

With all the learned Moderns and the Ancients. 180

As Roman noblemen were wont to greet,

And compliment the rabble in the street,
Had nomenclators in their trains, to claim
Acquaintance with the meanest by his name,
And, by fo mean contemptible a bribe,
Trepann'd the fuffrages of every tribe;

185

Sa