Hence 'tis that fome, who fet up first
As raw, and wretched, and unverst,
And open'd with a stock as poor
As a healthy beggar with one fore;
That never writ in profe or verse,
But pick'd, or cut it, like a purfe,
And at the best could but commit
The petty-larceny of wit;
To whom to write was to purloin,
And printing but to ftamp falfe coin ;
Yet, after long and sturdy' endeavours
Of being painful wit-receivers,
With gathering rags and fcraps of wit,
As paper 's made on which 'tis writ,
Have gone forth authors, and acquir'd
The right or wrong-to be admir'd;
And, arm'd with confidence, incurr'd
The fool's good luck, to be preferr'd.
For, as a banker can difpofe
Of greater fums he only owes,
Than he who honeftly is known
To deal in nothing but his own,
So, whofoe'er can take up moft,
May greateft fame and credit boast.

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SATIRE,

SATIRE,

IN TWO PARTS,

Upon the Imperfection and Abufe of

HUMAN LEARNING.

PART I.

T is the nobleft act of human reason,

Iro free itself from flavih prepoffeffion,

Aflume

In the large General Dictionary, or Bayle's enlarged by Mr. Bernard, Birch, and Lockman, we are told by the learned editors, under the article Hudibras, that they were perfonally informed by the late Mr. Longueville, That amongst the genuine remains of Butler, which were in his hands, there was a poem, entitled The Hiftory of Learning.-To the fame purpofe is the following paffage, cited from The Poetical Regifter, vol. II. p. 21." In juftice to the public, it is thought proper to declare, that all the manufcripts Mr. But"ler left behind him are now in the cuftody of Mr. Longueville (among which is one, entitled The Hiftory of Learning, written after the manner of Hudi"bras) and that not one line of thofe poems lately "published under his name is genuine."

As thefe authorities must have given the world reafon to expect, in this Work, a poem of this fort, it becomes necessary for me to inform the public-that But

ler

Affume the legal right to difengage
From all it had contracted under age,

And not its ingenuity and wit,

To all it was imbued with first, submit ;

5

Take

ler did meditate a pretty long fatire upon the imperfection and abuse of Human Learning; but that he only finished this first part of it, though he has left very confiderable and interefting fragments of the remainder, fome of which I fhall fubjoin.

The Poet's plan feems to have consisted of two parts; the firft, which he has executed, is to expose the defects of human learning-from the wrong methods of education-from the natural imperfection of the human mind-and from that over-eagerness of men to know things above the reach of human capacity.The fecond, as far as one can judge by the Remains, and intended parts of it, was to have exemplified what he has afferted in the first; and ridiculed and fatirized the different branches of human learning, in characterizing the philofopher, critic, orator, &c.

Mr. Longueville might be led, by this, into the miftake of calling this work A Hiftory of Learning; or perhaps it might arise from Butler's having, in one plan, which he afterwards altered, begun with thefe two lines,

The hiftory of learning is fo lame,

That few can tell from whence at first it came.

What has been faid will, I flatter myself, be a fufficient apology for the printing an imperfect work, if the many good things to be met with in it does not make one unneceffary. However, for this reafon, I did not think fit to place it amongst his other Satires, which are perfect in their different ways.

Take true or falfe for better or for worse,
To have or t' hold indifferently of course.

For Custom, though but usher of the school
Where Nature breeds the body and the foul,
Ufurps a greater power and interest

O'er man, the heir of Reason, than brute beast,
That by two different instincts is led,

ΤΟ

Born to the one, and to the other bred,

And that's one reason why more care 's bestow'd
Upon the body than the foul 's allow'd,
That is not found to understand and know
So fubtly as the body's found to grow.

20

25

Though children, without ftudy, pains, or thought, Are languages and vulgar notions taught, Improve their natural talents without care, And apprehend before they are aware, Yet as all strangers never leave the tones They have been us'd of children to pronounce, So moft men's reafon never can outgrow The difcipline it first receiv'd to know, But renders words they first began to con,

The end of all that 's after to be known,

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And fets the help of education back,

Worfe than, without it, man could ever lack;

Who, therefore, finds the artificial'ft fools

Have not been chang'd i' th' cradle, but the schools, Where error, pedantry, and affectation,

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Run them behind-hand with their education,

And

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

No fooner are the organs of the brain
¿Quick to receive, and stedfaft to retain,
Beft knowledges, but all 's laid out upon
Retrieving of the curfe of Babylon;
To make confounded languages restore
A greater drudgery than it barr'd before:
And therefore those imported from the East,
Where first they were incurr'd, are held the best,
Although convey'd in worse Arabian pothooks
Than gifted tradesmen scratch in sermon note-books ;
Are really but pains and labour loft,

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And not worth half the drudgery they coft,

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 fee more true,

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And take their aim much better, than with two :

For, the more languages a man can speak,

His talent has but sprung the greater leak;

And, for the industry he 'as spent upon 't,
Muft full as much fome other way discount.
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac,
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 exprefs

No fenfe at all in feveral languages,

бо

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