Charged with no fault but that of nonsense,—
Now to some priest that 's famed for teaching
He goes to learn the art of preaching,
And settles down with earnest zeal
Sermons to study and to steal.
Six months from all the world retires
To kindle up his cover'd fires;
Learns, with nice art, to make with ease
The scriptures speak whate'er he please;
With judgment, unperceived to quote
What Pool explain'd or Henry wrote;
To give the gospel new editions,
Split doctrines into propositions,
Draw motives, uses, inferences,
And torture words in thousand senses;
Learn the grave style and goodly phrase,
Safe handed down from Cromwell's days,
And shun, with anxious care, the while,
The infection of a modern style;
Or on the wings of folly fly
Aloft in metaphysic sky,
The system of the world explain
Till night and chaos come again;
Deride what old divines can say,
Point out to heaven a nearer way,
Explode all known establish'd rules,
Affirm our fathers all were fools.
(The present age is growing wise,
But wisdom in her cradle lies;
Late, like Minerva, born and bred,
Not from a Jove's but scribbler's head,
While thousand youths their homage lend her,
And nursing fathers rock and tend her.)
Round him much manuscript is spread:
Extracts from living works and dead,
Themes, sermons, plans of controversy
That hack and mangle without mercy,
And whence, to glad the reader's eyes,
The future dialogue shall rise.
At length, matured the grand design,
He stalks abroad a grave divine.
Mean while, from every distant seat,
At stated time the clergy meet:
Our hero comes, his sermon reads,
Explains the doctrine of his creeds,
A licence gains to preach and pray,
And makes his bow and goes his way.
What though his wits could ne'er dispense
One page of grammar or of sense;
What though his learning be so slight
He scarcely knows to spell or write;
What though his skull be cudgel-proof—
He's orthodox, and that 's enough. . .
Now in the desk, with solemn air,
Our hero makes his audience stare;
Asserts with all dogmatic boldness,
Where impudence is yoked to dulness;
Reads o'er his notes with halting pace,
Mask'd in the stiffness of his face,
With gestures such as might become
Those statues once that spoke at Rome,
Or Livy's ox that to the state
Declared the oracles of fate;
In awkward tones, nor said nor sung,
Slow rumbling o'er the falt'ring tongue,
Two hours his drawling speech holds on,
And names it preaching when he's done.
With roving tired, he fixes down
For life in some unsettled town:
People and priest full well agree,
For why-they know no more than he.
Vast tracts of unknown land he gains,
Better than those the moon contains;
There deals in preaching and in prayer,
And starves on sixty pounds a year,
And culls his texts and tills his farm,
Does little good and little harm;
On Sunday, in his best array,
Deals forth the dulness of the day,
And while above he spends his breath
The yawning audience nod beneath.
PART III, OR THE ADVENTURES OF MISS HARRIET SIMPER
First from the dust our sex began,
But woman was refined from man;
Received again, with softer air,
The great Creator's forming care.
And shall it no attention claim
Their beauteous infant souls to frame?
Shall half your precepts tend the while
And high-crown'd caps hang out the sign,
And beaux as customers throng in;
Whence sense is banish'd in disgrace,
Where wisdom dares not show her face,
Where the light head and vacant brain
Spoil all ideas they contain,
As th' air-pump kills in half a minute
Each living thing you put within it?
It must be so: by ancient rule
The fair are nursed in folly's school,
And all their education done
Is none at all, or worse than none;
Whence still proceed in maid or wife
The follies and the ills of life.
Learning is call'd our mental diet,
That serves the hungry mind to quiet,
That gives the genius fresh supplies,
Till souls grow up to common size;
But here, despising sense refined,
Gay trifles feed the youthful mind:
Chameleons thus, whose colours airy
As often as coquettes can vary,
Despise all dishes rich and rare,
And diet wholly on the air;
Think fogs blest eating, nothing finer,
And can on whirlwinds make a dinner;
And thronging all to feast together,
Fare daintily in blust'ring weather.
Here to the fair alone remain
Long years of action spent in vain.
Perhaps she learns (what can she less?)
The arts of dancing and of dress;
But dress and dancing are to women
Their education's mint and cummin:
These lighter graces should be taught,
And weightier matters not forgot;
For there where only these are shown
The soul will fix on these alone.
Then most the fineries of dress
Her thoughts, her wish, and time possess:
She values only to be gay,
With fruit that needs not be forbidden. . . .
As though they meant to take by blows
Th' opposing galleries of beaux,
To church the female squadron move,
All arm'd with weapons used in love:
Like colour'd ensigns gay and fair
High caps rise floating in the air;
Bright silk its varied radiance flings,
And streamers wave in kissing-strings;
Each bears th' artill'ry of her charms,
Like training bands at viewing arms.
So once, in fear of Indian beating,
Our grandsires bore their guns to meeting,
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