11 But, to the admiration
Of all both far and near,
He hath been shown
In ev'ry town,
And eke in ev'ry shire.
12 And now at length he's brought
Unto fair London city,
Where, in Fleet Street,
All those may see't,
That will not believe my ditty.
13 God save the King and Parliament,1
And eke the Prince's Highness;
And quickly send
The wars an end,
As here my song has-Finis.
SATIRE UPON THE IMPERFECTION AND
ABUSE OF HUMAN LEARNING.2
IT is the noblest act of human reason
To free itself from slavish prepossession,
Assume the legal right to disengage
From all it had contracted under age,
And not its ingenuity and wit,
To all it was imbued with first, submit ;
1 God save the King and Parliament:' from this circumstance it appears, that this ballad was wrote before the death of the King; and that it is the earliest performance of Butler's. 2 - This, and the following, are but parts of a large unfinished poem.
Take true or false for better or for worse,
To have, or t' hold, indifferently of course.
For Custom, though but usher of the school,
Where Nature breeds the body and the soul,
Usurps a greater pow'r and interest
O'er man, the heir of Reason, than brute beast;
That by two different instincts is led,
Born to the one, and to the other bred;
And trains him up with rudiments more false
Than Nature does her stupid animals :
And that's one reason why more care's bestow'd
Upon the body, than the soul's allow'd,
That is not found to understand and know
So subtly, as the body's found to grow.
Though children, without study, pains, or thought,
Are languages and vulgar notions taught,
Improve their natʼral talents without care,
And apprehend before they are aware;
Yet, as all strangers never leave the tones
They have been used of children to pronounce,
So most men's reason never can outgrow
The discipline it first received to know,
But renders words they first began to con,
The end of all that's after to be known,
And sets the help of education back
Worse than, without it, man could ever lack;
Who therefore finds the artificial'st fools
Have not been changed i' th' cradle, but the schools,
Where error, pedantry, and affectation,
Run them behind-hand with their education;
And all alike are taught poetic rage,
When hardly one's fit for it in an age.
No sooner are the organs of the brain
Quick to receive, and steadfast to retain
Best knowledges, but all's laid out upon
Retrieving of the curse of Babylon;
To make confounded languages restore
A greater drudg'ry than it barr'd before:
And therefore those imported from the East,
Where first they were incurr'd, are held the best.
Although convey'd in worse Arabian pothooks,
Than gifted tradesmen scratch in sermon note-books;
Are really but pains and labour lost,
And not worth half the drudgery they cost,
Unless, like rarities, as they 've been brought
From foreign climates, and as dearly bought;
When those who had no other but their own,
Have all succeeding eloquence outdone :
As men that wink with one eye see more true,
And take their aim much better, than with two.
For, the more languages a man can speak,
His talent has but sprung the greater leak;
And, for th' industry he has spent upon't,
Must full as much some other way discount.
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac,
Do, like their letters, set men's reason back,
And turn their wits, that strive to understand it
(Like those that write the characters), left-handed:
Yet he, that is but able to express
No sense at all in several languages,
Will pass for learneder than he that's known
To speak the strongest reason in his own.
These are the modern arts of education,
With all the learned of mankind in fashion,
But practised only with the rod and whip,
As riding-schools inculcate horsemanship;
Or Romish penitents let out their skins,
To bear the penalties of others' sins.
When letters, at the first, were meant for play,
And only used to pass the time away;
When th' ancient Greeks and Romans had no name
express a school and playhouse, but the same: And in their languages, so long agone,
To study or be idle was all one :
For nothing more preserves men in their wits.
Than giving of them leave to play by fits,
In dreams to sport, and ramble with all fancies,
And waking, little less extravagancies,
The rest and recreation of tired thought,
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 design'd
Than Nature (in her province) proves unkind :
The greatest inclinations with the least
Capacities are fatally possest,
Condemn'd to drudge, and labour, and take pains,
Without an equal competence of brains ;
While those she has indulged in soul and body
Are most averse to industry and study;
And th' activ'st fancies share as loose alloys,
For want of equal weight to counterpoise.
But when those great conveniencies meet
Of equal judgment, industry, and wit,
The one but strives the other to divert,
While Fate and Custom in the feud take part;
And scholars, by prepost 'rous over-doing,
And under-judging, all their projects ruin :
Who, though the understanding of mankind
Within so strait a compass is confined,
Disdain the limits Nature sets to bound
The wit of man, and vainly rove beyond.
The bravest soldiers scorn, until they 're got
Close to the enemy, to make a shot;
Yet great philosophers delight to stretch
Their talents most at things beyond their reach;
And proudly think t' unriddle ev'ry cause,
That Nature uses, by their own by-laws:
When 'tis not only impertinent, but rude,
Where she denies admission, to intrude;
And all their industry is but to err,
Unless they have free quarantine from her :
Whence 'tis the world the less has understood,
By striving to know more than 'tis allow'd.
For Adam, with the loss of Paradise
Bought knowledge at too desperate a price ;
And ever since that miserable fate,
Learning did never cost an easier rate:
For though the most divine and sovereign good
That Nature has upon mankind bestow'd,
Yet it has proved a greater hinderance
To th' interest of Truth than ignorance;
And therefore never bore so high a value,
As when 'twas low, contemptible, and shallow;
Had academies, schools, and colleges
Endow'd for its improvement and increase;
With pomp and show was introduced with maces,
More than a Roman magistrate had fasces;
Empower'd with statute, privilege, and mandate,
T'assume an art, and after understand it ;
Like bills of store for taking a degree,
With all the learning to it custom-free;
And own professions, which they never took
So much delight in as to read one book:
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