Else when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd like other folk;

For all a rhetorician's rules

Teach nothing but to name his tools.

90

But, when he pleas'd to show't, his speech,

In loftiness of sound, was rich;

A Babylonish dialect,

Which learned pedants much affect;

It was a party-colour'd dress

95

Of patch'd and py-ball'd languages;
'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin,
Like fustian heretofore on sattin;
It had an old promiscuous tone,

As if h'had talk'd three parts in one;

Which made some think, when he did gabble,

Th' had heard three labourers of Babel,
Or Cerberus himself pronounce

A leash of languages at once.

This he as volubly would vent,

100

105

As if his stock would ne'er be spent:

And truly, to support that charge,
He had supplies as vast and large;
For he could coin or counterfeit
New words, with little or no wit;

110

V. 109.] The Presbyterians coined a great number, such as Outgoings, Carryings-on, Nothingness, Workings out, Gospel-waking-times, &c. which we

C

Words so debas'd and hard, no stone

Was hard enough to touch them on;

And when with hasty noise he spoke 'em,
The ignorant for current took 'em,

That had the orator, who once

Did fill his mouth with pebble stones

When he harangu'd, but known his phrase,
He would have us'd no other ways.

In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater;
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve by sines and tangents straight
If bread or butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day

The clock does strike, by Algebra.
Beside, he was a shrewd philosopher,

And had read ev'ry text and gloss over;

115

120

125

shall meet with hereafter in the speeches of the Knight and Squire, and others, in this Poem; for which they are bantered by Sir John Birkenhead.

V. 115. This and the three following lines not in the two first editions of 1664, but added in the edit. 1674. Demosthenes is here meant, who had a defect in his speech.

V. 120.] An eminent Danish mathematician.

Ib. William Lilly, the famous astrologer of those times.

Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath,
He understood b' implicit faith:
Whatever sceptic could inquire for,
For ev'ry why he had a wherefore ;
Knew more than forty of them do,
As far as words and terms could go;
All which he understood by rote,
And, as occasion serv'd, would quote;
No matter whether right or wrong;
They might be either said or sung.
His notions fitted things so well,

130

135

That which was which he could not tell,

140

But oftentimes mistook the one

For th' other, as great clerks have done.

He could reduce all things to acts,

And knew their natures by abstracts;
Where Entity and Quiddity,

The ghosts of defunct bodies, fly;

145

Where truth in person does appear,

Like words congeal'd in northern air.

He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly:

150

V. 129.] This and the following line not in the two first editions of 1664, and first inserted in that of 1674v. 131. Enquire.] Inquere, in all editions to 1689, inclusive.

In school-divinity as able

As he that hight Irrefragable;

A second Thomas, or, at once

To name them all, another Dunce:

151

v. 152. Irrefragable.] Alexander Hales, so called: he was an Englishman, born in Gloucestershire, and flourished about the year 1236, at the time when what was called School-divinity was much in vogue; in which science he was so deeply read, that he was called Doctor Irrefragabilis; that is, the Invincible Doctor, whose arguments could not be resisted.

V. 153. 154. Dunce.] Thus they stood in the two first editions of 664, left out in those of 1674, 1684, 1689, 1700, and not restored till 1704. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican Friar, was born in 1224, studied at Cologne and at Paris. He new-modelled the school-divinity, and was therefore called the Angelic Doctor, and Eagle of divines. The most illustrious persons of his time were ambitious of his friendship, and put a high value on his merits, so that they offered him bishopricks, which he refused with as much ardour as others seek after them. He died in the fiftieth year of his age, and was canonized by Pope John XXII. We have his works in eighteen volumes, several times printed.

Johannes Dunscotus was a very learned man, who lived about the end of the thirteenth, and beginning of the fourteenth century. The English and Scots strive which of them shall have the honour of his birth. The English say he was born in Northumberland; the Scots allege he was born at Dunse in the Merse, the neighbouring county to Northumberland, and hence was called Dunscotus: Moreti, Buchannan,

Profound in all the Nominal

And Real ways beyond them all :
For he a rope of sand could twist
As tough as learned Sorbonist,

155

And weave fine cobwebs, fit for scull

That's empty when the moon is full;

160

and other Scotch historians, are of this opinion, and, for proof, cite his epitaph;

Scotia me genuit, Anglia suscepit,
Gallia edocuit, Germania tenei.

He died at Cologne, Nov. 8, 1308. In the Supplement to Dr. Cave's Historia Literaria, he is said to be extraordinary learned in physics, metaphysics, mathematics, and astronomy: that his fame was so great when at Oxford, that 30,000 scholars came thither to hear his lectures: that when at Paris, his arguments and authority carried it for the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin, so that they appointed a festival on that account, and would admit no scholars to degrees but such as were of his mind. He was a great opposer of Thomas Aquinas's doctrine; and, for being a very acute logician, was called Doctor Subtilis, which was the reason also that an old punster always called him the Latby Doctor.

v. 155, 156.] Gulielmus Occham was father of the Nominals, and Johannes Dunscotus of the Reals. These two lines not in the two first editions of 1664, but added in 1674.

v. 157, 158.] Altered thus in edition 1674, and continued till 1704.

And with as delicate a hand

Could twist as tough a rope of sand.