Classic Poem

IN TWO PARTS

PART I.

I T 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 imbned with first submit;
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 power 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 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 most men's reason never can outgrow
The discipline it first receiv'd 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 chang'di' the' 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 stedfast to retain
Best knowledges, but all's laid out upon
Retrieving of the curse 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 incur'd, are held the best,
Although convey'd in worse Arabian pothooks
Than gifted tradesmen scratch in sermon notebooks;
Are really but pains and labour lost,
And not worth half the drudgery they cost,
Unless, like rarities, as they 'ave 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 the 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 practis'd 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 us'd to pass the time away;
When the' ancient Greeks and Romans had no name
To' 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 extravagances,
The rest and recreation of tir'd 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 indulg'd in soul and body,
Are most averse to industry and study,
And the' 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 straight a compass is confin'd,
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 to' unriddle every cause
That Nature uses, by their own bye-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 prov'd a greater hinderance
To the' interest of truth than ignorance.
And therefore never bore so high a value
As when 'twas low, contemptible, and shallow;
Had academics, schools, and colleges,
Endow'd for its improvement and increase;
With pomp and show was introduc'd with maces,
More than a Roman magistrate had fasces;
Impower'd with statute, privilege, and mandate,
To' 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:
Like princes, had prerogative to give
Convicted malefactors a reprieve;
And having but a little paltry wit
More than the world, reduc'd and govern'd it,
But scorn'd, as soon as 'twas but understood,
(As better is a spiteful foe to good,)
And now has nothing left for its support,
But what the darkest times provided for't.
Man has a natural desire to know,
But th' one half is for interest, t' other show:
As scriveners take more pains to learn the sleight
Of making nots, than all the hands they write:
So all his study is not to extend
The bounds of knowledge, but some vainer end;
To' 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 quartos and for folios;
To which they are but indexes themselves,
And understand no further than the shelves;
But smatter with their titles and editions,
And place them in their Classical partitions:
When all a student knows of what he reads
Is not in's own, but under general heads
Of common-places, not in his own pow'r,
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 possession, is a doubt;
Affects all books of past 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
With all the learned Moderns and the Ancients,
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;
Vnd by so mean contemptible a bribe
Trepann'd the suffrages of every tribe:
So learned men, by authors' names unknown,
Have gain'd no small improvement to their own.
And he's esteem'd the learned'st of all others,
That has the largest catalogue of authors.