Admire whate'er they find abroad,
But nothing here, though e'er so good:
Be natives wheresoe'er they come,
And only foreigners at home;

To which they appear so far estrang'd,
As if they 'ad been i' th' cradle chang'd,
Or from beyond the seas convey'd
By witches-not born here, but laid;
Or by outlandish fathers were
Begotten on their mothers here,
And therefore justly slight that nation,
Where they 've so mongrel a relation;
And seek out other climates, where
They may degenerate less than here;

As woodcocks, when their plumes are grown,
Borne on the wind's wings and their own,
Forsake the countries where they 're hatch'd,
And seek out others to be catch'd:
So they more naturally may please
And humour their own geniuses,
Apply to all things which they see
With their own fancies best agree;
No matter how ridiculous,
'Tis all one, if it be in use;
For nothing can be bad or good,
But as 'tis in or out of mode;
And, as the nations are that use it,
All ought to practise or refuse it;

T' observe their postures, move, and stand,
As they give out the word o' command;
To learn the dullest of their whims,
And how to wear their very limbs;
To turn and manage every part,
Like puppets, by their rules of art;
To shrug discreetly, act, and tread,
And politicly shake the head,
Until the ignorant, (that guess
At all things by th' appearances)
To see how Art and Nature strive,
Believe them really alive,

And that they're very men, not things
That move by puppet-work and springs;
When truly all their feats have been
As well perform'd by motion-men,
And the worst drolls of Punchinellos
Were much th' ingeniouser fellows;
For, when they're perfect in their lesson,
Th' hypothesis grows out of season,
And, all their labour lost, they 're fain
To learn new, and begin again;
To talk eternally and loud,
And altogether in a crowd,
No matter what; for in the noise
No man minds what another says:
T' assume a confidence beyond
Mankind, for solid and profound,
And still, the less and less they know,
The greater dose of that allow:
Decry all things; for to be wise
Is not to know, but to despise;
And deep judicious confidence
Has still the odds of wit and sense,
And can pretend a title to

Far greater things than they can do:
Tadorn their English with French scraps,
And give their very language claps;
To jernie rightly, and renounce

th' pure and most approv'd-of tones, And, while they idly think t' enrich, Adulterate their native speech:

For, though to smatter ends of Greek
Or Latin be the rhetorique

Of pedants counted, and vain-glorious,
To smatter French is meritorious;
And to forget their mother-tongue,
Or purposely to speak it wrong,
A hopeful sign of parts and wit,
And that they improve and benefit;
As those that have been taught amiss,
In liberal arts and sciences,

Must all they 'ad learnt before in vain
Forget quite, and begin again.

SATIRE UPON DRUNKENNESS,

'Tis pity Wine, which Nature meant
To man in kindness to present,
And gave him kindly, to caress
And cherish his frail happiness;
Of equal virtue to renew

His wearied mind and body too;
Should (like the cyder-tree in Eden,
Which only grew to be forbidden)
No sooner come to be enjoy'd,
But th' owner 's fatally destroy'd ;
And that which she for good design'd,
Becomes the ruin of mankind,
That for a little vain excess
Runs out of all its happiness,

And makes the friend of Truth and Love
Their greatest adversary prove;
T'abuse a blessing she bestow'd
So truly essential to his good,
To countervail his pensive cares,
And slavish drudgery of affairs;
To teach him judgment, wit, and sense,
And, more than all these, confidence;
To pass his times of recreation
In choice and noble conversation,
Catch truth and reason unawares,
As men do health in wholesome airs;
(While fools their conversants possess
As unawares with sottishness)
To gain access a private way
To man's best sense, by its own key,
Which painful judges strive in vain
By any other course t' obtain;
To pull off all disguise, and view
Things as they 're natural and true;
Discover fools and knaves, allow'd
For wise and honest in the crowd;
With innocent and virtuous sport
Make short days long, and long nights short,
And mirth, the only antidote

Against diseases ere they 're got;

To save health harmless from th' access
Both of the med'cine and disease;

Or make it help itself, secure
Against the desperat'st fit, the cure.
All these sublime prerogatives
Of happiness to humau lives,
He vainly throws away and slights,
For madness, noise, and bloody fights;
When nothing can decide, but swords
And pots, the right or wrong of words,
Like princes' titles; and he's outed
The justice of his cause that's routed.

No sooner has a charge been sounded With-Son of a whore, and Damn'd confounded, And the bold signal given, the lie, But instantly the bottles fly,

Where cups and glasses are small shot,

And cannon-ball a pewter-pot:

That blood, that 's hardly in the vein,

Is now remanded back again;

Though sprung from wine of the same piece,
And near a-kin, within degrees,
Strives to commit assassinations
On its own natural relations;
And those twin-spirits, so kind-hearted,
That from their friends so lately parted,
No sooner several ways are gone,
But by themselves are set upon,
Surpris'd like brother against brother,
And put to th' sword by one another;
So much more fierce are civil wars,
Than those between mere foreigners!
And man himself, with wine possest,
More savage than the wildest beast!
For serpents, when they meet to water,
Lay by their poison and their nature:
And fiercest creatures, that repair,
In thirsty deserts, to their rare
And distant river's banks to drink,
In love and close alliance link,

And from their mixture of strange seeds
Produce new, never-heard-of breeds,
To whom the fiercer unicorn
Begins a large health with his horn;
As cuckolds put their antidotes,
When they drink coffee, into th' pots;
While man, with raging drink inflam'd,
Is far more savage and untam'd;
Supplies his loss of wit and sense
With barbarousness and insolence;
Believes himself, the less he 's able,
The more heroic and formidable;
Lays by his reason in his bowls,
As Turks are said to do their souls,
Until it has so often been
Shut out of its lodging, and let in,
At length it never can attain
To find the right way back again;
Drinks all his time away, and prunes
The end of 's life, as vignerons
Cut short the branches of a vine,
To make it bear more plenty o' wine;
And that which Nature did intend
T'enlarge his life, perverts t' its end.

So Noah, when he anchor'd safe on
The mountain's top, his lofty haven,
And all the passengers he bore
Were on the new world set ashore,
He made it next his chief design
To plant and propagate a vine;

Which since has overwhelm'd and drown'd
Far greater numbers, on dry ground,
Of wretched mankind, one by one,
Than all the flood before had done.

SATIRE UPON MARRIAGE. SURE marriages were never so well fitted, As when to matrimony men were committed, Like thieves by justices, and to a wife Bound, like to good behaviour, during life:

For then 'twas but a civil contract made'
Between two partners that set up a trade;
And if both fail'd, there was no conscience
Nor faith invaded in the strictest sense;

No canon of the church, nor vow, was broke,
When men did free their gall'd necks from the yoke;
But when they tir'd, like other horned beasts,
Might have it taken off, and take their rests,
Without being bound in duty to show cause,
Or reckon with divine or human laws.

For since, what use of matrimony has been
But to make gallantry a greater sin?
As if there were no appetite nor gust,
Below adultery, in modish lust;
Or no debauchery were exquisite,
Until it has attain'd its perfect height.
For men do now take wives to nobler ends,
Not to bear children, but to bear them friends;
Whom nothing can oblige at such a rate
As these endearing offices of late.

For men are now grown wise, and understand
How to improve their crimes as well as land;
And, if they 've issue, make the infants pay

Down for their own begetting on the day,

The charges of the gossiping disburse,

And pay beforehand (ere they 're born) the nurse;

As he that got a monster on a cow,
Out of design of setting up a show.

For why should not the brats for all account,

As well as for the christening at the fount,
When those that stand for them lay down the rate
O' th' banquet and the priest in spoons and plate?
The ancient Romans made the state allow
For getting all men's children above two:
Then married men, to propagate the breed,
Had great rewards for what they never did,
Were privileg'd, and highly honour'd too,
For owning what their friends were fain to do;
For so they 'ad children, they regarded not
By whom, (good men) or how, they were begot.
To borrow wives (like money) or to lend,
Was then the civil office of a friend,
And he that made a scruple in the case
Was held a miserable wretch and base;
For when they 'ad children by 'em, th' honest mea
Return'd them to their husbands back again.
Then, for th' encouragement and propagation
Of such a great concernment to the nation,
All people were so full of complacence,
And civil duty to the public sense,
They had no name t' express a cuckold then,
But that which signified all married men;
Nor was the thing accounted a disgrace,
Unless among the dirty populace,
And no man understands on what account
Less civil nations after hit upon 't:
For to be known a cuckold can be no
Dishonour but to him that thinks it so;
For if he feel no chagrin or remorse,

His forehead's shot-free, and he's ne'er the worse
For horns (like horny callouses) are found
To grow on sculls that have receiv'd a wound,
Are crackt, and broken; not at all on those,
That are invulnerate and free from blows.
What a brave time had cuckold-makers then,
When they were held the worthiest of men,
The real fathers of the commonwealth,
That planted colonies in Rome itself!
When he that help'd his neighbours, and begot
Most Romans, was the noblest patriot!

And spirits of a nobler nature
Drawn from the dull ingredient matter.
Hence mighty Virgil 's said of old,
From dung to have extracted gold;
(As many a lout and silly clown
By his instructions since have done)
And grew more lofty by that means,
Than by his livery-oats and beans,
When from his carts and country farms
He rose a mighty man at arms;
To whom th' Heroics ever since
Have sworn allegiance, as their prince,
And faithfully have all in times
Observ'd his customs in their rhymes.
'Twas counted learning once, and wit,
To void but what some author writ,
And what men understood by rote,
By as implicit sense to quote:
Then many a magisterial clerk

Was taught, like singing-birds, i' th' dark,
And understood as much of things,
As th' ablest blackbird what it sings;
And yet was honour'd and renown'd
For grave, and solid, and profound.
Then why should those, who pick and choose
The best of all the best compose,
And join it by Mosaic art,
In graceful order, part to part,
To make the whole in beauty suit,
Not merit as complete repute

As those who, with less art and pains,
Can do it with their native brains,
And make the homespun business fit
As freely with their mother wit;
Since, what by Nature was deny'd,
By Art and Industry 's supply'd,

Both which are more our own, and brave,
Than all the alms that Nature gave?
For that w' acquire by pains and art
Is only due t' our own desert;
While all th' endowments she confers
Are not so much our own as her's,
That, like good fortune, unawares
Fall not t' our virtue, but our shares,
And all we can pretend to merit
We do not purchase, but inherit.

Thus all the great'st inventions, when
They first were found out, were so mean,
That th' authors of them are unknown,
As little things they scorn'd to own;
Until by men of nobler thought
Th' were to their full perfection brought.
This proves that Wit does but rough-hew,
Leaves Art to polish and review;
And that a wit at second-hand
Has greatest interest and command;
For to improve, dispose, and judge,
Is nobler than t' invent and drudge.
Invention's humorous and nice,
And never at command applies;
Disdains t' obey the proudest wit,
Unless it chance t' be in the fit;
(Like prophecy, that can presage
Successes of the latest age,
Yet is not able to tell when

It next shall prophesy again)

Makes all her suitors course and wait,
Like a proud minister of state,

And, when she 's serious, in some freak,
Extravagant, and vain, and weak,

Attend her silly lazy pleasure,
Until she chance to be at leisure;
When 'tis more easy to steal wit:
To clip, and forge, and counterfeit,
Is both the business and delight,
Like hunting sports, of those that write;
For thievery is but one sort,
The learned say, of hunting sport.

Hence 'tis that some, who set up first,
As raw, and wretched, and unverst,
And open'd with a stock as poor
As a healthy beggar with one sore;
That never writ in prose or verse,
But pick'd, or cut it, like a purse,
And at the best could but commit
The petty-larceny of wit;

To whom to write was to pnrloin,
And printing but to stamp false coin;
Yet, after long and sturdy endeavours
Of being painful wit-receivers,
With gathering rags and scraps 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 dispose
Of greater sums he only owes,
Than he who honestly is known
To deal in nothing but his own,
So, whosoe'er can take up most,
May greatest fame and credit boast.

SATIRE,

IN TWO PARTS,

UPON THE IMPERFECTION AND ABUSE OF

HUMAN LEARNING.

PART I.

Ir 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;
Take true or false for better or for worse,
To have or to 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,