So learned men, by authors' names unknown, FRAGMENTS 190 OF AN INTENDED SECOND PART OF THE FOREGOING SATIRE. MEN'S talents grow more bold and confident, The further they 're beyond their just extent, As Thefe Fragments were fairly written out, and several times, with fome little variations, tranfcribed by Butler, but never connected, or reduced into any regular form. They may be confidered as the principal parts of a curious edifice, each feparately finished, but not united into one general defign. From these the reader may form a notion and tolerable idea of our Author's intended fcheme; and will, I doubt not, regret, with me, that he did not apply himself to the finishing of a fatire fo well fuited to his judgment and particular turn of wit. It may be thought, perhaps, that fome parts of it ought to have been illuftrated with notes; but as the printing an imperfect work may be judged, by fome readers of great delicacy, a fort of intrufion upon the public, I did not care to enhance the objection by clogging it with additional observations of my own.. As fmatterers prove more arrogant and pert, O'er all they have a right to understand, Than those that falfely venture to encroach WHAT WHAT mad fantastic gambols have been play'd By th' ancient Greek forefathers of the trade, That were not much inferior to the freaks Of all our lunatic fanatic fects! The first and best philofopher of Athens Was crackt, and ran stark-staring mad with patience, The Euripus, leapt into 't, and was drown'd: And contemplate on natural things the steadier, Though reverenc'd by the learned ever fince. Leapt into Etna, with his fandals shod: An idle freak he needed not have done, If he had known himself to be but one. Things that are properer for Knightsbridge college, That th' antique fage, that was gallant t' a goose, THE ancient fceptics conftantly deny'd What they maintain'd, and thought they juftify'd; For when they' affirm'd that nothing 's to be known, They did but what they faid before disown; And, like Polemics of the Poft, pronounce The fame thing to be true and false at once. These follies had fuch influence on the rabble, As to engage them in perpetual fquabble; Divided Rome and Athens into clans Of ignorant mechanic partisans ; That, to maintain their own hypothefes, Broke one another's blockheads, and the peace ;; Were often fet by officers 'i th' ftocks For quarreling about a paradox: When When pudding-wives were launcht in cock-quean stools, A pair of fhoes of any other school; That us'd t' encounter in athletic lifts, With beard to beard, and teeth and nails to fifts, Of academics, to maintain the truth. But in the boldest feats of arms the Stoic And Epicureans were the most heroic, That ftoutly ventur'd breaking of their necks, In waging cuffs and bruifes as difpute, Until, with wounds and bruises which they' had got, DISTINCTIONS, that had been at first defign'd To regulate the errors of the mind, By being too nicely overftrain'd and vext, |