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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 fecond-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;
Difdains t' obey the proudest wit,
Unless it chance to b' in the fit
(Like prophecy, that can prefage
Succeffes of the latest age,

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Yet is not able to tell when

It next fhall prophefy again);

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Makes all her fuitors courfe and wait,

Like a proud minister of state,

And, when the 's ferious, in some freak,

Extravagant, and vain, and weak,

Attend her filly lazy pleasure,

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Until the chance to be at leifure;
When 'tis more easy to steal wit:
To clip, and forge, and counterfeit,
Is both the bufinefs and delight,

Like hunting-fports, of those that write;

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For thievery is but one fort,

The learned fay, of hunting-fport.

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Hence

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Hence 'tis that fome, who fet
As raw, and wretched, and unverft,
And open'd with a stock as poor
As a healthy beggar with one fore;
That never writ in profe 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 purloin,
And printing but to stamp false coin ;
Yet, after long and sturdy' endeavours
Of being painful wit-receivers,
With gathering rags and fcraps 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 fums he only owes,
Than he who honestly is known
To deal in nothing but his own,
So, whofoe'er can take up moft,
May greatest fame and credit boast.

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SATIRE,

SATIRE,

IN TWO PARTS,

Upon the Imperfection and Abuse of

HUMAN LEARNING

PART I.

T is the nobleft act of human-reafon,
To free itself from flavish prepoffeffion,

Affume

In the large General Dictionary, or Bayle's enlarged by Mr. Bernard, Birch, and Lockman, we are told by the learned editors, under the article Hudibras, that they were perfonally informed by the late Mr. Lon gueville, That amongst the genuine remains of Butler, which were in his hands, there was a poem, entitled The Hiftory of Learning.-To the fame purpofe is the following paffage, cited from The Poetical Regifter, vol. II. p. 21." In juftice to the public, it is thought proper to declare, that all the manufcripts Mr. But"ler left behind him are now in the cuftody of Mr. "Longueville (among which is one, entitled The Hifto"ry of Learning, written after the manner of Hudi"bras) and that not one line of thofe poems lately "published under his name is genuine."

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As thefe authorities must have given the world reafon to expect, in this Work, a poem of this fort, it be'comes neceffary for me to inform the public-that But

ler

Affume 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

ler did meditate a pretty long fatire upon the imperfection and abufe of Human Learning, but that he only finished this first part of it, though he has left very confiderable and interefting fragments of the remainder, fome of which I shall fubjoin.

me

The Poet's plan feems to have confifted of two parts; the firft, which he has executed, is to expofe the defects of human learning-from the wrong thods of education-from the natural imperfection of the human mind-and from that over-eagerness of men to know things above the reach of human capacity.The fecond, as far as one can judge by the Remains, and intended parts of it, was to have exemplified what he has afferted in the first; and ridiculed and fatirized the different branches of human learning, in characte rizing the philofopher, critic, orator, &c.

Mr. Longueville might be led, by this, into the miftake of calling this work A Hiftory of Learning; or perhaps it might arife from Butler's having, in one plan, which he afterwards altered, begun with thefe two lines,

The hiftory of learning is fo lame,

That few can tell from whence at firft it came.

What has been faid will, I flatter myself, be a fuffi cient apology for the printing an imperfect work, if the many good things to be met with in it does not make one unneceffary. However, for this reafon, I did not think fit to place it amongst his other Satires, which are perfect in their different ways.

Take true or false for better or for worse,
To have or t' hold indifferently of course.

For Cuftom, though but ufher of the school
Where Nature breeds the body and the foul,
Ufurps a greater power and intereft

O'er man, the heir of Reason, than brute beast,
That by two different inftincts is led,

Born to the one, and to the other bred,

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And trains him up with rudiments more false

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Than Nature does her stupid animals;

And that's one reafon why more care 's bestow'd
Upon the body than the foul 's allow'd,
That is not found to understand and know

So fubtly as the body's found to grow.

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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 ftrangers never leave the tones They have been us'd of children to pronounce, So moft men's reafon never can outgrow The difcipline it first receiv'd to know,

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But renders words they first began to con,

The end of all that 's after to be known,

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And fets the help of education back,

Worfe than, without it, man could ever lack;

Who, therefore, finds the artificial'st fools

Have not been chang'd i' th' cradle, but the schools,

Where error, pedantry, and affectation,

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Run them behind-hand with their education,

And

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