120 Yet if health do not sweeten the blast with her bloom, Farewell to the few I have left with regret, When they've asked me the manners, the mind, or the mien Of some bard I had known, or some chief I had seen, I told them each luminous trait that I knew, Shall recur to their ear, they'll recal me the same I have been to them now, young, unthoughtful, and blest, Ere hope had deceived me or sorrow depress'd! But, DOUGLAS! while thus I endear to my mind Not a tract of the line, not a barbarous shore, That I could not with patience, with pleasure explore! The merriest wight of all the kings That ever ruled these gay gallant isles; Like us, by day they rode, they walk'd, The only different trait is this, That woman then, if man beset her, Was rather given to saying «yes,» Because, as yet, she knew no better! Each night they held a coterie, And husbands not the least alarm'd! They call'd up all their school-day pranks, As- Why are husbands like the Mint?. Is just to set the name and print Why is a garden's wilder'd maze The weeds, which have no business there! And thus they miss'd and thus they hit, While others of a pun miscarried. 'T was one of those facetious nights All this I'll prove, and then to you, Long may your ancient inmates give Let no pedantic fools be there, For ever be those fops abolish'd, With heads as wooden as thy ware, And, Heaven knows! not half so polish'd. But still receive the mild, the gay, ΤΟ NEVER mind how the pedagogue proses, Oh! never must smell of the lamp. Old Cloe, whose withering kisses Have long set the loves at defiance, Now, done with the science of blisses, May fly to the blisses of science! Young Sappho, for want of employments, But for you to be buried in books- Read more than in millions of pages! Better light than she studies above, In Ethics-'t is you that can check, In a minute, their doubts and their quarrels; Oh! show but that mole on your neck, And 't will soon put an end to their morals. Your Arithmetic only can trip When to kiss and to count you endeavour; But eloquence glows on your lip When you swear that 'll love me for ever. you Thus you see what a brilliant alliance A course of more exquisite science And, oh!-if a fellow like me May confer a diploma of hearts, With my lip thus I seal your degree, My divine little Mistress of Arts! EXTRACT FROM THE DEVIL AMONG THE SCHOLARS. »' Τι κακον ο γελος; Polymaths, and Polyhistors, him as Mamurra, a dogmatic philosopher, who never doubted about any thing, except who was his father. Nulla de re unquam præterquam de patre dubitavit.--In vit. ile was very learned-- Là dedans (that is, in his head, when it was opened) le Punique heurte le Persan, l'Hébreu choque l'Arabique, pour ne point parler de la mauvaise intelligence du Latin avec le Grec, etc.-See l'His toire de Montmaur, tom. ¡¡, page 91. Bombastus was one of the names of that great scholar and quack Paracelsus. Philippus Bombastus latet sub splendido tegmin Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi, says Stadelius de circumforanea Literatorum vanitate.-Ile used to fight the devil every night with a broad-sword, to the no small terror of his pupil Oporinus, who has recorded the circumstance. (See Oporiș. Vit, apud Christian, Gryph. Vit. Select, quorundum Eruditissimorum, etc.) Paracelsus had but a poor opinion of Galen. My very beard (says he in his Paragrœnam) has more learning in it than either Galen or Avicenna.» 3 The angel who scolded St Jerom for reading Cicero, as GRATIAN tells the story, in his concordantia discordantium Canonum, and says that for this reason bishops were not allowed to read the Classics, Episcopus Gentilium libros non legat.-Distinc. 37. But Gratian is notorious for lying-besides, angels have got no tongues, as the CHRYSOST. Homil. in Epist. ad Hebræos. illustrious pupil of Pantenes assures us: Ουχ ως ημιν ταύτα, BUT, whither have these gentle ones, II promised that I would give the remainder of this poem, but. as my critics do not seem to relish the sublime learning which it contains, they shall have no more of it. With a view, however, to the edification of these gentlemen, I have prevailed on an industrious friend of mine, who has read a great number of unnecessary books, to illuminate the extract with a little of his precious erudition. ούτως εκείνοις η γλώττα ουδ' αν οργανα τις των 4 The idea of the Rabbins about the origin of woman is singular. They think that man was originally formed with a tail, like a monkey, but that the Deity cut off this appendage behind, and made woman of it. Upon this extraordinary supposition the following refletion is founded: If such is the tie between women and men, When scarce there happen'd any frolics A cold and loveless son of Lucifer, Who woman scorn'd, nor knew the use of her, A branch of Dagon's family 2 (Which Dagon, whether He or She, That, all for Greck and learning's glory, 4 He nightly tippled Græco more,» And never paid a bill or balance From whence your sholars, when they want tick, SCALIGER, de Emendat. Tempor.--Dagon was thought by others to be a certain sea-monster, who came every day out of the Red Sea to teach the Syrians huslandry.-See JACQUES GAFFAREL's CLriosités inoutes, chap. 1. He says he thinks this story of the seamonster carries little show of probability with it.» I wish it were known with any degree of certainty whether the Commentary on Boethius attributed to Thomas Aquinas be really the work of this angelic Doctor. There are some bold assertions hazarded in it for instance, he says that Plato kept school in a town called Academia, and that Alcibiades was a very beautiful woman whom some of Aristotle's pupils fell in love with: Alcibiades mulier fuit pulcherrima, quam videntes quidam discipuli Aristotelis, etc.-See FREYTAG. Adparat. Literar, art. 86, tom, 1. The following compliment was paid to Laurentius Valla, upon his accurate knowledge of the Latin language: Nunc postquam manes defunctus Valla petivit, Non audet Pluto verba Latina loqui. Since Val arrived in Pluto's shade, His nouns and pronouns all so pat in, To ask even what's o'clock in Latin! These lines may be found in the Actorum Censio of DU VERDIER (page 29), an excellent critic, if he could have either felt or understood any one of the works which be criticises. 4 It is much to be regretted that Martin Luther, with all his talents for reforming, should yet be vulga enough to laugh at Camerarius for writing to him in Greek. Master Joachim (says he) has sent me some dates and some raisins, and has also written me two letters in Greek. As soon as I am recovered, I shall answer them in Turkish, that he too may have the pleasure of reading what he does not understand.-- Græca sunt, legi non possunt is th: ignorant spec. b attributed to Accursius, but very unjustly-far from asserting that Greek could not be read, that worthy juris-consult upon the Law 6. D. de Bonor. Possess. expressly says, Græcæ litere possunt intelligi et legi. (Vide Now, Libror. Rarior. Collection, Fasciculi IV.)-Scipio Carteromachus seems to think that there is no salvation out of the pale of Greek literature: Via prima salutis Graia pandetur ab urbe. And the zeal of Laurentius Rhodomannus cannot be sufficiently admired, when he exhorts his countrymen, « per gloriam Christi, per salutem patriæ, per reipublicae decus et emolumentum, to study the Greek language. No must we forget Phavorinus, the excellent Bishop of No era, who, careless of all the usual commendations of a Christian, required no farther eulogium on his tomb than. Here lieth a Greek Lexicographer.» In logics, he was quite Ho Panu!1 That though you were the learned Stagyrite, He taught this maid his esoterica, Or how they placed the medius terminus, But, as for all your warbling Delias, He own'd he thought them much surpass'd Likewise to show his mighty knowledge, he, 'O Пz. -- The introduction of this language into English poetry has a good effect, and ought to be more universally adopted. A word or two of Greek in a stanza would serve as ballast to the most light o' love verses. AUSONICS, among the ancients, may serve as a model: Ου γαρ μοι θέμις εςιν in hac regione μένοντι RONSARD, the French poet, has enriched his sonnets and odes with many an exquisite morsel from the Lexicon. His Cière Ent lechle, in addressing his mistress, is admirable, and can be only matched by COWLEY's Antiperistasis. The first figure of simple syllogisms, to which Barbara belongs, together with Celarent, Darii, and Ferio. Because the three propositions in the mood of Barbara are universal affirmatives.-The poet borrowed this equivoque upon Barbara from a curious Epigram which MENGKENIUS gives in a note upon his Es ays de Charlataneria Eruditor m. In the Noptic Peripatetice of Caspar Barlaus, the reader will find some facetious applications of the terms of logic to matrimony. GRAMBE's Treatise on Syllogisms, in Martinus Scriblerus, is borrowed chiefly from the Nuptia Peripateticæ of Barlaus. 4 Or Glass-Breaker. - MORHOFits has given an traordinary man, in a work published 1682. fracto, etc. account of this exDe vitreo crypho In point of science astronomical, Is for the eyes a great emporium, Send all they can and meet with dealers. The brain, he said, show'd great good-breeding; (A trick which Barbara tutor'd him in), Our doctor thus with stuff'd sufficiency This is translated almost literally from a passage in Albertus de Secretis, etc.-I have not the book by me, or I would transcribe the words. Alluding to that habitual act of the judgment, by which, not withstanding the inversion of the image upon the retina, a correct impression of the object is conveyed to the sensorium. Under this description, I believe, the Deri! among the Scholarss may be included. Yet Leibnitz found out the uses of incomprehensibility, when he was appointed secretary to a society of philosophers at Nuremberg, merely for his merit in writing a cabalistical letter, one word of which neither they nor himself could interpret. See the Eloge Historique de M. de Leibnitz, l'Europe Savante. People in all ages have loved to be puzzled. We find CICERO thanking Atticus for having sent him a work of Serapion, ex quo (says he) quidem ego (quod inter nos liceat dicere) millesimam partem vix intelligo, -Lib. 1, epist. 4. And we know that Avicen, the learned Arabian, read ARISTOTLE's Metaphysics forty times over, for the supreme pleasure of being able to inform the world that he could not comprehend one syllable throughout them.-NICOLAS MOSSA in Vit. Avicen. The tatter'd rags of every vest, In which the Greeks and Romans dress'd, All as neat as old Turnebus's; Eggs and altars, cyclopædias, Grammars, prayer-books-oh! 't were tedious, Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy, These fragments form but a small part of a ridiculous medley of prose and doggerel, into which, for my amusement, I threw some of the incidents of my journey. If it were even in a more rational form, there is yet much of it too allusive and too personal for publication. 2 Having remained about a week at New York, where I saw Madame Jerome Bonaparte, and felt a slight shock of an earthquake (the only things that particularly awakened my attention), I sailed again in the Boston for Norfolk, from whence I proceeded on my tour to the northward, through Williamsburgh, Richmond, etc. At Richmond there are a few men of considerable talents. Mr Wickham, one of their celebrated legal characters, is a gentleman whose manners and mode of life would do honour to the most cultivated societies. Judge Marshall, the author of Washington's Life, is another very distinguished ornament of Ri hmond. These gentlemen, I must observe, are of that respectable, but at present unpopular, party, the Federalists. 3 What Mr Weld says of the continual necessity of balancing or trimming the stage, in passing over some of the wretched roads in America, is by no means exaggerated. The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the stage, to lean out of the carriage, first at one side, then at the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep ruts with which the road abounds! Now, gentlemen, to the right;' upon which the passengers all stretched their bodies half way out of the carriage, to balance it on that side. Now, gentlemen, to the left; and so on."-WELD's Travels, letter 3. Before the stage can pass one of these bridges, the driver is obliged to stop and arrange the loose planks, of which it is composed, in the manner that best suits his ideas of safety: and, as the planks are again disturbed by the passing of the coach, the next travellers who arrive have of course a new arrangement to make. Mahomet (as Sale tells us) was at some pains to imagine a precarious kind of bridge for the entrance of Paradise, in order to enhance the pleasures of arrival: a Virginian bridge, I think, would have answered his purpose completely. Or that a nymph, who wild as comet errs, Farming tools, statistic histories, Sentiment, George, I'll talk, when I've got any, Oh! Linnæus has made such a prig o' me, Under every bush, As would make the shy curcuma 4 blush; 1 Σπερμαγοραιολεκιθηλαχανοπώλιδες. sistrata of ARISTOPHANES, V. 458, Observed likewise in these savannas abundance of the ludicrous Dionea Muscipula.-BARTRAM's Travels in North America. For his description of this carnivorous vegetable, see Introduction, p. 13. 2 This philosophical Duke, des ribing the view from Mr Jeffer son's house, says, The Atlantic might be seen, were it not for the greatness of the distance, which renders that prospect impossible.. -See his Travels. 3 Polygnotus was the first painter, says Pliny, who showed the teeth in his portraits. He would scarcely, I think, have been tempted to such an innovation in America. The Marquis de CHASTELLEX, in his wise letter to Mr Maddison, Professor of Philosophy in the Colleg of William and Mary, at Williamsburgb, dwells with much earnestness on the attention which should be paid to dancing.-See his Travels. This college, the only one in the state of Virginia, and the first which I saw in America, -From the Ly-gave me but a melancholy idea of republican seats of learning. That This phrase is taken verbatim from an account of an expedition to Drummond's Pond, by one of those many Americans who profess to think that the English language, as it has been hitherto written, is deficient in what they call republican energy. One of the savans of Washington is far advanced in the construction of a new language for the United States, which is supposed to be a mixture of Hebrew and Mikmak. Alluding to a collection of poems, called La Pace de grands-jours de Poitiers. They were all written upon a flea, which Stephen Pasquier found on the bosom of the famous Catherine des Roches, one morning during the grawi-jurs of Poitiers. I ask pardon of the learned Catherine's memory, for my valgar alteration of her most respectable name. 4. Curcuma, cold and shy.-DARWIN. contempt for the eleganies of education, which the American democrats afect, is no where more grossly conspicuous than in Virginia : the young men, who look for advancement, study rather to be demagogues than politicians; and as every thing that distinguishes from the multitude is supposed to be invidious and unpopular, the levelling system is applied to education, and has had all the effect which its partisans could desire, by producing a most extensive equality of ignorane. The Abbé RAYNAL, in his prophetic admonitions to the Americans, directing their attention very strongly to learned establishments, says, When the youth of a country are seen depraved, the nation is on the decline. I know not what the Abbé Raynal would pronounce of this nation now, were he alive to know the morals of the young students at Williamsburgh! But when he wrote, his countrymen had not yet introduced the doctrinam deos spernentem into America. |