BUT whither have these gentle ones,
The rosy nymphs and black-eyed nuns,
With all of Cupid's wild romancing,
Led my truant brains a-dancing?
Instead of wise Encomiastics
Upon the Doctors and Scholastics,
Polymaths, and Polyhistors,
Polyglots and-all their sisters,
The instant I have got the whim in,
Off I fly with nuns and women,
Like epic poets, ne'er at ease
Until I've stolen in medias res !'
So have I known a hopeful youth
Sit down in quest of lore and truth

I promised that I would give the remainder of this poem; but as my critics do not seem to relish the sublime learning 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.

Bombastus was one of the names of that scholar and quack Paracelsus. Philippus Bombastus latet sub splendido tegmine Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi,' says Stadelius de Circumforanea Literatorum Vanitate. He used to fight the devil every night with a broadsword, to the no small terror of his pupil, Oporinus, who has recorded the circumstance. Paracelsus had but a

poor opinion of Galen. My very beard,' (says he, in his "Paragrænum ") has more learning in it than either Galen or Avicenna.'

3 The angel, who scolded St. Jerome 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

The angel's were on Hieronymus, Saying, 'twas just as sweet to kiss heroh!

Far more sweet than reading Cicero !
Quick fly the folios, widely scattered,
Old Homer's laurelled brow is battered,
And Sappho's skin to Tully's leather,
All are confused and tossed together!
Raptured he quits each dozing sage,
Oh woman! for thy lovelier page:
Sweet book! unlike the books of art,
Whose errors are thy fairest part;
In whom the dear errata column
Is the best page in all the volume !*
But, to begin my subject rhyme-
'Twas just about this devilish time,
When scarce there happened any frolics
That were not done by Diabolics,
A cold and loveless son of Lucifer,
Who woman scorned, nor knew the use
of her,

Gentilium libros non legat.'-Distinct. 37. But Gratian is notorious for lying-besides, angels have got no tongues, as the illustrious pupil of Pantenus assures us. Oux' ws nuir to wrα, ούτως εκείνοις ή γλωττα ̇ ουδ' αν όργανα τις δωή

wrns ayyeλois.--Clem, Alexand. Stromat. How an angel could scold without a tongue, I leave the angelic Mrs. to determine.

The idea of the Rabbins, respecting 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, and made woman of it. Upon this extraordinary supposi tion the following reflection is founded:If such is the tie between women and men,

The ninny who weds is a pitiful elf, For he takes to his tail like an idiot again, And thus makes a deplorable ape of himself. Yet, if we may judge as the fashions prevail, Every husband remembers th' original plan, And, knowing his wife is no more than his tail, Why he leaves her behind him as much as he can.

A branch of Dagon's family
(Which Dagon, whether He or She,
Is a dispute that vastly better is
Referred to Scaliger1 et cæteris),
Finding that, in this cage of fools,
The wisest sots adorn the schools,
Took it at once his head Satanic in,
To grow a great scholastic mannikin,
A doctor, quite as learned and fine as
Scotus John or Tom Aquinas,2
Lully, Hales irrefragabilis,
Or any doctor of the rabble is!
In languages, the Polyglots,
Compared to him, were Babel sots;
He chattered more than ever Jew did,
Sanhedrim and Priest included;
Priest and holy Sanhedrim
Were one-and-seventy fools to him!
But chief the learned demon felt a
Zeal so strong for gamma, delta,
That, all for Greek and learning's glory,
He nightly tippled 'Græco more,

1 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 husbandry.-See Jacques Gaffarel (Curiosités Inouïes,' chap. i.), who says he thinks this story of the sea-monster carries little show of probability with it.'

2 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, &c.See Freytag Adparat. Litterar. art. 86, tom. i. 3 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,
Pluto himself would be afraid

To ask even what's o'clock ?' in Latin! These lines may be found in the Auctorum Censio of Du Verdier (page 29), an excellent critic, if he could have either felt or understood any one of the works which he criticises.

It is much to be regretted that Martin Luther, with all his talents for reforming, should yet be vulgar enough to laugh at Camerarius for writing to him in Greek. 'Master Joachim (says

And never paid a bill or balance
Except upon the Grecian Kalends,
From whence your scholars, when they
want tick,

Say, to be At-tick's to be on tick!
In logics, he was quite Ho Panu !5
Knew as much as ever man knew.
He fought the combat syllogistic
With so much skill and art eristic,
That though you were the learned
Stagyrite,

At once upon the hip he had you right!
Sometimes indeed his speculations
Were viewed as dangerous innovations.
As thus--the Doctor's house did har
bour a

Sweet blooming girl, whose name was
Barbara ;

Oft, when his heart was in a merry key,
He taught this maid his esoterica,
And sometimes, as a cure for hectics,
Would lecture her in dialectics.

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 the ignorant speech attributed to Accursius, but very unjustly. Far from asserting that Greek could not be read, that worthy jurisconsult upon the Law 6. D. de Bonor. possess. expressly says, 'Græcæ litera possunt intelligi et legi. (Vide Nov. Libror. Rarior. Collection. Fascicul. IV.)-Scipio Carte romachus 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 suffi

ciently admired, when he exhorts his countrymen, per gloriam Christi, per salutem patriæ, per reipublicæ decus et emolumentum,' to study the the excellent Bishop of Nocera, who, careless of Greek language. Nor must we forget Phavorinus, all the usual commendations of a Christian, required no further eulogium on his tomb than 'Here lieth a Greek Lexicographer.'

5 'O HANY.-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. Ausonius, among the ancients, may serve as a model:

Ου γαρ μοι θεμις εστιν in hac regione μενοντι Αξιον ab nostris επιδευεα csse καμήναις. Ronsard, the French poet, has enriched his sonnets and odes with many an exquisite morsel from the Lexicon. His Cère Entelechie, in addressing his mistress, is admirable, and can be only matched by Cowley's An ́iperistasis.

How far their zeal let him and her go
Before they came to sealing Ergo,
Or how they placed the medius ter-
minus,

Our chronicles do not determine us;
But so it was-by some confusion
In this their logical prælusion,
The Doctor wholly spoiled, they say,
The figure of young Barbara ;
And thus, by many a snare sophistic,
And enthymeme paralogistic,
Beguiled a maid, who could not give,
To save her life, a negative.
In music, though he had no ears
Except for that amongst the spheres
(Which most of all, as he averred it,
He dearly loved, 'cause no one heard it),
Yet aptly he, at sight, could read
Each tuneful diagram in Bede,
And find, by Euclid's corollaria,
The ratios of a jig or aria.
But, as for all your warbling Delias,
Orpheuses and Saint Cecilias,

He owned he thought them much surpassed

By that redoubted Hyaloclast,3
Who still contrived, by dint of throttle,
Where'er he went to crack a bottle!

Likewise to show his mighty knowledge, he,

On things unknown in physiology,
Wrote many a chapter to divert us,
Like that great little man Albertus,
Wherein he showed the reason why,
When children first are heard to cry,
If boy the baby chance to be,
He cries, OA!-if girl, OE !—
They are, says he, exceeding

fair

hints Respecting their first sinful parents; 'Oh Eve!' exclaimeth little madam, While little master cries, 'Oh Adam! '4

The first figure of simple syllogisms, to which Barbara belongs, together with Celarent, Darii, and Ferio.

2 Because the three propositions in the mood of Barbara are universal affirmatives.-The poet borrowed this equivoque upon Barbara from a curious Epigram which Menckenius gives in a note upon his Essays de Charlataneria Eruditorum. In the Nuptiae Peripatetica of Caspar Barlaus, the reader will find some facetious applications of the terms of logic to matrimony. Crambe's Treatise on Syllogisms, in Martinus

mon, on,

As a more rare and rich phenomenon!
He wisely said that the sensorium
Is for the eyes a great emporium,
To which these noted picture stealer
Send all they can, and meet with
dealers.

In many an optical proceeding,
The brain, he said, showed great good
breeding;

For instance, when we ogle women
(A trick which Barbara tutored him
in),
Although the dears are apt to get in a
Strange position on the retina;
Yet instantly the modest brain
Doth set them on their legs again !5
Our doctor thus with stuffed suffi
ciency'

Of all omnigenous omnisciency,
Began (as who would not begin
That had, like him, so much within ?)
Scriblerus, is borrowed chiefly from the Nuplic
Peripatetice of Barlæus.

3 Or Glass Breaker.-Morhofius has given an account of this extraordinary man, in a work published 1682. De vitreo scypho fracto,' etc.

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.

5 Alluding to that habitual act of the judg ment, by which, notwithstanding the inversion of the image upon the retina, a correct impression of the object is conveyed to the sensorium.