The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Part 46

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, Where, every fear to slumber charmed, Lovers were all they ought to be, And husbands not the least alarmed.

Then called they up their school-day pranks, Nor thought it much their sense beneath To play at riddles, quips, and cranks, And lords showed wit, and ladies teeth.

As--"Why are husbands like the mint?"

Because, forsooth, a husband's duty Is but to set the name and print That give a currency to beauty.

"Why is a rose in nettles hid Like a young widow, fresh and fair?"

Because 'tis sighing to be rid Of weeds, that "have no business there!"

And thus they missed and thus they hit, And now they struck and now they parried; And some lay in of full grown wit.

While others of a pun miscarried,

'Twas one of those facetious nights That Grammont gave this forfeit ring For breaking grave conundrumrites, Or punning ill, or--some such thing;--

From whence it can be fairly traced, Through many a branch and many a bough, From twig to twig, until it graced The snowy hand that wears it now.

All this I'll prove, and then, to you Oh Tunbridge! and your springs ironical, I swear by Heathcote's eye of blue To dedicate the important chronicle.

Long may your ancient inmates give Their mantles to your modern lodgers, And Charles's loves in Heathcote live, And Charles's bards revive in Rogers.

Let no pedantic fools be there; For ever be those fops abolished, With heads as wooden as thy ware, And, heaven knows! not half so polished.

But still receive the young, the gay.

The few who know the rare delight Of reading Grammont every day, And acting Grammont every night.

THE DEVIL AMONG THE SCHOLARS,

A FRAGMENT.

But, whither have these gentle ones, These rosy nymphs and black-eyed nuns, With all of Cupid's wild romancing, Led by truant brains a-dancing?

Instead of studying tomes scholastic, Ecclesiastic, or monastic, Off I fly, careering far In chase of Pollys, prettier far Than any of their namesakes are,-- The Polymaths and Polyhistors, Polyglots and all their sisters.

So have I known a hopeful youth Sit down in quest of lore and truth, With tomes sufficient to confound him, Like Tohu Bohu, heapt around him,-- Mamurra[1] stuck to Theophrastus, And Galen tumbling o'er Bombastus.[2]

When lo! while all that's learned and wise Absorbs the boy, he lifts his eyes, And through the window of his study Beholds some damsel fair and ruddy, With eyes, as brightly turned upon him as The angel's[3] were on Hieronymus.

Quick fly the folios, widely scattered, Old Homer's laureled brow is battered, And Sappho, headlong sent, flies just in The reverend eye of St. Augustin.

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![4]

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 saw the use of her, A branch of Dagon's family, (Which Dagon, whether He or She, Is a dispute that vastly better is Referred to Scaliger[5] _et coeteris_,) 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 manikin,-- A doctor, quite as learned and fine as Scotus John or Tom Aquinas, Lully, Hales Irrefragabilis, Or any doctor of the rabble is.

In languages, the Polyglots, Compared to him, were Babelsots: 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,[6]

He nightly tippled "Graeco more,"

And never paid a bill or balance Except upon the Grecian Kalends:-- From whence your scholars, when they want tick, Say, to be Attic's to be _on_ tick.

In logics, he was quite Ho Panu; 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.

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 surpast By that redoubted Hyaloclast[7]

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 O A!--if girl, O E!-- Which are, quoth he, exceeding fair hints Respecting their first sinful parents; "Oh Eve!" exclaimeth little madam, While little master cries "Oh Adam!"

But, 'twas in Optics and Dioptrics, Our daemon played his first and top tricks.

He held that sunshine pa.s.ses quicker Through wine than any other liquor; And though he saw no great objection To steady light and clear reflection, He thought the aberrating rays, Which play about a b.u.mper's blaze, Were by the Doctors looked, in common, 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-stealers 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!

Our doctor thus, with "stuft sufficiency"

Of all omnigenous omnisciency, Began (as who would not begin That had, like him, so much within?) To let it out in books of all sorts, Folios, quartos, large and small sorts; Poems, so very deep and sensible That they were quite incomprehensible Prose, which had been at learning's Fair, And bought up all the trumpery there, The tattered rags of every vest, In which the Greeks and Romans drest, And o'er her figure swollen and antic Scattered them all with airs so frantic, That those, who saw what fits she had, Declared unhappy Prose was mad!

Epics he wrote and scores of rebuses, All as neat as old Turnebus's; Eggs and altars, cyclopaedias, Grammars, prayer-books--oh! 'twere tedious, Did I but tell thee half, to follow me: Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy, No--nor the h.o.a.ry Trismegistus, (Whose writings all, thank heaven! have missed us,) E'er filled with lumber such a wareroom As this great "_porcus literarum_!"

[1] Mamurra, a dogmatic philosopher, who never doubted about anything, except who was his father.

[2] Bombastus was one of the names of that great scholar and quack Paracelsus. He used to fight the devil every night with a broadsword, to the no small terror of his pupil Oporinus, who has recorded the circ.u.mstance.

[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 Cla.s.sics.

[4] The idea of the Rabbins, respecting the origin of woman, is not a little 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.

[5] Scaliger.--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.

[6] 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 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."

[7] Or Gla.s.s-breaker--Morhofius has given an account of this extraordinary man, in a work, published 1682.

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