Hudibras - Samuel Butler (story reading txt) 📗

ride upon;
Which heads denote the sinful tribe
Of deacon, priest, lay-elder, scribe.

Lay-elder, Simeon to Levi,
Whose little finger is as heavy
As loins of patriarchs, prince-prelate,
And bishop-secular. This zealot
Is of a mongrel, diverse kind;
Cleric before, and lay behind;
A lawless linseywoolsey brother,
Half of one order, half another;
A creature of amphibious nature,
On land a beast, a fish in water;
That always preys on grace or sin;
A sheep without, a wolf within.
This fierce inquisitor has chief
Dominion over men’s belief
And manners; can pronounce a saint
Idolatrous or ignorant,
When superciliously he sifts
Through coarsest boulter others’ gifts;
For all men live and judge amiss,
Whose talents jump not just with his.
He’ll lay on gifts with hands, and place
On dullest noddle light and grace,
The manufacture of the kirk.
Those pastors are but th’ handy-work
Of his mechanic paws, instilling
Divinity in them by feeling;
From whence they start up chosen vessels,
Made by contact, as men get measles.
So cardinals, they say, do grope
At th’ other end the new-made pope.80

Hold, hold, quoth Hudibras; soft fire,
They say, does make sweet malt. Good Squire,
Festina lente, not too fast;
For haste (the proverb says) makes waste.
The quirks and cavils thou dost make
Are false, and built upon mistake:
And I shall bring you, with your pack
Of fallacies, t’ elenchi back;
And put your arguments in mood
And figure to be understood.
I’ll force you, by right ratiocination,
To leave your vitilitigation,81
And make you keep to th’ question close,
And argue dialecticos.

The question then, to state it first,
Is, Which is better, or which worst,
Synods or bears? Bears I avow
To be the worst, and synods thou.
But to make good th’ assertion,
Thou say’st they’re really all one.
If so, not worst; for if th’ are idem
Why then, tantundem dat tantidem.
For if they are the same, by course,
Neither is better, neither worse.
But I deny they are the same,
More than a maggot and I am.
That both are animalia
I grant, but not rationalia:
For though they do agree in kind,
Specific difference we find;
And can no more make bears of these,
Than prove my horse is Socrates.
That synods are bear-gardens too,
Thou dost affirm; but I say, No:
And thus I prove it in a word;
Whats’ver assembly’s not impow’r’d
To censure, curse, absolve, and ordain,
Can be no synod: but bear-garden
Has no such pow’r; ergo, ’tis none:
And so thy sophistry’s o’erthrown.

But yet we are beside the question
Which thou didst raise the first contest on;
For that was, Whether bears are better
Than synod-men? I say, Negatur.
That bears are beasts, and synods men,
Is held by all: they’re better then;
For bears and dogs on four legs go,
As beasts, but synod-men on two.
’Tis true, they all have teeth and nails;
But prove that synod-men have tails;
Or that a rugged, shaggy fur
Grows o’er the hide of presbyter;
Or that his snout and spacious ears
Do hold proportion with a bear’s.
A bear’s a savage beast, of all
Most ugly and unnatural
Whelp’d without form, until the dam
Has lick’d it into shape and frame:
But all thy light can ne’er evict,
That ever synod man was lick’d,
Or brought to any other fashion
Than his own will and inclination.

But thou dost further yet in this
Oppugn thyself and sense; that is,
Thou would’st have presbyters to go
For bears and dogs, and bear-wards too;
A strange chimera of beasts and men,
Made up of pieces heterogene;
Such as in nature never met
In eodem subjecto yet.
Thy other arguments are all
Supposures, hypothetical,
That do but beg, and we may chose
Either to grant them, or refuse.
Much thou hast said, which I know when
And where thou stol’st from other men,
Whereby ’tis plain thy light and gifts
Are all but plagiary shifts;
And is the same that Ranter said,
Who, arguing with me, broke my head,
And tore a handful of my beard:
The self-same cavils then I heard,
When, b’ing in hot dispute about
This controversy, we fell out:
And what thou know’st I answer’d then,
Will serve to answer thee agen.

Quoth Ralpho, Nothing but th’ abuse
Of human learning you produce;
Learning, that cobweb of the brain,
Profane, erroneous, and vain;
A trade of knowledge, as replete
As others are with fraud and cheat;
An art t’ encumber gifts and wit,
And render both for nothing fit;
Makes light unactive, dull, and troubled,
Like little David in Saul’s doublet:
A cheat that scholars put upon
Other men’s reason and their own;
A fort of error, to ensconce
Absurdity and ignorance;
That renders all the avenues
To truth impervious and abstruse,
By making plain things, in debate,
By art, perplex’d, and intricate:
For nothing goes for sense or light
That will not with old rules jump right:
As if rules were not in the schools
Deriv’d from truth, but truth from rules.
This Pagan heathenish invention
Is good for nothing but contention.
For as, in sword and buckler fight,
All blows do on the target light;
So when men argue, the great’st part
O’ th’ contest falls on terms of art,
Until the fustian stuff be spent,
And then they fall to th’ argument.

Quoth Hudibras, Friend Ralph, thou hast
Out-run the constable at last:
For thou art fallen on a new
Dispute, as senseless as untrue,
But to the former opposite
And contrary as black to white;
Mere disparata;82 that concerning
Presbytery; this, human learning;
Two things s’ averse, they never yet
But in thy rambling fancy met.
But I shall take a fit occasion
T’ evince thee by ratiocination,
Some other time, in place more proper
Than this we’re in; therefore let’s stop here,
And rest our weary’d bones a while,
Already tir’d with other toil.

Part II Canto I