And, all their labour loft, they 're fain
To learn new, and begin again;
To talk eternally and loud,
And all together in a crowd,
No matter what; for in the noise
No man minds what another says:
T' affume a confidence beyond
Mankind, for folid and profound,
And ftill, the lefs and lefs they know,
The greater dofe of that allow :
Decry all things; for to be wife
Is not to know, but to despise;
And deep judicious confidence
Has ftill the odds of wit and sense,
And can pretend a title to
Far greater things than they can do:
T' adorn their English with French scraps,
And give their very language claps ;
To jernie rightly, and renounce
I' th' pure and most approv'd-of tones,
And, while they idly think t' enrich,
Adulterate their native speech:
For, though to fmatter ends of Greek
Or Latin be the rhetorique
Of pedants counted, and vain-glorious,
To fmatter French is meritorious ;
And to forget their mother-tongue,
Or purposely to speak it wrong,
A hopeful fign of parts and wit,
And that they' improve and benefit;
As thofe that have been taught amifs
In liberal arts and fciences,
Muft all they 'ad learnt before in vain
Forget quite, and begin again.
IS pity wine, which Nature meant
To man in kindness to prefent,
And gave him kindly, to carefs
And cherish his frail happiness;
Of equal virtue to renew
His weary'd mind and body too;
Should (like the cyder-tree in Eden,
Which only grew to be forbidden)
No fooner come to be enjoy'd,
But th' owner's fatally deftroy'd;
And that which the for good defign'd,
Becomes the ruin of mankind,
That for a little vain excefs
Runs out of all its happiness,
And makes the friend of Truth and Love
Their greatest adversary prove;
T'abuse a blessing she bestow'd
So truly' effential to his good,
To countervail his penfive cares,
And flavish drudgery of affairs;
To teach him judgment, wit, and sense,
And, more than all these, confidence ;
To pafs his times of recreation
In choice and noble converfation,
Catch truth and reafon unawares,
As men do health in wholesome airs
(While fools their converfants poffefs
As unawares with fottishness);
To gain access a private way
To man's best fenfe, by its own key,
Which painful judgers ftrive in vain
By any other course t' obtain ;
To pull off all disguise, and view
Things as they 're natural and true;
Difcover fools and knaves, allow'd
For wife and honeft in the crowd;
With innocent and virtuous sport
Make short days long, and long nights short,
And mirth, the only antidote
Against diseases ere they 're got;
To fave health harmlefs from th' accefs
Both of the medicine and disease ;
Or make it help itfelf, fecure
Against the defperat'ft fit, the cure.
All these sublime prerogatives
Of happiness to human lives,
He vainly throws away and flights,
For madness, noife, and bloody fights;
When nothing can decide, but fwords
And pots, the right or wrong of words,
Like princes" titles; and he's outed
The juftice of his caufe that 's routed.
No fooner has a charge been founded
With-Son of a whore, and Damn'd confounded,
And the bold fignal given, the lye,
But inftantly the bottles fly,
Where cups and glasses are small shot,
And cannon-ball a pewter-pot:
That blood, that 's hardly in the vein,
Is now remanded back again;
Though sprung from wine of the fame piece,
And near a-kin, within degrees,
Strives to commit affaffinations
On its own natural relations ;
And those twin-fpirits, fo kind-hearted,
That from their friends fo lately parted,
No fooner feveral ways are gone,
But by themselves are fet upon,
Surpriz'd like brother against brother,
And put to th' fword by one another :
So much more fierce are civil wars,
Than those between mere foreigners t
And man himself, with wine poffeft,
More favage than the wildest beast!
For ferpents, when they meet to water,
Lay by their poifon and their nature;
And fierceft creatures, that repair,
In thirsty deserts, to their rare
And diftant rivers' banks to drink,
In love and close alliance link,
And from their mixture of strange feeds
Produce new, never-heard-of breeds,
To whom the fiercer unicorn
Begins a large health with his horn;
As cuckolds put their antidotes,
When they drink coffee, into th' pots:
While man, with raging drink inflam'd,
Is far more favage and untam'd;
Supplies his lofs of wit and fenfe
With barbaroufnefs and infolence;
Believes himfelf, the lefs he 's able,
The more heroic and formidable;
Lays-by his reason in his bowls,
As Turks are faid to do their fouls,
Until it has fo often been
Shut out of its lodging, and let in,
At length it never can attain
To find the right way back again;
Drinks all his time away, and prunes
The end of 's life, as vignerons
Cut fhort the branches of a vine,
To make it bear more plenty o' wine;
And that which Nature did intend
T'enlarge his life, perverts t' its end.
So Noah, when he anchor'd fafe on
The mountain's top, his lofty haven,
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