Walker Sculp

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

Written at Moor-park, June, 1689.

I.
VIRTUE, the greatest of all monarchies !

Till, its first emperor rebellious man

Depos’d from off his seat,
It fell, and broke with its own weight
Into small states and principalities,

By many a petty lord possess’d,
But ne'er since feated in one single breast!

'Tis
you

who must this land subdue,
The mighty conquest 's left for you,
The conquest and discovery too ;
Search out this Utopian ground,
Virtue's Terra Incognita,

Where none ever led the way,
Nor ever since but in descriptions found,

Like the philosopher's sone,
With rules to search it, yet obtain’d by none.
VOL. I.

B

II. We

II.
We have too long been led astray ;
Too long have our misguided souls been taught

With rules from musty morals brought,
'Tis
you

muft put us in the way ;
Let us (for shame!) no more be fed

With antique reliques of the dead,
The gleanings of philosophy,
Philosophy, the lumber of the schools,
The roguery of alchemy;

And we, the bubbled fools,
Spend all our present life in hopes of golden rules.

III.
But what does our proud ignorance Learning call ?

We oddly Plato's paradox make good,
Our knowledge is but mere remembrance all;

Remembrance is our treasure and our food ;
Nature's fair table-book, our tender fouls,
We fcrawl all o'er with old and empty rules,

Stale memorandums of the schools :
For Learning's mighty treasures look

In that deep grave a book;
Think that she there does all her treasures hide,
And that hertroubled ghost still haunts there fince the dy'd.
Confine her walks to colleges and schools ;

Her priests, her train, and followers show
As if they all were spectres too !
They purchase knowledge at th' expence
Of common breeding, common sense,
And grow at once scholars and fools ;
3

Affect