her domestics, her travail came upon her between the Colossian theatre and St. Clements, as she was going to the Lateran church, and she died upon the place, having sat two years, one month, and four days, and was buried there without any pomp. He owns, that for the shame of this, the Popes decline going through this street to the Lateran; and that, to avoid the like error, when any` Pope is placed in the porphyry chair, his genitals are felt by the youngest deacon, through a hole made for that purpose; but he supposes the reason of that to be, to put him in mind that he is a man, and obnoxious to the necessities of nature: whence he will have that seat to be called, sedes stercoraria.

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V. 1253. Festina, lente, Not too fast.] This is equivalent to the English proverb, slow and sure; or, the more haste the worse speed. V. 1262. To leave your vitilitigation.] Arguing like a calf or blockhead. Vitilitigation," Dr. Grey says, " is a word the Knight was passionately in love with, and never failed to use it on all possible occasions, and therefore to omit it when it fell in the way, had argued too great a neglect of his parts and learning, though it means no more than a perverse humour of wrangling." The author of a tract entitled The Simple Cobler of Agawam, in America, speaking of the sectaries of those times, says, "It is a most toilsome task to run the wild goose chace after a wellbreathed opinionist, they delight in vitilitigation," &c.

V. 1264. And argue dialecticos.] That is, according to the rules

of logic.

V. 1272.

tantundem dat tantidem.] So much gives so much.

V. 1307-8. Whelp'd without form, until the dam

Has lick'd into shape and frame.] An allusion to the vulgar opinion, that bears when they are born, are nothing but a shapeless mass of flesh, until they are licked into forms by their dams. Pope, in his Dunciad, says,

"So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care,

Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear."

V. 1317-8. A strange chimera of beasts and men,

Made up of pieces heterogene.] Butler alludes to the Chimera in the heathen mythology, which was a monster that had the head and breast of a lion, the belly of a goat, and the tail of a dragon; and vomited forth fire.

V. 1329. And is the same that ranter said.] One of the numerous sects which sprung up in those fanatical times, were denominated Ranters; probably most of them deserved the appellation.

Of human learning, &c.] The Independents and Anabaptists of those times exclaimed much against human learning and it is remarkable (Dr. Grey says) that Mr. D—, Master of Caius College, Cambridge, preached a sermon in St. Mary's church against it; for which he was notably girded by Mr. John Sedgwick, Fellow of Christ's College, in a tract entitled Learning's Necessity to an able Minister of the Gospel, publishsd 1653. To such we may apply the pun made by Mr. Knight, Assize Sermon at Northampton, March 30, 1682, “That such men shew their heads, like those upon clipped money, without letters." And it was a pity that such illiterate creatures were not treated in the way that the truant scholar was, who, upon a time, when he came home to visit his friends, was asked by his father, what was Latin for bread, answered bredibus, and for beer, beeribus, and the like of all other things he asked him, only adding a termination of bus to the plain English word of every one of them; which his father perceiving, and (though ignorant of Latin) perfectly apprehending, that the mysteries his son had learned defrayed not the expense of keeping him at school, bid him put off immediately his hosibus and shoesibus, and fall to his old trade of treading morteribus." Dr. South makes the following observations upon that reforming age: "That all learning was then cried down; so that with them the best preachers were such as could not read, and the best divines such as could not write. In all their preachings they so highly pretended to the spirit, that some of them could hardly spell a letter: for to be blind with them was a proper qualification of a spiritual guide, and to be book-learned, as they called it, and to be irreligious, were almost terms convertible: so that none were thought fit for the ministry but tradesmen and mechanics, because none else were allowed to have the spirit: and those only were accounted like St. Paul, who could work with their hands, and in a literal sense drive the nail home, and be able to make a pulpit before they preached in it." In another discourse,

entitled the Christian Pentecost, the same eminent divine says, "that Latin unto them was a mortal crime; and Greek, instead of being owned to be the language of the Holy Ghost (as in the New Testament it is) was looked upon as the sin against it; so that, in a word, they had all the confusion of Babel amongst them, without the diversity of tongues.”

"What's Latin but the language of the beast?
Hebrew and Greek is not enough a feast:
Ha'n't we the word in English, which at ease
We can convert to any sense we please?
Let them urge the original, if we

Say 't was first writ in English, so 't shall be.
For we'll have our own way, be 't wrong or right;
And say, by strength of faith, the crow is white."

V. 1339. Learning, that cobweb of the brain.] Butler makes Ralpho argue almost precisely in the same manner, that Shakespeare makes Cade argue with the Lord Say, before he ordered his head to be cut off. "I am the besom that must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art: thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm, in erecting a grammar-school; and whereas before our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally; thou hast caused printing to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper mill. It will be proved to thy face, that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear." A writer of those times, railing at literature, says, "I tell you wicked books do as much wound us as the swords of our adversaries; for this manner of learning is superfluous and costly. Many tongues and languages are only confusion, and only wit, reason, understanding, and scholarship are the main means that oppose us, and hinder our cause; therefore, if ever we have the fortune to get the upper hand, we will down with all law and learning, and have no other rule but the carpenter's, nor any writing or reading but the score and the tally."

"We'll down with all the 'versities,

Where learning is profess'd,

Because they practise and maintain

The language of the beast:
We'll drive the doctors out of doors,

And parts whate'er they be,

We'll cry all parts and learning down,

And high then up go we."

Oliver Cromwell would have established an university at Durham for the advantage of the northern parts of the kingdom, but he was so warmly opposed by George Fox, and other fanatics, that he relinquished his design.

V. 1357-8. As if rules were not in the schools

Deriv'd from truth, but truth from rules.] Warburton says upon this passage, "that this observation is very just. The logicians have run into strange absurdities of this kind. Peter Ramus, the best of them, in his logic, rejects a very just argument of Cicero's as sophistical, because it did not jump right with his rules."

V. 1373. Mere disparata, &c.] Disparata are things seperate and unlike, from the Latin word disparo. Dr. Brett says, "that the English Presbyterians of those times, as the Knight observes, had little human learning among them, though many of them made pretences to it: but having seen their boasted arguments, and all the doctrines wherein they differed from the church of England, baffled by the learned divines of that church, they found without more learning they should not maintain the ground they had left, notwithstanding their toleration; therefore, about the time of the revolution, they began to think it very proper, instead of Calvin's Institutions, and a Dutch system or two, with Blondel, Daille, and Salmasius, to help them to arguments against episcopacy, to read and study more polite books. It is certain that the dissenting ministers have, since that time, both preached and wrote more politely than they did in the reign of King Charles II. in whose time the clergy of the church of England wrote and published most learned and excellent discourses, such as have been exceeded by none that have appeared since. And it is likely enough the dissenting ministers have studied their works, imitated their language, and improved much by them."

V. 1381-2. And rest our weary'd bones a while,

Already tir'd with other toil.] This is only a hypocritical shift of the Knight's; his fund of argument had been exhausted, and so he was glad to find any pretence to discontinue the argument. Dryden, in his tale of the Hind and Panther, has some lines somewhat to the same purpose.

"Thus did the gentle hind her fable end,

Nor would the panther blame it, nor commend:
But with affected yawning at the close,
Seem'd to require her natural repose."