Yet, hold, surmounting all the rest,
Appears a wondrous, common crest,
To all thy kindred striking:

For they alike thy symbols bear,
Bells, ladle, and the fool's cap wear,
Insignias of their liking.

L'ENVOY OF THE POET.

Consummate ass, how canst thou raise thy fame On thoughts of pedigree and boasted birth? The noblest title is an honest name;

For, after all, our common parent's earth.

plebeian pedestrians. "That is the Duke of exclaimed my friend. "Impossible," answered I, glancing at the arms emblazoned on the pannel of the vehicle, where I could perceive no bar of bastardy. "Pshaw," replied my friend, "your heralds, now-a-days, have a method of disposing of them, so as to draw a veil over that family obloquy." Upon this he requested me to examine the arms more minutely, which I accordingly did; when lo! the cloven foot appeared, but so artfully wound round the shield in form of a garter, as to take away all appearance of the fatal bar, that insignia of illegitimacy. Thanks to the contrivance of the Collegians of Arms.

THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS.

Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis, Crowds flock to man my Stultifera Navis.

SECTION XLIII.

OF FOOLS WHO PURSUE UNPROFITABLE ́

STUDY.

Learning, that cobweb of the brain,
Profane, erroneous, and vain;
A fort of error to ensconce
Absurdity and ignorance;

By making plain things in debate,
By art, perplext 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.

WHAT learned doctors of the schools
Set down for academic rules,

Serve to give common sense the phthisics:
Witness disputes on metaphysics*.

* Aristotle, the famous father of this branch of philosophy, or, as others call it, pneumatology, seems to have intended by his metaphysics, a species of natural

A learned wight, who folios wrote us,
A fam'd disputant, nam'd Duns Scotus*,

theology: yet, as in all cases of an abstruse nature, the several votaries of this science, have, in some measure, varied in their ideas on the subject, for instance, Locke, in England, and Malebranche, in France, racked their brains on this theme, and although much more perspicuous than the ancients, are frequently so intricate in their reasonings, as to send common sense a wool gathering; so that, speaking of these philosophers, we may well exclaim with the Roman, they are but "deliramenta doctrinæ:" or, to quote a sentence used by Mr. Locke, when he considers the association of ideas, "I conceive that such deep men of the schools only give sense to jargon, demonstration to absurdities, and consistency to nonsense; and have proved the foundation of the greatest, I had almost said, of all the errors in the world."

* This very acute metaphysician and logician, surnamed Doctor Subtilis, most assuredly may claim the wreath of most consummate folly: for, what with speculative ideas, such as the poet has instanced in the third and fourth lines of the above stanza, which allude to corpuscular philosophy, together with the jargon of the schools, he may well be said arenearum telas texere, while he intended to display the art of reasoning justly. Yet, soft, why do I dare presume to rail against this renowned character, whose oratory outvied the powers of the famed Orpheus, by giving animation even to stone, without in

strnmental assistance: for we are very gravely informed, that, while Duns Scotus was haranguing the learned doc tors of the day, on the subject of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, he pointed to the stone effigy of the mother of our Saviour, placed in the church of Notre Dame, at Paris, upon which, in token of assent to the position of the speaker, the image very reverently bent its body, and is stated to have ever after continued in that curbed attitude. Another voluminous writer of later date, known by the name of Dr. Manton, produced in this country a thick folio volume of commentaries on the 119th psalm; to the reading of which the famous Lord Bolingbroke attributes all his scepticism on religious subjects: and, indeed, the production of the above doctor forcibly brings to mind these lines of Butler:

Still so perverse and opposite,

As if they worshipp'd God for spite.
The self same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for :

Quarrel with minc'd pies, and disparage

Their best and dearest friend plumb porridge ;

Fat pig and goose itself oppose,

And blaspheme custard through the nose.

Th' apostles of this fierce religion,

Like Mahomet's were Ass and Widgeon ;

As if hypocrisie and nonsense

Had got th' advowson of his conscience.

Dean Swift, in speaking of the folly of fast days, has been equally sarcastic in these lines: