Tell, how _blessed Virgin_ to come down was seen, Like play-house punk descending in machine, How she writ _billet-doux_ and _love-discourse_, Made _assignations_, _visits_, and _amours_; How hosts distrest, her _smock_ for _banner_ wore, Which vanquished foes! ---- how _fish_ in conventicles met, And _mackerel_ were with _bait of doctrine_ caught: How cattle have judicious hearers been!-- How _consecrated hives_ with bells were hung, And _bees_ kept mass, and holy _anthems sung_! How _pigs_ to th' _rosary_ kneel'd, and _sheep_ were taught To bleat _Te Deum_ and _Magnificat_; How _fly-flap_, of church-censure houses rid Of insects, which at _curse of fryar_ died. How _ferrying cowls_ religious pilgrims bore O'er waves, without the help of sail or oar; How _zealous crab_ the _sacred image_ bore, And swam a catholic to the distant shore. With shams like these the giddy rout mislead, Their folly and their superstition feed. All these are allusions to the extravagant fictions in the "Golden Legend." Among other gross impositions to deceive the mob, Oldham likewise attacks them for certain publications on topics not less singular. The tales he has recounted, Oldham says, are only baits for children, like toys at a fair; but they have their profounder and higher matters for the learned and inquisitive. He goes on:-- One undertakes by scales of miles to tell The bounds, dimensions, and extent of HELL; How many German leagues that realm contains! How many chaldrons Hell each year expends In coals for roasting Hugonots and friends! Another frights the rout with useful stories Of wild chimeras, limbos--PURGATORIES-- Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung, Like a Westphalia gammon or neat's tongue, To be redeem'd with masses and a song.--SATIRE IV. The readers of Oldham, for Oldham must ever have readers among the curious in our poetry, have been greatly disappointed in the pompous edition of a Captain Thompson, which illustrates none of his allusions. In the above lines Oldham alludes to some singular works. Treatises and topographical descriptions of HELL, PURGATORY, and even HEAVEN, were once the favourite researches among certain zealous defenders of the Romish Church, who exhausted their ink-horns in building up a Hell to their own taste, or for their particular purpose.[60] We have a treatise of Cardinal Bellarmin, a Jesuit, on _Purgatory_; he seems to have the science of a surveyor among all the secret tracks and the formidable divisions of "the bottomless pit."