On verse 68, canto 1, he continues:--"Here, again, the author resumes the Rosicrucian system. But this tenet, peculiar to that wild philosophy, was founded on a principle very unfit to be employed in such a sort of poem, and, therefore suppressed, though a less judicious writer would have been tempted to expatiate upon it." Swift, in the "Tale of a Tub," says:--"Night being the universal mother of things, wise philosophers hold all writings to be fruitful, in the proportion they are dark; and therefore the true illuminated (that is to say, the darkest of all) have met with such numberless commentators, whose scholastic midwifery has delivered them of meanings, that the authors themselves perhaps never conceived, and yet may very justly be allowed the lawful parents of them; the words of such writers being like seed, which, however scattered, at random, when they light upon a fruitful ground, will multiply far beyond either the hopes or imagination of the sower. And, therefore, in order to promote so useful a work, I will here take leave to glance a few inuendos, that may be of great assistance to those sublime spirits, who shall be appointed to labour in a universal comment upon this wonderful discourse. And, first, I have couched a very profound mystery in the number of O's multiplied by seven and divided by nine. Also, if a devout brother of the rosy cross will pray fervently for sixty-three mornings, with a lively faith, and then transpose certain letters and syllables, according to prescription, in the second and fifth section, they will certainly reveal into a full receipt of the _opus magnum_. Lastly, whoever will be at the pains to calculate the whole number of each letter in this treatise, and sum up the difference exactly between the several numbers, assigning the true natural cause for every such difference, the discoveries in the product will plentifully reward his labour." "For Mystic Learning, wondrous able In magic Talisman and Cabal, Whose primitive tradition reaches As far as Adam's first green breeches; Deep sighted in Intelligences, Ideas, Atoms, Influences; And much of Terra-Incognita, Th' intelligible world, could say; A deep Occult Philosopher, As learned as the wild Irish are, Or Sir Agrippa, for profound And solid lying much renowned. He Anthroposophus and Fludd, And Jacob Behmen understood; Knew many an amulet and charm, That would do neither good nor harm; In Rosy-Crusian lore as learned As he that _vere adeptus_ earned." --HUDIBRAS, Part I, Canto I.