The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2Pope, Alexander
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The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2
Pope, Alexander
English poetry -- 18th century
Prompt at the call, around the goddess roll
Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal: 190
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.
Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day,
Though Christ-church long kept prudishly away.
Each stanch polemic, stubborn as a rock,
Each fierce logician, still expelling Locke,[396]
Came whip and spur, and dash'd through thin and thick
On German Crousaz,[397] and Dutch Burgersdyck.
As many quit the streams[398] that murmuring fall
To lull the sons of Margaret and Clare-hall, 200
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in port.[399]
Before them march'd that awful Aristarch!
Plough'd was his front with many a deep remark:
His hat, which never vail'd to human pride,
Walker with reverence took, and laid aside.
Low bow'd the rest: he, kingly, did but nod;
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
'Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
Avaunt! is Aristarchus yet unknown? 210
Thy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains.
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain,
Critics like me shall make it prose again.
Roman and Greek grammarians! know your better,
Author of something yet more great than letter;[400]
While towering o'er your alphabet, like Saul,
Stands our digamma,[401] and o'ertops them all.
''Tis true, on words is still our whole debate,
Disputes of _me_ or _te_, of _aut_ or _at_, 220
To sound or sink in _cano_, O or A,
Or give up Cicero[402] to C or K.
Let Freind[403] affect to speak as Terence spoke,
And Alsop never but like Horace joke:
For me, what Virgil, Pliny, may deny,
Manilius or Solinus[404] shall supply:
For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas[405] for unlicensed Greek.
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,
Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal; 230
What Gellius or Stobaeus hash'd before,
Or chew'd by blind old scholiasts o'er and o'er,
The critic eye, that microscope of wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit:
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,
The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see,
When Man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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