Has no such power, ergo 'tis none;
And so thy sophistry's o'erthrown.1290
But yet we are beside the question
Which thou didst raise the first contest on:
For that was, Whether bears are better
Than synod-men? I say, Negatur.
That bears are beasts, and synods men,1295
Is held by all: they're better then,
For bears and dogs on four legs go,
As beasts; but synod-men on two.
'Tis true, they all have teeth and nails;
But prove that synod-men have tails:1300
Or that a rugged, shaggy fur
Grows o'er the hide of presbyter;
Or that his snout and spacious ears
Do hold proportion with a bear's.
A bear's a savage beast, of all 1305
Most ugly and unnatural,
Whelp'd without form, until the dam
Has lickt it into shape and frame:[1]
But all thy light can ne'er evict,
That ever synod-man was lickt, 1310
Or brought to any other fashion
Than his own will and inclination.
But thou dost further yet in this
Oppugn thyself and sense; that is,
Thou would'st have presbyters to go 1315
For bears and dogs, and bearwards too;
A strange chimæra[2] of beasts and men,
Made up of pieces het'rogene;
Such as in nature never met,
In codem subjecto yet. 1320
- ↑ It was in Butler's time, and long afterwards, a popular notion that the
cubs of the bear were mere "lumps of flesh," until fashioned by the tongue
of their dam. See Ovid's Metam. XV.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 36 (Bohn's Edit. vii. ii. p.305.). It is alluded to in Pope's Dunciad, i. 99, 100;
So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care,
Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear. - ↑ Alluding to the fable of Chimæra in Ovid's Metamorphoses, book IX.:
———and where Chimæra raves
On craggy rocks, with lion's face and mane,
A goat's rough body, and a serpent's train.
Described also by Homer, Iliad, vi. 180.
