A trade of knowledge as replete,
As others are with fraud and cheat;
An art t' incumber gifts and wit,
And render both for nothing fit;
Makes light unactive, dull and troubled,1345
Like little David in Saul's doublet:[1]
A cheat that scholars put upon
Other men's reason and their own;
A fort of error to ensconce
Absurdity and ignorance,1350
That renders all the avenues
To truth impervious, and abstruse,
By making plain things, in debate,
By art perplex'd, and intricate:
For nothing goes for sense or light 1355
That will not with old rules jump right,
As if rules were not in the schools
Deriv'd from truth, but truth from rules.[2]
This pagan, heathenish invention
Is good for nothing but contention.1360
For as in sword-and-buckler fight.
All blows do on the target light;
So when men argue, the greatest part
O' th' contest falls on terms of art.
Until the fustian stuff be spent,1365
And then they fall to th' argument.
Quoth Hudibras, Friend Ralph, thou hast
Out-run the constable at last;
For thou art fallen on a new
Dispute, as senseless as untrue,1370
But to the former opposite,
And contrary as black to white;
- ↑ See 1 Samuel xvii. 38.
- ↑ Bishop Warburton, in a note on these lines, says: "This observation is just, the logicians have run into strange absurdities of this kind: Peter Ramus, the best of them, in his Logic, rejects a very just argument of Cicero's as sophistical, because it did not jump right with his rules."
and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face, that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb; and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear." Henry VI. Part II. Act iv. sc. 7.
