This page has been validated.
10
HUDIBRAS.
[PART I.
Where Truth in person does appear,[1]
Like words congeal'd in northern air.[2]
He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly.[3]150
In school-divinity as able
As he that hight irrefragable;
A second Thomas, or at once.
To name them all, another Duns:[4]
Profound in all the nominal, 155
And real ways, beyond them all;
And, with as delicate a hand,
Could twist as tough a rope of sand;[5]
And weave tine cobwebs, fit for scull
That's empty when the moon is full;[6] 160
Such as take lodgings in a head
That's to be let unfurnished.
- ↑ Some authors have represented truth as a real thing or person, whereas it is nothing but a right method of putting man's notions or images of things into the same state and order that their originals hold in nature. See Aristotle, Met. lib. 2.
- ↑ In Rabelais, Pantagruel throws upon deck three or four handfuls of frozen words. This notion is humorously elaborated in the Tatler, p. 254, and in Munchausen's Travels.
- ↑ The jest here is in giving a vulgar expression as the translation of the "quid est quid" of our old logicians.
- ↑ These two lines were omitted after the second edition, but restored in 1704. This whole passage is a smart satire upon the old School divines, many of whom were honoured with some extravagant epithet, and as well known by it as by their proper names: thus Alexander Hales was called doctor irrefragable, or invincible; Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, or eagle of divines; Duns Scotus, the great opponent of the doctrine of Aquinas, acquired, by his logical acuteness, the title of the subtle doctor. This last was father of the Reals, and William Ockham of the Nominals. See a full account of these Schoolmen in Tennemann's Manual (Bohn's edit. p. 243 et seq.).
- ↑ A proverbial saying applicable to those who lose their labour by busying themselves in trifles, or attempting things impossible. The couplet stood thus in the first and all succeeding editions till 1704:—The proverb is supposed to be derived from the story of the devil being baulked of a soul for which he had contracted (under the guise of a doctor of the College of Sorbonne), by not being able to make a rope of sand.
For he a rope of sand could twist
As tough as learned Sorbonist. - ↑ That is, subtle questions or foolish conceits, fit for the brain of a lunatic.
