This page has been validated.
CANTO I.]
HUDIBRAS.
11
He could raise scruples dark and nice,
And after solve 'em in a trice;
As if Divinity had catch'd 165
The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd;
Or, like a mountebank, did wound
And stab herself with doubts profound,
Only to show with how small pain
The sores of Faith are cured again; 170
Although by woful proof we find
They always leave a scar behind.
He knew the seat of Paradise,
Could tell in what degree it lies;[1]
And, as he was disposed, could prove it, 175
Below the moon, or else above it:
What Adam dreamt of, when his bride
Came from her closet in his side:
Whether the devil tempted her
By a High-Dutch interpreter:[2] 180
If either of them had a navel;[3]
Who first made music malleable:[4]
- ↑ This is a banter upon the many learned and laborious treatises which have been published on the Site of Paradise; some affirming it to be above the moon, others above the air; some that it is the whole world, others only a part of the north; some thinking that it was nowhere, whilst others supposed it to be God knows where in the West Indies. Rudbeck, a Swede, asserts that Sweden was the real Paradise. The learned Bishop Huet gives a map of Paradise, and says it is situated upon the canal formed by the Tigris and Euphrates, near Aracca. Mahomet assured his followers, that Paradise was seated in heaven, and that Adam was cast out from thence when he transgressed. Humboldt (see Cosmos, Bohn, vol. i. p. 364–5) brings up the rear, with telling us that every nation has a Paradise somewhere on the other side of the mountains.
- ↑ Joh. Goropius Becanus maintained the Teutonic to be the first and most ancient language in the world, and assumed it to have been spoken in Paradise.
- ↑ "Over one of the doors of the King's antechamber at St James's, is a picture of Adam and Eve, painted by Mabuse, which formerly hung in the gallery at Whitehall, thence called the Adam and Eve Gallery. Evelyn, in the preface to his 'Idea of the Perfection of Painting,' mentions this picture, and objects to the absurdity of representing Adam and Eve with navels." See Sir Thomas Walpole Anecdotes of Painting. Browne, in his Vulgar Errors, has a chapter expressly on this subject, and is, no doubt, what the poet is quizzing.
- ↑ This relates to the idea that music was first invented by Pythagoras, on hearing the variations of sound produced by a blacksmith striking his anvil with a hammer—a story which has been frequently ridiculed.
