And tho' it be a two-foot trout,
'Tis with a single hair pull'd out.[1]
Others believe no voice t' an organ15
So sweet as lawyer's in his bar-gown,[2]
Until, with subtle cobweb-cheats,
They're catch'd in knotted law, like nets;
In which, when once they are imbrangled,
The more they stir, the more they're tangled;20
And while their purses can dispute.
There's no end of th' immortal suit.
Others still gape t' anticipate
The cabinet designs of fate,
Apply to wizards, to foresee[3]25
What shall, and what shall never be;[4]
And as those vultures do forbode,[5]
Believe events prove bad or good.
A flam more senseless than the roguery
Of old aruspicy and aug'ry,[6]30
That out of garbages of cattle
Presag'd th' events of truce or battle;
From flight of birds, or chickens pecking,
Success of great'st attempts would reckon:
- ↑ That is, though a man of discernment, and one as unlikely to be caught by a medicine and a receipt, as a trout two feet long to be pulled out by a single hair.
- ↑ In the hope of success many are led into law-suits, from which they are not able to extricate themselves till they are quite ruined. See Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxx. cap. 4, where the evil practices of lawyers in the Roman Empire are described, in terms not unsuitable to modern times.
- ↑ Var. Run after wizards; in editions of 1664.
- ↑ Thus Horace, in his fifth Satire, Book ii. v. 59:
O son of great Laertes, everything
Shall come to pass, or never, as I sing;
For Phœbus, monarch of the tuneful Nine,
Informs my soul, and gives me to divine. - ↑ Alluding to the opinion that vultures repair beforehand to the place where battles will be fought. Vultures being birds of prey, the word is here used in a double sense.
- ↑ Aruspicy was divination by sacrifice; by the behaviour of the beast before it was slain, by the appearance of its entrails, or of the flames while it was burning. Augury was divination from appearances in the heavens, thunder, lightning, &c., also from birds, their flight, chattering, manner of feeding, &c. Cato used to say, somewhat shrewdly, that he marvelled how an augur could keep his countenance when he met a brother of the College.
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