248
HUDIBRAS.
[PART II.
And yet they're far from satisfactory,
T' establish and keep up your factory.
Th' Egyptians say, the sun has twice[1] 865
Shifted his setting and his rise ;
Twice has he risen in the west,
As many times set in the east ;
But whether that be true or no,
The devil any of you know. 870
Some hold, the heavens, like a top,
Are kept by circulation up,[2]
And were't not for their wheeling round.
They'd instantly fall to the ground :
As sage Empedocles of old,[3] 875
And from him modern authors hold.
Plato believ'd the sun and moon
Below all other planets run.[4]
Some Mercury, some Venus seat
Above the sun himself in height. 880
- ↑ The Egyptian priests informed Herodotus that, in the space of 11,340 years, the sun had four times risen and set out of its usual course, rising twice where it now sets, and setting twice where it now rises. See Herodotus (Bohn's transl. p. 152). Spenser alludes to this supposed miracle in his Fairy Queen, book v. c. 1, stanza 6, et seq. Such a phenomenon might have been observed by some who had ventured beyond the equator, to the south, exploring the continent of Africa; for there, to any one standing with his face to the sun at noon, it would appear that the sun had risen on his right hand, and was about to set on his left.
- ↑ It is mentioned as one of the opinions of Anaxagoras, that the heaven was composed of stone, and was kept up by violent circumrotation, but would fall when the rapidity of that motion should be remitted. Some do Anaxagoras the honour to suppose, that this conceit of his, gave the first hint towards the modern theory of the planetary motions.
- ↑ Empedocles was a philosopher of Agrigentum, in Sicily, of the 5th cent. b. c. He was equally famous for his knowledge of natural history and medicine, and as a poet and a statesman; and it is generally related that he threw himself into Mount Etna, so that by suddenly disappearing he might establish his claim to divinity, but Diogenes Laertius gives a more rational account of his death. He maintained the motions of the sun and the planets; but held that the stars were composed of fire, and fixed in a crystal sphere, and that the sun was a body of fire. Some of these opinions are embodied in Shakspeare's familiar lines:
"Doubt that the stars are fire
Doubt that the sun doth move," &c. - ↑ The Knight further argues, that there can be no foundation for truth in astrology, since the learned differ so much about the planets themselves, from which astrologers chiefly drew their predictions.
