250
HUDIBRAS.
[PART II.
Which others say must needs be false,
Because your true bears have no tails.[1] 900
Some say, the zodiac constellations[2]
Have long since chang'd their antique stations[3]
Above a sign, and prove the same
In Taurus now, once in the Ram;
Affirm'd the Trigons chopp'd and chang'd, 905
The wat'ry with the fiery rang'd;[4]
Then how can their effects still hold
To be the same they were of old?
This, though the art were true, would make
Our modern soothsayers mistake,[5] 910
And is one cause they tell more lies,
In figures and nativities,
Than th' old Chaldean conjurers,
In so many hundred thousand years;[6]
Beside their nonsense in translating, 915
For want of accidence and Latin;
- ↑ This was a vulgar error, originating in the shortness of the bear's tail.
- ↑ In the editions of 1664, this and the following lines stand thus:
Some say the stars i' th' zodiac
Are more than a whole sign gone back
Since Ptolemy; and prove the same
In Taurus now, then in the Ram.
The alteration was made in the edition of 1674. - ↑ The Knight, still further to lessen the credit of astrology, observes that the stars have suffered a considerable variation of their longitude, by the precession of the equinoxes; for instance, the first star of Aries, which in the time of Meton the Atheniau was found in the very intersection of the ecliptic and equator, is now removed eastward more than thirty degrees, so that the sign Aries possesses the place of Taurus, Taurus that of Gemini, and so on.
- ↑ The twelve signs are in astrology divided into four trigons, each named after one of the four elements: accordingly there are three fiery, three airy, three watery, and three earthly.
Fiery—Aries, Leo, Sagittarius.
Earthly—Taurus, Virgo, Capricornus.
Airy—Gemini, Libra, Aquarius.
Watery—Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. - ↑ See Dr Bentley's Boyle Lectures. Sermon iii.
- ↑ The Chaldeans, as Cicero remarks, pretended to have been in possession of astrological knowledge for the space of 47,000 years.
