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Some fools there are, who prate of love* platonic,
Just like the secret fam'd of tribe masonic ;
A secret of such note, that those who win it,
Find for their pains that there is nothing in it.

L'ENVOY OF THE POET.

Let not mere face and form thy sense subdue,
For, though desire may blind thee for a season,
The mind can only stamp affection true,

By permanently sealing love in reason.

* At length our son of Apollo has let the cat out of the bag, for, if he turns platonic love into ridicule, he doubtless means to aver, that without sexual intercourse, nothing can exist but friendship and esteem, thereby rendering love a gross desire instead of an heavenly emanation, and treating it with as much nonchalance as if he was speaking of eating, drinking, sleeping, &c. &c. yet what is to be said of Heloise, who was to be content with nothing, and “to dream the rest;" surely our poet must allow himself in error, if a lady of such a temperament as we are given to understand she possessed, could be satisfied in this easy manner; though I must confess, that he would confound me, did he ask what damsels of the present period, would think of such a namby pamby system.

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THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS.

Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis, Crowds flock to man my Stultifera Navis.

SECTION XXXVIII.

OF FOOLISH ASTRONOMERS AND STARGAZERS.

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.

HERE'S one, that rears his thoughts on high,
And makes a ledger of the sky;

That he may read the planet's motions;
Deducing thence strange whims and notions;
Demonstrating at once with ease,

The moon's not made of Cheshire cheese.*

Or now he shows, from certain reasons,
Th' approaching changes of the seasons;

* Fontaine's fable on the effects of star-gazing, is not inapplicable to this section; who makes his Astronomer consider a planet for such a length of time, that, totally unmindful of his situation, he steps into a well, at whose brink he had taken his station. And the satirist Butler, no less exposes the folly of these pretended Savans, when he causes the acute Sidrophel to mistake a lanthorn at a kite's tail, for some newly discovered comet.

How weather will become precarious,
When Sol shall enter in Aquarius;
Or genial heat produce before us,*
The budding flow'rs when he's in Taurus.

Then will he calculate, and from it

Tell ye, when next shall come a comet;
With tail more fine than coachmen's whips,
Or else will speak of Sol's eclipse;

All this he makes a common trade of,

Yet knows not what the comet's made of.

*Nothing can better expose the ridiculous folly of pretending to understand by the stars, the events which are te happen to mankind, than the following inimitable lines. There's but the twinkling of a star, Between a man of peace and war; A thief and justice, fool and knave, A huffing officer and slave, A crafty lawyer and pickpocket, A great philosopher and a blockhead, A formal preacher and a player, A learn'd physician and manslayer; As if men from the stars did suck,

Old age, diseases, and ill-luck;

Wit, folly, honour, virtue, vice,

Trade, travel, women, cl—ps and dice;
And draw with the first air they breathe,
Battel and murther, sudden death.

Of wind he'll speak, yet can't disclose,
From whence it comes, or where it goes;
To regions unexplor'd he'll guide us,
Finding at length a Georgium Sidus;
And having other worlds made known,
Dies, knowing nothing of his own.*

What though tow'rd Sol the glass you bend,
His nature you can't comprehend ;†
Or, if you did, what would accrue,
I pr'ythee, friend, to me or you;
Why, both must die, and leave behind,
What serves nor us, nor humankind.

* The great Newton, after all his researches into the regions of heaven, wrote a treatise on the Revelations; and the philosophic Boyle, whose mind soared shove all vulgar prejudices, nevertheless quitted the tract he had so long pursued, in order to pen his Meditations, which were afterwards so ably satirized by Dean Swift, who inscribed his production" Meditations on a Broom Stick." But what avails, let me ask, all this boasted research? Socrates, with his intense study, affirmed, that all he knew was, that he knew nothing; while Pyrrho, the founder of scepticism, alleged that he knew nothing, not even this, that he knew nothing; so much for the subtilization of the schools, and the refinement on philosophy.

This is most assuredly what may be termed a dead hit on the part of our poet, who hath, in the above line, struck

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