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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=457093" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos. - Canto I.</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Matthew met Richard, when or where<br>From story is not mighty clear:<br>Of many knotty points they spoke,<br>And pro and con by turns they took:<br>Rats half the manuscript have ate;<br>Dire hunger! which we still regret;<br>O! may they ne'er again digest<br>The horrors of so sad a feast;<br>Yet less our grief, if what remains,<br>Dear Jacob, by thy care and pains<br>Shall be to future times convey'd:<br>It thus begins:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">** Here Matthew said,<br>Alma in verse, in prose, the mind,<br>By Aristotle's pen defined,<br>Throughout the body squat or tall,<br>Is <br>bona fide<br>, all in all;<br>And yet, slapdash, is all again<br>In every sinew, nerve, and vein;<br>Runs here and there, like Hamlet's ghost,<br>While every where she rules the roast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This system, Richard, we are told<br>The men of Oxford firmly hold:<br>The Cambridge wits, you know, deny<br>With <br>ispe dixit<br>to comply: <br>They say (for in good truth they speak<br>With small respect of that old Greek)<br>That, putting all his words together,<br>'Tis three blue beans in one blue bladder.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Alma, they strenuously maintain, <br>Sits cock-horse on her throne, the brain,<br>And from that seat of thought dispenses,<br>Her sovereign pleasure to the senses.<br>Two optic nerves, they say, she ties,<br>Like spectacle across the eyes,<br>By which the spirits bring her word<br>Whene'er the balls are fix'd or stirr'd;<br>How quick at Park and play they strike;<br>The duke they court; the toast they like;<br>And at St. James's turn their grace<br>From former friends, now out of place.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Without these aids, to be more serious,<br>Her power they hold had been precarious;<br>The eyes might have conspired her ruin,<br>And she not known what they were doing.<br>Foolish it had been and unkind<br>That they should see and she be blind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wise Nature, likewise, they suppose,<br>Has drawn two conduits down our nose:<br>Could Alma else with judgement tell<br>When cabbage stinks or roses smell?<br>Or who would ask for her opinion<br>Between an oyster and an onion?<br>For from most bodies, Dick, you know,<br>Some little bits ask leave to flow,<br>And as through these canals they roll,<br>Bring up a sample of the whole;<br>Like footmen running before coaches,<br>To tell the inn what lord approaches.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By nerves about our palate placed,<br>She likewise judges of the taste;<br>Else (dismal thought!) our warlike men<br>Might drink thick Port for fine Champaign,<br>And our ill-judging wives and daughters, <br>Mistake small-beer for citron-waters.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hence, too, that she might better hear,<br>She sets a drum at either ear,<br>And loud or gentle, harsh or sweet,<br>Are but the alarums which they beat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Last, to enjoy her sense of feeling,<br>(A thing she much delights to deal in)<br>A thousand little nerves she sends<br>Quite to our toes and fingers' ends,<br>And these, in gratitude, again<br>Return their spirits to the brain,<br>In which their figure being printed,<br>(As just before I think I hinted)<br>Alma inform'd can try the case,<br>As she had been upon the place.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus while the judge gives different journeys<br>To country counsel and attorneys,<br>He on the bench in quiet sits,<br>Deciding as they bring the writs.<br>The Pope thus prays and sleeps at Rome,<br>And very seldom stirs from home, <br>Yet sending forth his holy spies,<br>And having heard what they advise,<br>He rules the church's bless'd dominions,<br>And sets men's faith by his opinions.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The scholars of the Stagyrite,<br>Who for the old opinion fight,<br>Would make their modern friends confess<br>The difference but from more or less:<br>The Mind, say they, while you sustain<br>To hold her station in the brain,<br>You grant, at least, she is extended,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ergo<br>, the whole dispute is ended:<br>For till to-morrow should you plead,<br>From form and structure of the head,<br>The Mind as visibly is seen<br>Extended through the whole machine.<br>Why should all honour then be ta'en<br>From lower parts to load the brain,<br>When other limbs we plainly see<br>Each in his way as brisk as he?<br>For music, grant the head receives it,<br>It is the artist's hand that gives it:<br>And though the skull may wear the laurel,<br>The soldier's arm sustains the quarrel.<br>Besides, the nostrils, ears, and eyes,<br>Are not his parts, but his allies:<br>E'en what you here the tongue proclaim,<br>Comes <br>ab origine<br>from them.<br>What could the head perform alone<br>If all their friendly aids were gone?<br>A foolish figure we must make, <br>Do nothing else but sleep and ake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor matters it that you can show<br>How to the head the spirits go;<br>Those spirits started from some goal<br>Before they through the veins could roll;<br>Nor we should hold them much to blame<br>If they went back before they came.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If, therefore, as we must suppose,<br>They came from fingers and from toes,<br>Or toes or fingers, in this case,<br>Of numskull's self should take the place;<br>Disputing fair you grant this much,<br>That all sensation is but touch.<br>Dip but your toes into cold water,<br>Their correspondent teeth will chatter;<br>And strike the bottom of your feet,<br>You set your head into a heat.<br>The bully beat, and happy lover,<br>Confess that feeling lies all over.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not here, Lucretius dares to teach<br>(As all our youth may learn from Creech)<br>That eyes were made, but could not view,<br>Nor bands embrace, not feet pursue,<br>But heedless Nature did produce<br>The members first, and then the use:<br>What each must act was yet unknown,<br>Till all is moved by Chance alone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A man first builds a country-seat,<br>Then finds the walls not good to eat.<br>Another plants, and wondering, sees<br>Nor books nor medals on his trees.<br>Yet poet and philosopher<br>Was he who durst such whims aver.<br>Bless'd for his sake be human reason,<br>That came at all, though late, in season.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But no man sure e'er left his house,<br>And saddled Ball, with thoughts so wild<br>To bring a midwife to his spouse<br>Before he knew she was with child:<br>And no man ever reapt his corn,<br>Or from the oven drew his bread,<br>Ere hinds and bakers yet were born,<br>That taught them both to sow and knead.<br>Before they're ask'd can maids refuse?<br>Can - Pray, says Dick, hold in your Muse,<br>While you Pindaric truths rehearse,<br>She hobbles in alternate verse.<br>Verse! Matt. replied; is that my care?<br>Go on, quoth Richard, soft and fair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This looks, friend Dick, as Nature had<br>But exercised the salesman's trade;<br>As if she haply had sat down<br>And cut out clothes for all the Town,<br>Then sent them out to Monmouth street<br>To try what persons they would fit; <br>But every free and licensed tailor<br>Would in this thesis find a failure.<br>Should whims like these his head perplex,<br>How could he work for either sex!<br>His clothes as atoms might prevail,<br>Might fit a pismire or a whale.<br>No, no: he views with studious pleasure<br>Your shape before he takes your measure<br>For real Kate he made the bodice,<br>And not for an ideal goddess.<br>No error near his shopboard lurk'd;<br>He knew the folks for whom he work'd:<br>Still to their size he aim'd his skill,<br>Else pray thee who would pay his bill?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Next, Dick, if Chance herself should vary,<br>Observe how matter would miscarry:<br>Across your eyes, Friend, place your shoes,<br>Your spectacles upon your toes,<br>Then you and Memmius shall agree<br>How nicely men would walk or see.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But wisdom, peevish, and cross-gain'd<br>Must be opposed to be sustain'd;<br>And still your knowledge will increase,<br>As your make other people's less.<br>In arms and science 'tis the same; <br>Our rival's hurts create our fame.<br>At Faubert's, if disputes arise<br>Among the champions for the prize,<br>To prove who gave the fairer butt,<br>John shows the chalk on Robert's coat.<br>So for the honour of your book,<br>It tells where other folks mistook,<br>And as their notions you confound,<br>Those you invent get farther ground.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The commentators on old Ari-<br>Stotle ('tis urged) in judgement vary:<br>They to their own conceits have brought<br>The image of his general thought,<br>Just as the melancholic eye<br>Sees fleets and armies in the sky,<br>And to the poor apprentice ear<br>The bells sound Whittington Lord Mayor.<br>The conjurer thus explains his scheme; <br>Thus spirits walk and prophets dream; <br>North Britons thus have second sight,<br>And Germans free from gunshot fight.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Theodoret and Origen,<br>And fifty other learned men, <br>Attest that if their comments find<br>The traces of their master's mind,<br>Alma can ne'er decay nor die:<br>This flatly th' other sect deny,<br>Simplicius, Theophrast, Durand,<br>Great names, but hard in verse to stand<br>They wonder men should have mistook<br>The tenets of their master's book,<br>And hold that Alma yields her breath,<br>O'ercome by age and seized by death.<br>Now which were wise, and which were fools?<br>Poor Alma sits between two stools;<br>The more she reads the more perplex'd,<br>The comment ruining the text:<br>Now fears, now hopes her doubtful fate.<br>But, Richard, let her look to that - <br>Whilst we our own affairs pursue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">These different systems old or new,<br>A man with half an eye may see<br>Were only form'd to disagree.<br>Now to bring things to fair conclusion,<br>And save much Christian ink's effusion,<br>Let me propose a healing scheme,<br>And sail along the middle stream;<br>For, Dick, if we could reconcile<br>Old Aristotle with Gassendus, <br>How many would admire our toil,<br>And yet how few would comprehend us?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here, Richard, let my scheme commence:<br>Oh! may my words be lost in sense,<br>While pleased Thalia deigns to write<br>The slips and bounds of Alma's flight.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My simple system shall suppose<br>That Alma enters at the toes;<br>That then she mounts, by just degrees,<br>Up to the ancles, legs, and knees:<br>Next as the sap of life does rise,<br>She lends her vigour to the thighs:<br>And, all these under regions past,<br>She nestles somewhere near the waist;<br>Gives pain or pleasure, grief or laughter,<br>As we shall show at large hereafter:<br>Mature, if not improved by time,<br>Up to the heart she loves to climb:<br>From thence, compell'd by craft and age,<br>She makes the head her latest stage.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From the feet upward to the head,<br>Pithy, and short, says Dick, proceed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dick, this is not an idle notion;<br>Observe the progress of the motion:<br>First, I demonstratively prove<br>That feet were only made to move,<br>And legs desire to come and go, <br>For they have nothing else to do.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hence, long before the child can crawl,<br>He learns to kick, and wince, and sprawl,<br>To hinder which, your midwife knows<br>To bind those parts extremely close,<br>Lest Alma, newly enter'd in,<br>And stunn'd at her own christ'ning's din, <br>Fearful of future grief and pain,<br>Should silently sneak out again.<br>Full piteous seems young Alma's case,<br>As in a luckless gamester's place,<br>She would not play, yet must not pass.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Again, as she grows something stronger,<br>And master's feet are swath'd no longer,<br>If in the night too oft he kicks,<br>Or shows his <br>loco<br>-motive tricks,<br>These first assaults fat Kate repays him,<br>When halt-asleep she overlays him.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now mark, dear Richard, from the age<br>That children tread this worldly stage,<br>Broomstaff or poker they bestride,<br>And round the parlour love to ride,<br>Till thoughtful father's pious care<br>Provides his brood, next Smithfield fair,<br>With supplemental hobby-horses,<br>And happy be their infant courses!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hence for some years they ne'er stand still;<br>Their legs you see direct their will;<br>From opening morn till setting sun<br>Around the fields and woods they run,<br>They frisk, and dance, and leap, and play,<br>Nor heed what Friend or Snape can say.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To her next stage as Alma flies,<br>And likes, as I have said, the thighs,<br>With sympathetic power she warms<br>Their good allies and friends the arms;<br>White Betty dances on the green,<br>And Susan is at stoolball seen:<br>While John for ninepins does declare,<br>And Roger loves to pitch the bar,<br>Both legs and arms spontaneous move,<br>Which was the thing I meant to prove.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Another motion now she makes:<br>O need I name the seat she takes?<br>His thought quite changes the stripling finds;<br>The sport and race no more he minds;<br>Neglected Tray and Pointer lie,<br>And covies unmolested fly:<br>Sudden the jocund plain he leaves,<br>And for the nymph in secret grieves:<br>In dying accents he complains<br>Of cruel fires and raging pains.<br>The nymph, too, longs to be alone,<br>Leaves all the swains and sighs for one:<br>The nymph is warm'd with young desire,<br>And feels, and dies to quench his fire.<br>They meet each evening in the grove;<br>Their parley but augments their love:<br>So to the priest their case they tell;<br>He toes the knot, and all goes well.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, O my Muse, just distance keep,<br>Thou art a maid, and must not peep.<br>In nine months time the bodice loose,<br>And petticoats too short, disclose<br>That at this age the active mind<br>About the waist lies most confined,<br>And that young life, and quickening sense<br>Spring from his influence darted thence:<br>So from the middle of the world<br>The sun's prolific rays are hurl'd;<br>'Tis from that seat he darts those beams<br>Which quicken earth with genial flames.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dick, who thus long had passive sat,<br>Here stroked his chin and cock'd his hat,<br>Then slapp'd his hand upon the board,<br>And thus the youth put in his word.<br>Love's advocates, sweet Sir, would find him<br>A higher place than you assign'd him.<br>Love's advocates, Dick, who are those? -<br>The poets, you may well suppose.<br>I'm sorry, Sir, you have discarded <br>The men with whom till now you herded.<br>Prosemen alone, for private ends, <br>I thought forsook their ancient friends,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In cor stillavit,<br>cries Lucretius,<br>If he may be allow'd to teach us. <br>The selfsame thing soft Ovid says,<br>(A proper judge in such a case.)<br>Horace his phrase is <br>torret jecur,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And happy was that curious speaker.<br>Here Virgil too has placed this passion;<br>What signifies too long quotation?<br>In ode and epic plain the case is,<br>That Love holds one of these two places.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dick, without passion or reflection,<br>I'll straight demolish this objection.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">First, poets, all the world agrees,<br>Write half to profit half to please;<br>Matter and figure they produce,<br>For garnish this, and that for use;<br>And, in the structure of their feasts,<br>They seek to feed and please their guests:<br>But one may baulk this good intent,<br>And take things otherwise than meant.<br>Thus, if you dine with my Lord Mayor,<br>Roast beef and venison is your fare,<br>Thence you proceed to swan and bustard,<br>And persevere in tart and custard:<br>But tulip-leaves and lemon-peel<br>Help only to adorn the meal,<br>And painted flags, superb and neat,<br>Proclaim you welcome to the treat.<br>The man of sense his meat devours,<br>But only smells the peel and flowers;<br>And he must be an idle dreamer<br>Who leaves the pie and gnaws the streamer.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That Cupid goes with bow and arrows,<br>And Venus keeps her coach and sparrows,<br>Is all but emblem, to acquaint one<br>The son is sharp, the mother wanton.<br>Such images have sometimes shown<br>A mystic sense, but oftener none;<br>For who conceives what bards devise,<br>That heaven is placed in Celia's eyes?<br>Or where's the sense, direct and moral, <br>That teeth are pearl, or lips are coral?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Your Horace owns he various writ,<br>As wild or sober maggots bit; <br>And where too much the poet ranted,<br>The sage philosopher recanted.<br>His grave Epistles may disprove<br>The wanton Odes he made to love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lucretius keeps a mighty pother<br>With Cupid and his fancied mother;<br>Calls her great Queen of earth and air,<br>Declares that winds and seas obey her.<br>And, while her honour he rehearses,<br>Implores her to inspire his verses.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet, free from this poetic madness,<br>Next page he says, in sober sadness,<br>That she and all her fellow-gods<br>Sit idling in their high abodes,<br>Regardless of this world below,<br>Our health or hanging, weal or wo,<br>Nor once disturb their heavenly spirits<br>With Scapin's cheats, or Caesar's merits.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor e'er can Latin poets prove<br>Where lies the real seat of Love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Jecur<br>they burn, and <br>cor<br>they pierce,<br>As either best supplies their verse;<br>And if folks ask the reason for't,<br>Say one was long the other short.<br>Thus I presume the British Muse<br>In prose our property is greater,<br>Why should it then be less in metre?<br>If Cupid throws a single dart,<br>We make him wound the lover's heart<br>But if he takes his bow and quiver,<br>'Tis sure he must transfix the liver:<br>For rhyme with reason may dispense,<br>And sound has right to govern sense.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But let your friends in verse suppose,<br>What ne'er shall be allow'd in prose,<br>Anatomists can make it clear<br>The liver minds his own affair,<br>Kindly supplies our public uses,<br>And parts and strains the vital juices,<br>Still lays some useful bile aside<br>To tinge the chyle's insipid tide,<br>Else we should want both gibe and satire,<br>And all be burst with pure good-nature:<br>Now gall is bitter with a witness,<br>And love is all delight and sweetness:<br>My logic then has lost its aim<br>If sweet and bitter be the same:<br>And he methinks is no great scholar<br>Who can mistake is desire for choler.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The like may of the heart be said;<br>Courage and terror there are bred.<br>All those whose hearts are loose and low<br>Start if they hear but the tattoo;<br>And mighty physical their fear is,<br>Their heart, descending to their breeches,<br>Must give their stomach cruel twitches:<br>But heroes who o'ercome or die<br>Have their hearts hung extremely high,<br>The string of which, in battle's heat,<br>Against their very corslets beat,<br>Keep time with their own trumpet's measure,<br>And yield them most excessive pleasure.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now, if 'tis chiefly in the heart<br>That courage does itself exert,<br>That this is eke the throne of Love.<br>Would nature make one place the seat<br>Of fond desire and fell debate?<br>Must people only take delight in<br>Those hours when they are tired with fighting?<br>And has no man but who has kill'd<br>A father, right to get a child?<br>These notions, then, I think but idle,<br>And love shall still possess the middle.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This truth more plainly to discover,<br>Suppose your hero were a lover;<br>Though he before had gall and rage,<br>Which death or conquest must assuage,<br>He grows dispirited and low,<br>He hates the fight and shuns the foe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In scornful sloth Achilles slept,<br>And for his wench, like Tallboy, wept,<br>Nor would return to war and slaughter,<br>Till they brought back the parson's daughter.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Antonius fled from Actium's coast,<br>Augustus pressing Asia lost.<br>His sails by Cupid's hand unfurl'd,<br>To keep the fair he gave the world.<br>Edward our Fourth, revered and crown'd, <br>Vigorous in youth, in arms renown'd,<br>While England's voice and Warwick's care<br>Design'd him Gallia's beauteous heir,<br>Changed peace and power for rage and wars,<br>Only to dry one widow's tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">France's Fourth Henry we may see<br>A servant to the fair d'Estree;<br>When quitting Coutras' prosperous field,<br>And Fortune taught at length to yield,<br>He, from his guards and midnight tent,<br>Disguis'd, o'er hills and valleys went, <br>To wanton with the sprightly dame,<br>And in his pleasure lost his fame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bold is the critic who dares prove<br>These heroes were no friends to love;<br>And bolder he who dares aver<br>That they were enemies to war;<br>Yet when their thought should, now or never,<br>Have raise their heart or fired their liver,<br>Fond Alma to those parts was gone <br>Which Love more justly calls his own.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Examples I could cite you more,<br>But he contented with these four;<br>For when one's proofs are aptly chosen,<br>Four are as valid as four dozen.<br>One came from Greece, and one from Rome<br>The other two grew nearer home,<br>For some in ancient books delight, <br>Others prefer what moderns write;<br>Now I should be extremely loath<br>Not to be thought expert in both.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Matthew+Prior">Matthew Prior</a><div class=q>
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From story is not mighty clear:
Of many knotty points they spoke,
And pro and con by turns they took:
Rats half the manuscript have ate;
Dire hunger! which we still regret;
O! may they ne'er again digest
The horr..."></div>
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