Burnet and Heylin, Hobbes and Locke:
He pays due visits after noon

To cousin Alice and uncle John ;
At ten from coffee-house or play
Returning, finishes the day.

But, give him port and potent sack,
From milksop he starts up mohack;
Holds that the happy know no hours;
So through the street at midnight scours,
Breaks watchmen's heads, and chairmen's
glasses,

And thence proceeds to nicking sashes;

Till, by some tougher hand o'ercome,
And first knock'd down, and then led home,
He damns the footman, strikes the maid,
And decently reels up to bed.

Observe the various operations

Of food and drink in several nations.
Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel
Upon the strength of water-gruel?
But who shall stand his rage and force,
If first he rides, then eats his horse?
Salads, and eggs, and lighter fare,
Tune the Italian spark's guitar.
And, if I take Dan Congreve right,
Pudding and beef make Britons fight.
Tokay and coffee cause this work
Between the German and the Turk;
And both, as they provisions want,
Chicane avoid, retire and faint.

Hunger and thirst, or guns and swords,
Give the same death in different words.
To push this argument no further;
To starve a man, in law is murther
As in a watch's fine machine,
Though many artful springs are seen;
The added movements, which declare
How full the moon, how old the year,
Derive their secondary power

From that which simply points the hour.
For, though those gimcracks were away,
(Quare would not swear, but Quare would say)
However more reduc'd and plain,

The watch would still a watch remain :

But, if the horal orbit ceases,

The whole stands still, or breaks to pieces;

Is now no longer what it was,

And you may e'en go sell the case.

So, if unprejudic'd you scan

The goings of this clock-work, man,

You find a hundred movements made

By fine devices in his head;

But 'tis the stomach's solid stroke
That tells his being, what's o'clock.

If

you take off this rhetoric trigger,
He talks no more in mode and figure:
Or, clog his mathematic wheel,
His buildings fall, his ship stands still;
Or, lastly, break his politic-weight,
His voice no longer rules the state.

Yet, if these finer whims were gone,

Your clock, though plain, would still go on,
But spoil the engine of digestion,

And you entirely change the question.
Alma's affairs no power can mend ;
The jest, alas! is at an end:
Soon ceases all this worldly bustle,
And

you consign the corpse to Russel.1
Now make your Alma come or go
From leg to hand, from top to toe,
Your system, without my addition,
Is in a very sad condition.
So Harlequin extoll'd his horse,
Fit for the war, or road, or course;
His mouth was soft; his eye was good;

His foot was sure as ever trod :

One fault he had (a fault indeed!)
And what was that? the horse was dead.
Dick, from these instances and fetches,
Thou mak'st of horses, clocks, and watches,
Quoth Mat, to me thou seem'st to mean,
That Alma is a mere machine :

That, telling others what's o'clock,

She knows not what herself has struck;
But leaves to standers-by the trial

Of what is mark'd upon her dial.

Here hold a blow, good friend, quoth Dick, And rais'd his voice exceeding quick.

1 A celebrated undertaker of funerals. He is mentioned by Dr. Garth in the Dispensary, canto III.

Fight fair, Sir: what I never meant
Don't you infer. In argument

Similes are like songs in love:

They must describe; they nothing prove. Mat, who was here a little gravell❜d,

Tost up his nose,

and would have cavill'd;

But, calling Hermes to his aid,

Half pleas'd, half angry, thus he said :
(Where mind ('tis for the author's fame)
That Matthew call'd, and Hermes came.
In danger heroes, and in doubt
Poets find gods to help them out.)
Friend Richard, I begin to see,
That you and I shall scarce agree.
Observe how oddly you behave:
The more I grant, the more you crave.
But, comrade, as I said just now,

I should affirm, and you allow.
We system-makers can sustain

The thesis, which you grant was plain;
And with remarks and comments tease ye,
In case the thing before was easy.
But, in a point obscure and dark,
We fight as Leibnitz did with Clarke;
And, when no reason we can show,
Why matters this or that way go,
The shortest way the thing we try,
And what we know not, we deny ;
True to our own o'erbearing pride,
And false to all the world beside.

That old philosopher grew cross,
Who could not tell what motion was:
Because he walk'd against his will,
He fac❜d men down, that he stood still.
And he who, reading on the heart
(When all his quodlibets of art

Could not expound its pulse and heat)
Swore, he had never felt it beat.
Chrysippus, foil'd by Epicurus,

Makes bold (Jove bless him!) to assure us,
That all things, which our mind can view,
May be at once both false and true.
And Malebranche has an odd conceit,
As ever enter'd Frenchman's pate:
Says he, so little can our mind
Of matter or of spirit find,

That we by guess at least may gather
Something, which may be both, or neither.
Faith, Dick, I must confess, 'tis true
(But this is only entre nous)

That many knotty points there are,
Which all discuss, but few can clear.
As nature slily had thought fit,
For some by-ends to cross-bite wit;
Circles to square, and cubes to double,
Would give a man excessive trouble;
The longitude uncertain roams,
In spite of Whiston and his bombs.
What system, Dick, has right averr'd
The cause why woman has no beard?
Or why, as years our frame attack,