No, no; he views with studious pleasure
Your shape, before he takes your measure.
For real Kate he made the bodice,
And not for an ideal goddess.
No error near his shopboard lurked:
He knew the folks for whom he worked;
Still to their size he aimed his skill:
Else, pr'ythee, who would pay his bill?
Next, Dick, if chance herself should vary,
Observe, how matters would miscarry;
Across your eyes, friend, place your shoes;
Your spectacles upon your toes;
Then you and Memmius shall agree,
How nicely men would walk, or see.
But wisdom, peevish and cross-grained,
Must be opposed, to be sustained;
And still your knowledge will increase,
As you make other people's less.
In arms and science 'tis the same;
Our rival's hurts create our fame.
At Faubert's, if disputes arise
Among the champions for the prize,
Το prove who gave the fairer butt,
John shows the chalk on Robert's coat.
So, for the honour of your book,
It tells where other folks mistook;
And, as their notions
you confound,
Those you invent get farther ground.
The commentators on old Ari-
stotle ('tis urged) in judgment vary;
They to their own conceits have brought
The image of his general thought;
Just as the melancholic eye
Sees fleets and armies in the sky,
And to the poor apprentice ear
The bells sound, Whittington lord mayor.'
The conjuror thus explains his scheme;
Thus spirits walk, and prophets dream;
North Britons thus have second-sight;
And Germans, free from gun-shot, fight.
Theodoret and Origen,
And fifty other learned men,
Attest, that, if their comments find
The traces of their master's mind,
Alma can ne'er decay nor die;
This flatly t'other sect deny:
Simplicius, Theophrast, Durand,
Great names, but hard in verse to stand.
They wonder men should have mistook
The tenets of their master's book;
And hold, that Alma yields her breath,
O'ercome by age, and seized by death.
Now which were wise, and which were fools?
Poor Alma sits between two stools:
The more she reads, the more perplexed;
The comment ruining the text.
Now fears, now hopes, her doubtful fate:
But, Richard, let her look to that—
Whilst we our own affairs pursue.
These different systems, old or new,
A man with half an eye may see,
Were only formed to disagree.
Now, to bring things to fair conclusion,
And save much Christian ink's effusion,
Let me propose a healing scheme,
And sail along the middle stream:
For, Dick, if we could reconcile
Old Aristotle with Gassendus,
How many would admire our toil,
And yet how few would comprehend us!
Here, Richard, let my scheme commence;
Oh! may my words be lost in sense!
While pleased Thalia deigns to write
The slips and bounds of Alma's flight.
My simple system shall suppose,
That Alma enters at the toes;
That then she mounts by just degrees
Up to the ankles, legs, and knees;
Next, as the sap of life does rise,
She lends her vigour to the thighs;
And, all these under-regions past,
She nestles somewhere near the waist;
Gives pain or pleasure, grief or laughter;
As we shall show at large hereafter,
Matured, if not improved by time,
Up to the heart she loves to climb;
From thence, compelled by craft and age,
She makes the head her latest stage.
From the feet upward to the head,
Pithy and short, says Dick, proceed.
Dick, this is not an idle notion,
Observe the progress of the motion.
First, I demonstratively prove
That feet were only made to move;
And legs desire to come and go,
For they have nothing else to do.
Hence, long before the child can crawl,
He learns to kick, and wince, and sprawl:
To hinder which, your midwife knows
To bind those parts extremely close;
Lest Alma, newly entered in,
And stunned at her own christening's din,
Fearful of future grief and pain,
Should silently sneak out again.
Full piteous seems young Alma's case;
As in a luckless gamester's place,
She would not play, yet must not pass.
Again, as she grows something stronger,
And master's feet are swathed no longer,
If in the night too oft he kicks,
Or shows his locomotive tricks;
These first assaults fat Kate repays him;
When half-asleep, she overlays him.
Now mark, dear Richard, from the age
That children tread this worldly stage,
Broom-staff or poker they bestride,
And round the parlour love to ride;
Till thoughtful father's pious care
Provides his brood, next Smithfield fair,
With supplemental hobby-horses;
And happy be their infant courses!
Hence for some years they ne'er stand
Their legs, you see, direct their will;
From opening morn till setting sun,
Around the fields and woods they run;
They frisk, and dance, and leap, and play,
Nor heed what Friend or Snape can say.
To her next stage as Alma flies,
And likes, as I have said, the thighs,
With sympathetic power she warms
Their good allies and friends, the arms.
While Betty dances on the green;
And Susan is at stool-ball seen;
While John for nine-pins does declare;
And Roger loves to pitch the bar;
Both legs and arms spontaneous move;
Which was the thing I meant to prove.
Another motion now she makes:
O need I name the seat she takes!
His thought quite changed the stripling finds; The sport and race no more he minds; Neglected Tray and Pointer lie;
And covies unmolested fly.
Sudden the jocund plain he leaves,
And for the nymph in secret grieves.
In dying accents he complains
Of cruel fires, and raging pains.
The nymph too longs to be alone,
Leaves all the swains, and sighs for one.
The nymph is warmed with young desire,
And feels, and dies to quench his fire.
They meet each evening in the grove;
Their parley but augments their love:
So to the priest their case they tell,
He ties the knot, and all goes well.
But, O my Muse, just distance keep;
Thou art a maid, and must not peep.
In nine months time, the boddice loose,
And petticoats too short, disclose
That at this age the active mind
About the waist lies most confined;
And that young life and quickening sense
Spring from his influence darted thence.
So from the middle of the world
The sun's prolific rays are hurled:
"Tis from that seat he darts those beams,
Which quicken earth with genial flames.
Dick, who thus long had passive sat,
Here stroked his chin, and cocked his hat;
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