touch them on:
And when with hasty noise he spoke 'em,
The ignorant for current took 'em,
That had the orator who once
Did fill his mouth with pebble-stones
When he harangu'd but known his phrase,
He would have us'd no other ways.
In mathematics he was greater
Then Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve by sines and tangents, straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock does strike by algebra.
Beside, he was a shrewd philosopher,
And had read ev'ry text and gloss over;
Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath,
He understood b' implicit faith:
Whatever sceptic could inquire for,
For every _why_ he had a _wherefore_,
Knew more than forty of them do,
As far as words and terms could go.
All which he understood by rote,
And as occasion serv'd, would quote:
No matter whether right or wrong,
They must be either said or sung.
His notions fitted things so well,
That which was which he could not tell;
But oftentimes mistook the one
For th' other, as great clerks have done.
He cou'd reduce all things to acts,
And knew their natures by abstracts;
Where entity and quiddity,
The ghosts of defunct bodies, fly;
Where Truth in persons does appear,
Like words congeal'd in northern air.
He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly.
In school divinity as able,
As he that hight, Irrefragable;
A second Thomas, or at once
To name them all, another Duns:
Profound in all the Nominal
And Real ways beyond them all;
For he a rope of sand could twist
As tough as learned Sorbonist:
And weave fine cobwebs, fit for scull;
That's empty when the moon is full:
Such as lodgings in a head
That's to be let unfurnished.
He could raise scruples dark and nice,
And after solve 'em in a trice,
As if divinity had catch'd
The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd;
Or, like a mountebank, did wound
And stab herself with doubts profound,
Only to show with how small pain
The sores of faith are cur'd again;
Although by woful proof we find,
They always leave a scar behind.
He knew the seat of paradise,
Cou'd tell in what degree it lies;
And, as he was dispos'd could prove it,
Below the moon, or else above it.
What Adam dream'd of when his bride
Came from her closet in his side;
Whether the d