Hudibras Part 2

115 h That had the, &c.] Demosthenes, who is said to have had a defect in his p.r.o.nunciation, which he cured by using to speak with little stones in his mouth.

120 i Than TYCHO BRAHE, &c.] Tycho Brahe was an eminent Danish mathematician. Quer. in Collier's Dictionary, or elsewhere.

131 k Whatever Sceptick, &c.] Sceptick. Pyrrho was the chief of the Sceptick Philosophers, and was at first, as Apollodorus saith, a painter, then became the hearer of Driso, and at last the disciple of Anaxagoras, whom he followed into India, to see the Gymnosophists. He pretended that men did nothing but by custom; there was neither honesty nor dishonesty, justice nor injustice, good nor evil. He was very solitary, lived to be ninety years old, was highly esteemed in his country, and created chief priest. He lived in the time of Epicurus and Theophrastus, about the 120th Olympiad. His followers were called Phyrrhonians; besides which they were named the Ephecticks and Aph.o.r.eticks, but more generally Scepticks. This sect made their chiefest good to consist in a sedateness of mind, exempt from all pa.s.sions; in regulating their opinions, and moderating their pa.s.sions, which they called Ataxia and Metriopathia; and in suspending their judgment in regard of good and evil, truth or falsehood, which they called Epechi. s.e.xtus Empiricus, who lived in the second century, under the Emperor Antoninus Pius, writ ten books against the mathematicians or astrologers, and three of the Phyrrhonian opinion. The word is derived from the Greek SKEPTESZAI, quod est, considerare, speculare. [To consider or speculate]

143 l He cou'd reduce, &c.] The old philosophers thought to extract notions out of natural things, as chymists do spirits and essences; and, when they had refined them into the nicest subtilties, gave them as insignificant names as those operators do their extractions: But (as Seneca says) the subtiler things are they are but the nearer to nothing. So are all their definitions of things by acts the nearer to nonsense.

147 m Where Truth, &c.] Some authors have mistaken truth for a real thing, when it is nothing but a right method of putting those notions or images of things (in the understanding of man) into the same and order that their originals hold in nature, and therefore Aristotle says Unumquodque sicut habet secundum esse, ita se habet secundum veritatem. Met. L. ii. [As every thing has a secondary essence, therefore it has a secondary truth]

148 n Like words congeal'd, &c.] Some report in Nova Zembla, and Greenland, mens' words are wont to be frozen in the air, and at the thaw may heard.

151 In School-Divinity as able, As o he that Hight, Irrefragable, &c.]

Here again is another alteration of three or lines, as I think, for the worse.

Some specific epithets were added to the t.i.tle of some famous doctors, as Angelicus, Irrefragabilis, Subtilis, [Angelic, Unopposable, Discriminating] &c. Vide Vossi Etymolog.

Baillet Jugemens de Scavans, & Possevin's Apparatus

153 p A Second THOMAS or at once, To name them all, another DUNCE.

Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar, was born in 1224, and studied at Cologne and Paris. He new modelled the school- divinity, and was therefore called the Angelic Doctor, and Eagle of Divines. The most ill.u.s.trious persons of his time were ambitious of his friends.h.i.+p, and put a high value on his merits, so that they offered him bishop.r.i.c.ks, which he refused with as much ardor as others seek after them. He died in the fiftieth year of his age, and was canonized by Pope John XII. We have his works in eighteen volumes, several times printed.

Johannes Dunscotus was a very learned man, who lived about the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century. The English and Scotch strive which of them shall have the honour of his birth. The English say, he was born in Northumberland: the Scots alledge he was born at Duns, in the Mers, the neighbouring county to Northumberland, and hence was called Dunscotus. Moreri, Buchanan, and other Scotch historians, are of this opinion, and for proof cite his epitaph:

Scotia me genuit, Anglia suscepit, Gallia edocuit, Germania tenet.

[Scotland bore me, England reared me, France instructed me, Germany kept me.]

He died at Cologne, Novem. 8. 1308. In the Supplement to Dr.

Cave's Historia Literaria, he is said to be extraordinary learned in physicks, metaphysicks, mathematicks, and astronomy; that his fame was so great when at Oxford, that 30,000 scholars came thither to hear his lectures: that when at Paris, his arguments and authority carried it for the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin; so that they appointed a festival on that account, and would admit us scholars to degrees but such as were of this mind. He was a great opposer of Thomas Aquinas's doctrine; and, for being a very acute logician, was called Doctor Subtilis; [Discriminating (or, literally, Slender) Teacher] which was the reason also, that an old punster always called him the Lathy Doctor.

158 q As tough as, &c.] Sorbon was the first and most considerable college of the university of Paris, founded in time reign of St. Lewis, by Robert Sorbon, which name is sometimes given to the whole University of Paris, which was founded, about the year 741, by Charlemagne, at the persuasion of the learned Alcuinus, who was one of the first professors there; since which time it has been very famous. This college has been rebuilt with an extraordinary magnificence, at the charge of Cardinal Richlieu, and contains lodgings for thirty-six doctors, who are called the Society of Sorbon. Those which are received among them before they have received their doctor's degree are only said to be of the Hospitality of Sorbon. Claud. Hemeraus de Acad. Paris. Spondan in Annal.

173 r he knew, &c.] There is nothing more ridiculous than the various opinions of authors about the seat of Paradise. Sir.

Walter Raleigh has taken a great deal of pains to collect them, in the beginning of his History of the World; where those, who are unsatisfied, may be fully informed.

180 s By a High-Dutch, &c.] Goropius Beca.n.u.s endeavours to prove that High-Dutch was the language that Adam and Eve spoke in Paradise.

181 t If either of &c.] Adam and Eve being made, and not conceived and formed in the womb had no navels as some learned men have supposed, because they had no need of them.

182 u Who first made, &c.] Musick is said to be invented by Pythagoras, who first found out the proportion of notes from the sounds of hammers upon an anvil

232 w Like MAHOMET's &c.) Mahomet had a tame dove, that used to pick seeds out of his ear that it might be thought to whisper and inspire him. His a.s.s was so intimate with him, that the Mahometans believed it carried him to heaven, and stays there with him to bring him back again.

257 x It was Monastick, and did grow In holy Orders by strict Vow.

He made a vow never to cut his beard until the Parliament had subdued the King; of which order of phanatick votaries there were many in those times.

281 y So learned TALIACOTIUS &c.] Taliacotius was an Italian surgeon, that found out a way to repair lost and decayed noses. This Taliacotius was chief surgeon to the Great Duke of Tuscany, and wrote a treatise, De Curtis Membris, [Of Cut-off Parts] which he dedicates to his great master wherein he not only declares the models of his wonderful operations in restoring of lost members, but gives you cuts of the very instruments and ligatures he made use of therein; from hence our Author (c.u.m poetica licentia [with poetic licence]) has taken his simile.

289 z For as AENEAS, &c.] AEneas was the son of Anchises and Venus; a Trojan, who, after long travels, came to Italy, and after the death of his father-in-law, Latinus, was made king of Latium, and reigned three years. His story is too long to insert here, and therefore I refer you to Virgil's AEneids. Troy being laid in ashes, he took his aged father Anchises upon his back, and rescued him from his enemies. But being too solicitous for his son and household G.o.ds, he lost his wife Creusa; which Mr.

Dryden, in his excellent translation, thus expresseth.

Haste my dear father (tis no time to wait,) And load my shoulders with a willing freight.