Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not; And thou thyself seem'st otherwise inclined Than to a worldly crown; addicted more To contemplation and profound dispute, As by that early action may be judged,
When, slipping from thy mother's eye, thou went'st Alone into the temple, there wast found Among the gravest rabbies, disputant
On points and questions fitting Moses' chair, Teaching, not taught. The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day: be famous, then, By wisdom; as thy empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o'er all the world In knowledge, all things in it comprehend. All knowledge is not couch'd in Moses' law, The Pentateuch, or what the prophets wrote; The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach To admiration, led by nature's light, And with the Gentiles much thou must converse, Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean'st. Without their learning, how wilt thou with them, Or they with thee, hold conversation meet? How wilt thou reason with them, how refute Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes ?
Error by his own arms is best evinced.
Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount, Westward, much nearer by south-west, behold, Where on the Ægean shore a city stands, Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil; Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades. See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream: within the walls then view250 The schools of ancient sages; his, who bred Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:
There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various measured verse, Eolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd, Whose poem Phœbus challenged for his own: Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received In brief sententious precepts, while they treat Of fate, and chance, and change in human life, High actions, and high passions best describing: Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne:
To sage philosophy next lend thine ear,
From heaven descended to the low-roof'd house Of Socrates; see there his tenement, Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams, that water'd all the schools Of Academics, old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect Epicurean, and the Stoic severe;
These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home, Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight; These rules will render thee a king complete Within thyself, much more with empire join'd." To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied: "Think not but that I know these things, or think I know them not; not therefore am I short Of knowing what I ought: he, who receives Light from above, from the Fountain of Light, No other doctrine needs, though granted true; But these are false, or little else but dreams, Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm. The first and wisest of them all profess'd To know this only, that he nothing knew; The next to fabling fell, and smooth conceits A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense; Others in virtue placed felicity,
But virtue join'd with riches and long life; In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease; The Stoic last, in philosophic pride,
By him call'd virtue; and his virtuous man, Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing, Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer, As fearing God nor man, contemning all Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life, Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can, For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead, Ignorant of themselves, of God much more, And how the world began, and how man fell, Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,
And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves All glory arrogate, to God give none; Rather accuse him under usual names, Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things. Who, therefore, seeks in these True wisdom, finds her not; or, by delusion, Far worse, her false resemblance only meets, An empty cloud. However, many books, Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself, Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge; As children gathering pebbles on the shore. Or, if I would delight my private hours With music or with poem, where so soon, As in our native language, can I find
That solace? All our law and story strew'd
With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscribed, Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon,
That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare That rather Greece from us these arts derived; Ill imitated, while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities, and their own, In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame. Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid As varnish on a harlot's cheek; the rest, Thin sown with aught of profit or delight, Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling, Where God is praised aright and godlike men, The holiest of holies, and his saints
(Such are from God inspired, not such from thee), 350 Unless where moral virtue is express'd
By light of nature, not in all quite lost. Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those The top of eloquence; statists indeed, And lovers of their country, as may seem; But herein to our prophets far beneath, As men divinely taught, and better teaching The solid rules of civil government,
In their majestic, unaffected style,
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so, What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat; These only with our law best form a king.”
So spake the Son of God; but Satan, now Quite at a loss (for all his darts were spent), Thus to our Saviour, with stern brow, replied: "Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts, Kingdom nor empire pleases thee, nor aught By me proposed in life contemplative Or active, tended on by glory or fame,
What dost thou in this world? The wilderness For thee is fittest place: I found thee there,
And thither will return thee; yet remember What I foretel thee, soon thou shalt have cause To wish thou never hadst rejected, thus
Nicely or cautiously, my offer'd aid,
Which would have set thee in short time with ease
On David's throne, or throne of all the world, Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season,
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