CANTO III.]
HUDIBRAS.
131
Thy other arguments are all
Supposures hypothetical,
That do but beg; and we may chuse
Either to grant them, or refuse.
Much thou hast said, which I know when,1325
And where thou stol'st from other men;
Whereby 'tis plain thy light and gifts
Are all but plagiary shifts;
And is the same that Ranter said.
Who, arguing with me, broke my head,[1]1330
And tore a handful of my beard:
The self-same cavils then I heard,
When b'ing in hot dispute about
This controversy, we fell out;
And what thou know'st I answer'd then 1335
Will serve to answer thee agen.
Quoth Ralpho, Nothing but th' abuse
Of human learning you produce;
Learning, that cobweb of the brain.
Profane, erroneous, and vain;[2]1340
- ↑ The Ranters were a vile sect, that denied all the doctrines of religion, natural and revealed, and believed sin and vice to be the whole duty of man. They held, says Alexander Ross, that God, Devil, Angels, Heaven, and Hell, were fictions; that Moses, John the Baptist, and Christ, were impostors, and that preaching was but public lying. With one of these the knight had entered into a dispute, and at last came to blows. Whitelocke says that the soldiers in the parliament army were frequently punished for being Ranters.
- ↑ Independents and Anabaptists were great enemies to all human learning, the thought that preaching, and everything else, was to come by inspiration. Dr South says: "Latin unto them was a mortal crime, and Greek looked upon as a sin against the Holy Ghost. All learning was then cried down, so that with them the best preachers were such as could not read, and the ablest divines such as could not write. In all their preachments they so highly pretended to the spirit, that they hardly could spell the letter." We are told in the Mercurius Rusticus, that the tinkers and tailors who governed Chelmsford at the beginning of the Rebellion, asserted "that learning had always been an enemy to the gospel, and that it would be a happy state if there were no universities, and all books were burnt except the Bible." Their enmity to learning is well satirized by Shakspeare, who makes Jack Cade say when he ordered Lord Say's head to be struck off: "I am the besom that must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art. Thou has most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm, in erecting a grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books, but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown
