12
THE ELEPHANT
And have no more our best Designs,
Because they're ours, believ'd ill Signs.
T'out-throw, and stretch, and to enlarge
Shall now no more be laid t' our Charge;
205 Nor shall our ablest Virtuosos
Prove Arguments for Coffee-houses;[1]
Nor those Devices, that are laid
Too truly on us, nor those made,
Hereafter gain Belief among
210 Our strictest Judges, right, or wrong;
Nor shall our past Misfortunes more
Be charg'd upon the ancient Score:
No more our making old Dogs young
Make Men suspect us still i' th' Wrong;
215 Nor new-invented Chariots draw
The Boys to course us, without Law;
Nor putting Pigs t' a Bitch to nurse,
To turn 'em into Mungrel-Curs,
Because they're ours, believ'd ill Signs.
T'out-throw, and stretch, and to enlarge
Shall now no more be laid t' our Charge;
205 Nor shall our ablest Virtuosos
Prove Arguments for Coffee-houses;[1]
Nor those Devices, that are laid
Too truly on us, nor those made,
Hereafter gain Belief among
210 Our strictest Judges, right, or wrong;
Nor shall our past Misfortunes more
Be charg'd upon the ancient Score:
No more our making old Dogs young
Make Men suspect us still i' th' Wrong;
215 Nor new-invented Chariots draw
The Boys to course us, without Law;
Nor putting Pigs t' a Bitch to nurse,
To turn 'em into Mungrel-Curs,
- ↑ Nor shall our ablest Virtuosos—Prove Arguments for Coffee-houses.] To the same Thing Butler alludes in his Hudibras, where Sidrophel, defending his Art against the Objectors to it, calls them
Those wholesale Critics, that in Coffee-
Houses, cry down all Philosophy.P. II. C. 3. ver. 109.
And that the Wits of that Age did joke upon the Labours of the Royal Society is clear from Sprat's History of it, in which, after having enumerated the many Advantages arising from their Labours, and among the rest that of improving Wit by furnishing the Imagination with such a Stock of new Images, he adds—"And now I hope that what I have said will prevail something with the Wits and Railleurs of this Age, to reconcile their Opinions and Discourses to these Studies: For now they may behold that their Interest is united with that of the Royal Society; and that if they shall decry the promoting of Experiments, they will deprive them-
selves
