Imagination and our appetite
Forming our speech no easier than they light
All letterless companions; t' all they know
Here or hereafter that like earth's sons plough
All under-worlds and ever downwards grow,
Nor let your learning think, egregious Ben,
These letterless companions are not men
With all the arts and sciences indued,
If of man's true and worthiest knowledge rude,
Which is to know and be one complete man,
And that not all the swelling ocean
Of arts and sciences, can pour both in:
If that brave skill then when thou didst begin
To study letters, thy great wit had plied,
Freely and only thy disease of pride
In vulgar praise had never bound thy [hide].
JOHN DONNE.
(1573-1631.)
XI. THE CHARACTER OF THE BORE.
From Donne's _Satires_, No. IV.; first published in the quarto
edition of the "Poems" in 1633. See Dr. Grosart's interesting Essay
on the Life and Writings of Donne, prefixed to Vol. II. of that
scholar's excellent edition.
Well; I may now receive and die. My sin
Indeed is great, but yet I have been in
A purgatory, such as fear'd hell is
A recreation, and scant map of this.
My mind neither with pride's itch, nor yet hath been
Poison'd with love to see or to be seen.
I had no suit there, nor new suit to shew,
Yet went to court: but as Glare, which did go
To mass in jest, catch'd, was fain to disburse
The hundred marks, which is the statute's curse,
Before he 'scap'd; so't pleas'd my Destiny
(Guilty of my sin of going) to think me
As prone to all ill, and of good as forget-
Ful, as proud, lustful, and as much in debt,
As vain, as witless, and as false as they
Which dwell in court, for once going that way,
Therefore I suffer'd this: Towards me did run
A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun
E'er bred, or all which into Noah's ark came;
A thing which would have pos'd Adam to name:
Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies,
Than Afric's monsters, Guiana's rarities;
Stranger than strangers; one who for a Dane
In the Danes' massacre had sure been slain,
If he had liv'd then, and without help dies
When next the 'prentices 'gainst strangers rise;
One whom the watch at noon lets scarce go by;
One t' whom th' examining justice sure would cry,
Sir, by your priesthood, tell me what you are.
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