No More Learning

Beyond; a crater in each eye, 100
Sways brown, broad-shouldered PILLSBURY,
Who tears up words like trees by the roots,
A Theseus in stout cow-hide boots,
The wager of eternal war
Against that loathsome Minotaur
To whom we sacrifice each year
The best blood of our Athens here,
(Dear M. , pray brush up your Lempriere. )
A terrible denouncer he,
Old Sinai burns unquenchably 110
Upon his lips; he well might be a
Hot-blazing soul from fierce Judea,
Habakkuk, Ezra, or Hosea.
His words are red hot iron searers,
And nightmare-like he mounts his hearers,
Spurring them like avenging Fate, or
As Waterton his alligator.

Hard by, as calm as summer even,
Smiles the reviled and pelted STEPHEN,
The unappeasable Boanerges 120
To all the Churches and the Clergies,
The grim _savant_ who, to complete
His own peculiar cabinet,
Contrived to label 'mong his kicks
One from the followers of Hicks;
Who studied mineralogy
Not with soft book upon the knee,
But learned the properties of stones
By contact sharp of flesh and bones,
And made the _experimentum crucis_ 130
With his own body's vital juices;
A man with caoutchouc endurance,
A perfect gem for life insurance,
A kind of maddened John the Baptist,
To whom the harshest word comes aptest,
Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred,
Hurls back an epithet as hard,
Which, deadlier than stone or brick,
Has a propensity to stick.
His oratory is like the scream 140
Of the iron-horse's frenzied steam
Which warns the world to leave wide space
For the black engine's swerveless race.
Ye men with neckcloths white, I warn you--
_Habet_ a whole haymow _in cornu_.

A Judith, there, turned Quakeress,
Sits ABBY in her modest dress,
Serving a table quietly,
As if that mild and downcast eye
Flashed never, with its scorn intense, 150
More than Medea's eloquence.
So the same force which shakes its dread
Far-blazing blocks o'er AEtna's head,
Along the wires in silence fares
And messages of commerce bears.
No nobler gift of heart and brain,
No life more white from spot or stain,
Was e'er on Freedom's altar laid
Than hers, the simple Quaker maid.

These last three (leaving in the lurch 160
Some other themes) assault the Church,
Who therefore writes them in her lists
As Satan's limbs and atheists;
For each sect has one argument
Whereby the rest to hell are sent,
Which serve them like the Graiae's tooth,
Passed round in turn from mouth to mouth;--
If any _ism_ should arise,
Then look on it with constable's eyes, 169
Tie round its neck a heavy _athe-_,
And give it kittens' hydropathy.
This trick with other (useful very) tricks
Is laid to the Babylonian _meretrix_,
But 'twas in vogue before her day
Wherever priesthoods had their way,
And Buddha's Popes with this struck dumb
The followers of Fi and Fum.

Well, if the world, with prudent fear
Pay God a seventh of the year,
And as a Farmer, who would pack
All his religion in one stack, 181
For this world works six days in seven
And idles on the seventh for Heaven,
Expecting, for his Sunday's sowing,
In the next world to go a-mowing
The crop of all his meeting-going;--
If the poor Church, by power enticed,
Finds none so infidel as Christ,
Quite backward reads his Gospel meek,
(As 'twere in Hebrew writ, not Greek,) 190
Fencing the gallows and the sword
With conscripts drafted from his word,
And makes one gate of Heaven so wide
That the rich orthodox might ride
Through on their camels, while the poor
Squirm through the scant, unyielding door,
Which, of the Gospel's straitest size,
Is narrower than bead-needles' eyes,
What wonder World and Church should call
The true faith atheistical? 200

Yet, after all, 'twixt you and me,
Dear Miller, I could never see
That Sin's and Error's ugly smirch
Stained the walls only of the Church;
There are good priests, and men who take
Freedom's torn cloak for lucre's sake;
I can't believe the Church so strong,
As some men do, for Right or Wrong,
But, for this subject (long and vext)
I must refer you to my next, 210
As also for a list exact
Of goods with which the Hall was packed.




READER!
_walk up at once (it will soon be too late), and buy
at a perfectly ruinous rate. _

A FABLE FOR CRITICS;

OR, BETTER--

_I like, as a thing that the reader's first fancy may strike,
an old fashioned title-page,
such as presents a tabular view of the volumes contents_,--

A GLANCE AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES

(Mrs. Malaprop's Word)

FROM THE TUB OF DIOGENES;

A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY,

THAT IS,

A SERIES OF JOKES

BY A WONDERFUL QUIZ


_Who accompanies himself with a rub-a-dub-dub, full of spirit and grace,
on the top of the tub. _

SET FORTH IN

_October, the 21st day, in the year '48. _

G. P. PUTNAM, BROADWAY.


It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few candid remarks

TO THE READER:--

This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was
laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by
dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come
to that very conclusion, I asked their advice when 'twould make no
confusion. For though (in the gentlest of ways) they had hinted it was
scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it.

I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhymeywinged,
with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously
planned, digressions chance-hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and
dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which
I held In my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the
tree),--it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old
woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt,
wonder and laugh; and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen
full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull.

Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is
neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows,
some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is
becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in
following wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more
than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so like
Mephistopheles, that the Public will doubt, as they grope through my
rhythm, if in truth I am making fun _of_ them or _with_ them.

So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is
already secured.