Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ALMA: OR, THE PROGRESS OF THE MIND: CANTO 1, by MATTHEW PRIOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ALMA: OR, THE PROGRESS OF THE MIND: CANTO 1, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Matthew met richard, when or where
Last Line: Not to be thought expert in both.
Subject(s): Aristotle (384-322 B.c.); Grief; Love; Nature; Sorrow; Sadness


MATTHEW met Richard, when or where
From story is not mighty clear;
Of many knotty points they spoke,
And pro and con by turns they took.
Rats half the manuscript have eat;
Dire hunger! which we still regret.
O! may they ne'er again digest
The horrors of so sad a feast!
Yet less our grief, if what remains,
Dear Jacob, by thy care and pains
Shall be to future times conveyed.
It thus begins:
Here Matthew said,
Alma in verse, in prose the mind,
By Aristotle's pen defined,
Throughout the body squat or tall,
Is, bona fide, all in all.
And yet, slap-dash, is all again
In every sinew, nerve, and vein;
Runs here and there, like Hamlet's ghost;
While everywhere she rules the roast.
This system, Richard, we are told,
The men of Oxford firmly hold.
The Cambridge wits, you know, deny
With ipse dixit to comply.
They say (for in good truth they speak
With small respect of that old Greek),
That, putting all his words together,
'Tis three blue beans in one blue bladder.
Alma, they strenuously maintain,
Sits cock-horse on her throne the brain;
And from that seat of thought dispenses
Her sovereign pleasure to the senses.
Two optic nerves, they say, she ties,
Like spectacles, across the eyes;
By which the spirits bring her word,
Whene'er the balls are fixed or stirred,
How quick at park and play they strike;
The duke they court; the toast they like;
And at St James's turn their grace
From former friends now out of place.
Without these aids, to be more serious,
Her power, they hold, had been precarious:
The eyes might have conspired her ruin;
And she not known what they were doing.
Foolish it had been, and unkind,
That they should see, and she be blind.
Wise nature likewise, they suppose,
Has drawn two conduits down our nose;
Could Alma else with judgment tell,
When cabbage stinks, or roses smell!
Or who would ask for her opinion
Between an oyster and an onion!
For from most bodies, Dick, you know,
Some little bits ask leave to flow;
And, as through these canals they roll,
Bring up a sample of the whole;
Like footmen running before coaches,
To tell the inn, what lord approaches.
By nerves about our palate placed,
She likewise judges of the taste:
Else (dismal thought!) our warlike men
Might drink thick port for fine champagne;
And our ill-judging wives and daughters
Mistake small beer for citron waters.
Hence too, that she might better hear,
She sets a drum at either ear;
And, loud or gentle, harsh or sweet,
Are but the larums which they beat.
Last, to enjoy her sense of feeling,
A thing she much delights to deal in,
A thousand little nerves she sends
Quite to our toes' and fingers' ends;
And these in gratitude again
Return their spirits to the brain;
In which their figure being printed,
As just before, I think, I hinted,
Alma informed can try the case,
As she had been upon the place.
Thus, while the judge gives different journeys
To country counsel and attornies,
He on the bench in quiet sits,
Deciding, as they bring their writs.
The Pope thus prays and sleeps at Rome,
And very seldom stirs from home;
Yet, sending forth his holy spies,
And having heard what they advise,
He rules the church's blest dominions,
And sets men's faith by his opinions.
The scholars of the Stagyrite,
Who for the old opinion fight,
Would make their modern friends confess
The difference but from more to less.
The mind, say they, while you sustain
To hold her station in the brain,
You grant, at least, she is extended;
Ergo, the whole dispute is ended.
For till to-morrow should you plead,
From form and structure of the head,
The mind as visibly is seen
Extended through the whole machine.
Why should all honour then be ta'en
From lower parts to load the brain;
When other limbs we plainly see,
Each in his way as brisk as he!
For music, grant the head receives it;
It is the artist's hand that gives it;
And, though the skull may wear the laurel,
The soldier's arm sustains the quarrel.
Besides, the nostrils, ears, and eyes,
Are not his parts, but his allies;
Even what you hear the tongue proclaim
Comes ab origine from them.
What could the head perform alone,
If all their friendly aids were gone!
A foolish figure he must make;
Do nothing else but sleep and ake.
Nor matters it, that you can show
How to the head the spirits go;
Those spirits started from some goal,
Before they through the veins could roll.
Now, we should hold them much to blame,
If they went back, before they came.
If, therefore, as we must suppose,
They came from fingers, and from toes;
Or toes, or fingers, in this case,
Of Num-scull's self should take the place:
Disputing fair, you grant thus much,
That all sensation is but touch.
Dip but your toes into cold water,
Their correspondent teeth will chatter;
And, strike the bottom of your feet,
You set your head into a heat.
The bully beat, and happy lover,
Confess, that feeling lies all over.
Note here, Lucretius dares to teach,
As all our youth may learn from Creech,
That eyes were made, but could not view,
Nor hands embrace, nor feet pursue;
But heedless Nature did produce
The members first, and then the use.
What each must act was yet unknown,
Till all is moved by chance alone.
A man first builds a country-seat,
Then finds the walls not good to eat.
Another plants, and wondering sees
Nor books nor medals on his trees.
Yet poet and philosopher
Was he, who durst such whims aver.
Blessed, for his sake, be human reason,
That came at all, though late in season.
But no man sure e'er left his house,
And saddled Ball with thoughts so wild,
To bring a midwife to his spouse,
Before he knew she was with child.
And no man ever reaped his corn,
Or from the oven drew his bread,
Ere hinds and bakers yet were born,
That taught them both to sow and knead.
Before they're asked can maids refuse,
Can------Pray, says Dick, hold in your Muse.
While you Pindaric truths rehearse,
She hobbles in alternate verse.
Verse! Mat replied; is that my care?
Go on, quoth Richard, soft and fair.
This looks, friend Dick, as Nature had
But exercised the salesman's trade;
As if she haply had set down,
And cut out clothes for all the town,
Then sent them out to Monmouth Street,
To try what persons they would fit;
But every free and licensed tailor
Would in this thesis find a failure.
Should whims like these his head perplex,
How could he work for either sex;
His clothes, as atoms might prevail,
Might fit a pismire, or a whale.
No, no; he views with studious pleasure
Your shape, before he takes your measure.
For real Kate he made the bodice,
And not for an ideal goddess.
No error near his shopboard lurked:
He knew the folks for whom he worked;
Still to their size he aimed his skill:
Else, pr'ythee, who would pay his bill?
Next, Dick, if chance herself should vary,
Observe, how matters would miscarry;
Across your eyes, friend, place your shoes;
Your spectacles upon your toes;
Then you and Memmius shall agree,
How nicely men would walk, or see.
But wisdom, peevish and cross-grained,
Must be opposed, to be sustained;
And still your knowledge will increase,
As you make other people's less.
In arms and science 'tis the same;
Our rival's hurts create our fame.
At Faubert's, if disputes arise
Among the champions for the prize,
To prove who gave the fairer butt,
John shows the chalk on Robert's coat.
So, for the honour of your book,
It tells where other folks mistook;
And, as their notions you confound,
Those you invent get farther ground.
The commentators on old Aristotle
('tis urged) in judgment vary;
They to their own conceits have brought
The image of his general thought;
Just as the melancholic eye
Sees fleets and armies in the sky,
And to the poor apprentice ear
The bells sound, 'Whittington lord mayor.'
The conjuror thus explains his scheme;
Thus spirits walk, and prophets dream;
North Britons thus have second-sight;
And Germans, free from gun-shot, fight.
Theodoret and Origen,
And fifty other learned men,
Attest, that, if their comments find
The traces of their master's mind,
Alma can ne'er decay nor die;
This flatly t' other sect deny:
Simplicius, Theophrast, Durand,
Great names, but hard in verse to stand.
They wonder men should have mistook
The tenets of their master's book;
And hold, that Alma yields her breath,
O'ercome by age, and seized by death.
Now which were wise, and which were fools?
Poor Alma sits between two stools:
The more she reads, the more perplexed;
The comment ruining the text.
Now fears, now hopes, her doubtful fate:
But, Richard, let her look to that --
Whilst we our own affairs pursue.
These different systems, old or new,
A man with half an eye may see,
Were only formed to disagree.
Now, to bring things to fair conclusion,
And save much Christian ink's effusion,
Let me propose a healing scheme,
And sail along the middle stream:
For, Dick, if we could reconcile
Old Aristotle with Gassendus,
How many would admire our toil,
And yet how few would comprehend us!
Here, Richard, let my scheme commence;
Oh! may my words be lost in sense!
While pleased Thalia deigns to write
The slips and bounds of Alma's flight.
My simple system shall suppose,
That Alma enters at the toes;
That then she mounts by just degrees
Up to the ankles, legs, and knees;
Next, as the sap of life does rise,
She lends her vigour to the thighs;
And, all these under-regions past,
She nestles somewhere near the waist;
Gives pain or pleasure, grief or laughter;
As we shall show at large hereafter.
Matured, if not improved by time,
Up to the heart she loves to climb;
From thence, compelled by craft and age,
She makes the head her latest stage.
From the feet upward to the head,
Pithy and short, says Dick, proceed.
Dick, this is not an idle notion,
Observe the progress of the motion.
First, I demonstratively prove
That feet were only made to move;
And legs desire to come and go,
For they have nothing else to do.
Hence, long before the child can crawl,
He learns to kick, and wince, and sprawl:
To hinder which, your midwife knows
To bind those parts extremely close;
Lest Alma, newly entered in,
And stunned at her own christening's din,
Fearful of future grief and pain,
Should silently sneak out again.
Full piteous seems young Alma's case;
As in a luckless gamester's place,
She would not play, yet must not pass.
Again, as she grows something stronger,
And master's feet are swathed no longer,
If in the night too oft he kicks,
Or shows his locomotive tricks;
These first assaults fat Kate repays him;
When half-asleep, she overlays him.
Now mark, dear Richard, from the age
That children tread this worldly stage,
Broom-staff or poker they bestride,
And round the parlour love to ride;
Till thoughtful father's pious care
Provides his brood, next Smithfield fair,
With supplemental hobby-horses;
And happy be their infant courses!
Hence for some years they ne'er stand still:
Their legs, you see, direct their will;
From opening morn till setting sun,
Around the fields and woods they run;
They frisk, and dance, and leap, and play,
Nor heed what Friend or Snape can say.
To her next stage as Alma flies,
And likes, as I have said, the thighs,
With sympathetic power she warms
Their good allies and friends, the arms.
While Betty dances on the green;
And Susan is at stool-ball seen;
While John for nine-pins does declare;
And Roger loves to pitch the bar;
Both legs and arms spontaneous move;
Which was the thing I meant to prove.
Another motion now she makes:
O need I name the seat she takes!
His thought quite changed the stripling finds;
The sport and race no more he minds;
Neglected Tray and Pointer lie;
And covies unmolested fly.
Sudden the jocund plain he leaves,
And for the nymph in secret grieves.
In dying accents he complains
Of cruel fires, and raging pains.
The nymph too longs to be alone,
Leaves all the swains, and sighs for one.
The nymph is warmed with young desire,
And feels, and dies to quench his fire.
They meet each evening in the grove;
Their parley but augments their love:
So to the priest their case they tell,
He ties the knot, and all goes well.
But, O my Muse, just distance keep;
Thou art a maid, and must not peep.
In nine months time, the boddice loose,
And petticoats too short, disclose
That at this age the active mind
About the waist lies most confined;
And that young life and quickening sense
Spring from his influence darted thence.
So from the middle of the world
The sun's prolific rays are hurled:
'Tis from that seat he darts those beams,
Which quicken earth with genial flames.
Dick, who thus long had passive sat,
Here stroked his chin, and cocked his hat;
Then slapped his hand upon the board;
And thus the youth put in his word.
Love's advocates, sweet sir, would find him
A higher place than you assign'd him.
Love's advocates! Dick, who are those? --
The poets, you may well suppose.
I'm sorry, sir, you have discarded
The men with whom till now you herded.
Prose-men alone for private ends,
I thought, forsook their ancient friends.
In cor stillavit, cries Lucretius;
If he may be allowed to teach us.
The selfsame thing soft Ovid says,
A proper judge in such a case.
Horace's phrase is, torret jecur;
And happy was that curious speaker.
Here Virgil too has placed this passion.
What signifies too long quotation?
In ode and epic, plain the case is,
That love holds one of these two places.
Dick, without passion or reflection,
I'll straight demolish this objection.
First, Poets, all the world agrees,
Write half to profit, half to please;
Matter and figure they produce,
For garnish this, and that for use;
And, in the structure of their feasts,
They seek to feed and please their guests.
But one may balk this good intent,
And take things otherwise than meant:
Thus, if you dine with my lord mayor,
Roast-beef and venison is your fare;
Thence you proceed to swan and bustard,
And persevere in tart and custard:
But tulip-leaves and lemon-peel
Help only to adorn the meal;
And painted flags, superb and neat,
Proclaim you welcome to the treat.
The man of sense his meat devours,
But only smells the peel and flowers;
And he must be an idle dreamer,
Who leaves the pie, and gnaws the streamer.
That Cupid goes with bow and arrows,
And Venus keeps her coach and sparrows,
Is all but emblem, to acquaint one,
The son is sharp, the mother wanton.
Such images have sometimes shown
A mystic sense, but oftener none.
For who conceives, what bards devise,
That Heaven is placed in Celia's eyes;
Or where's the sense, direct and moral,
That teeth are pearl, or lips are coral?
Your Horace owns, he various writ,
As wild or sober maggots bit:
And where too much the poet ranted,
The sage philosopher recanted.
His grave epistles may disprove
The wanton odes he made to love.
Lucretius keeps a mighty pother
With Cupid and his fancied mother;
Calls her great queen of earth and air,
Declares that winds and seas obey her;
And, while her honour he rehearses,
Implores her to inspire his verses.
Yet, free from this poetic madness,
Next page he says, in sober sadness,
That she and all her fellow-gods
Sit idling in their high abodes,
Regardless of this world below,
Our health or hanging, weal or woe:
Nor once disturb their heavenly spirits
With Scapin's cheats, or Caesar's merits.
Nor e'er can Latin poets prove
Where lies the real seat of love.
Jecur they burn, and cor they pierce,
As either best supplies their verse;
And, if folks ask the reason for't,
Say, one was long, and t' other short.
Thus, I presume, the British muse
May take the freedom strangers use.
In prose our property is greater,
Why should it then be less in metre?
If Cupid throws a single dart,
We make him wound the lover's heart;
But if he takes his bow and quiver,
'Tis sure, he must transfix the liver:
For rhyme with reason may dispense;
And sound has right to govern sense.
But let your friends in verse suppose,
What ne'er shall be allowed in prose;
Anatomists can make it clear,
The liver minds his own affair;
Kindly supplies our public uses,
And parts and strains the vital juices;
Still lays some useful bile aside,
To tinge the chyle's insipid tide;
Else we should want both gibe and satire;
And all be burst with pure good-nature.
Now gall is bitter with a witness,
And love is all delight and sweetness.
My logic then has lost its aim,
If sweet and bitter be the same:
And he, methinks, is no great scholar,
Who can mistake desire for choler.
The like may of the heart be said;
Courage and terror there are bred.
All those, whose hearts are loose and low
Start if they hear but the tattoo;
And mighty physical their fear is;
For, soon as noise of combat near is,
Their heart, descending to their breeches,
Must give their stomach cruel twitches.
But heroes, who o'ercome or die,
Have their hearts hung extremely high;
The strings of which, in battle's heat,
Against their very corslets beat;
Keep time with their own trumpet's measure,
And yield them most excessive pleasure.
Now, if 'tis chiefly in the heart
That courage does itself exert,
'Twill be prodigious hard to prove,
That this is eke the throne of love.
Would Nature make one place the seat
Of fond desire, and fell debate;
Must people only take delight in
Those hours, when they are tired of fighting?
And has no man, but who has killed
A father, right to get a child!
These notions then I think but idle,
And love shall still possess the middle.
This truth more plainly to discover,
Suppose your hero were a lover.
Though he before had gall and rage,
Which death or conquest must assuage;
He grows dispirited and low;
He hates the fight and shuns the foe.
In scornful sloth Achilles slept,
And for his wench, like Tall-boy, wept;
Nor would return to war and slaughter,
Till they brought back the parson's daughter.
Antonius fled from Actium's coast,
Augustus pressing, Asia lost;
His sails by Cupid's hands unfurled,
To keep the fair, he gave the world.
Edward our Fourth, revered and crowned,
Vigorous in youth, in arms renowned,
While England's voice, and Warwick's care,
Designed him Gallia's beauteous heir,
Changed peace and power, for rage and wars,
Only to dry one widow's tears.
France's fourth Henry we may see
A servant to the fair d'Estree;
When, quitting Coutras' prosperous field,
And fortune taught at length to yield,
He from his guards and midnight tent
Disguised o'er hills and valleys went,
To wanton with the sprightly dame,
And in his pleasure lost his fame.
Bold is the critic who dares prove
These heroes were no friends to love;
And bolder he, who dares aver,
That they were enemies to war.
yet, when their thought should, now or never,
Have raised their heart, or fired their liver,
Fond Alma to those parts was gone,
Which love more justly calls his own.
Examples I could cite you more;
But be contented with these four:
For, when one's proofs are aptly chosen,
Four are as valid as four dozen.
One came from Greece, and one from Rome;
The other two grew nearer home.
For some in ancient books delight;
Others prefer what moderns write;
Now I should be extremely loth,
Not to be thought expert in both.





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