Part 2. Canto 2 Line 53.

HUDI BRAS.

CANTO II.

'Tis strange how fome men's tempers fuit,
Like bawd and brandy, with dispute,
That for their own opinions stand fast,
Only to have them claw'd and canvast.
That keep their consciences in cases,
As fiddlers do their crowds and bafes,

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LRefs sculp.

Ne'er to be us'd but when they 're bent
To play a fit for argument.

Make true and false, unjust and just,
Of no use but to be difcuft;

Dispute and set a paradox,

Like a strait boot, upon the stocks,
And stretch it more unmercifully,

Than Helmont, Montaigne, White or Tully..
So th' ancient Stoics in the porch,

With fierce difpute maintain'd their church,
Beat out their brains in fight and study,
To prove that virtue is a body,
That bonum is an animal,

Made good with ftout polemic brawl:
In which some hundreds on the place
Were slain outright, and many a face
Retrench'd of nose, and eyes, and beard,
To maintain what their fect averr'd.

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