Chapter IV: Book III: Ode XIII. 171 (3)

David Hume ate a swinging great dinner,
And grew every day fatter and fatter;
And yet the huge hulk of a sinner
Said there was neither spirit nor matter.
Now there's no sober man in the nation,
Who such nonsense could write, speak, or think:
It follows, by fair demonstration,
That he philosophiz'd in his drink.

As a smuggler, even Priestley could sin;
Who, in hopes the poor gauger of frightening,
While he fill'd the case-bottles with gin,
Swore he fill'd them with thunder and lightning.[6]
In his cups, (when Locke's laid on the shelf),
Could he speak, he would frankly confess t' ye,
That unable to manage himself,
He puts his whole trust in Necessity.

If the young in rash folly engage,
How closely continues the evil!
Old Franklin retains, as a sage,
The thirst he acquired when a devil.[7]
That charging drives fire from a phial,
It was natural for him to think,
After finding, from many a trial,
That drought may be kindled by drink.

A certain high priest could explain,[8]
How the soul is but nerve at the most;
And how Milton had glands in his brain,
That secreted the Paradise Lost.
And sure it is what they deserve,
Of such theories if I aver it,
They are not even dictates of nerve,
But mere muddy suggestions of claret.

Our Holland Philosophers say, Gin
Is the true philosophical drink,
As it made Doctor Hartley imagine
That to _shake_ is the same as to _think_.[9]
For, while drunkenness throbb'd in his brain,
The sturdy materialist chose (O fye!)
To believe its vibrations not pain,
But wisdom, and downright philosophy.

Ye sages, who shine in my verse,
On my labours with gratitude think,
Which condemn not the faults they rehearse,
But impute all your sin to your drink.
In drink, poets, philosophers, mob, err;
Then excuse if my satire e'er nips ye:
When I praise, think me prudent and sober,
If I blame, be assur'd I am tipsy.

[1] Roger Bacon, the father of experimental philosophy. He
flourished in the thirteenth century.

[2] See _The Spectator_, No. 47.

[3] Hobbes was a great smoker, and wrote what some have been
pleased to call a Translation of Homer.

[4] He taught that the external universe has no existence,
but an ideal one, in the mind (or _spirit_) that perceives
it; and he thought tar-water a universal remedy.

[5] Private vices public benefits.

[6] Electrical batteries.

[7] Bred a printer. This was written long before Dr.
Franklin's death.

[8] Dr. L., Bp. of C., is probably the person here alluded
to. He was a zealous materialist.

[9] He resolved Perception and Thinking into _vibrations_,
and (what he called) _vibratiuncles_ of the brain.

[AA] "I have been assured by those who were intimately acquainted with both, that of the two brothers, Montagu was in many respects the superior."

Bower's _Life of Beattie_, 1804, p. 210.

[AB] James Hay Beattie had a scientific knowledge of music, and, with the assistance of the Rev. Dr. Laing, had superintended the building an organ for himself. In one of our author's letters, 8th June, 1791, is the following passage:

"The organ of Durham cathedral was too much for my feelings; for it brought too powerfully to my remembrance another organ, much smaller, indeed, but more interesting, which I can never hear any more."

[AC] See, too, Beattie's letter to Blacklock, p. xv. of this memoir.

[AD]

Thy shades, thy silence now be mine,
Thy charms my only theme;
My haunt the hollow cliff, whose pine
Waves o'er the gloomy stream:
_Whence the scar'd owl on pinions gray
Breaks from the rustling boughs,
And down the lone vale sails away
To more profound repose._

ADVERTISEMENT.

January, 1777.

Having lately seen in print some poems ascribed to me which I never wrote, and some of my own inaccurately copied, I thought it would not be improper to publish, in this little volume, all the verses of which I am willing to be considered as the author. Many others I did indeed write in the early part of my life; but they were in general so incorrect, that I would not rescue them from oblivion, even if a wish could do it.

Some of the few now offered to the Public would perhaps have been suppressed, if in making this collection I had implicitly followed my own judgment. But in so small a matter, who would refuse to submit his opinion to that of a friend?

It is of no consequence to the reader to know the date of any of these little poems. But some private reasons determined the author to add, that most of them were written many years age, and that the greatest part of the MINSTREL, which is his latest attempt in this way, was composed in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight.