Hudibras Samuel Butler (free novels to read TXT) 📖

Tycho Brahe was an eminent Danish mathematician. Quer. in Collier’s Dictionary, or elsewhere. ↩

Sceptic. Pyrrho was the chief of the sceptic Philosophers, and was at first, as Apollodorus saith, a painter, then became the hearer of Driso, and at last the disciple of Anaxagoras, whom he followed into India, to see the Gymnosophists. He pretended that men did nothing but by custom; there was neither honesty nor dishonesty, justice nor injustice, good nor evil. He was very solitary, lived to be ninety years old, was highly esteemed in his country, and created chief priest. He lived in the time of Epicurus and Theophrastus, about the 120th Olympiad. His followers were called Phyrrhonians; besides which they were named the Ephecticks and Aphoreticks, but more generally sceptics. This sect made their chiefest good to consist in a sedateness of mind, exempt from all passions; in regulating their opinions, and moderating their passions, which they called Ataxia and Metriopathia; and in suspending their judgment in regard of good and evil, truth or falsehood, which they called Epechi. Sextus Empiricus, who lived in the second century, under the Emperor Antoninus Pius, writ ten books against the mathematicians or astrologers, and three of the Phyrrhonian opinion. The word is derived from the Greek σκέπτομαι, quod est, considerare, speculare. ↩

The old philosophers thought to extract notions out of natural things, as chymists do spirits and essences; and, when they had refined them into the nicest subtleties, gave them as insignificant names as those operators do their extractions: But (as Seneca says) the subtler things are they are but the nearer to nothing. So are all their definitions of things by acts the nearer to nonsense. ↩

Some authors have mistaken truth for a real thing, when it is nothing but a right method of putting those notions or images of things (in the understanding of man) into the same and order that their originals hold in nature, and therefore Aristotle says Unumquodque sicut habet secundum esse, ita se habet secundum veritatem. Met. L. ii. [As everything has a secondary essence, therefore it has a secondary truth] ↩

Some report in Nova Zembla, and Greenland, mens’ words are wont to be frozen in the air, and at the thaw may heard. ↩

Here again is another alteration of three or lines, as I think, for the worse.

Some specific epithets were added to the title of some famous doctors, as Angelicus, Irrefragabilis, Subtilis, [Angelic, Unopposable, Discriminating] etc. Vide Vossi Etymolog. Baillet Jugemens de Scavans, & Possevin’s Apparatus ↩

Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar, was born in 1224, and studied at Cologne and Paris. He new-modelled the school divinity, and was therefore called the Angelic Doctor, and Eagle of Divines. The most illustrious persons of his time were ambitious of his friendship, and put a high value on his merits, so that they offered him bishoprics, which he refused with as much ardour as others seek after them. He died in the fiftieth year of his age, and was canonized by Pope John XII. We have his works in eighteen volumes, several times printed.

Johannes Dunscotas was a very learned man, who lived about the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century. The English and Scotch strive which of them shall have the honour of his birth. The English say, he was born in Northumberland: the Scots alledge he was born at Duns, in the Mers, the neighbouring county to Northumberland, and hence was called Dunscotas. Moreri, Buchanan, and other Scotch historians, are of this opinion, and for proof cite his epitaph:

Scotia me genuit, Anglia suscepit,
Gallia edocuit, Germania tenet.

Scotland bore me, England reared me,
France instructed me, Germany kept me.

He died at Cologne, November 8, 1308. In the Supplement to Dr. Cave’s Historia Literaria, he is said to be extraordinary learned in physics, metaphysics, mathematics, and astronomy; that his fame was so great when at Oxford, that 30,000 scholars came thither to hear his lectures: that when at Paris, his arguments and authority carried it for the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin; so that they appointed a festival on that account, and would admit us scholars to degrees but such as were of this mind. He was a great opposer of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine; and, for being a very acute logician, was called Doctor Subtilis; [Discriminating (or, literally, Slender) Teacher] which was the reason also, that an old punster always called him the Lathy Doctor. ↩

Sorbon was the first and most considerable college of the university of Paris, founded in time reign of St. Lewis, by Robert Sorbon, which name is sometimes given to the whole University of Paris, which was founded, about the year 741, by Charlemagne, at the persuasion of the learned Alcuinus, who was one of the first professors there; since which time it has been very famous. This college has been rebuilt with an extraordinary magnificence, at the charge of Cardinal Richlieu, and contains lodgings for thirty-six doctors, who are called the Society of Sorbon. Those which are received among them before they have received their doctor’s degree are only said to be of the Hospitality of Sorbon. Claud. Hemeraus de Acad. Paris. Spondan in Annal. ↩

There is nothing more ridiculous than the various opinions of authors about the seat of Paradise. Sir Walter Raleigh has taken a great deal of pains to collect them, in the beginning of his History of the World; where those, who are unsatisfied, may be fully informed. ↩

Goropius Becanus endeavours to prove that High Dutch was the language that Adam and Eve spoke in Paradise. ↩

Adam and Eve being made, and not conceived and formed in the womb had no navels, as some learned