But
his main weapon was ridicule, and in this he showed himself a
master. He tells the world, "The following paraphrase has nothing
of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems to have all the
elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves":
"When men out of the earth of old
A dumb and beastly vermin crawled;
For acorns, first, and holes of shelter,
They tooth and nail, and helter skelter,
Fought fist to fist; then with a club
Each learned his brother brute to drub;
Till, more experienced grown, these cattle
Forged fit accoutrements for battle.
At last (Lucretius says and Creech)
They set their wits to work on _speech_:
And that their thoughts might all have marks
To make them known, these learned clerks
Left off the trade of cracking crowns,
And manufactured verbs and nouns."
But a far more powerful theologian entered the field in
England to save the sacred theory of language--Dr.
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