The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote;

The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach

To admiration, led by Nature’s light;

And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,

Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean’st.

Without their learning, how wilt thou with them,

Or they with thee, hold conversation meet?

How wilt thou reason with them, how refute

Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?

Error by his own arms is best evinced.

Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,

Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold

Where on the AEgean shore a city stands,

Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil—

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts

And Eloquence, native to famous wits

Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or suburban, studious walks and shades.

See there the olive-grove of Academe,

Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;

There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound

Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites

To studious musing; there Ilissus rowls

His whispering stream. Within the walls then view

The schools of ancient sages—his who bred

Great Alexander to subdue the world,

Lyceum there; and painted Stoa next.

There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power

Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,

AEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,

Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,

Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.

Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught

In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received

In brief sententious precepts, while they treat

Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,

High actions and high passions best describing.

Thence to the famous Orators repair,

Those ancient whose resistless eloquence

Wielded at will that fierce democraty,

Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece

To Macedon and Artaxerxes’ throne.

To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,

From heaven descended to the low-roofed house

Of Socrates—see there his tenement—

Whom, well inspired, the Oracle pronounced

Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth

Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools

Of Academics old and new, with those

Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect

Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.

These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home,

Till time mature thee to a kingdom’s weight;

These rules will render thee a king complete

Within thyself, much more with empire joined.”

To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied:—

“Think not but that I know these things; or, think

I know them not, not therefore am I short

Of knowing what I ought. He who receives

Light from above, from the Fountain of Light,

No other doctrine needs, though granted true;

But these are false, or little else but dreams,

Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.

The first and wisest of them all professed

To know this only, that he nothing knew;

The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;