That makes fools cattle, do you good? 40
Nor putting pigs t’ a bitch to nurse,
To turn ’em into mungrel-curs,
Put you into a way, at least,
To make yourself a better beast? 
Can all your critical intrigues 45
Of trying sound from rotten eggs;
Your several new-found remedies
Of curing wounds and scabs in trees;
Your arts of flexing them for claps,
And purging their infected saps; 50
Recov’ring shankers, crystallines,
And nodes and botches in their rinds,
Have no effect to operate
Upon that duller block, your pate? 
But still it must be lewdly bent 55
To tempt your own due punishment;
And, like your whymsy’d chariots, draw,
The boys to course you without law;
As if the art you have so long
Profess’d, of making old dogs young, 60
In you had virtue to renew
Not only youth, but childhood too. 
Can you that understand all books,
By judging only with your looks,
Resolve all problems with your face, 65
As others do with B’s and A’s;
Unriddle all that mankind knows
With solid bending of your brows;
All arts and sciences advance,
With screwing of your countenance, 70
And, with a penetrating eye,
Into th’ abstrusest learning pry? 
Know more of any trade b’ a hint;
Than those that have been bred up in’t;
And yet have no art, true or false, 75
To help your own bad naturals;
But still, the more you strive t’ appear,
Are found to be the wretcheder
For fools are known by looking wise,
As men find woodcocks by their eyes. 80
Hence ’tis that ‘cause y’ have gain’d o’ th’ college
A quarter share (at most) of knowledge,
And brought in none, but spent repute,
Y’ assume a pow’r as absolute
To judge, and censure, and controll, 85
As if you were the sole Sir Poll;
And saucily pretend to know
More than your dividend comes to. 
You’ll find the thing will not be done
With ignorance and face alone 90
No, though y’ have purchas’d to your name,
In history, so great a fame;
That now your talents, so well
For having all belief out-grown,
That ev’ry strange prodigious tale 95
Is measur’d by your German scale;
By which the virtuosi try
The magnitude of ev’ry lye,
Cast up to what it does amount,
And place the bigg’st to your account? 100
That all those stories that are laid
Too truly to you, and those made,
Are now still charg’d upon your score,
And lesser authors nam’d no more. 
Alas! that faculty betrays 105
Those soonest it designs to raise;