Nor in Polemicks controvert:  470
While all professions else are found
With nothing but disputes t’ abound
Divines of all sorts, and physicians,
Philosophers, mathematicians: 
The Galenist and Paracelsian 475
Condemn the way each other deals in: 
Anatomists dissect and mangle,
To cut themselves out work to wrangle
Astrologers dispute their dreams,
That in their sleeps they talk of schemes:  480
And heralds stickle, who got who
So many hundred years ago.

But lawyers are too wise a nation
T’ expose their trade to disputation;
Or make the busy rabble judges 485
Of all their secret piques and grudges;
In which whoever wins the day,
The whole profession’s sure to pay. 
Beside, no mountebanks, nor cheats,
Dare undertake to do their feats, 490
When in all other sciences
They swarm, like insects, and increase.

For what bigot durst ever draw,
By inward light, a deed in law? 
Or could hold forth, by revelation, 495
An answer to a declaration? 
For those that meddle with their tools
Will cut their fingers, if they’re fools;
And if you follow their advice,
In bills, and answers, and replies, 500
They’ll write a love-letter in chancery,
Shall bring her upon oath to answer ye,
And soon reduce her to b’ your wife,
Or make her weary of her life.

The Knight, who us’d with tricks and shifts 505
To edify by RALPHO’s Gifts,
But in appearance cry’d him down,
To make them better seem his own,
(All Plagiaries’ constant course
Of sinking when they take a purse), 510
Resolv’d to follow his advice,
But kept it from him by disguise;
And, after stubborn contradiction,
To counterfeit his own conviction,
And by transition fall upon 515
The resolution as his own.

Quoth he, This gambol thou advisest
Is of all others the unwisest;
For if I think by law to gain her,
There’s nothing sillier or vainer 520
’Tis but to hazard my pretence,
Where nothing’s certain, but th’ expence;
To act against myself, and traverse
My suit and title, to her favours
And if she shou’d (which Heav’n forbid) 525
O’erthrow me, as the fidler did,
What aftercourse have I to take,
’Gainst losing all I have at stake? 
He that with injury is griev’d,
And goes to law to be reliev’d, 530
Is sillier than a sottish chowse,
Who, when thief has robb’d his house,
Applies himself to cunning men,
To help him to his goods agen;
When all he can expect to gain, 535