Craniology

'Tis strange how like a very dunce,Man--with his bumps upon his sconce,Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge heHas had, till lately, of Phrenology--A science that by simple dint ofHead-combing he should find a hint of,When scratching o'er those little poll-hills,The faculties throw up like mole-hills;A science that, in very spiteOf all his teeth, ne'er came to light,For though he knew his skull had grinders,Still there turned up no organ finders,Still sages wrote, and ages fled,And no man's head came in his head--Not even the pate of Erra Pater,Knew aught about its pia mater.

At last great Dr. Gall bestirs him--I don't know but it might be Spurzheim--Tho' native of a dull and slow land,And makes partition of our Poll-land;At our Acquisitiveness guesses,And all those necessary nessesIndicative of human habits,All burrowing in the head like rabbits.Thus Veneration, he made known,Had got a lodging at the Crown;And Music (see Deville's example)A set of chambers in the Temple;That Language taught the tongues close by,And took in pupils thro' the eye,Close by his neighbor Computation,Who taught the eyebrows numeration.

The science thus--to speak in fitTerms--having struggled from its nit,Was seized on by a swarm of ScotchmenThose scientifical hotch-potch men,Who have at least a penny dip,And wallop in all doctorship,Just as in making broth they smatterBy bobbing twenty things in water:These men, I say, made quick applianceAnd close, to phrenologic science;For of all learned themes whatever,That schools and colleges deliver,There's none they love so near the bodles,As analysing their own noddles;Thus in a trice each northern blockheadHad got his fingers in his shock head,And of his bumps was babbling yet worseThan poor Miss Capulet's dry wet-nurse;Till having been sufficient rangersOf their own heads, they took to strangers'.And found in Presbyterians' pollsThe things they hated in their souls!For Presbyterians hear with passionOf organs joined with veneration.No kind there was of human pumpkinBut at its bumps it had a bumpkin;Down to the very lowest gullion,And oiliest skull of oily scullion.No great man died but this they did do,They begged his cranium of his widow:No murderer died by law disaster,But they took off his sconce in plaster;For thereon they could show depending,"The head and front of his offending":How that his philanthropic bumpWas mastered by a baser lump;For every bump (these wags insist)Has its direct antagonist,Each striving stoutly to prevail,Like horses knotted tail to tail!And many a stiff and sturdy battleOccurs between these adverse cattle,The secret cause, beyond all question,Of aches ascribed to indigestion,--Whereas 'tis but two knobby rivalsTugging together like sheer devils,Till one gets mastery, good or sinister,And comes in like a new prime-minister.

Each bias in some master node is:--What takes M'Adam where a road is,To hammer little pebbles less?His organ of Destructiveness.What makes great Joseph so encumberDebate? a lumping lump of Number:Or Malthas rail at babies so?The smallness of his Philopro--What severs man and wife? a simpleDefect of the Adhesive pimple:Or makes weak women go astray?Their bumps are more in fault than they.

These facts being found and set in orderBy grave M. D.'s beyond the Border,To make them for some months eternal,Were entered monthly in a journal,That many a northern sage still writes in,And throws his little Northern Lights in,And proves and proves about the phrenos,A great deal more than I or he knows:How Music suffers, par exemple,By wearing tight hats round the temple;What ills great boxers have to fearFrom blisters put behind the ear;And how a porter's VenerationIs hurt by porter's occupation;Whether shillelaghs in realityMay deaden Individuality;Or tongs and poker be creativeOf alterations in th' Amative;If falls from scaffolds make us lessInclined to all Constructiveness:With more such matters, all applyingTo heads--and therefore head-ifying.