and configuring power of the new technology. His readers have 
been befogged by content obsession and the practical benefits 
of applied knowledge. He says in a note to Book III, 1. 337:

     Do not gentle reader, rest too secure in thy contempt of 
     the Instruments for such a revolution in learning, or 
     despise such weak agents as have been described in our 
     poem, but remember what the Dutch  stories somewhere 
     relate, that a great part of their Provinces was once 
     overflow’d, by a small opening made in one of their dykes 
     by a single Water-Rat .

     But the new mechanical instrument and its mesmerized 
and homogenized servants, the dunces, are irresistible:

     In vain, in vain,—The all-composing Hour