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were much followed, and much complained of, in those days, as well as in more modern times. The author of a satire, entitled the Chimney Scuffle, printed in 1663, says,

"Be not these courtly coy ducks, whose repute
Swoln with ambition of a gaudy suit,

Or some outlandish gimp-thigh'd pantaloon,
A garb since Adam's time was scarcely known."
V. 929-30. Meanwhile the other champions, yerst,

In hurry of the fight dispers'd.] Erst, or yearst, in old English, signifies in earnest; thus Chaucer has, "But now at erst will I begin

To expone you the pith within."

V. 1001-2. And in the self-same limbo put

The Knight and Squire, where he was shut.] This is strictly conformable to the rules of justice. The Knight and Squire, in their turn, having experienced the mutability of fortune, are incarcerated in the same prison where they had shut up Crowdero. Nothing are more common in revolutions than such vicissitudes of fortune. When the rebels were triumphant, their prisons were filled with royalists; and when the regal party was restored, they, in their turn, filled the goals with their enemies. It must, however, be confessed, that the commonwealth men showed much more moderation when they were in power, than the royal party did after the restoration.

V. 1003.

Hockley-i'-th-hole.] A noted place in those

times for bear-baiting and other boisterous sports.

V. 1013-4. Quoth he, Th' one half of man, his mind,

Is, sui juris, unconfin'd.] The body may be imprisoned, but the mind cannot. In the beautiful sonnet, by Colonel Lovelace, addressed to Althea, during his confinement in the Gatehouse, Westminster, is the same thought:

"Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage,

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage:

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty."

Butler, however, probably borrowed his thought from the reasoning of Justice Adam Overdo, in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, who, like Hudibras, was also set in the stocks:

"Just. I do not feel it, I do not think of it; it is a thing without me.

Adam. Thou art above these batteries, these contumelies, "Inte manea ruit fortuna;" as thy friend Horace says, "thou art one," “ Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent ;" and, therefore, as another friend of thine says, (I think it be thy friend Persius,) "Nec te quæsiveris extra.”

Mr. Byron (one of the commentators upon our poet) observes upon this passage, that "the Knight seems to have had a great share of the stoic in him, though we are not told so in his character. His stoicism supported him in this his first direful mishap; and he relies wholly upon that virtue which the stoics say is a sufficient fund for happiness. What makes the principle more apparent in him, is the argument he urges against pain to the widow upon her visit to him; which is conformable to the stoic system. Such reflections wonderfully abate the anguish and indignation that would have naturally risen in his mind at such bad fortune."

V. 1021-2. The whole world was not half so wide

To Alexander, when he cry'd.] Alexander, disputing with Anaxagoras, the philosopher, concerning a plurality of worlds, which doctrine Anaxagoras maintained, is said to have wept, because, out of so many worlds as the philosopher had argued there were, it was possible for him only to conquer one. "One world suffic'd not Alexander's mind;

Coop'd up, he seem'd in earth and sea confin'd,
And struggling, stretch'd his restless limbs about
The narrow globe, to find a passage out."
Walker, in his Panegyric on the Lord Protector says,
"When for more worlds the Macedonian cry'd,
He wist not Thetis in her lap to hide
Another yet, a world reserv'd for you,

To make more great than that he did subdue."

V. 1039. Though we with blacks and blues are suggill'd.] A word coined from the Latin verb sugillo, which signifies to beat black and blue.

V. 1061-2. As gifted brethren, preaching by

A carnal hour-glass, &c.] In the days of puritanism there was always an hour-glass stood by the pulpit, in a frame of iron made on purpose for it, and fastened to the board on which the cushion lay, that it might be visible to the whole congregation; who, if the sermon did not hold till the glass was out, (which was turned up as soon as the text was taken,) would say, that the preacher was lazy; and, if he held out much longer, would yawn and stretch, and by those signs signify to the preacher, that they began to be weary of his discourse, and wanted to be dismissed. In some country churches the stands on which these hour-glasses were placed remained till very lately, and perhaps remain still. In some parts of Holland they were used so late as the year 1800. Sir Roger L'Estrange, in his Fables, makes mention of a tedious holder-forth, that was three quarters through his second glass, the congregation quite tired out, and starving, and no hope of a deliverance yet appearing; these things considered, a good charitable sexton took compassion upon the auditory, and procured them their deliverance only by a short hint out of the aisle: "Pray, Sir," said he, "be pleased when you have done, to leave the key under the door;" and so the sexton departed, and the teacher followed him soon after. In the tract entitled The Reformado, precisely characterised by a modern churchwarden, it is proposed, that the hour-glass should be turned out of doors, "for our extemporal preachers," says he, 66 may not keep time with a clock or glass; and so when they are out, (which is not very seldom), they can take leisure to come in again; whereas they that measure their meditations by the hour, are often gravelled, by complying with the sand."

V. 1072. For Presbyterian zeal and wit.] Ralpho was an Independent, the Knight a Presbyterian. However our poet may laugh equally at Presbyterians and Independents, the Independents certainly were the party who had the good of their country truly at heart, and laboured zealously to secure general liberty and freedom of conscience. The Presbyterians were a set of narrowminded, gloomy, sour fanatics, who, in all their designs, had principally their own interest in view, and hated the very name of toleration when they had the power of persecution; the Independ

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ents, on the other hand, were friends of toleration, and could reckon among their number some of the most enlightened and virtuous patriots that this, or any other country, ever produced.

V. 1091. That has but any guts in 's brains.] Sancho Panza expresses himself in the same manner to his master, Don Quixote, upon his mistaking the barber's bason for Mambrino's helmet. "Who the devil," says he, " can hear a man call a barber's bason a helmet, and stand to it, and vouch it for days together, and not think him that says it stark mad, or without guts in his brains."

V. 1122. By him that baited the Pope's bull.] A learned divine, in King James' time, wrote a polemic work against the Pope, and gave it the title of the Pope's Bull baited.

V. 1129-30. And then set heathen officers,

Instead of dogs, about their ears.] The tyranny which the Presbyterian party exercised when they were in power, is here satirised with the most pointed severity. Mrs. Hutchinson, in her excellent Memoirs of the Life of her Husband, Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham Castle, speaking of the Presbyterian government, says, "And now it grew to a sad wonder, that the most zealous promoters of the cause were more spitefully carried against their own faithful armies, than against the vanquished foe; whose restitution they henceforth secretly endeavoured, by all the arts of treacherous and dissembling policy, only that they might throw down those whom God had exalted in glory and power to resist their tyrannical impositions. At that time, and long after, they prevailed not, till that pious people too began to admire themselves for what God had done by them, and to set up themselves above their brethren, and then the Lord humbled them again beneath their conquered vassals."

V. 1139. To make Presbytery supreme.] In the Elegy on King Charles I. are the following lines:

"Whilst blind ambition, by successes fed,

Hath you beyond the bounds of subjects led
Who, tasting once the sweets of royal sway,
Resolved now no longer to obey:

For Presbyterian pride contests as high,
As doth the Popedom, for supremacy."

V. 1140. And kings themselves submit to them.] When Charles

II. was in Scotiand, previous to the battle of Worcester, many of his council and servants were dismissed, and their places supplied with rigid covenanters. "He was surrounded," Smollet says, "and incessantly importuned by their clergy, who came to instruct him in religion; obliged to give constant attendance at their long sermons and prayers, which generally turned upon the tyranny of the idolatry of his mother, and his own malignant disposition. They insisted upon his observing Sunday as the most rigorous fast of a Jewish sabbath; they kept a strict watch upon his looks and gestures; and, if ever he chanced to smile during this religious mummery, he underwent a severe reprimand for his profanity." Cartwright, one of their ecclesiastical writers, says, "that princes must remember to subject themselves to the church; yea, to lick the dust of the feet of the church.” This is requiring of princes of a Protestant communion as much as the tribunal of the Inquisition requires of the King of Spain, who, before his coronation, subjects himself, and all his dominions, by a special oath, to the jurisdiction of the most holy tribunal of the Inquisition."

V. 1145. When pious frauds, &c.] An allusion to the pious frauds of the Romish church, in which they were resembled by the Presbyterian fanatics; witness their dreams, prophecies, revelations, &c. with which they deluded the common people, and persuaded them into a belief of the peculiar sanctity of their cause.

V. 1152. Of scribes, commissioners, and triars.] The Presbyterians had particular persons commissioned by order of the two Houses, to try such persons as were to be chosen ruling elders in every congregation; and in an ordinance of the Lords and Commons in Parliament, dated Die Veneris, 26th of September, 1646, there was a list of the names of such persons as were to be triers and judges of the integrity and abilities of such as were to be chosen elders within the province of London, and the dueness of their election: the scribes registered the acts of the classes. There is nothing in this ordinance concerning the trial of such as were to be made ministers, because, a month before, there was an ordinance, whereby it was ordained, that the several and respective classical Presbyteries, within the several respective bounds, may, and shall appear, examine and ordain Presbyters, according to

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