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"Now a few lines to paper I will put,

Of men's beards strange and variable cut,
In which there's some that take as vain a pride
As almost in oll other things beside;

Some are reap'd most substantial like a brush,
Which makes a natʼral wit known by the bush;
And in my time of some men I have heard,
Whose wisdom have been only wealth and beard;
Many of these the proverb well doth fit,
Which says, Bush natural, more hair than wit:
Some seem as they were starched stiff and fine,
Like to the bristles of some angry swine;
And some, to set their love's desire on edge,
Are cut and prun'd, like to a quick-set hedge;
Some like a spade, some like a fork, some square,

Some round, some mow'd like stubble, some stark bare,

Some sharp, stiletto-fashion, dagger-like,

That may, with whispering, a man's eyes outpike;

Some with the hammer cut, or Roman T,

Their beards extravagant reform'd must be ;

Some with the quadrate, some triangle-fashion,

Some circular, some oval in translation;

Some perpendicular in longitude,

Some like a thicket for their crassitude:

That heights, depth, breadths, triform, square, oval, round,
And rules geometrical in beards are found."

V. 172. And cut square by the Russian standard.] Previous to the reign of Czar Peter the Great, the Russians universally wore beards, and considered them as a great ornament to the face. But that monarch compelled them to part with their beards, sometimes by laying a heavy tax upon them, and at others by ordering those he found with beards to have them pulled up by the roots, or shaved with a blunt razor, which drew the skin after it; and by these n.eans scarce a beard was left in the kingdom at his death: but such a veneration had the people for these ensigns of gravity, that many of them carefully preserved their beards in their cabinets, to be buried with them; imagining, perhaps, they should make but an odd figure in the grave with their naked chins.

V. 183-4-5-6. ----- this thing call'd pain

Is (as the learned Stoics maintain)

Not bad simpliciter, nor good,

But merely as 't is understood.] The Stoic philo

sophers maintained that pain is no real evil, but that a wise man is happy in the midst of tortures, is always the same, and is always joyful. Notwithstanding the banter which our poet attempts to put upon them here, the Stoics were, doubtless, the greatest phiosophers of all antiquity. Less intent than other philosophers upon frivolous and often dangerous speculations, they devoted their studies to the clearing up of those great principles of morality which are the firmest supports of society; and, in consequence, they were held in high estimation by the primitive fathers of the church.

V. 201-2. Some have been wounded with conceit,

And died of mere opinion straight.] A very entertaining history might be written upon the force of the imagination, as exemplified in the remarkable effects both of fear and joy on different constitutions. In the Athenian Oracle it is related, that a trial of the former kind was made upon a condemned malefactor in the following manner: "A dog was by surgeons let blood, and suffered to bleed to death before him; the surgeons talking all the while, and describing the gradual loss of blood, and, of course, a gradual faintness of the dog, occasioned thereby and just before the dog died, they said, unanimously, Now he is going to die. They told the malefactor, that he was to be bled to death in the same way; and, accordingly, blindfolded him, and tied up his arm, then one of them thrust a lancet into his arm, but purposely missed the vein: however, they soon began to' describe the poor man's gradual loss of blood, and, of course a gradual faintness occasioned thereby: and just before the supposed minute of his death, the surgeons said," unanimously, Now he dies. The malefactor thought all this real, and died by mere conceit, though he had not lost above twenty drops of blood."—Another story, to the same purpose, is thus related by Howell, in his Familiar Letters. "When the Duke of Alva went to Brussels, about the beginning of the tumults in the Netherlands, he had sat down before Hulst, in Flanders, and there was a provost-marshal

in the army, who was a favorite of his, and this provost had put

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some to death by secret commission from the duke.

There was

one Captain Bolea in the army, who was an intimate friend of the provost, and one evening late, he went to the said captain's tent, and brought with him a confessor and an executioner, as was his custom. He told the captain, that he was come to execute his excellency's commission and martial law upon him; the captain started up suddenly, his hair standing at an end, and being struck with amazement, asked him wherein he had offended the duke? The provost answered, Sir, I come not to expostulate with you, but to execute my commission, therefore, I pray, prepare yourself, for there is your ghostly father and executioner: so he fell upon his knees before the priest, and having done, the hangman going to put the halter about his neck, the provost threw it away, and breaking into a laughter, told him, There was no such thing, and that he had done this to try his courage, how he could bear the terror of death: the captain looked ghastly upon him, and said, Then, sir, get out of my tent, for you have done me a very ill office. The next morning the said Captain Bolea, though a young man, of about thirty, had his hair all turned grey, to the astonishment of all the world, and the Duke of Alva himself, who questioned him about it, but he would confess nothing. The next year the duke was revoked, and in his journey to the court of Spain, he was to pass by Saragossa, and this Captain Bolea and the provost went along with him as his domestics. The duke being to repose some days in Saragossa, the young old Captain Bolea told him that there was a thing in that town worthy to be seen by his excellency, which was a Casa de Locos, a Bedlam-house; for there was not the like in Christendom. Well, said the duke, go and tell the warden I will be there to-morrow, in the afternoon, and wish him to be in the way. The captain having obtained this, went to the warden and told him that the duke would come to visit the house the next day, and the chiefest occasion that moved him to it was, that he had an unruly provost about him, who was subject oftentimes to fits of phrensy, and because he wished him well, he had tried divers means to cure him, but all would not do, therefore he would try whether keeping him close in Bedlam, for some days, would do him any good. The next day the duke came with a ruffling train captains after him, amongst whom was the said provost, very

shining brave. Being entered into the house, about the duke's person, Captain Bolea told the warden (pointing at the provost) that's the man; so he took him aside into a dark lobby, where he had placed some of his men, who muffled him in his cloak, seized upon his gilt sword, with his hat and feather, and so hurried him down into a dungeon. The provost had lain there two nights and a day, and it afterwards happened that a gentleman coming out of curiosity to see the house, peeped in at a small grate where the provost was. The provost conjured him, as he was a Christian, to go and tell the Duke of Alva, that his provost was clapped up, nor could he imagine why. The gentleman did the errand, whereat the duke being astonished, sent for the warden, with his prisoner; so he brought the provost en querpo, madman like, full of straws and feathers, before the duke, who, at the sight of him, breaking out into laughter, asked the warden why he had made him his prisoner. Sir, said the warden, it was by virtue of your excellency's commission brought me by Captain Bolea. Bolea stepped forth, and told the duke, Sir, you have often asked me how these hairs of mine grew so suddenly grey; I have not revealed it yet to any soul breathing, but now I will tell it to your excellency, and so fell a relating the passage in Flanders. And, sir, said he, I have been ever since beating my brains how to get an equal revenge of him, and I thought no revenge to be more equal or corresponding, now that you see he hath made me old before my time, than to make him mad if I could, and had he stayed some days longer close prisoner in the Bedlam-house, it might haply have wrought some impression on his pericranium. The duke was so well pleased with the story, and the wittiness of the revenge, that he made them both friends; and Captain Bolea afterwards lived to be upwards of ninety years of age."-Epistolæ Ho-Eliana, Sect. iv. Lett. xxviii.

V. 205-6. A Saxon duke did grow so fut

That mice, &c.] The story to whieh Butler here alludes, is that of Hatto, Bishop of Mentz, who, according to some chronicles, grew so fat that he was devoured by mice. In the Lollards' tower, at Lambeth, during the persecution of the Wickliffites, one of those unfortunate persons, confined in an underground dungeon, was devoured by rats.

V. 235-6. Th' old Romans freedom did bestow,

Our princes worship, with a blow.] The old Romans had various methods of manumitting, or bestowing freedom on their slaves. The most common method was striking them with a rod called vindicta, and declaring them from that time free. The word vindicta was derived from Vindicius, a slave, who, discovering Junius Brutus' design of delivering up the gates of Rome to Sextus Tarquinius, was rewarded by the senate for his fidelity, and made free; and from him the rod laid upon the head of a slave, when made free, was called vindicta. “Our princes worship, with a blow." When the King confers the honor of knighthood, he lays his sword on the shoulder of the person to be knighted, and says, "Rise, Sir

V. 237-8. King Pyrrhus cur'd his splenetic

And testy courtiers with a kick.] Pliny says, that Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, cured the spleen with the touch of the toe of his right foot. A modern wit, in an epigram on the Dismission of a Lord of the Bed-chamber by his present majesty, who subsequently bestowed a pension upon him, has a similar thought:

"When a king gives a courtier a kick on the breech,

And bids him turn out for a son of a b-ch,

A kiss from his hand, with an office to boot,

Will atone for the injury done by his foot;

Yet a kiss from his hand, unless honor's a farce,

Is a very odd cure for a kick on the a-se."

V. 239. The Negus, when some mighty Lord.] The Negus is one of the titles of the King of Ethiopia.

Le Blanc, speaking

of him in his Travels, part ii, chap. iv. p. 190. edit. 1660, says, "If a nobleman is found guilty of a crime, the king leads him to his chamber, where being disrobed, prostrate on the ground, begging pardon, he receives from the king's own hand certain stripes, more or fewer, in proportion to the crime or services he hath done: which done, he revests, kisses the king's feet, and with all humility thanks him for the favor received."

V. 259. In close catastra shut.] A cage or prison in which the Romans locked up the slaves that were to be sold.

V. 275-6. But if a beating seem so brave,

What glories must a whipping have.] The widow pro

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