V. 372. Than Serjeant Bum invading shoulder.] A bum-bailiff, one of the lowest and most despicable retainers of the law. "How wittily," says Dr. Grey, in this place, " does the poet describe an arrest? This thought has been much admired, and has given a hint to two celebrated writers to improve upon it in as fine a vein of satire and burlesque as ever appeared in any language. I think the reader cannot be displeased to see them quoted in this place." Behind him stalks

Another monster, not unlike himself,

Sullen of aspect, by the vulgar call'd

A catchpole, whose polluted hands the gods
With haste incredible and magic charms
Erst have endur'd. If his ample palm
Should haply on ill-fated shoulders lay
Of debtor, straight his body, to the touch
Obsequious, (as whilom knights were wont)
To some enchanted castle is convey'd,
Where gates impregnable, and coercive chains
In durance strict detain him, till in form

Of money, Pallas sets the captive free.”

Philip's Splendid Shilling. The author of the Tatler, evidently borrowing his idea from Hudibras, says, "As for Tipstaffe, the youngest son, he was an honest fellow; but his sons, and his son's sons, have all of them been the veriest rogues living; it is this unlucky branch has stocked the nation with that swarm of lawyers, attorneys, serjeants, and ba:liffs, with which the nation is overrun. Tipstaffe, being a seventh son, used to cure the king's evil; but his rascally descendants are so far from having that healing quality, that, by a touch upon the shoulder, they give a man such an ill habit of body that he can never come abroad afterwards."

V. 379. It was a serviceable dudgeon.] A dudgeon dagger signifies a small dagger, and in this sense it is used by our poet. Curio, in Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of the Coxcomb, speaking of the justice, says, "An his justice be as short as his memory, a dudgeon dagger will serve him to mow down sin withal."

V. 382. It would scrape trenchers, or chip bread.] Hudibras's

dagger reminds us of the character of Scrub in the Beau's Stratagem, who had a new office and employment for every day in the week. "A monday,” says he, "I drive the coach, of a Tuesday I drive the plough, on Wednesday I follow the hounds, on Thursday I dun the tenants, on Friday I go to market, on Saturday I draw warrants, and on Sunday I draw beer.”

V. 383. Toast cheese, &c.] Like Corporal Nim's sword, in Shakespeare's Henry V. “I dare not fight," says he, "but I will wink, and hold out mine iron; it is a simple one, what though; it will toast cheese, and it will endure cold as another man's sword will, and there's an end."

V. 387. It had been 'prentice to a brewer.] Butler here alludes to the knight's connection with Oliver Cromwell, who, though of good family, was before his coming into parliament a brewer, at Huntingdon. This circumstance is often introduced by the loyal authors in ridicule of the protector. Butler, speaking of him in his Remains, says,

"Who, fickler than the city ruff,

Can change his brewer's coat to buff;
His dray-cart to a coach, the beast
Into two Flander's mares at least;

Nay, hath the heart to murder kings,

Like David, only with his slings."

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In another poem of the same period, but by a different author, the parliament house is thus described:

""Tis Nol's old brewhouse now I swear;

The speaker's but his skinker,

Their members are like the council of war,

Carmen, pedlars, tinkers."

V. 411-2. But, after many strains and heaves,

He got up to the saddle eaves.] The knight was of low stature, and as his horse was " sturdy, large and tall," and he furnished with so many accoutrements, no wonder he had great difficulty to mount him. The rest of the circumstances attending the knight's setting out on his adventures, are admirably calculated to support the ridicule cast upon his character from the commencement of the poem.

V. 423. The beast was sturdy, large, and tall.] Our poet here

66

had probably his eye on Shakespeare's description of Petruchio's horse, in the Taming of the Shrew. "His horse," says Biondello hip'd with an old mothy saddle, the stirrups of no kindred: besides, possessed with the glanders, and like to mose in the chine, troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with the spavins, raid with the yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, sway'd in the back, and with a half check'd bit, and a head-stall of sheep's leather, which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst, and now repaired with knots; one girt six times pieced, and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pierced with packthread."

V. 430. Or mended pace, than Spaniard whipp'd.] Alluding to the story, in one of L'Estrange's Fables, of the Spaniard under the lash, who made a point of honour of it not to mend his pace for the saving of his carcass, and so marched his stage with as much gravity as if he had been upon a procession, insomuch that one of the spectators advised him to consider, that the longer he was upon the way the longer he must be under the scourge, and the more haste he made, the sooner he would be out of his pain. “Noble, Sir,” says the Spaniard, “I kiss your hand for your courtesy, but it is below the spirit of a man to run like a dog: if ever it should be your fortune to fall under the same discipline, you shall have my consent to walk your course at what rate you please yourself; but, in the mean time, with your good favour, I shall make bold to use my own liberty."

V. 433-4. That Cæsar's horse, who, as fame goes,

Had corns upon his feet and toes.] Suetonius relates in his History of the Cæsars, that Julius Cæsar had a horse with feet like a man's.'

V. 457. A squire he had, whose name was Ralph.] Sir Roger L'Estrange, in his Key to Hudibras, says, "This famous Squire was one Isaac Robinson, a zealous butcher in Moorfields, who was always contriving some new querqo cut in church government;" but in another Key it is observed, “that Hudibras's squire was one Pemble, a tailor, and one of the committee of sequestrators." As Butler borrowed the name of his knight from Spenser,

it is probable he named his squire from Ralph, the grocer's apprentice in Beaumont and Fletcher's play called the Knight of the Burning Pestle. It might be asked, how it comes to pass that the knight makes choice of a squire of different principles from his own? and why the poet afterwards says,

Never did trusty squire with knight,

Or knight with squire e'er jump more right;
Their arms and equipage did fit,

As well as virtues, parts and wit,

when there is so manifest a disagreement in the principal part of their characters? To which it may be answered, that the end they proposed by those adventures was the same, and though they dif fered about circumstantials, they agreed to unite their forces against the established religion. The poet, by this piece of management, intended to show the joint concurrence of sectaries against all law and order at that time. Had the knight and his squire been in all occurrences of the one opinion, we should never have had those eloquent disputes about synods, oaths, consciences, &c. which are some of the chief beauties in the poem, and give us a wonderful insight into the character of those times: besides, this conduct was necessary to give an agreeable diversity of character to the hero of the piece.

V. 466. by birth a tailor.] We gather from contemporary writers, that most of the Knights of the Thimble of those times were inimical to the established church government. The Anabaptists of Munster, who committed such horrible excesses in Germany, had their origin in a tailor. Swift, in his Tale of a Tub, gives a description of the sect of tailors, so humorous and appro→ priate, that we cannot deny ourselves the satisfaction of placing it before our readers. "About this time [soon after the reformation] it happened that a sect arose, whose tenets obtained and spread far and wide in the grande monde, and among every body of good fashion. They worshipped a sort of idol, who, as their doctrine delivered, did daily create men by a kind of manufactory operation. This idol they placed in the highest part of the house, on an altar about three feet high. He was shown in the person of a Persian emperor, sitting on a superficies, with his legs interwoven under him. This god had a goose for his ensign, whence it is that

some men pretend to deduce his original from Jupiter Capitolinus. At his left hand, beneath his altar, hell seemed to open and catch at the animals the idol was creating: to prevent which, certain of his priests hourly flung in pieces of the uninformed mass or substance, and sometimes whole limbs already enlivened, which the horrid gulf insatiably devoured, terrible to behold. The goose was also held a subaltern divinity, or deus minorum gentium, before whose shrine was sacrificed that creature whose hourly food was human gore, and who is in so great repute abroad by being the delight and Favourite of the Egyptian Cercopithecus. Millions of these animals were slaughtered every day to appease the hunger of that consuming deity The chief idol was worshipped also as the inventor of the yard and needle: whether as the god of seamen, or on account of certain other mystical attributes, hath not been sufficiently clear."

V. 467-8. The mighty Tyrian Queen, that gain'd,

With subtle shreds, a tract of land.] Dido, daughter of Belus, King of Tyre, sailed to that part of Africa which is called Zeugitana, and bought there as much land as she could compass with a bull's hide, which she cut into small stripes, and enclosed therewith a great quantity of ground, on which she built the city of Carthage.

V. 471. From him descended cross-legg'd knights.] The Knightstemplars had their effigies laid on their tombs, with their legs crossed. Butler heré alludes also to the tailor's posture in sitting at his work.

V. 472. Fam'd for their faith, &c.] Obliged to trust much in their way of trade.

V. 476-7-8. As the bold Trojan Knight, seen hell,

Not with a counterfeited pass

Of golden bough, but true gold-lace.] To understand the humour of this passage, it is proper to mention, that the tailors call that place hell, where they put all the cloth or cabbage they steal. The Trojan Knight, to whom he alludes, was Æneas, who consulting the Sybil concerning the method he should take to see his beloved father Anchises in the shades below, was accosted in the following terms:

"Receive my counsel. In this neighbour grove

There stands a tree, the Queen of Stygian. Jove