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to punish his nobility, who offended him, in a similar manner, covering them with bear skins, and baiting them with fierce English mastiffs.

V.800. Of this lewd anti-christian game.] Butler probably here alluded to a passage in Pryn's Histrio Mastix, who has endea voured to prove it such from the 61st canon of the sixth council of Constantinople, which he has thus translated: "Those ought also to be subject to six years excommunication who carry about bears, or such like creatures, for sport, to the hurt of simple people." Our Knight was not the only stickler in those times against bearbaiting. Colonel Pride, a foundling and drayman, was likewise a hero in these kind of exploits, as we learn from a ballad upon him, which, having described his zeal against cock-fighting, goes on thus:

‘But flush'd with these spoils, the next of his toils

Was to fall with wild beasts by the ears;

To the bear-ward he goeth, and then open'd his mouth
And said, 'Oh! are you there with your bears.'
The crime of the bears was, they were cavaliers,
And had formerly fought for the king;

And had pull'd by the ears, the round-headed curs,

That made their ears to ring."

The Puritans were mortal enemies to all kinds of public diversions, if we may believe a merry cavalier, who triumphs at the approach of a free parliament, in the following words:

"A hound and a hawk no longer

Shall be token of disaffection:

A cock-fight shall cease

To be breach of the peace,

And a horse-race an insurrection."

V. 807-8. For certainly there's no such word

In all the Scripture on record.] The Puritans carried their fanaticism in nothing farther than in their abuse of scriptural phrases and terms. The common actions of life were all expressed in biblical phraseology; and the Disciplinarians held, that the Scripture of God is in such sort the rule of human actions, that simply, whatever we do, and are not by it directed thereto, the same is sin. In a tract printed in those times, entitled "Accom

modation discommended, as incommodious to the Commonwealth," are the following words: "First, accommodation is not the language of Canaan, and therefore it cannot conduce to the peace of Jerusalem. 2. It is no Scripture word: now to vilify the ordinances which are in Scripture, and to set up accommodation, which is not in Scripture, no, not so much as in the Apocrypha, is to relinquish the word, and follow the inventions of man, which is plain popery." Cowley, in his poem entitled the Puritan, ridicules their folly in this respect, in the following lines:

"What mighty sums have they squeez'd out o' th' city,

Enough to make them poor, and something witty;

Excise, loan, contributions, pole monies,

Bribes, plunder, and such parliament privileges;
Are words which you ne'er learn'd in holy writ,

Till the spirit of your synod mended it.”

V. 811. A vile assembly 'tis, &c.] Our poet here means to ridicule the Assembly of Divines, composed chiefly of Presbyterians, for pretending that their form of church government, by classical, provincial, and national assemblies, was founded on the authority of Scripture, when no such words as classical, &c. are to be met with there. Sir John Birkenhead, speaking of an assembly-man, says, "weigh him singly, and he has the pride of three tyrants, the forehead of six gaolers, the fraud of six brokers; and take them in the bunch, and the whole assembly are a club of hypocrites, where six dozen of schismatics spend two hours for four shillings, a piece." What opinion the learned Seldon had of them appears from the following account. "The house of parliament once making a question, whether they had best admit Bishop Usher to the Assembly of Divines? he said, they had as good enquire, whether they had best admit Inigo Jones, the king's architect, to the company of mouse-trap makers?"

V. 816-7. For when men run a-whoring thus

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With their inventions, &c.] A paraphrase on the 38th verse of the 106th Psalm: "Thus were they stained with their own works; and went a-whoring with their own inventions,"

V. 824. The true ad amussim, &c.] This is a word derived from a carpenter's rule, and signifies exactly, by line and level.

V, 830. thing resembling it.

homæosis.] An explanation of a thing by some

V. 851-2. Thou’lt at best but suck a bull,

Or sheer swine, all cry, and no wool.] The first of these alludes to a proverbial saying, “As wise as the Waltham calf, that went nine miles to suck a bull." The following passage in Don Quixote will explain the other: "Nor that ever a wise woman should see her master come to this, to run a wool gathering: I would it were so well; but the wool that we shall have is as much as the devil (God bless us) got when he shore a hog."

V. 876. And all the godly, &c.] The Presbyterians and sectaries of those times called themselves the godly, and all that were for the church and king the ungodly; they resembled in this particular the tyrant and usurper Richard III. whom Shakespeare makes to say,

“But then I sigh, and with a piece of Scripture
Tell them that God bids me do good for evil:

And thus I cloak my naked villany

With an old odd end stolen forth of holy writ,

And seem a saint when most I play the devil.”

V. 882. We do but row, we're steer'd by Fate.] The Puritans were most of them zealous believers in the doctrine of predestination, and held the opinion that all things must happen as was decreed or fated. Swift, in his Tale of a Tub, ridicules this doctrine in an exquisite vein of humour. Speaking of Jack, the Calvinist, or Presbyterian, he says, "he would shut his eyes as he walked along the streets, and if he happened to bounce his head against a post, or fall into a kennel, (as he seldom failed to do one or both) he would tell the gibing 'prentices that looked on, that he submitted with entire resignation as to a trip or blow of fate, with which he found, by long experience, how vain it was either to wrestle or cuff: and whoever durst undertake to do either would be sure to come off with a swinging fall or bloody nose: it was ordained (said he), some few days before the creation, that my nose and this very post should have an encounter, and therefore Provideuce thought fit to send us both into the world in the same age, and to make us countrymen and fellow citizens. Now, had my eyes been open, it is very likely the business had been a great deal worse; for how many a confounded slip is daily got by a man with all his foresight about him."

V. 903.

Mamaluke.] Soldiers under the command

of the beys of Egypt. They are usually the offspring of poor Christians in the different provinces of the Turkish empire, taken from their parents when young, and educated in the Mahometan religion.

V. 904. In foreign land, y'clep'd. -] Some of the commentators on Hudibras have supposed that the chasm here ought to be filled up with Sir Simon Luke, with whom our author lived some time, and who, to his dishonour, was an eminent commander under Oliver Cromwell.

V. 917-8. ——— as yerst the Phrygian knight,

So ours, with trusty steel did smite

His Trojan horse, &c.] Laocoon, one of the sons of Priam, who, suspecting the treachery of the Greeks, smote the wooden horse with his spear.

V. 925-6. So have I seen, with armed heel,

A wight bestride the commonweal.] Butler here most probably alludes to Richard Cromwell, a weak but harmless man, who succeeded his father in the protectorship, but was soon dispossessed of the government. In a loyal song written after the restoration, the commonwealth is compared to a horse, and the two protectors to riders, in the following lines:

"But Nol, a rank rider, gets first in the saddle,

And made her show tricks, and curvet and rebound;

She quickly perceiv'd he rode widdle waddle,

And, like his coach horses, threw his highness to ground. Then Dick being lame, rode holding by the pommel.

Not having the wit to get hold by the rein;

But the jade did so snort at the sight of a Cromwell,

That poor Dick and his kindred turn'd footmen again."

The Notes upon this Canto cannot be better concluded than with a compliment paid to Butler by Matthew Prior, who was the best imitator of his style and humour. It is to be found in his Alma, and is a good defence of our poet for abruptly breaking the thread of his narration at the end of this Canto:

"But shall we take the muse abroad,

To drop her idly on the road,

And leave her subject in the middle,
As Butler did his bear and fiddle.
Yet he, consummate master, knew
When to recede, and where pursue:
His noble negligences teach
What other folks despair to reach;
He, perfect master, climbs the rope,
And balances your fear and hope.
If, after some distinguish'd leap,
He drops his pole, and seems to slip,
Straight gath'ring all his active strength,
He rises higher half his length;
With wonder you approve his sleight,
And owe your pleasure to your fright;
But like poor Andrew, I advance,
False mimic of my master's dance,
Around the cord a while I sprawl,
And then, though low, in earnest fall."

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