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And to party give up what was meant for mankind."

Though his subject was local and temporary, his fame was not circumscribed within his own age. He was admired by Charles II. and has been rewarded by posterity. It is the poet's fate! It is not, perhaps, to be wondered at, that arbitrary and worthless monarchs like Charles II. should neglect those who pay court to them. The idol (if it had sense) would despise its worshippers. Indeed, Butler hardly merited anything on the score of loyalty to the house of Stuart. True wit is not a parasite plant. The strokes which it aims at folly and knavery on one side of a question, tell equally home on the other. Dr. Zachary Grey, who added notes to the poem, and abused the leaders of Cromwell's party by name, would be more likely to have gained a pension for his services than Butler, who was above such petty work. A poem like 'Hudibras' could not be made to order of a court. Charles might very well have reproached the author with wanting to show his own wit and sense rather than to favour a tottering cause; and he has even been suspected, in parts of his poem, of glancing at majesty itself. He in general ridicules not persons, but things, not a party, but their principles, which may belong, as time and occasion serve, to one set of solemn pretenders or another. This he has done most effectually, in every possible way, and from every possible source, learned or unlearned. He has exhausted the moods and figures of satire and sophistry. It would be possible to deduce the dif ferent forms of syllogism in Aristotle, from the different violations or mock-imitations of them in Butler. He fulfils every one of Barrow's conditions of wit, which I have enumerated in the first Lecture. He makes you laugh or smile by comparing the

"And have not two saints power to use
A greater privilege than three Jews?

*

Her voice the music of the spheres,
So loud it deafens mortals' ears.
As wise philosophers have thought
And that's the cause we hear it not."

high to the low, or by pretending to raise the low to the lofty;† he succeeds equally in the familiarity of his illustrations, or their incredible extravagance, by comparing things that are alike or not alike. He surprises equally by his coincidences or contradictions, by spinning out a long-winded flimsy excuse, or by turning short upon you with the point-blank truth. His rhymes are as witty as his reasons, equally remote from what common custom would suggest; and he startles you sometimes

"No Indian prince has to his palace

More followers than a thief to the gallows."

+ "And in his nose, like Indian king,

He (Bruin) wore for ornament a ring."

"Whose noise whets valour sharp, like beer
By thunder turned to vinegar."

"Replete with strange hermetic powder,

That wounds nine miles point-blank would solder.”

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by an empty sound like a blow upon a drum-head,* by a pun upon one word,† and by splitting another in two at the end of a verse, with the same alertness and power over the odd and unaccountable in the combinations of sounds as of images.

There are as many shrewd aphorisms in his works, clenched by as many quaint and individual allusions, as perhaps in any author whatever. He makes none but palpable hits, that may be said to give one's understanding a rap on the knuckles. He is, indeed, sometimes too prolific, and spins his antithetical sentences out, one after another, till the reader, not the author, is wearied. He is, however, very seldom guilty of repetitions, or wordy paraphrases of himself; but he sometimes comes rather too near it, and interrupts the thread of his argument (for narrative he has none) by a tissue of epigrams, and the tagging of points and conundrums without end. The fault, or original sin of his genius, is, that from too much leaven it ferments and runs over; and there is, unfortunately, nothing in his subject to restrain and keep it within compass. He has no story good for anything, and his characters are good for very little. They are too low and mechanical, or too much one thing, personifications, as it were, of nicknames, and bugbears of popular prejudice and vulgar cant, unredeemed by any virtue, or difference or variety of disposition. There is no relaxation or shifting of the parts; and the impression in some degree fails of its effect, and becomes questionable from its being always the same. The satire looks,

"The mighty Tottipottimoy
Sent to our elders an envoy."

↑ "For Hebrew roots, although they are found
To flourish most in barren ground."

"Those wholesale critics that in coffee-
Houses cry down all philosophy."

"This we among ourselves may speak,
But to the wicked or the weak,
We must be cautious to declare
Perfection-truths, such as these are."

at length, almost like special pleading; it has nothing to confirm it in the apparent good humour or impartiality of the writer. It is something revolting to see an author persecute his characters, the cherished offspring of his brain, in this manner, without mercy. Hudibras and Ralpho have immortalised Butler; and what has he done for them in return, but set them up to be "pilloried on infamy's high and lasting stage?" This is ungrateful!

The rest of the characters have, in general, little more than their names and professions to distinguish them. We scarcely know one from another, Cerdon, or Orsin, or Crowdero, and are often obliged to turn back, to connect their several adventures together. In fact, Butler drives only at a sect of obnoxious opinions, and runs into general declamations. His poem in its essence is a satire, or didactic poem. It is not virtually dramatic or narrative. It is composed of digressions by the author. He instantly breaks off in the middle of a story, or incident, to comment upon and turn it into ridicule. He does not give characters but topics, which would do just as well in his own mouth without agents, or machinery of any kind. The long digression in Part III., in which no mention is made of the hero, is just as good and as much an integrant part of the poem as the rest. The conclusion is lame and impotent, but that is saying nothing; the beginning and middle are equally so as to historical merit. There is no keeping in his characters, as in Don Quixote; nor any enjoyment of the ludicrousness of their situations, as in Hogarth. Indeed, it requires a considerable degree of sympathy to enter into and describe to the life even the ludicrous eccentricities of others, and there is no appearance of sympathy or liking to his subject in Butler. His humour is to his wit, "as one grain of wheat in a bushel of chaff: you shall search all day, and when you find it, it is not worth the trouble." Yet there are exceptions. The most decisive is, I think, the description of the battle between Bruin and his foes, Part I., Canto iii., and again of the triumphal procession in Part II., Canto ii., of which the principal features are copied in Hogarth's election print, the Chairing of the Successful Candidate. The account of Sidrophel and Whackum is

another instance, and there are some few others, but rarely sprinkled up and down.*

* The following are nearly all I can remember:

"Thus stopp'd their fury and the basting
Which towards Hudibras was hasting."

It is said of the bear, in the fight with the dogs-
"And setting his right foot before,

He raised himself to show how tall
His person was above them all.

*

At this the knight grew high in chafe,
And staring furiously on Ralph,
He trembled and look'd pale with ire,
Like ashes first, then red as fire.

The knight himself did after ride,
Leading Crowdero by his side,
And tow'd him if he lagged behind,
Like boat against the tide and wind."

*

"And raised upon his desperate foot,
On stirrup-side he gazed about.

And Hudibras, who used to ponder

On such sights with judicious wonder.”

The beginning of the account of the procession in Part II. is as follows :—

Both thought it was the wisest course
To wave the fight and mount to horse,

And to secure, by swift retreating,
Themselves from danger of worse beating:
Yet neither of them would disparage
By uttering of his mind his courage.
Which made 'em stoutly keep their ground,
With horror and disdain wind-bound.
And now the cause of all their fear
By slow degrees approached so near,
They might distinguish different noise
Of horns and pans, and dogs and boys,
And kettle-drums, whose sullen dub
Sounds like the hooping of a tub."

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