this last could not be obtained, the enactments are therefore called Lords' and Commons' Ordinances. 768. no hands, perhaps = paws. The first edition reads 'land' and 'no hand' at the end of these two lines. Perhaps some early error has here perpetuated itself. 769. evil counsellors. Alluding to the impeachment of Strafford and Laud, and the declaring 'delinquents,' all who had taken any part in the unconstitutional measures of the King. 773. dogs. All animals were sacred in the eyes of the Egyptians. For an account of their religious customs with regard to animals, cf. Herodotus, II. 65 sq. 777. Indians. In Ceylon and Siam. The Portuguese destroyed these idols though the natives fought bravely in their defence. 797. they sewed them. '] 'Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent.'-TAC. Ann. xv. 44. 811. vile assembly. There is a covert allusion here to the Assembly of Divines. Cf. Introduction, p. xix. The form of Church government arranged by the Assembly was by Classical, Provincial, and National assemblies. The point is that while the Puritans claimed to do nothing for which they could not find exact verbal authority in the Scripture, they yet established a Church government which broke their own rule, the names of their own chief councils being 'unscriptural.' 820. Dagon. Cf. I. Maccab. x. 83, 84. The horsemen also being scattered in the field, fled to Azotus and went into Beth-dagon, their idols' temple, for safety. But Jonathan set fire on Azotus and the cities round about it and took their spoils; and the temple of Dagon, with them that were fled into it, he burnt with fire.' 824. ad amussim = exactly. 830. homœosis. duolwois, a making like. The substitution of a similar thing for the thing itself. 846. keep touch. Abide by your word. Cf. Touch kept is commended, yet credit to keepe T. TUSSER, Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie. K 849-50. These lines are variously read. First Edition. 1674-1704. Thou wilt at best but suck a bull, 867. deeds, not words. Cf. 'Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.' SHAKS. Macbeth, II. 1. 880. steered by fate. The doctrine of predestination was carried to an extreme by the Puritans, for which they were frequently ridiculed by their opponents. 901. Mamaluke. The Mamelukes were originally slaves, and were made into a bodyguard by the Sultan in 1230. When Egypt came under Turkish rule they were taken into the pay of the Beys. They reconquered Egypt from the Turks, but were almost all slain by them in 1811. 902. The blank at the end of this line is to be filled with the words 'Sir Samuel Luke,' thus making this line, like its predecessor, to contain ten syallables. 917. as erst . . . 'Primus ibi ante omnes, magna comitante caterva, Et procul: O miseri ! quae tanta insania, cives? 924. a wight. Richard Cromwell, probably. PART I.-CANTO II. ARGUMENT. 3. In the first edition these lines run 'To whom the Knight does make a speech He fights with Talgol, routs the Bear,' &c. 8. Bastile. The great state prison of France before the outbreak of the Revolution, when it was stormed and destroyed, 1789. CANTO II. 2. For the rhyme, cf. I. i. 127. Alexander Ross. This is a name which Butler's queer rhyme has kept alive. Ross was a busy and voluminous writer. He published a Life of Christ in Latin words and lines and phrases all taken from Virgil, and a View of all Religions. The ancient philosopher who is whimsically declared to have read a man who lived a couple of thousand years after him, is Empedocles (c. 500-430 B. C.). He promulgated the celebrated doctrine of the four elements,-Earth, Water, Air, Fire,-and the two opposing principles,-Sympathy and Antipathy (called pixía, 'Appovía, &c. and Neikos, Añpis, &c.) as the foundation of all things. 'I am afraid that great numbers of those that admire the incomparable Hudibras do it more on account of these doggerel rhymes than of the parts that really deserve admiration. I am sure I have heard the and "Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic Was beat with fist instead of a stick," "There was an ancient sage philosopher more frequently quoted than the finest pieces of wit in the whole poem.'-Spectator, No. 60, ad fin. 15. a whole street, &c. In 1549 the Protector Somerset pulled down several churches and many other buildings to erect on the site so obtained the palace now called Somerset House. 20. dead-doing. Butler is fond of this word, which certainly works well into mock-heroic, Cf. I. ii. 803; I. iii. 141; I. iii. 844, &c. 22. Old proverb 'Nine tailors make a man.' 23. Tartar. This is probably taken from Peter Heylin's Cosmographie. He says of Carazan, a province of TartaryThey have an use, that when any stranger cometh into their houses, of an handsome shape, to kill him in the night: not out of desire of spoil or to eat his bodie, but that the soul of such a comely bodie, might remain amongst them.'-Book III. p. 857. Cf. The wild Tartars are ambitious of destroying a man of the most extraordinary parts and accomplishments, as thinking that upon his decease the same talents, whatever post they qualified him for, enter of course into his destroyer.'-Spectator, No. 126. 30. o'erthwart across. 33. Allusion to the case of Lord Capel, 'a Gentleman of great courage and integrity. He had made an adventurous escape out of the Tower, but was retaken by the treachery of a limping Waterman (if I knew his name I would bestow a blot of Inke upon him). He pleaded for himself Articles of Surrender that divers that were in Colchester, and in his condition, had been admitted to compound. . . . He desireth to see his Jury and that they might see him, and so might be tried by his Peers, saying He did believe no precedent could be given of any subject tried but by Bill of Attainder in Parliament, or by a Jury. But all was but to charm a deaf adder. He was a gallant Gentleman and they durst not let him live.'-CLEMENT WALKER, History of Independency, Part II. p. 133. Cf. also the History of the Great Rebellion, by Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, Edition 1826, Vol. VI. pp. 258 sq., for a full account of the imprisonment and escape and condemnation of Lord Capel. 38. more to troth. Aristotle (Ethics I., vi. 1) proceeds to examine the Platonic theory of the idea' of good,-πроσávтous τῆς τοιαύτης ζητήσεως γινομένης διὰ τὸ φίλους ἄνδρας εἰσαγαγεῖν τὰ εἴδη. Δόξειε δ ̓ ἂν ἴσως βέλτιον εἶναι καὶ δεῖν ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ γε τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα ἀναιρεῖν, ἄλλως τε καὶ φιλοσόφους ὄντας ἀμφοῖν γὰρ ὄντοιν φίλοιν ὅσιον πρυτιμᾶν τὴν ἀλή θειαν. Hence arose the well-known saying, 'Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato, sed magis amica Veritas.' 47. tollutation = ambling. 52. mysterious light. Here Butler again derides the Puritan use of the word light. Cf. Inward Light' 'New Light,' &c. 54. living engines. Alluding to the celebrated theory by which some of the Cartesians tried to account for the sufferings that animals, who are guiltless, share with man whose liability to suffer was incurred at the Fall. Descartes had allowed real sensation to animals, but not a thinking perception of it; and on this was founded the theory that animals do not really have sensation at all, but only seem to have it; and that their sufferings are really none;-that they are, in fact, living engines.' ་ 60. as Indian Britons were from Penguins. The allusion seems to be to a passage in Michael Drayton's Polyolbion, and the note on it by Selden. Drayton writes (Ed. 1753, Song IX., Vol. iii., p. 834): As Madock his brave son, may come the rest among; Ere the Iberian powers had touched her long sought bay, On this passage Selden gives a note (Id. p. 845)—' Abɔut the year CI. C. LXX [1170] Madoc, brother to David ap Owen, Prince of Wales, made this sea voyage; and by probability, those names of Capo de Breton in Norumbeg, and Pengwin in part of the Northern America, for a white rock and a whiteheaded bird, according to the British, were reliques of this discovery. So that the Welsh may challenge priority of finding that new world, before the Spaniard, Genoway, and all other mentioned in Lopez, Marinaeus, Cortez, and the rest of that kind.' Thus the word Penguin is the evidence on which Selden makes the existence of his Indian Britons depend, whence Butler says they were 'invented from' Penguins. 65. Pharsalian plain. Julius Caesar defeated Pompey in the battle of Pharsalia, B.C. 48. This was the decisive battle of the Roman Civil War :-from that field Pompey fled only to meet his death by assassination as he landed in Egypt. |