It had appear'd with courage bolder
Than Serjeant Bum invading shoulder:
Oft had it ta'en possession,

And prisoners too, or made them run.
This sword a dagger had his page,
That was but little for his age;
And therefore waited on him so
As dwarfs upon knights-errant do:
It was a serviceable dudgeon,
Either for fighting, or for drudging:
When it had stabb'd or broke a head,
It would scrape trenches, or chip bread;
Toast cheese or bacon, though it were
To bait a mouse trap, would not care:
'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions, and so forth:
It had been 'prentice to a brewer,
Where this and more it did endure,
But left the trade as many more
Have lately done on the same score.

THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF HUDIBRAS.

When civil dudgeon first grew high

And men fell out, they knew not why:
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,

Set folks together by the ears,

And made them fight, like mad or drunk,
For Dame Religion as for punk;
Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Though not a man of them knew wherefore :

When gospel-trumpeter, surrounded

With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded,

And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,

Was beat with fist, instead of a stick:
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,

And out he rode a-colonelling.

A wight he was, whose very sight would
Entitle him, mirror of knighthood;
That never bow'd his stubborn knee

To any thing but chivalry;

Nor put up blow, but that which laid
Right-worshipful on shoulder blade:
Chief of domestic knights and errant,
Either for chartel or for warrant:
Great on the bench, great on the saddle,
That could as well bind o'er, as swaddle:
Mighty he was at both of these,
And styl'd of war as well as peace.
(So some rats of amphibious nature,
Are either for the land or water.)
But here our authors make a doubt,
Whether he were more wise or stout;
Some hold the one, and some the other:
But howsoe'er they make a pother,

The diff'rence was so small, his brain
Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain:
Which made some take him for a tool
That knaves do work with, called a fool.
For 't has been held by many, that
As Montaigne, playing with his cat,
Complains she thought him but an ass,
Much more she would Sir Hudibras.
(For that's the name our valiant knight
To all his challenges did write.)
But they 're mistaken very much;
'Tis plain enough he was no such :
We grant, although he had much wit,

He was very shy of using it;

As being loath to wear it out,
And, therefore, bore it not about;
Unless on holydays or so,

As men their best apparel do;

Beside, 'tis known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak;

That Latin was no more difficile,

Than for a blackbird 'tis to whistle :

Being rich in both, he never scanted
His bounty unto such as wanted,
But much of either would afford
To many, that had not one word.

A hair 'twixt south and south-west side;
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute;
He'd undertake to prove by force

Of argument, a man 's no horse;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,

And that a lord may be an owl,

A calf an alderman, a goose a justice,
And rooks committee-men and trustees.

He'd run in debt by disputation,

And pay with ratiocination:

All this by syllogism, true

In mood and figure, he would do.

For rhetoric, he could not ope

His mouth, but out there flew a trope;

And when he happen'd to break off

I' the middle of his speech, or cough,
H' had hard words, ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by:
Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd like other folk;
For all a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.

:

But, when he pleas'd to show 't, his speech
In loftiness of sound was rich;

A Babylonish dialect,

Which learned pedants much affect:

It was a party-colour'd dress

Of patch'd and piebald languages;

'T was English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin.

It had an odd promiscuous tone,

As if he had talk'd three parts in one;

Which made some think, when he did gabble,
Th' had heard three labourers of Babel;
Or Cerberus himself pronounce

A leash of languages at once.
This he as volubly would vent

As if his stock would ne'er be spent;
And truly to support that charge,
He had supplies as vast and large:
For he would coin or counterfeit
New words with little or no wit:
Words so debas'd and hard, no stone
Was hard enough to touch them on:
And when with hasty noise he spoke 'em,
The ignorant for current took 'em;

That had the orator, who once

Did fill his mouth with pebble-stones

When he harangu'd, but known his phrse,

He would have us'd no other ways.

RELIGION OF HUDIBRAS.'

For his religion, it was fit

To match his learning and his wit.

'T was Presbyterian true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints-whom all men grant

To be the true church militant;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery;

And prove their doctrine orthodox

By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire, and sword, and desolation,
A godly thorough reformation,
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done;
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended;

A sect whose chief devotion lies

In odd perverse antipathies;
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss;

More peevish, cross, and splenetic,
Than dog distraught or monkey sick;
That with more care keep holyday
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to.
Still so perverse and opposite,

As if they worship'd God for spite;
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for;
Free will they one way disavow,
Another nothing else allow;
All piety consists therein

In them, in other men all sin ;
Rather than fail, they will defy

That which they love most tenderly;
Quarrel with minc'd-pies, and disparage

Their best and dearest friend, plum-porridge;

Fat pig and goose itself oppose,

And blaspheme custard through the nose.

Th' apostles of this fierce religion,

Like Mahomet, were ass and widgeon,

To whom our knight, by fast instinct

Of wit and temper, was so link'd,

As if hypocrisy and nonsense

Had got th' advowson of his conscience.

As conspicuous as is Butler's wit in his poetry, it shines with no less brilliancy in some of his prose works, the manuscripts of which were left, at his death, with his friend Longueville, but were not presented to the public in printed form, until 1759. The most interesting of these works, is the one from which we select the following extract. It is entitled Characters; and it closely resembles, in style, those of Overbury, Earle, and Hall.

A SMALL POET

Is one that would fain make himself that which nature never meant him ; like a fanatic that inspires himself with his own whimsies. He sets up haberdasher of small poetry, with a very small stock, and no credit. He believes it is invention enough to find out other men's wit; and whatsoever he lights upon, either in books or company, he makes bold with as his own. This he puts together so untowardly, that you may perceive his own wit has the rickets, by the swelling disproportion of the joints. You may know his wit not to be natural, 'tis so unquiet and troublesome in him for as those that have money but seldom, are always shaking their pockets when they have it, so docs he, when he thinks he has got something that will make him appear. He is a perpetual talker, and you may know by the freedom of his discourse that he came lightly by it, as thieves spend freely what they get. He is like an Italian thief, that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery; so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected. He appears so over-concerned in all men's wits, as if they were but disparagements of his own; and cries down all they do, as if they were encroachments upon him. He takes jests from the owners and breaks them, as justices do false weights, and pots that want measure. When he meets with any

thing that is very good, he changes it into small money, like three groats for a shilling, to serve several occasions. He disclaims study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be very true, by his often missing of his mark. As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such matches are unlawful, and not fit to be made by a Christian poet; and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two, and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation. For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexion seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did; for contraries are best set off with contraries. He has found out a new sort of poetical Georgics—a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects, which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no room left for invention. He will take three grains of wit, like the elixir, and, projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has presently vanished, the whole world has kept holyday; there has been no men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses: trees have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge. When he writes, he commonly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases. There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarcely able to contain them; for there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece, but the ancient name of it is become a term of art in poetry. By this means, small poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryades, hamadryades, aönides, fauni, nymphæ, sylvani, &c., that signify nothing at all; and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and 'thorough reformations' that can happen between this and Plato's great year.

From Waller and Butler we pass to notice Vaughan, Denham, Chamberlayne, and Marvell, with the last of whom our present remarks will close.

HENRY VAUGHAN was born on the banks of the river Usk, in Brecknockshire, in 1614, and at the age of seventeen entered the university of Oxford. His parents designed him for the legal profession, but after he had completed his collegiate studies he resolved to turn his attention to medicine. With this view he repaired to London, and after there perfecting himself in the healing art, he retired, at the commencement of the civil wars, to his home, and there, for many years, practiced as a physician, with very considerable success. Much of his time, however, he devoted to the muses; and in 1651, he published a volume of miscellaneous poems, evincing considerable strength and originality of thought and copious imagery, though tinged with a gloomy sectarianism, and marred by crabbed rhymes. But Campbell scarcely does justice to him when he styles him 'one of the harshest even, of the inferior order of the school of conceit,' though he admits that he has 'some few scattered thoughts that meet our eye amid his harsh pages, like wild flowers on a barren heath.'