Samuel Butler

“ I bear the king hath set up his standard at York, against the parliament and the city of London. Look thou upon them; take their cause into thine own hand, appear thou in the cause of thy saints; the cause in hand. ”

“ Dr Johnson well expresses the general sense of all its readers when he says, "If Inexhaustible wit could give perpetual pleasure, no eye would ever leave half read the work of Butler; for what poet has ever brought so many remote images so happily together? It is scarcely possible to peruse a page without finding some association of images that was never found before. By the first paragraph the reader is amused, by the next he is delighted, and by a few more strained to astonishment; but astonishment is a toilsome pleasure; he is soon weary of wondering, and longs to be diverted." ”

“ He has dammed up all those lights that nature made into the noblest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loopholes backwards, by turning day into night, and night into day. His appetite to his pleasures is diseased and crazy, like the pica in a woman, that longs to eat what was never made for food, or a girl in the green sickness, that cats chalk and mortar. ”

“ Hold whipping may be sympathetic.440
It is enough, quoth Hudibras,
Thou hast resolv'd, and clear'd the case;
And canst, in conscience, not refuse,
From thy own doctrine, to raise use: [79]
I know thou wilt not, for my sake, 445
Be tender-conscienc'd of thy back:
Then strip thee of thy carnal jerkin,
And give thy outward fellow a firking;
For when thy vessel is new hoop'd,
All leaks of sinning will be stopp'd. 450
Quoth Ralpho, You mistake the matter.
For in all scruples of this nature,
No man includes himself, nor turns
The point upon his own concerns. ”

“ He does not dwell in his house, but haunt it, like an evil spirit that walks all night to disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time, as men do their ways, in the dark ”

“ Who never end, but always prune a suit
To make it bear the greater store of fruit.
As labouring men their hands, criers their lungs,
Porters their backs, lawyers hire out their tongues.
A tongue to mire and gain accustom'd long,
Grows quite insensible to right or wrong.
The humourist that would have had a trial,
With one that did but look upon his dial,
And sued him but for telling of his clock,
And saying, 'twas too fast, or slow it struck.
↑ An answer to a bill in chancery is always upon oath;—a petition not so. ↑ Probably the poet had his eye on some particular person here. ”

“ Most writers have more words than ideas, and the reader wastes much pains with them, and gets little information or amusement. Butler, on the contrary, has more ideas than words; his wit and learning crowd so fast upon him, that he cannot find room or time to arrange them: hence his periods become sometimes embarrassed and obscure, and his dialogues too long. Our poet has been charged with obscenity, evil-speaking, and profaneness; but satirists will take liberties. Juvenal, and that elegant poet Horace, must plead his cause, so far as the accusation is well founded. ”

“ Port-cannons were streamers of ribands which hung from the knees of the short breeches; they had grown to such excess in France, that Molière was thought to have done good service by laughing them out of fashion. Perriwigs were brought from France in the reign of Elizabeth, but were not much used till after the Restoration. At first they were of various colours, to suit the complexion, and of immense size in large flowing curls, as we see on monuments in Westminster Abbey and in old portraits. ”

“ We are told in the Mercurius Rusticus, that the tinkers and tailors who governed Chelmsford at the beginning of the Rebellion, asserted "that learning had always been an enemy to the gospel, and that it would be a happy state if there were no universities, and all books were burnt except the Bible." Their enmity to learning is well satirized by Shakspeare, who makes Jack Cade say when he ordered Lord Say's head to be struck off: "I am the besom that must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art. Thou has most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm, in erecting a grammar school ”

“ Butler's note on this passage in the edition of 1674, is as follows: "Paracelsus is said to have kept a small devil prisoner in the pummel of his sword; which was the reason, perhaps, why he was so valiant in his drink. However, it was to better purpose than Hannibal carried poison in his to dispatch himself, if he should happen to be surprised in any great extremity; for the sword would have done the feat alone much better and more soldier-like. And it was below the honour of so great a commander to go out of the world like a rat." ”

“ The moon pull'd off her veil of light,905
That hides her face by day from sight.
Mysterious veil, of brightness made,
That's both her lustre and her shade, [160]
And in the lanthorn of the night,
With shining horns, hung out her light: [161] 910
For darkness is the proper sphere [162]
Where all false glories use t' appear. ”

“ This reflection affects equally all sorts of rhyme, which certainly can add nothing to the sense; but double rhymes are like the whimsical dress of Harlequin, which does not add to his wit, but sometimes increases the humour and drollery of it: they are not sought for, but, when they come easily, are always diverting: they are so seldom found in Hudibras, as hardly to be an object of censure, especially as the diction and the rhyme both suit well with the character of the hero. ”

“ When Machiavel is represented as such a proficient in wickedness, that his name hath become an appellation for the devil himself, we are not less entertained by the smartness of the sentiment, than we should be if it were supported by the truth of history. ”

“ The history of mankind hath scarcely furnished any thing more unaccountable than the prevalence of this custom. We meet with it in ancient and modern times, in the Old World and in the New, among nations who could never have had the least intercourse with each other. It is practised in China, and in Purchas's Pilgrims it is said to be practised among the Brazilians. At Haarlem, a cambric cockade hung to the door, shows that the woman of the house is brought to bed, and that her husband claims a protection from arrests during the six weeks of his wife's confinement. ”

“ In th' other souls and consciences; 1110
Where saints themselves are brought to stake [113]
For gospel-light, and conscience-sake;
Expos'd to scribes and presbyters,
Instead of mastiff dogs and curs;
Than whom th' have less humanity, 1115
For these at souls of men will fly.
This to the prophet did appear,
Who in a vision saw a bear,
Prefiguring the beastly rage
Of church-rule, in this latter age: [114] 1120
As is demonstrated at full
By him that baited the pope's bull. [115]
Bears naturally are beasts of prey,
That live by rapine; so do they. ”

“ Thus Shakspeare makes Celia reply to Rosalind upon the entry of the Clown: "Fortune hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits." Lying for the whetstone appears to have been a jocular custom. ”

“ Quoth Hudibras, 'Tis a caprich [56] 305
Beyond the infliction of a witch;
So cheats to play with those still aim,
That do not understand the game.
Love in your heart as idly burns
As fire in antique Roman urns, [57] 310
To warm the dead, and vainly light
Those only that see nothing by 't.
Have you not power to entertain,
And render love for love again?
As no man can draw in his breath 315
At once, and force out air beneath. ”

“ The Independents, finding that the Presbyterians, who held the principal places both in Parliament and in the army, instead of aiming at what had been proposed in the Covenant, were solely intent upon securing for themselves the position and authority of the Church of England, and that the Lord General Essex was plainly afraid of beating the king too well, proposed and carried the Self-denying Ordinance, by which all members of Parliament (except Fairfax and Cromwell) were prohibited from holding commissions in the army and seats in the legislature at the same time. ”

“ The Knight and Squire in hot dispute,
Within an ace of falling out,
Are parted with a sudden fright
Of strange alarm, and stranger sight;
With which adventuring to stickle,
They're sent away in nasty pickle.
PART II. CANTO II.
'IS strange how some men's tempers suit,
Like bawd and brandy, with dispute, [1]
That for their own opinions stand fast.
Only to have them claw'd and canvast.
That keep their consciences in cases, [2] 5
As fiddlers do their crowds and bases, [3]
Ne'er to be us'd but when they're bent
To play a fit for argument. ”

“ 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, [21] a goose a Justice, [22] ⁠75
And rooks, Committee-men and Trustees. ”

“ In Butler's Remains, vol. ii. p. 235, we read: "these spirits they use to catch by the noses with fumigations, as St Dunstan did the devil, by a pair of tongs." St Dunstan lived in the tenth century, and became successively abbot of Glastonbury, bishop of London and Worcester, and archbishop of Canterbury. He was a man of great learning, a student of the occult sciences, and proficient in the polite arts, particularly painting and sculpture. The legend runs, that as he was very attentively engraving a gold cup in his cell, the Devil tempted him in the shape of a beautiful woman. ”

“ Hudibras is to an epic poem what a good farce is to a tragedy; persons advanced in years generally prefer the former, having met with tragedies enough in real life; whereas the comedy, or interlude, is a relief from anxious and disgusting reflections, and suggests such playful ideas, as wanton round the heart and enliven the very features.
The hero marches out in search of adventures, to suppress those sports, and punish those trivial offences, which the vulgar among the Royalists were fond of, but which the Presbyterians and Independents abhorred ”

“ Some force whole regions, in despite
O' geography, to change their site;
Make former times shake hands with latter,25
And that which was before, come after; [10]
But those that write in rhyme still make
The one verse for the other's sake;
For one for sense, and one for rhyme,
I think's sufficient at one time.30
But we forget in what sad plight
We whilom [11] left the captiv'd Knight
And pensive Squire, both bruis'd in body
And conjur'd into safe custody. ”

“ Since the owl, however, is usually considered a moping, drowsy bird, the poet intimates that the knowledge of these sceptics is obscure, confused, and undigested. The meaning of the whole passage is: that there are two sorts of men, who are great enemies to the advancement of science; the first, bigoted divines, who, upon hearing of any new discovery in nature, apprehend an attack upon religion, and proclaim loudly that the Capitol, i.e. the faith of the church, is in danger ”

“ Butler's treasures of knowledge appear proportioned to his experience: whatever topic employs his mind, he shows himself qualified to expand and illustrate it with all the accessaries that books can furnish: he is found not only to have travelled the beaten road, but the by-paths of literature; not only to have taken general surveys, but to have examined particulars with minute inspection."
Various have been the attempts to define or describe the wit and humour of this celebrated poem ”

“ It would be degrading the liberal spirit and universal genius of Mr Butler, to narrow his general satire to a particular libel on any characters, however marked and prominent. To a single rogue, or blockhead, he disdained to stoop; the vices and follies of the age in which he lived were the quarry at which he flew; these he concentrated, and embodied in the persons of Hudibras, Ralpho, Sidrophel, &c., so that each character in this admirable poem should be considered, not as an individual, but as a species. ”

“ Continual wine, women, and music put false values upon things, which by custom become habitual, and debauch his understanding, so that he retains no right notion nor sense of things. And as the same dose of the same physic has no operation on those that are much used to it, so his pleasures require a larger proportion of excess and variety to render him sensible of them. ”

“ His parts are disproportionate, and, like a monster, he has more of some and less of others than he should have. He has pulled down all that fabric which nature raised to him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. ”

“ Sir John Mandeville, in his Voyages, says, "In my country there are trees that do bear fruit that become birds flying, and they are good to eat, and that which falls in the water lives, and that which falls on the earth dies." ”

“ Before I speak of widows, I cannot but observe one thing, which I do not know how to account for; a widow is always more sought after than an old maid of the same age. It is common enough among ordinary people for a stale virgin to set up a shop in a place where she is not known ”

“ Canst make a poet, spite of fate,
And teach all people to translate; ⁠660
Though out of languages, in which
They understand no part of speech;
Assist me but this once, I 'mplore,
And I shall trouble thee no more.
In western clime there is a town, [126] ⁠665
To those that dwell therein well known,
Therefore there needs no more be said here,
We unto them refer our reader;
For brevity is very good.
When w' are, or are not understood. [127] ⁠670
To this town people did repair
On days of market, or of fair,
R.Cooper sculpt. ”

“ He was one of the Rump; and a little before this time, when the Committee of Safety had been set up, and the Rump excluded, he had seized Portsmouth for their use. It is probable that Butler might call Sir Arthur by the hangman's name, for his forwardness and zeal in Parliament in bringing the royalists and the king himself to execution. Before Monk's intentions were known, Hazlerig, in a conversation with him, said, "I see which way things are going; monarchy will be restored; and then I know what will become of me." "Pooh!" replied Monk, "I will secure you for two-pence." ”

“ For by swinging a weight at the end of a string, and calculating, by the motion of the sun or any star, how long the vibration would last, in proportion to the length of the string and weight of the pendulum, they thought to reduce it back again, and from any part of time compute the exact length of any string, that must necessarily vibrate for such a period of time. So that if a man should ask in China for a quarter of an hour of satin or taffeta, they would know perfectly well what he meant ”

“ This doctrine was revived by the Presbyterians, and actually put in practice by the Scots, in their treatment of Charles II. The Presbyterians, in the civil war, maintained "that princes must submit their sceptres, and throw down their crowns before the church, yea, lick the dust off the feet of the church;" and Buchanan, in his famous "De Jure Regni apud Scotos," asserted, that "ministers may excommunicate princes, and that they, being by excommunication cast into hell, are not worthy to enjoy any life upon earth." ”