Hudibras

“ Those who have not acquired from accurate modern portrayal and representation their whole notion of the dress of the early colonists have, I find, a figure in their mind’s eye something like that of Matthew Hopkins the witch-finder. Hogarth’s illustrations of Hudibras give similar Puritans. Others have figures, dull and plainly dressed, from the pictures in some book of saints and martyrs of the Puritan church, such as were found in many an old New England home. ”

“ Rolls, a Devonshire gentleman, is said to be satirized under the character of Hudibras; and it is asserted, that Hugh de Bras was the name of the old tutelar saint of that county; Dr Grey had been informed, on credible authority, that the person intended was Sir Henry Rosewell, of Ford Abbey, Devonshire; but it is idle to look for personal reflections in a poem designed for a general satire on hypocrisy, enthusiasm, and false learning. There is no doubt, however, that Sir Samuel Luke, of Bedfordshire, is the likeliest hero. ”

“ Voltaire says of Hudibras, "I have never met with so much wit in one book as in this—who would believe that a work which paints in such lively and natural colours the several foibles and frolics of mankind, and where we meet with more sentiment than words, should baffle the endeavours of the ablest translator?" But any alteration of words would generally destroy humour. "To go to the crows," was a good and witty expression in ancient Greece, but it does not signify anything to us, except, perhaps, climbing trees. When we wish a man to be devoured, we tell him to "go to the dogs." ”

“ The Sun had long since, in the lap
Of THETIS, taken out his nap, 30
And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn,
When HUDIBRAS, whom thoughts and aking,
'Twixt sleeping kept all night and waking,
Began to rub his drowsy eyes, 35
And from his couch prepar'd to rise,
Resolving to dispatch the deed
He vow'd to do with trusty speed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among these wild mountains in antiquity lived an indigenous blond race, whose blue-eyed, clear-complexioned descendants may still be met with there, and mixed with them a darker population from the sunburnt desert and lowlands, the Getulae and Numidians of history, of whom Jugurtha was a fine and unforgotten type; on these original and tenacious races, whose blood was inexpugnable, poured the immigrant human floods through the centuries from north and south, west and east, but the natives maintained their hold and the stock survived. ”

“ There is enough in the history of Judah himself, and there is enough in the subsequent history of the tribe, to justify the ascription to him of all lion-like qualities—a kingly fearlessness, confidence, power, and success; in action a rapidity of movement and might that make him irresistible, and in repose a majestic dignity of bearing. As the serpent is the cognisance of Dan, the wolf of Benjamin, the hind of Naphtali, so is the lion of the tribe of Judah. He scorns to gain his end by a serpentine craft, and is himself easily taken in ”

“ The invasion of the White Húṇas a century later, who were welcomed as allies by some of the Panjáb chiefs,26 would cause fresh movements among the frontier tribes. The welcome given to the Húṇas, and the show and dash which marked their century of ascendancy in India and Persia, make it probable that as leaders they conducted south as far as Káthiáváḍa and Málava large bodies of the earlier northern settlers. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The most powerful kingdom is Aquilonia, but others vie with it in strength and mixed race; the nearest to the ancient root-stock are the Gundermen of Gunderland, a northern province of Aquilonia. But this mixing has not weakened the race. They are supreme in the western world, though the barbarians of the wastelands are growing in strength.
In the north, golden-haired, blue-eyed barbarians, descendants of the blond arctic savages, have driven the remaining Hyborian tribes out of the snow countries, except the ancient kingdom of Hyperborea, which resists their onslaught. ”

“ As the lightning scorns the oak, as the fire triumphs over the venerable pile, as the swollen river scoffs at the P. W. D., while arch after arch tumbles into its gurgling whirlpools, so the Dhobie, dashing your cambric and fine linen against the stones, shattering a button, fraying a hem, or rending a seam at every stroke, feels a triumphant contempt for the miserable creature whose plodding needle and thread put the garment together. This feeling is the germ from which the Dhobie has grown. ”

“ And already the more northern tribes are beginning to be harried by gigantic blond savages, not much more advanced than ape-men.
The tale of the next thousand years is the tale of the rise of the Hyborians, whose warlike tribes dominate the western world. Rude kingdoms are taking shape. The tawny-haired invaders have encountered the Picts, driving them into the barren lands of the west. To the northwest, the descendants of the Atlanteans, climbing unaided from apedom into primitive savagery, have not yet met the conquerors. ”

“ On October 20, 1683, more than 200 Jumano visited El Paso for the purpose of asking for missionaries, “stating that thirty-two tribes were waiting for baptism, because, being on the point of fighting a great battle, and anxious because they were few while the enemy were more than 30,000 in number, they invoked the aid of the holy cross, of which they had heard from their forefathers, and at once there descended through the air a cross wrought in red, with a pedestal two yards in breadth ... ”

“ There are few Indian tribes, whose6 history forms part of that of our own land, that have a record traceable to the first half of the sixteenth century. [3]
The next Spaniards to pass through the Jumano country were Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado and his party in company with three missionaries, in 1581; but no new light is thrown on the tribe in question, and indeed there is no definite evidence in the account of two of the soldiers [4] who were members of the little party that they were seen at all, although the Rio Grande was followed northward from its junction with the Conchos. ”

“ To this despised wife six of the tribes traced their origin, and among these was the tribe of Judah. Thus he learned the fruitfulness of God’s retribution—that to be humbled by God is really to be built up, and to be punished by Him the richest blessing. Through such an experience are many persons led: when we would embrace the fruit of years of toil God thrusts into our arms something quite different from our expectation—something that not only disappoints, but that at first repels us, reminding us of acts of our own we had striven to forget. ”

“ Towns and villages were numerous, and everywhere on the road they were met by numbers of people, chiefly women, bearing loads of produce on their heads, always cheerful and obliging, and delighted to see white men. At Humba, the inhabitants kept up singing and dancing all night, in the true negro style, round the house allotted to the white men. ”

“ Tribes of tawny-haired Hyborians have moved southward and westward, conquering and destroying many of the small unclassified clans. Absorbing the blood of conquered races, already the descendants of the older drifts have begun to show modified racial traits, and these mixed races are attacked fiercely by new, purer-blooded drifts, and swept before them, as a broom sweeps debris impartially, to become even more mixed and mingled in the tangled debris of races and tag-ends of races. ”

“ It was the region long inhabited By all the race of Seth; and Jubal said, "Here have I found my thirsty soul's desire, Eastward the hills touch heaven, and evening's fire Flames through deep waters, I will take my rest, And feed anew from my great mother's breast, The sky-clasped Earth, whose voices nurture me As the flowers' sweetness doth the honey-bee." He lingered wandering for many an age, And, sowing music, made high heritage For generations far beyond the Flood For the poor late-begotten human brood Born to life's weary brevity and perilous good. ”

“ Our folk lore serves to show that the Brazilian people, despite its moodiness and sentimentality, retains at bottom a clear comprehension of life and a sound, admirable inner energy that, at the first touch, bursts forth unexpected and indomitable.” This is, perhaps, an example of that very sentimentality of which this engaging critic has been speaking, for the folk lore of most nations reveals precisely these same qualities. For us, the essential point is that Brazilian popular poetry and tale exhibit the characteristic national hybridism; the exotic here feeds upon the exotic. ”

“ There are, probably, more well formed and featured people among the Hydas than any other aboriginal race, though there are none which can be considered handsome; indeed I have never seen an Indian beauty, nor an adult Indian woman of graceful movement. ”

“ Their widespread and unchallenged dominion in North India, the absence of record of any reverse later than the Karur defeat, the hopelessness of any attempt to pass out of India in the face of the combined Turk and Sassanian forces make it probable that the Húṇas and their associated tribes, adopting Hinduism and abandoning their claim to supremacy, settled in west and north-west India. This view finds support in the leading place which the Húṇas and Hára-Húṇas, the Maitrakas or Mers, and the Gurjjaras hold in the centuries that follow the overthrow of the White Húṇa empire. ”

“ The origin of Thuggee is entirely lost in fable and obscurity. Colonel Sleeman conjectures that it owed its existence to the vagrant tribes of Mahomedans which continued to plunder the country long after the invasion of India by the Moghuls and Tartars. The Hindoos claim for it a divine origin in their goddess Bhowanee; and certainly the fact that both Mahomedans and Hindoos believe in her power, and observe Hindee ceremonies, would go far to prove that the practice of Thuggee was of Hindoo origin. ”

“ Besides food, the natives gave the white men buffalo-robes—seemingly the first of their sort mentioned in history. The Indians came in numbers and took the Spaniards “to the settled habitations of others, who lived upon the same food.” It may, I think, be assumed that these other habitations were those of other Jumano, although Cabeza de Vaca mentions that from the second settlement of houses onward was another usage. ”

“ The neighbouring tribes, who occupy the lowest place in the scale of humanity, are naked wandering savages, who could not possibly have carved hieroglyphics in stone. A whole range of these rocks covered with symbolical signs may be traced from Rupunuri, Essequibo, and the mountains of Pacaraima, to the banks of the Orinoco and of the Yupura, extending over more than eight degrees of longitude. ”

“ The whole southern part of Palestine fell to Judah’s lot; but the tribes of Simeon and Dan possessed many cities which at first were given to Judah. This tribe was so numerous, that at the departure out of Egypt it contained seventy-four thousand six hundred men capable of bearing arms, Num. i, 26, 27. The crown passed from the tribe of Benjamin, of which Saul and his sons were, to that of Judah, which was David’s tribe, and the tribe of the kings, his successors, until the Babylonish captivity. ”

“ It was in Hezekiah's days, some time after the captivity of the ten tribes, that God, being displeased with the colonies settled there, sent lions among them, 2 Kings xvii. 25. But Judah keeps her integrity, and therefore no lions shall be there. Those that walk in the way of holiness must separate themselves from the unclean and the ravenous, must save themselves from an untoward generation; hoping that they themselves are of the redeemed, let them walk with the redeemed who shall walk there. ”

“ They boldly affirm that their people were here taken from a subterranean vault, by the Divine Being, and conducted eastward along the river Ye-no-na-nat-che, going around a mountain, now the Mohawk, until they came to where it discharges into a great river running toward the mid-day sun, the Hudson, and went down this river and touched the bank of a great water, while the main body returned by the way they came, and as they proceeded westward, originated the different tribes composing their nation; and to each tribe was assigned the territory they occupied, when first discovered by the whites. ”