Quarrel with mince-pies and disparage
Their best and dearest friend plum-porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard thro’ the nose.”
It is not worth while to tell the story of the poem—which, indeed, its author did not live to complete. Its fable was undoubtedly suggested by the far larger and worthier work of Cervantes; Hudibras and Ralpho standing in the place of the doughty Knight of La Mancha, and Sancho Panza; but there is a world between the two.
Hudibras had also the like honor of suggesting its scheme and measure and jingle to an early American poem—that of McFingal, by John Trumbull—in which our compatriot with less of wit and ribaldry, but equal smoothness, and rhythmic zest, did so catch the humor of the Butler work in many of his couplets that even now they pass muster as veritable parts of Hudibras.[78]
Samuel Butler was the son of a farmer, over in the pretty Worcestershire region of England; but there was in him little sense of charming ruralities; they never put their treasures into his verse. For sometime he was in the household of one of Cromwell’s generals,[79] who lived in a stately country-hall a little way out of Bedford; again, he filled some dependency at that stately Ludlow Castle on the borders of Wales—forever associated with the music of Milton’s “Comus.” It was after the Restoration that he budded out in his anti-Puritan lampoon; but though he pandered to the ruling prejudices of the time, he was not successful in his search for place and emoluments; he quarrelled with those who laughed loudest at his buffoonery and died neglected. His name is to be remembered as that of one of the noticeable men of this epoch, who wrote a poem bristling all through with coarse wit, and whose memory is kept alive more by the stinging couplets which have passed from his pen into common speech than by any high literary merit or true poetic savor. His chief work in verse must be regarded as a happy, witty extravaganza, which caused so riotous a mirth as to be mistaken for valid fame. The poem is a curio of letters—a specimen of literary bric-à-brac—an old, ingeniously enamelled snuff-box, with dirty pictures within the lid.
Samuel Pepys.
I had occasion just now to speak of the Pepys Diary, and promised later and further talk about its author, whom we now put in focus, and shall pour what light we can upon him.[80]