The general idea of the poem is taken from Don Quixote. As in that immortal work, there are two heroes. Sir Hudibras, corresponding to the Don, is a Presbyterian justice of the peace, whose features are said to have been copied from those of the poet's former employer, Sir Samuel Luke. For this, Butler has been accused of ingratitude, but the nature of their connection does not seem to have been such as to warrant the charge. Ralph the squire, the humble Sancho of the poem, is a cross-grained dogmatic Independent.
These two the poet sends forth, as a knight-errant with a squire, to correct existing abuses of all kinds—political, religious, and scientific. The plot is rambling and disconnected, but the author contrives to go over the whole ground of English history in his inimitable burlesque. Unlike Cervantes, who makes his reader always sympathize with his foolish heroes, Butler brings his knight and squire into supreme contempt; he lashes the two hundred religious sects of the day, and attacks with matchless ridicule all the Puritan positions. The poem is directly historical in its statement of events, tenets, and factions, and in its protracted religious discussions: it is indirectly historical in that it shows how this ridicule of the Puritans, only four years after the death of Cromwell, delighted the merry monarch and his vicious court, and was greatly acceptable to the large majority of the English people. This fact marks the suddenness of the historic change from the influence of Puritanism to that of the restored Stuarts.
Hudibras is written in octosyllabic verse, frequently not rising above doggerel: it is full of verbal "quips and cranks and wanton wiles:" in parts it is eminently epigrammatic, and many of its happiest couplets seem to have been dashed off without effort. Walpole calls Butler "the Hogarth of poetry;" and we know that Hogarth illustrated Hudibras. The comparison is not inapt, but the pictorial element in Hudibras is not its best claim to our praise. This is found in its string of proverbs and maxims elucidating human nature, and set forth in such terse language that we are inclined to use them thus in preference to any other form of expression.
Hudibras is the very prince of burlesques; it stands alone of its kind, and still retains its popularity. Although there is much that belongs to the age, and much that is of only local interest, it is still read to find apt quotations, of which not a few have become hackneyed by constant use. With these, pages might be filled; all readers will recognize the following:
He speaks of the knight thus:
On either side he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute:
For rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth but out there flew a trope.
Again: he refers, in speaking of religious characters, to
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun,
And prove their doctrine orthodox,
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Compound for sins they are inclined to
By damning those they have no mind to.
Few persons of the present generation have patience to read Hudibras through. Allibone says "it is a work to be studied once and gleaned occasionally." Most are content to glean frequently, and not to study at all.
His Poverty and Death.—Butler lived in great poverty, being neglected by a monarch and a court for whose amusement he had done so much. They laughed at the jester, and let him starve. Indeed, he seems to have had few friends; and this is accounted for quaintly by Aubrey, who says: "Satirical wits disoblige whom they converse with, and consequently make to themselves many enemies, and few friends; and this was his manner and case."