The Age of Dryden

by Richard Garnett

‘No sooner did the Knight perceive her,
But straight he fell into a fever,
Inflam’d all over with disgrace,
To be seen by her in such a place;
Which made him hang his head, and scowl,
And wink, and goggle like an owl.
He felt his brains begin to swim,
When thus the Dame accosted him,
This place (quoth she) they say’s enchanted,
And with delinquent spirits haunted,
That here are tied in chains, and scourged,
Until their guilty crimes be purged:
Look, there are two of them appear
Like persons I have seen somewhere.
Some have mistaken blocks and posts
For spectres, apparitions, ghosts,
With saucer-eyes, and horns, and some
Have heard the Devil beat a drum:
But if our eyes are not false glasses,
That give a wrong account of faces,
That beard and I should be acquainted,
Before ’twas conjur’d and enchanted;
For tho’ it be disfigured somewhat,
As if ’t had lately been in combat,
It did belong t’ a worthy Knight,
Howe’er this goblin is come by it.
When Hudibras the lady heard,
Discoursing thus upon his beard,
And speak with such respect and honour,
Both of the beard, and the beard’s owner;
He thought it best to set as good
A face upon it as he cou’d,
And thus he spoke: Lady, your bright
And radiant eyes are in the right;
The beard’s th’ identic beard you knew,
The same numerically true:
Nor is it worn by fiend or elf,
But its proprietor himself.
Oh Heav’ns! quoth she, can that be true?
I do begin to fear ’tis you;
Not by your individual whiskers,
But by your dialect and discourse,
That never spoke to man or beast
In notions vulgarly exprest.
But what malignant star, alas!
Has brought you both to this sad pass?
Quoth he, The fortune of the war,
Which I am less afflicted for,
Than to be seen with beard and face
By you in such a homely case.
Quoth she, Those need not be asham’d
For being honourably maim’d;
If he that is in battle conquer’d,
Have any title to his own beard,
Tho’ yours be sorely lugg’d and torn,
It does your visage more adorn,
Than if ’twere prun’d, and starch’d and lander’d,
And cut square by the Russian standard.
A torn beard’s like a tatter’d ensign,
That’s bravest which there are most rents in,
That petticoat about your shoulders
Does not so well become a soldier’s,
And I’m afraid they are worse handled,
Although i’ th’ rear, your beard the van led;
And those uneasy bruises make
My heart for company to ache,
To see so worshipful a friend
I’ th’ pill’ry set at the wrong end.’

The mischievous lady, nevertheless, only consents to liberate Hudibras upon condition that he shall administer a sound flogging to himself. Hudibras willingly promises this, and is released, but next day he thinks better of it, and consults Ralpho whether he is actually bound by his oath. Ralpho’s reply abounds with the pithy couplets so frequent in Hudibras, which have become a part of the language:

‘Oaths were not purposed, more than law,
To keep the good and just in awe,
But to confine the bad and sinful,
Like moral cattle in a pinfold.’

‘The Rabbins write, when any Jew
Did make to God or man a vow
Which afterward he found untoward
And stubborn to be kept, or too hard;
Any three other Jews of the nation
Might free him from his obligation.
And have not two saints power to use
A greater privilege than three Jews?’

‘Does not in Chancery every man swear
What makes best for him in his answer?’

‘He that imposes an oath makes it,
Not he that for convenience takes it;
Then how can any man be said
To break an oath he never made?’

‘That sinners may supply the place
Of suff’ring saints is a plain case.
Justice gives sentence many times
On one man for another’s crimes.
Our brethren of New England use
Choice malefactors to excuse,
And hang the guiltless in their stead,
Of whom the churches have less need:
As lately ’t happened in a town,
There liv’d a cobler, and but one,
That out of doctrine could cut use,
And mend men’s lives as well as shoes.
This precious brother having slain,
In times of peace, an Indian,
(Not out of malice, but mere zeal,
Because he was an infidel)
The mighty Tottipottymoy
Sent to our elders an envoy;
Complaining sorely of the breach
Of league, held forth by brother Patch,
Against the articles in force
Between both churches, his and ours,
For which he crav’d the saints to render
Into his hands, or hang th’ offender:
But they maturely having weigh’d
They had no more but him o’ th’ trade,
(A man that serv’d them in a double
Capacity, to teach and cobble,)
Resolv’d to spare him; yet to do
The Indian Hoghgan Moghgan too
Impartial justice, in his stead did
Hang an old weaver that was bed-rid.’

Hudibras, however, is but half convinced, or rather, doubts whether conviction can be brought to the minds of others. He bethinks himself of a middle course, and suggests that the whipping shall be inflicted by proxy, and that Ralpho shall be the proxy. To this Ralpho demurs, and an impending rupture is only averted by a new adventure, which seems invented for the purpose. When it is over Hudibras has profited by the interval of reflection to resolve to consult the wizard Sidrophel, who is apparently intended for Lilly. The scene affords Butler an opportunity of venting the dislike to physical science which he shared with so many other literary men, and to which he gave more definite expression in The Elephant in the Moon. The interview terminates in a scuffle, in which Hudibras overthrows Sidrophel, and, thinking he has killed him, makes off, leaving Ralpho, as he deems, to bear the brunt. The trusty squire, however, has already gone to the lady with the tale of Hudibras’s perjury, which insures the knight a warm reception. Here the action of the story ends, the remainder of the poem being chiefly occupied by ‘heroical epistles’ between the parties, which do not help it on, and by a digression on the downfall of the Rump, chiefly remarkable for allusions to politics of later date.

One of the most noticeable phenomena in Butler is, that after all this Cavalier poet is little of a Cavalier, and this assailant of Puritanism little of a Churchman. His loyalty is but hatred of anarchy, and his religion but hatred of cant. The genuineness of both these feelings is attested by the detached thoughts found among his papers; otherwise it might fairly have been doubted whether his motive for espousing the royalist cause had been any other than the infinitely greater scope which Puritanism and Republicanism offered to the shafts of a satirist. The follies of the Cavalier party proved that things may be absurd without being ridiculous; those of their opponents demonstrated that ridicule may justly attach to things not intrinsically absurd. It is clear, notwithstanding, from Butler’s prose remains, that he was constitutionally hostile to liberty in politics and to the inward light in religion, and that he obeyed his own sincere conviction in attacking them. But it is equally clear that his preference for monarchy was solely utilitarian, and that his preferences in religion were determined simply by taste. The ground of his acquiescence in the Church of England is thus frankly stated by himself in one of his detached thoughts:

‘Men ought to do in religion as they do in war. When a man of honour is overpowered, and must of necessity surrender himself up a prisoner, such are always wont to endeavour to do it to some person of command and quality, and not to a mere scoundrel. So, since all men are obliged to be of some church, it is more honourable, if there were nothing else in it, to be of that which has some reputation, than such a one as is contemptible, and justly despised by all the best of men.’