After this humorous reductio ad absurdum of Lilly’s pretensions as an astrologer, the satirist proceeds to allude to his dealings with the Puritan party:
‘Do not our great Reformers use
This Sidrophel to forebode news;
To write of victories next year,
And castles taken, yet i’ th’ air?
Of battles fought at sea, and ships
Sunk, two years hence, the last eclipse?’
The satirist then devotes himself to a minute exposure of Lilly’s pretensions:
‘He had been long t’wards mathematics,
Optics, philosophy, and statics;
Magic, horoscopy, astrology,
And was old dog at physiology;
But as a dog that turns the spit
Bestirs himself, and plies his feet
To climb the wheel, but all in vain,
His own weight brings him down again,
And still he’s in the self-same place
Where at his setting out he was;
So in the circle of the arts
Did he advance his nat’ral parts ...
Whate’er he laboured to appear,
His understanding still was clear;
Yet none a deeper knowledge boasted,
Since old Hodge Bacon and Bob Grosted.’
(Robert Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln [temp. Henry III.], whose learning procured him among the ignorant the reputation of being a conjurer.)
‘He had read Dee’s prefaces before
The Dev’l and Euclid o’er and o’er;
And all th’ intrigues ’twixt him and Kelly,
Lascus, and th’ Emperor, would tell ye;
But with the moon was more familiar
Than e’er was almanack well-willer;
Her secrets understood so clear,
That some believed he had been there;
Knew when she was in fittest mood
For cutting corns or letting blood ...’
Continuing his enumeration of the conjurer’s various and versatile achievements, the poet says he can—
‘Cure warts and corns with application
Of med’cines to th’ imagination;
Fright agues into dogs, and scare
With rhymes the toothache and catarrh;
Chase evil spirits away by dint
Of sickle, horse-shoe, hollow flint;
Spit fire out of a walnut-shell,
Which made the Roman slaves rebel;
And fire a mine in China here
With sympathetic gunpowder.
He knew whats’ever’s to be known,
But much more than he knew would own ...
How many diff’rent specieses
Of maggots breed in rotten cheese;
And which are next of kin to those
Engendered in a chandler’s nose;
Or those not seen, but understood,
That live in vinegar and wood.’
In the course of the long dialogue that takes place between Hudibras and the astrologer, Butler contrives to introduce a clever and trenchant exposure of the follies and absurdities, the impositions and assumptions, of the art of magic. With reference to the pretensions of astrologers, he observes that—
‘There’s but the twinkling of a star
Between a man of peace and war,
A thief and justice, fool and knave,
A huffing officer and a slave,
A crafty lawyer and pick-pocket,
A great philosopher and a blockhead,
A formal preacher and a player,
A learn’d physician and man-slayer;
As if men from the stars did suck
Old age, diseases, and ill-luck,
Wit, folly, honour, virtue, vice,
Trade, travel, women, claps, and dice;
And draw, with the first air they breathe,
Battle and murder, sudden death.
Are not these fine commodities
To be imported from the skies,
And vended here among the rabble,
For staple goods and warrantable?
Like money by the Druids borrowed
In th’ other world to be restored.’