From whence he vaulted into th' seat,

With so much vigour, strength, and heat,
That he had almost tumbled over
With his own weight, but did recover,
By laying hold on tail and mane,
Which oft he used instead of rein.*
But now we talk of mounting steed,
Before we further do proceed,

It doth behove us to say something
Of that which bore our valiant bumpkin.+
The beast was sturdy, large, and tall,
With mouth of meal, and eyes of wall;
I would say eye, for h' had but one,
As most agree, though some say none.
He was well stayed, and in his gait,
Preserved a grave, majestic state;
At spur or switch no more he skipped,
Or mended pace, than Spaniard whipped;+
And yet so fiery, he would bound

As if he grieved to touch the ground; §
That Cæsar's horse, who, as fame goes,
Had corns upon his feet and toes,||
Was not by half so tender-hoofed,
Nor trod upon the ground so soft;

* The whole of this ludicrous description is singularly happy; the fat, unwieldy knight, encumbered by a load of meat and puddings, and an exceedingly inconvenient costume; with only one stirrup tied up to the saddle very short on the off-side; making a desperate spring to mount, nearly tumbling over by the force of his own weight, and sprawling along the back of the great horse, which he seizes by mane and tail to preserve his equilibrium.

+ In all the editions bumkin, traced by Dr. Nash to boom, and ken or kin a diminutive. But this is not properly the term used by Butler. Bumkin is a short boom projecting from each bow of a ship. The word in the text should be bumpkin-from bump, large or swelling, and kin, kind or genus; and, applied to a man, means a heavy, awkward, clownish fellow.

The allusion is to Sir Roger L'Estrange's fable of the Spaniard under the lash. Being condemned to run the gauntlet, the Spaniard preserved a slow and dignified step, scorning to abbreviate his pain by quickening his pace.

§ See the description of Don Quixote's Rosinante.

Julius Cæsar's horse was said to have had feet like those of a man.

And as that beast would kneel and stoop,
Some write, to take his rider up,
So Hudibras his, 'tis well-known,
Would often do, to set him down.
We shall not need to say what lack
Of leather was upon his back;
For that was hidden under pad,
And breech of knight galled full as bad.
His strutting ribs on both sides showed
Like furrows he himself had ploughed ;
For underneath the skirt of pannel,
'Twixt ev'ry two there was a channel.
His draggling tail hung in the dirt,
Which on his rider he would flurt,
Still as his tender side he pricked,
With armed heel, or with unarmed, kicked;
For Hudibras wore but one spur,
As wisely knowing, could he stir
To active trot one side of 's horse,
The other would not hang an arse. *

A Squire he had, whose name was Ralph,t
That in th' adventure went his half.
Though writers, for more stately tone,
Do call him Ralpho, 'tis all one;
And when we can, with metre safe,
We'll call him so, if not, plain Ralph;

* Butler may, probably, have taken the hint of these lines from the following passage quoted by a correspondent of Notes and Queries:— 'A scholar being jeered on the way for wearing but one spur, said, that if one side of his horse went on, it was not likely that the other would stay behind.'-Gratia Ludentes: Jests from the Universitie. 1638.

+ Sir Roger L'Estrange says that the original of Ralph was one Isaac Robinson, a zealous butcher in Moorfields; another authority transfers the portrait to a tailor of the name of Pemble, one of the Committee of Sequestrators. Dr. Grey thinks it probable that the name was suggested by that of the grocer's apprentice in Beaumont and Fletcher's play of The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Ralph is the representative of the Independents, as Hudibras is of the Presbyterians. By this contrivance the union (and, also, the rivalry) of the sectaries in a common cause is exhibited throughout the poem.

For rhyme the rudder is of verses,
With which, like ships, they steer their courses.
An equal stock of wit and valour
He had laid in; by birth a tailor;
The mighty Tyrian queen that gained,
With subtle shreds, a tract of land,*
Did leave it, with a castle fair,

To his great ancestor, her heir;

From him descended cross-legged knights,+
Famed for their faith and warlike fights
Against the bloody Cannibal,+

Whom they destroyed both great and small.
This sturdy Squire had, as well
As the bold Trojan knight, seen hell,
Not with a counterfeited pass
Of golden bough, but true gold-lace.
His knowledge was not far behind
The knight's, but of another kind,
And he another way came by't;
Some call it Gifts, and some New-light;
A liberal art that costs no pains
Of study, industry, or brains.
His wits were sent him for a token,
But in the carriage cracked and broken;
Like commendation nine-pence crooked
With-To and from my love-it looked.§

* Queen Dido, who having obtained as much land as could be marked round by the hide of an ox, ingeniously cut the hide into strips so narrow as to enable her to enclose a much larger space than had been anticipated.

+ The knights were represented in their effigies on their tombs with their legs crossed, somewhat in the manner of tailors.

In carrying out the double figure of the Templars and the tailors, the bloody cannibal must be understood to represent the Saracens on the one side, and certain small creatures with which tailors are much troubled on the other.

§ Until the year 1696, when all money not milled was called in, a ninepenny-piece of silver was as common as sixpences or shillings.-G. Bending a coin, and preserving it as a love-token, was an old custom, and still prevails in many parts of the country. The usual form on the occasion of presenting one of these gifts was To my love, from my love.

He ne'er considered it, as loth
To look a gift-horse in the mouth;
And very wisely would lay forth
No more upon it than 'twas worth;
But as he got it freely, so

He spent it frank and freely too:
For saints themselves will sometimes be,
Of gifts that cost them nothing, free.
By means of this, with hem and cough,
Prolongers to enlightened snuff,
He could deep mysteries unriddle,
As easily as thread a needle:
For as of vagabonds we say,

That they are ne'er beside their way:
Whate'er men speak by this new light,
Still they are sure to be i' th' right.
'Tis a dark-lantern of the spirit,

Which none can see but those that bear it;
A light that falls down from on high,

For spiritual trades to cozen by;*

An ignis fatuus, that bewitches,

And leads men into pools and ditches,

To make them dip themselves,† and sound
For Christendom in dirty pond;

To dive, like wild-fowl, for salvation,
And fish to catch regeneration.
This light inspires, and plays upon
The nose of saint, like bag-pipe drone,‡
And speaks, through hollow empty soul,
As through a trunk, or whispering hole,
Such language as no mortal ear
But spirit'al eaves-dropper can hear.
So Phoebus, or some friendly muse,
Into small poets song infuse;

Traders in spiritual gifts are here compared to traders who have light let down upon their goods through a glass window in the roof. Ralph was probably an Anabaptist or Dipper.

Alluding to the prevailing mode of speaking through the nose.

Which they at second-hand rehearse,
Through reed or bagpipe, verse for verse.
Thus Ralph became infallible,

As three or four-legged oracle,*
The ancient cup, or modern chair;
Spoke truth point blank, though unaware.
For mystic learning wondrous able
In magic, talisman, and cabal,
Whose primitive tradition reaches
As far as Adam's first green breeches; +
Deep-sighted in intelligences,

Ideas, atoms, influences;

And much of Terra Incognita,
Th' intelligible world, could say ;+
A deep occult philosopher,
As learned as the wild Irish are,
Or Sir Agrippa, for profound

And solid lying much renowned:§

The three-legged oracle refers to the Tripos, upon which the priestess sat at Delphos, when she delivered her oracles. A fourlegged oracle probably means, as Dr. Nash suggests, divination by quadruped.

+ Probably intended to burlesque the Geneva translation of the Bible, published with notes, 1599, which, in the third of Genesis, says of Adam and Eve, they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves breeches.-G. The same expression is repeated elsewhere by Butler, in another form:-' he derives the pedigree of magic from Adam's first green breeches; because fig-leaves being the first clothes that mankind wore, were only used for covering, and therefore are the most ancient monuments of concealed mysteries.'-Character of an hermetic Philosopher.

The whole of this passage is in ridicule of the metaphysical and scientific affectations of the day. By th' intelligible world' is meant that remarkably unintelligible world which some philosophers regard as the refugium of ideas, and which to all the rest of the world has no more existence than the elixir vitæ.

§ Cornelius Agrippa, born in Cologne in 1486, was secretary to the Emperor Maximilian, Doctor of Divinity, physician to the Duchess of Anjou, and historiographer to Charles V. The particular allusion in the text is to a book of magic he published when he was very young, containing the most wonderful collection of falsehoods and impositions that were ever put together on the subject. Agrippa, in the latter part of his life, renounced all these follies, and in making a I. BUTLER. 5