He oft, in such attempts as these,
Came off with glory and success;
Nor will we fail in th' execution,
For want of equal resolution.
Honour is, like a widow, won
With brisk attempt and putting on;
With entering manfully and urging,
Not slow approaches, like a virgin."
This said, as erst the Phrygian knight,*
So ours, with rusty steel did smite
His Trojan horse, and just as much
He mended pace upon the touch;
But from his empty stomach groaned,
Just as that hollow beast did sound,
And angry, answered from behind,
With brandished tail and blast of wind.
So have I seen, with armèd heel,
A wight bestride a Common-weal,†
While still the more he kicked and spurred,
The less the sullen jade has stirred.

* Laocoon, who, suspecting the treachery of the Greeks, struck the wooden horse with his spear.

+ Our poet might possibly have in mind a print engraven in Holland. It represented a cow, the emblem of the Commonwealth, with the King of Spain on her back, kicking and spurring her; the Queen of England before, stopping and feeding her; the Prince of Orange milking her; and the Duke of Anjou behind, pulling her back by the tail.-HEYLIN's Cosmog.-N.

The image applies to the brief government of Richard Cromwell, rather than to that of Oliver. When a similar metaphor was applied to Oliver, the steeds' instead of being 'sullen,' were generally made to rear and plunge, as in the following lines of one of the royalist ballads:

But Nol, a rank rider, gets first in the saddle,

And made her show tricks, and curvet, and rebound;

She quickly perceived he rode widdle-waddle,

And like his coach-horses, threw his highness to ground.
Then Dick, being lame, rode holding by the pummel,
Not having the wit to get hold of the rein;

But the jade did so snort at the sight of a Cromwell,
That poor Dick and his kindred turned footmen again!

This incident actually occurred on one occasion when Cromwell was driving his own coach.-See CLEVELAND'S Coachman of St. James's.

1. BUTLER.

6

TH

PART I.-CANTO II.

THE ARGUMENT.

The catalogue and character
Of th' enemies' best men of war,
Whom, in a bold harangue, the knight
Defies, and challenges to fight:

H' encounters Talgol, routs the bear,
And takes the fiddler prisoner,

Conveys him to enchanted castle,

There shuts him fast in wooden Bastile.

over,

HERE was an ancient sage philosopher
That had read Alexander Ross*
And swore the world, as he could prove,
Was made of fighting, and of love.
Just so romances are, for what else

Is in them all but love and battles?+

O' th' first of these w' have no great matter
To treat of, but a world o' th' latter,
In which to do the injured right,
We mean in what concerns just fight,
Certes our authors are to blame,
For to make some well-sounding name
A pattern fit for modern knights

To

copy out in frays and fights,

* A Scotch divine, born in 1590. Having come to England in the reign of Charles I., he was made one of his Majesty's chaplains, and master of the free school of Southampton. He died in 1654, leaving a handsome legacy to the school, and bequeathing to some friends in Hampshire a large library, and a considerable sum of money, part of which was hidden amongst his books. Ross was a voluminous writer upon a great variety of subjects, and wrote commentaries on Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Thomas Browne, Hobbes, and Sir Walter Raleigh. To have read Alexander Ross over, would, therefore, have been an extraordinary achievement. Addison remarks, that this couplet, on account of its curious rhyme, has been more frequently quoted than the finest pieces of wit in the whole poem.

+ Some lines in Butler's Common-place Book are to the same effect:Love and fighting is the sum

Of all romances, from Tom Thumb
To Arthur, Gondibert and Hudibras.

Like those that a whole street do raze,
To build a palace in the place;*
They never care how many others
They kill, without regard of mothers,
Or wives, or children, so they can
Make up some fierce, dead-doing man,
Composed of many ingredient valours,
Just like the manhood of nine tailors:
So a wild Tartar, when he spies
A man that's handsome, valiant, wise,
If he can kill him, thinks t' inherit
His wit, his beauty, and his spirit;t
As if just so much he enjoyed,
As in another is destroyed:
For when a giant's slain in fight,
And mowed o'erthwart, or cleft downright,
It is a heavy case, no doubt,

A man should have his brains beat out,
Because he's tall, and has large bones,
As men kill beavers for their stones.
But, as for our part, we shall tell
The naked truth of what befel,
And as an equal friend to both
The knight and bear, but more to troth,‡
With neither faction shall take part,
But give to each his due desert,

And never coin a formal lie on't,

To make the knight o'ercome the giant.
This b'ing professed, we've hopes enough,
And now go on where we left off.

* Some editions read

To build another in its place.

The allusion, however, being apparently to the building of Somerset House, for which some religious houses and two churches were pulled down, the above reading is preferred.

The Tartar who kills a man of extraordinary endowments or beauty believes that the qualities of his victim are immediately transferred to himself.

Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.'

They rode, but authors having not
Determined whether pace or trot,
That is to say, whether tollutation,*
As they do term 't, or succussation,†
We leave it, and go on, as now
Suppose they did, no matter how ;
Yet some, from subtle hints, have got
Mysterious light it was a trot:
But let that pass; they now begun
spur their living engines on:

To

For as whipped tops and bandied balls,
The learned hold, are animals ;‡
So horses they affirm to be

Mere engines made by geometry,
And were invented first from engines,
As Indian Britons were from Penguins. §
So let them be, and, as I was saying,
They their live engines plied, not staying
Until they reached the fatal champaign
Which th' enemy did then encamp on;
The dire Pharsalian plain, where battle
Was to be waged 'twixt puissant cattle,
And fierce auxiliary men,

That came to aid their brethren;

The atomic theory, by which it is maintained that there is no vital principle in animals, and, that they have no higher motivepower than that of mere mechanism; consequently tops and bandied balls, while in motion, possess as much of the living principle as horses or dogs, or any of the lower animals.

§ Dr. Grey thinks it probable that this is meant as a banter upon Selden, who, in his notes on the Polyolbion, speaking of a voyage made by a certain Prince of Wales to Florida in 1170, conjectures that the words Capo de Broton and Penguin -a white rock and a whiteleaded bird-are reliques of the Prince's discoveries. The meaning is, that it is just as likely that horses were invented from engines, as that the Britons came from penguins. Warburton acutely observes, that 'the thought is extremely fine, and well exposes the folly of a philosopher, for attempting to establish a principle of great importance in his science, on as slender a foundation as an etymologist advances an historical conjecture.'

Who now began to take the field,
As knight from ridge of steed beheld.
For, as our modern wits behold,
Mounted a pick-back on the old,*
Much further off, much further he
Raised on his agèd beast, could see;
Yet not sufficient to descry
All postures of the enemy:

Wherefore he bids the squire ride further,
T'observe their numbers, and their order;
That when their motions he had known,
He might know how to fit his own.
Meanwhile he stopped his willing steed,
To fit himself for martial deed:
Both kinds of metal he prepared,
Either to give blows, or to ward;
Courage within, and steel without,
To give and to receive a rout.t

His death-charged pistols he did fit well,
Drawn out from life-preserving victual;
These being primed, with force he laboured
To free 's blade from retentive scabbard;
And after many a painful pluck,

He cleared at length the rugged tuck:+
Then shook himself, to see that prowess
In scabbard of his arms sat loose;
And, raised upon his desperate foot,
On stirrup-side he gazed about, §

* The moderns, observes Sir W. Temple, must have more know. ledge than the ancients, because they have the advantage both of theirs and their own; which is commonly illustrated by a dwarf's standing on a giant's shoulders, and seeing more and farther than the giant.

+ In the original edition, this couplet stood thus :—

Courage and steel, both of great force,

Prepared for better, or for worse.

Original edition :

From rusty dalliance he bailed tuck.

§ The details given in the first instance of the knight's furniture