And wish that they had rather dar'd
To pull the devil by the beard.o

Quoth Cerdon, noble Orsin, th' hast
Great reason to do as thou say'st,

And so has ev'ry body here,

As well as thou hast, or thy bear:
Others may do as they see good;
But if this twig be made of wood
That will hold tack, I'll make the fur
Fly 'bout the ears of that old cur,
And th' other mongrel vermin, Ralph,
That brav'd us all in his behalf.

Thy bear is safe, and out of peril,
Tho' lugg'd indeed, and wounded very ill;
Myself and Trulla made a shift

To help him out at a dead lift;

And having brought him bravely off,
Have left him where he's safe enough:
There let him rest; for if we stay,
The slaves may hap to get away.

This said, they all engag'd to join

Their forces in the same design,

And forthwith put themselves, in search
Of Hudibras, upon their march:

Where leave we them awhile, to tell

What the victorious Knight befell;

270

275

280

285

290

• To pull the devil by the beard.] A proverbial expression used for any bold or daring enterprise: so we say, To take a lion by the beard. The Spaniards deemed it an unpardonable affront to be pulled by the beard.

For such, Crowdero being fast
In dungeon shut, we left him last.
Triumphant laurels seem'd to grow
No where so green as on his brow;
Laden with which, as well as tir'd
With conqu❜ring toil, he now retir’d
Unto a neighb❜ring castle by,

To rest his body, and apply

Fit medicines to each glorious bruise

He got in fight, reds, blacks, and blues;
To mollify th' uneasy pang

Of ev'ry honourable bang.

Which b'ing by skilful midwife drest,
He laid him down to take his rest.

But all in vain: he'ad got a hurt

O' th' inside, of a deadlier sort,
By Cupid made, who took his stand
Upon a widow's jointure-land,'

For he, in all his am'rous battles,

No 'dvantage finds like goods and chattels,

1 But all in vain: heʻad got a hurt

O' th' inside, of a deadlier sort,

By Cupid made, who took his stand

295

300

305

310

Upon a widow's jointure-land,] Stable-stand is a term of the forest laws, and signifies a place under some convenient cover, where a deer-stealer fixes himself, and keeps watch for the purpose of killing deer as they pass by. From the place it came also to be applied to the person; and any man taken in the forest in that situation, with a gun or bow, was presumed to be an offender, and had the name of a Stable-stand. From a note by Hanmer on Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, Act ii. sc. 1. The widow is supposed to have been Mrs. Tomson, who had a jointure of 2001. a year.

Drew home his bow, and aiming right,
Let fly an arrow at the Knight;

The shaft against a rib did glance,

And gall him in the purtenance;2

315

That old Pyg—what d'y' call him—malion,
That cut his mistress out of stone,*

Had not so hard a hearted one.

330

2 And gall him in the purtenance ;] A ludicrous name for the knight's heart: taken, probably, from a calf's or lamb's head and purtenance, as it is vulgarly called, instead of appertenance, which, among other entrails, contains the heart.

Till purging comfits, and ants' eggs] Ants' eggs were supposed, by some, to be great antidotes to love passions.* I cannot divine what are the medical qualities of them. Palladius, de re rustica, 29. 2. directs ants' eggs to be given to young pheasants.-Plutarch, ii. 928. and ii. 974. says that bears, when they are sick, cure themselves by swallowing ants. Frosted caraway seeds (common sugar plumbs) are not unlike ants' eggs.

▲ That cut his mistress out of stone,] Pygmalion, as the mythologists say, fell in love with a statue of his own carving; and Venus, to gratify him, turned it into a living woman.

* Verum equidem miror formicarum hac in parte potentiam, quum quatuor tantum in potu sumptas, omnem Veneris, ac coëundi potentiam auferre tradit Brunfelsius.

She had a thousand jadish tricks,

Worse than a mule that flings and kicks; 'Mong which one cross-grain'd freak she had, As insolent as strange and mad;

She could love none but only such

As scorn'd and hated her as much.5

335

The truth of the story is supposed to be, that he had a very beautiful wife, whose skin far surpassed the whiteness of ivory.-Or it may mean, to shew the painter's or statuary's vanity, and extreme fondness of his own performance. See Fr. Junius, in Catalog. Architect. Pictor. Statuarior. &c. p. 188. 163. Stone, instead of ivory, that the widow's hard heart, v. 330. might be the nearer resembled: so brazen, for stone, in Pope's description of Cibber's brothers in the Dunciad, i. 32. that the resemblance between him and them might be the stronger. So in our poet a goose, instead of some more considerable fowl, is described with talons, only because Hudibras was to be compared to a fowl with such: but making a goose have talons, and Hudibras like a goose, to which wise animal he had before compared a justice, P. i. c. i. v. 75, heightens the ridicule. See P. i. c. iii. v. 525.

If the reader loves a punning epitaph, let him peruse the following on a youth who died for love of Molly Stone :

Molly fuit saxum, saxum, O! si Molle fuisset,

Non foret hic subter, sed super esset ei.

5 She could love none but only such

As scorn'd and hated her as much.] Such a capricious kind of love is described by Horace: Satires, book i. ii. 105.

Leporem venator ut altâ

In nive sectatur, positum sic tangere nolit :

Cantat et apponit: meus est amor huic similis ; nam
Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat.

Nearly a translation of the thirty-second epigram of Callimachus, which ends,

χ ̓ αὑμὸς ἔρως τοιόςδε, τὰ μὲν φεύγοντα διώκειν

διδε, τὰ δ' ἐν μέσσῳ κείμενα παρπέταται.

6

'Twas a strange riddle of a lady;
Not love, if any lov'd her: ha-day!"
So cowards never use their might,
But against such as will not fight.
So some diseases have been found
Only to seize upon the sound."

He that gets her by heart, must say her
The back-way, like a witch's prayer.

340

Mean while the Knight had no small task 345
To compass what he durst not ask :

He loves, but dares not make the motion;
Her ignorance is his devotion :8

ha-day!] In the edition of 1678 it is Hey-day, but either may stand, as they both signify a mark of admiration. See Skinner and Junius.

66

7 So some diseases have been found

Only to seize upon the sound.] It is common for horses, as well as men, to be afflicted "with sciatica, or rheumatism, to a great degree for weeks together, and when they once get clear of the "fit," as we term it, "have perhaps never heard any more of it "while they lived: for these distempers, with some others, called 66 salutary distempers, seldom or never seize upon an unsound body." See Bracken's Farriery Improved, ii. 46. The meaning then, from v. 338, is this: As the widow loved none that were disposed to love her, so cowards fight with none that are disposed to fight with them : so some diseases seize upon none that are already distempered, and in appearance proper subjects for them, but upon those only who, through the firmness of their constitution, seem least disposed for such attacks.

Her ignorance is his devotion:] That is, her ignorance of his love makes him adore and pursue her with greater ardour: but the poet here means to banter the papists, who deny to the common people the use of the bible or prayer book in the vulgar tongue : hence they are charged with asserting, that ignorance is the mother of devotion.