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AN HEROICAL EPISTLE*

OF HUDIBRAS TO SIDROPHEL.

Ecce iterum Crispinus....

WELL, Sidrophel, though 'tis in vain
To tamper with your crazy brain,
Without trepanning of your scull
As often as the moon 's at full,
'Tis not amiss, ere y' are giv'n o'er,
To try one desp❜rate med'cine more;
For where your case can be no worse
The desp'rat'st is the wisest course.
Is 't possible that you, whose ears
Are of the tribe of Issachar's,

And might (with equal reason) either
For merit or extent of leather,

With William Pryn's, before they were
Retrench'd and crucify'd, compare,

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*This Epistle was published ten years after the Third Canto of the Second Part, to which it is now annexed, namely, in the year 1674; and is said, in a Key to a Burlesque Poem of Mr. Butler's, published 1706, p. 13, to have been occasioned by Sir Paul Neal, a conceited virtuoso, and member of the Royal Society, who constantly affirmed that Mr. Butler was not the author of Hudibras, which gave rise to this Epistle; and by some he has been taken for the real Sidrophel of the poem. This was the gentleman, who, I am told, made a great discovery of an elephant in the moon, which, upon examination, proved to be no other than a mouse which had mistaken its way, and got into his telescope. See The Elephant in the Moon,' vol. ii.

Should yet be deaf against a noise
So roaring as the public voice?

That speaks your virtues free and loud,
And openly in every crowd,

As loud as one that sings his part
T'a wheelbarrow or turnip-cart,
Or your new nick-nam'd old invention

To cry green hastings with an engine
(As if the vehemence had stunn'd

And torn your drum-heads with the sound);
And 'cause your folly 's now no news,

But overgrown and out of use,

Persuade yourself there's no such matter,

But that 'tis vanish'd out of Nature;
When Folly, as it grows in years,
The more extravagant appears;
For who but you could be possest
With so much ignorance and beast,

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That neither all men's scorn and hate,

Nor being laugh'd and pointed at,

Nor bray'd so often in a mortar,

Can teach you wholesome sense and nurture,
But (like a reprobate) what course
Soever us❜d, grow worse and worse?
Can no transfusion of the blood,
That makes fools cattle, do you good?

Nor putting pigs t' a bitch to nurse,
To turn them into mongrel curs,
Put you into a way at least

To make yourself a better beast?
Can all

your critical intrigues

Of trying sound from rotten eggs;
Your sev'ral new-found remedies

Of curing wounds and scabs in trees;

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Your arts of fluxing them for claps,
And purging their infected saps;
Recov'ring shankers, chrystallines,
And nodes and blotches in their rinds;
Have no effect to operate

Upon that duller block, your pate?
But still it must be lewdly bent

To tempt your own due punishment;
And, like your whimsy'd chariots, draw
The boys to course you without law;
As if the art you have so long
Profess'd, of making old dogs young,
In you
had virtue to renew

Not only youth but childhood too.
Can you, that understand all books,
By judging only with your looks,
Resolve all problems with your face,
As others do with B's and A's;
Unriddle all that mankind knows
With solid bending of your brows;
All arts and sciences advance
With screwing of your countenance,
And with a penetrating eye
Into th' abstrusest learning pry;
Know more of any trade b' a hint
Than those that have been bred up
And yet have no art, true or false,
To help your own bad naturals?
But still the more you strive t' appear
Are found to be the wretcheder:
For fools are known by looking wise,
As men find woodcocks by their eyes.

in 't,

Hence 'tis that 'cause y' have gain'd o' th' college A quarter share (at most) of knowledge,

And brought in none, but spent repute,
Y'assume a pow'r as absolute

To judge, and censure, and control,
As if you were the sole Sir Poll,
And saucily pretend to know

More than your dividend comes to.
You'll find the thing will not be done
With ignorance and face alone;

No, though y' have purchas'd to your name
In history so great a fame;

That now your talent 's so well known
For having all belief outgrown,

That ev'ry strange prodigious tale

Is measur❜d by your German scale—
By which the virtuosi try

The magnitude of ev'ry lie,

Cast up to what it does amount,
And place the bigg'st to your account:
That all those stories that are laid

86 Sir Politic Would-be, in " Volpone."

91 92 These two lines, I think, plainly discover that Lilly, and not Sir Paul Neal, was here lashed under the name of 'Sidrophel;' for Lilly's fame abroad was indisputable. Mr. Strickland, who was many years agent for the Parliament in Holland, thus publishes it: "I came purposely into the committee this day to see the man who is so famous in those parts where I have so long continued: I assure you his name is famous all over Europe. I came to do him justice." Lilly is also careful to tell us, that the King of Sweden sent him a gold chain and medal, worth about fifty pounds, for making honourable mention of his Majesty in one of his almanacks, which, he says, was translated into the language spoken at Hamburgh, and printed and cried about the streets, as it was in London. Thus he trumpets to the world the fame he acquired by his infamous practices, if we may credit his own history.

VOL. I.

Too truly to you, and those made,
Are now still charg'd upon your score,
And lesser authors nam'd no more.
Alas! that faculty betrays
Those soonest it designs to raise ;
And all your vain renown will spoil,
As guns o'ercharg'd the more recoil;
Though he that has but impudence
To all things has a fair pretence;
And put among his wants but shame,
To all the world may lay his claim:

Though you have try'd that nothing 's borne
With greater ease than public scorn,

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That all affronts do still give place

To your impenetrable face;

That makes your way through all affairs,

As pigs through hedges creep with theirs :
Yet as 'tis counterfeit, and brass,
You must not think 'twill always pass;
For all impostors, when they're known,
Are past their labour and undone ;
And all the best that can befall

An artificial natural,

Is that which madmen find as soon

As once they're broke loose from the moon,
And, proof against her influence,

Relapse to e'er so little sense,

To turn stark fools, and subjects fit
For sport of boys and rabble-wit.

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