THE ARGUMENT. Sir HUDIBRAS1 his passing worth, HUDIBRAS.] Butler probably took this name from Spencer's Fairy Queen, B. ii. C. ii. St. 17. He that made love unto the eldest dame, Since errant arms to sew he first began. Geoffry of Monmouth mentions a British king of this name, though some have supposed it derived from the French, Hugo, Hu de Bras, signifying Hugh the powerful, or with the strong arm : thus Fortinbras, Firebras. In the Grub-street Journal, Col. Rolls, a Devonshire gentleman is said to be satirized under the character of Hudibras; and it is asserted, that Hugh de Bras was the name of the old tutelar saint of that county; but it is idle to look for personal reflexions in a poem designed for a general satire on hypocrisy, enthusiasm, and false learning. 2 breaks off in the middle.] Bishop Warburton observes very justly, that this is a ridicule on Ronsard's Franciade, and Sir William Davenant's Gondibert. 66 HUDIBRAS. CANTO I. WHEN civil fury first grew high,' 1 And men fell out, they knew not why ;' 1 When civil fury first grew high,] In the first edition of the first part of this poem, printed separately, we read dudgeon. But on the publication of the second part, when the first was re-printed with several additions and alterations, the word dudgeon was changed to fury; as appears in a copy corrected by the author's own hand. The publisher in 1704, and the subsequent ones, have taken the liberty of correcting the author's copy, restored the word dudgeon, and many other readings: changing them, I think I may say, for the worse, in several passages. Indeed, while the Editor of 1704 replaces this word, and contends for it, he seems to shew its impropriety. "To take in dudgeon," says he, “is inwardly to resent, a sort of grumbling in "the gizzard, and what was previous to actual fury." Yet in the next lines we have men falling out, set together by the ears, and fighting. I doubt not but the inconsistency of these expressions occurred to the author, and induced him to change the word, that his sense might be clear, and the æra of his poem certain and uniform.-Dudgeon, in its primitive sense, signifies a dagger; and figuratively, such hatred and sullenness as occasion men to employ short concealed weapons. Some readers may be fond of the word dudgeon, as a burlesque term, and suitable, as they think, to the nature of the poem: but the judicious critic will observe, that the poet is not always in a drolling humour, and might not think fit to fall into it in the first line: he chooses his words not by the oddness or uncouthness of the sound, but by the propriety of their signification. Besides, the word dudgeon, in the figurative sense, though not in its primitive one, is generally taken for a monoptote in the ablative case, to take in dudgeon, which might be another reason why the poet changed it into fury. See line 379. 2 And men fell out, they knew not why ;] Dr. Perrincheif's Life of When hard words, jealousies, and fears, Charles I. says, "There will never be wanting, in any country, some "discontented spirits, and some designing craftsmen; but when "these confusions began, the more part knew not wherefore they were come together." 66 3 When hard words, jealousies, and fears, Set folks together by the ears,] Hard words.-Probably the jargon and cant-words used by the Presbyterians, and other sectaries. They called themselves the elect, the saints, the predestinated: and their opponents they called Papists, Prelatists, ill-designing, reprobate, profligate, &c. &c. "In the body politic, when the spiritual and windy power moveth "the members of a commonwealth, and by strange and hard words "suffocates their understanding, it must needs thereby distract the “people, and either overwhelm the commonwealth with oppression, 66 or cast it into the fire of a civil war." HOBBES. Jealousies.—Bishop Burnet, in the house of lords, on the first article of the impeachment of Sacheverel, says, "The true occasion "of the war was a jealousy, that a conduct of fifteen years had "given too much ground for; and that was still kept up by a fatal "train of errors in every step." See also the king's speech Dec. 2, 1641. And fears. Of superstition and Popery in the church, and of arbitrary power and tyranny in the state: and so prepossessed were many persons with these fears, that, like the hero of this poem, they would imagine a bear-baiting to be a deep design against the religion and liberty of the country. Lord Clarendon tells us, that the English were the happiest people under the sun, while the king was undisturbed in the administration of justice; but a too much felicity had made them unmanageable by moderate government; a long peace having softened almost all the noblesse into court pleasures, and made the commoners insolent by great plenty. King Charles, in the fourth year of his reign, tells the lords, "We "have been willing so far to descend to the desires of our good 66 subjects, as fully to satisfie all moderate minds, and free them "from all just fears and jealousies." The words jealousies and fears, were bandied between the king and parliament in all their papers, before the absolute breaking out of the war. They were And made them fight, like mad or drunk, 5 10 used by the parliament to the king, in their petition for the militia, March 1, 1641-2; and by the king in his answer, "You speak of jealousies and fears, lay your hands to your hearts and ask your"selves, whether I may not be disturbed with jealousies and fears." And the parliament, in their declaration to the king at Newmarket, March 9, say, "Those fears and jealousies of ours which your majesty "thinks to be causeless, and without just ground, do necessarily "and clearly arise from those dangers and distempers into which your evil councils have brought us: but those other fears and "jealousies of yours, have no foundation or subsistance in any action, intention, or miscarriage of ours, but are merely grounded 66 on falsehood and malice." 66 The terms had been used before by the Earl of Carlisle to James I. 14 Feb. 1623. "Nothing will more dishearten the envious maligners “of your majesty's felicity, and encourage your true hearted friends "and servants, than the removing those false fears and jealousies, “which are mere imaginary phantasms, and bodies of air easily dissipated, whensoever it shall please the sun of your majesty to shew "itself clearly in its native brightness, lustre, and goodness." 66 ✩ For dame Religion as for Punk ;] From the Anglo-Saxon pung, it signifies a bawd, Anus instar corii ad ignem siccati. (Skinner.) Sometimes scortum, scortillum. Sir John Suckling says, Religion now is a young mistress here, For which each man will fight and die at least: Let it alone awhile, and 'twill become A kind of married wife; people will be 5 When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded,] Mr. Butler told Thomas Veal esquire, of Simons-hall, Gloucestershire, that the Puritans had And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick, Was beat with fist, instead of a stick ;" a custom of putting their hands behind their ears, at sermons, and bending them forward, under pretence of hearing the better. He had seen five hundred or a thousand large ears pricked up as soon as the text was named. Besides, they wore their hair very short, which shewed their ears the more. See Godwin's notes in Bodley library. Dr. Bulwer in his Anthropometamorphosis, or Artificial Changeling, tells us wonderful stories of the size of men's ears in some countries.-Pliny lib. 7. c. 2. speaks of a people on the borders of India, who covered themselves with their ears. And Purchas, in his Pilgrim, saith, that in the island Arucetto, there are men and women having ears of such bigness, that they lie upon one as a bed, and cover themselves with the other. I here mention the idle tales of these authors, because their works, together with Brown's Vulgar Errors, are the frequent object of our poet's satire. • And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick, Was beat with fist, instead of a stick ;] It is sufficiently known from the history of those times, that the seeds of rebellion were first sown, and afterwards cultivated, by the factious preachers in conventicles, and the seditious and schismatical lecturers, who had crept into many churches, especially about London. "These men," says Lord Clarendon, " had, from the beginning of the parliament, in"fused seditious inclinations into the hearts of all men, against the 66 government in church and state: but after the raising an army, "and rejecting the king's overtures for peace, they contained them"selves within no bounds, but filled all the pulpits with alarms of "ruin and destruction, if a peace were offered or accepted." These preachers used violent action, and made the pulpit an instrument of sedition, as the drum was of war. Dr. South, in one of his sermons, says, "The pulpit supplied the field with sword-men, and the parlia"ment-house with incendiaries.” ▾ And out he rode a colonelling.] Some have imagined from hence, that by Hudibras, was intended Sir Samuel Luke of Bedfordshire. Sir Samuel was an active justice of the peace, chairman of the |