On his own ground, that of satire in the grotesque vein written in doggerel verse, Butler is supreme in English. The wide distance at which his numerous imitators stand shows that his achievement was by no means an easy one; while their very number is among the proofs of his complete success. Another proof is that Charles II., no mean judge of wit, carried Hudibras about with him, and was constantly quoting it. Still more notable is what we learn about the poem from Pepys. That Pepys had a low opinion of Hudibras is easily explained. Though he is at least as amusing as Butler himself, he is so unintentionally; and he who is the cause why wit is in others, has never either understood or liked the man who is himself witty. The remarkable point for the present purpose is that Pepys, having sold his copy at a loss because the contents were so little to his taste, felt himself obliged to buy a second copy. No one who wished to swim with the current could afford to be ignorant of Hudibras. So again, when the second part appeared, the thrifty diarist thought it would suffice to borrow, but once more found that he must go to the expense of buying it. There is probably no more striking proof of popularity in our literary annals. Unfortunately, all this popularity brought small gain to the author. The poem was shamelessly pirated, and though Charles II. seems to have been less callous towards Butler than he was to many of the supporters of his cause, the royal bounty did not save the poet from an old age of poverty. According to his contemporary Oldham, "Of all his gains by verse he could not save Enough to purchase flannel and a grave."

In adopting the mock-heroic form Butler was, no doubt, influenced by his French contemporary Scarron's Virgile Travesti, which was destined to produce such a crop of imitations in England and on the Continent; and Courthope has shown that the Oxford poet James Smith had afforded useful hints for the verse. The choice was happy both for Butler's genius and in view of the circumstances of the time. Milton shows that even when the scene is laid in heaven the epic tends to be martial, and England had but recently been shaken by the tramp of armies. In the civil contest was involved everything that Butler cared for. It was religious as well as political; and Cavalier and Roundhead represented different types of character, no less than diverse views of Church and State.

Even manners and fashions were sharply opposed-on one side the "long essenced hair," on the other close-cropped locks; on one side gaiety, freedom of speech and round oaths, on the other a sour asceticism, and restraint of word and look. Restraint won, and the other side was forced to confess defeat. "God's nigs and ne'er stir, sir, has vanquish'd God damn me," sings Alexander Brome, and

"No accents are so pleasing now as those

That are caesura'd through the pastor's nose."

Even in courage, the same poet admits, temperance proved superior to intemperance. However the Good Fellow may brag, he cannot face his conquerors: "You'd as lief see the devil as Fairfax or Cromwell." Further, restraint won because it was restraint. Once more Brome tells us that "twas the cup made the camp to miscarry." But next, restraint, forgetting to restrain itself-like vaulting ambition overleaping itself-brought about the inevitable reaction, and the conquered became in turn the conqueror. The Puritans forgot human nature, which has never for long consented to renounce its cakes and ale, its ginger hot in the mouth, its merry tabor luring to the dance the merry toes.

Indian hunting parties are in the habit of making a kind of broth, the stock of which consists of parts of all the varied game the guns have brought in during the day. To what is not consumed the first night there is added the game of the second day, and so on as long as the expedition lasts. Each fresh variety contributes a new savour to the whole, which tastes neither of duck nor deer nor snipe nor jungle-fowl, but of all these blended in rich confusion with a dozen more, until the whole puts to shame or so it appears to palates stimulated by exercise and an outdoor life-the skill of the chef. What we call luck or chance has led to a result beyond the reach of art. Such a "hunter's pot" as this is Hudibras. The loose design enabled Butler to throw into his pot whatever of wit or wisdom he possessed. Hence it is that Hudibras is his one memorable work. Shakespeare could not express himself fully even in Hamlet, nor Milton in Paradise Lost, because these works have a beginning, middle and end. Hudibras has a sort of beginning, but it has neither middle nor end. To say it is unfinished is merely to say it is Hudibras; it never could have been finished in the artistic

sense, because that implies design. Butler took whatever he found in the past that suited his purpose, and he added all that was in his own mind. Hudibras contains suggestions borrowed from Don Quixote, from The Fairy Queen and from the Arthurian legends. When Hudibras rides out "a-colonelling," he is just a Don Quixote or an Arthurian knight-errant, and the fact that he

"Never bent his stubborn knee

To anything but chivalry,"

brings the sectaries' objection to kneeling at communion into grotesque contact with the chivalrous pride of the knights.

The main theme of Hudibras is the quarrel between Crown and Parliament, with which is inextricably blended the quarrel between Church and Dissent. Butler could not have separated these two aspects if he had wished; for they are as indissolubly united as the obverse and reverse of a coin. It is not worth while following the wanderings of the Knight and the Squire; they meander with as mazy motion as the dream-river of Coleridge. But wherever they go the underlying theme is the same. They fling themselves against the amusements dear to the people, such as bear-baiting, and they illustrate the quibbling casuistry of sectarian theology. One is Presbyterian, the other Independent; and there runs through all a criticism, now open and now implied, of the religious and political evils which flow from insistence upon differences as to the dotting of the i's and stroking of the t's in either. In a passage of unusual elevation Butler praises the Royalists' steadfastness, which is due to unity of principle:

And with this he

"For loyalty is still the same

Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to the sun,

Although it be not shined upon."

contrasts the confusion due to multiplicity of

sects, which dates back from before the Civil War, for

"Ere the storm of war broke out,
Religion spawned a various rout
Of petulant capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts."

The reign of the Saints is obstructed by their numbers; for though many hands make light work, it is just the contrary with intellects.

In a contemptuous image Butler expresses his sense of the inefficiency which flows from unrestricted differences of opinion. Many heads, he says,

"Obstruct intrigues,

As slowest insects have most legs."

The Roundhead centipede was incapable of progress, because its various members were all for moving different ways.

Macaulay thought that the tap-root of the Civil War was shipmoney; but Carlyle insisted that serious men must have something more important than money at stake before they will fight. Hudibras confirms Carlyle; for it shows that not only ship-money but every political question was subordinate to religion. The sects spawned from "the maggots of corrupted texts" are the cause rather than the effect of the quarrel with the Crown; and if Butler ever wished to make the political predominant over the religious aspect, he completely failed. It is Presbyterians and Independents who are satirised, and the faithful Churchman who is inferentially approved. It is from false religion; from a forced interpretation of texts; from an ethical perversion on the part of those who compounded "For sins they are inclined to,

By damning those they have no mind to";

and, still worse, from the outrageous claims of those who held that the regenerate were incapable of sin, so that what is a sin in the wicked is pious in the saint-it is from these causes that all political errors, in the view of Butler, spring. His picture of the sects is admirable. He brings Presbyterian into contact with Independent-the learned Knight, profound in logic, a master of rhetoric and mathematics, a shrewd philosopher, with the Squire, unlearned indeed, but the Knight's equal or superior by virtue of what some call Gifts, and others the New Light:—

"A liberal art that costs no pains
Of study, industry, or brains."

Thus Butler is enabled to introduce anything and everything. Learned himself, he had yet a hearty contempt for the pedantry of learning; and the character of the Knight gives ample scope for his ridicule of such pedantry. Hudibras is learned enough not merely to make the worse appear the better reason, but to explain away

the most obvious facts. He has been soundly beaten, but what of that?

"This thing called pain,

Is, as the learned stoics maintain,
Not bad simpliciter, nor good,
But merely as 'tis understood."

Neither is such a beating derogatory to the honour of a soldier; for
"Some have been beaten till they know
What wood a cudgel's of by the blow;
Some kicked, until they can feel whether
A shoe be Spanish or neat's leather ";

and yet after long running away have taught the same cunning to others. And Ralph is quite the equal of Hudibras as a casuist. As the latter finds excuse for the drubbing he suffers, so does the former argue that running away is a most soldierly act :

"Timely running's no mean part

Of conduct, in the martial art,
By which some glorious deeds achieve,
As citizens by breaking thrive,

And cannons conquer armies, while
They seem to draw off and recoil."

But Hudibras's learning could be applied to many things besides his own case. Butler anticipates Swift's satire of Laputa; for the Knight

"By geometric scale

Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread or butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock does strike, by algebra."

Still, the satirist is no prophet; and if time often exposes the folly of pedantic learning, it occasionally reveals the danger which besets criticism resting upon a foundation of common sense. Probably Butler conceived the satire which he aimed, as is supposed, at Dr. Robert Hooke, secretary and curator to the Royal Society, to be as sound as that which strikes at the application of geometry to pots of ale. Butler evidently held investigation into the minutest forms of life to be idle, for he represents the conjurer Sidrophel as enquiring

K

"How many different specieses

Of maggots breed in rotten cheese;
And which are next of kin to those
Engendered in a chandler's nose;
Or those not seen, but understood,
That live in vinegar or wood."