And beat a Tuscan running horse,
Whose jockey-rider is all spurs.3

› And beat a Tuscan running horse,

1690

Whose jockey-rider is all spurs.] Races of this kind are practised both in the corso at Rome, and at Florence. At Rome, in the carnival, there are five or six horses trained on purpose for this diversion. They are drawn up a-breast in the Piazza del Popolo; and certain balls, with little sharp spikes, are hung along their rumps, which serve to spur them on as soon as they begin to run.

PART III. CANTO III,

THE ARGUMENT.

The Knight and Squire's prodigious flight
To quit th' enchanted bow'r by night.
He plods to turn his amorous suit,
T'a plea in law, and prosecute:
Repairs to counsel, to advise
'Bout managing the enterprise;
But first resolves to try by letter,

And one more fair address, to get her.

HUDIBRAS.

CANTO III.'

WHO would believe what strange bugbears
Mankind creates itself, of fears,

That spring, like fern, that insect weed,
Equivocally, without seed,2

And have no possible foundation,

But merely in th' imagination?

5

The Editor was much inclined to follow the plan of the French translator, and place this before the preceding canto; but he was afraid to alter the form which Butler himself had made choice of, especially as the poet had taken the pains to recapitulate and explain the foregoing adventure, and bring it back to the reader's memory. › That spring, like fern, that insect weed,

Equivocally, without seed,] He calls it an insect weed, on the supposition of its being bred, as many insects were thought to be, not by the natural generation of their own kinds, but by the corruption of other substances, or the spontaneous fecundity of matter. This is called equivocal generation, in contradistinction to unequivocal, or that which is brought about by a natural succession and derivation, from an egg, a seed, or a root, of the same animal or vegetable. Plants of the cryptogamia class, ferns, mosses, flags, and fungusses, have their seeds and flowers so small as not to be discernible; so that the ancients held them to be without seed. Pliny, in his Natural History, says, Filicis duo genera, nec florem habent, nec semen. (lib. xxvii. c. 9,) Mr. Durham says, the capsulas are hardly a quarter so big as a grain of sand, and yet may contain an hundred seeds. [Our ancestors, believing that this plant produced -seed that was invisible, concluded that those who possessed the secret of wearing it about them would become likewise invisible. See Henry IV. Part I.

Gads.

We steal as in a castle, cocksure; we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible.

Chamb. Nay, by my faith; I think, you are more beholden to the night]

And yet can do more dreadful feats
Than hags, with all their imps and teats;
Make more bewitch and haunt themselves,
Than all their nurseries of elves.

For fear does things so like a witch,

"Tis hard t' unriddle which is which;
Sets up communities of senses,

To chop and change intelligences;
As Rosicrucian virtuoso's

Can see with ears, and hear with noses;3

As Rosicrucian virtuoso's

10

15

Can see with ears, and hear with noses;] A banter on the marquis of Worcester's scantlings of inventions. Edmund Somerset, marquis of Worcester, published, in 1663, a century of the names and scantlings of such inventions, as, says he, "I can call to mind to "have tried and perfected." The book is a mere table of contents, a list only of an hundred projects, mostly impossibilities; though he pretends to have discovered the art of performing all of them. How to make an unsinkable ship-how to sail against wind and tidehow to fly-how to use all the senses indifferently for each other, to talk by colours, and to read by the taste-how to converse by the jangling of bells out of tune, &c. &c. For an account of the marquis of Worcester, see Walpole's Catalogue of Noble Authors; and Collins's Peerage, article Beaufort, where is that most extraordinary patent which Charles the first granted to the marquis. Panurge, in Rabelais, says: que ses lunettes lui faisoient entendre beaucoup plus clair. Shakspeare, in his Midsummer Night's Dream, says, "he is gone to see a noise that he heard." "This is an art to teach

men to see with their ears, and hear with their eyes and noses, as it "has been found true by experience and demonstration, if we may "believe the history of the Spaniard, that could see words, and swal"low music by holding the peg of a fiddle between his teeth, or him "that could sing his part backward at first sight, which those that 66 were near him might hear with their noses." Butler's Remains, vol. ii. p. 245. Our poet probably means to ridicule sir Kenelm Digby, and some treatises wrote by Dr. Bulwer, author of the Artificial Changeling.