POETS CONTEMPORARY WITH DRYDEN.
[Sidenote: Oldham (1653-1683).]
The contemporary of Dryden who approached him most nearly in satiric
force, and, generally speaking, in the borderland between poetry and
prose, was John Oldham (1653-1683). Not much is known of his life. The
son of a Nonconformist minister, he nevertheless obtained a university
education, but after leaving college was glad to accept the position of
usher in Archbishop Whitgift's free school at Croydon. Coming to town he
filled the post of tutor in various families, and by his _Satires upon
the Jesuits_ (1681) gained the acquaintance of Dryden and other men of
letters and the patronage of the Earl of Kingston, who seemed likely to
provide for him, but at whose seat in Nottinghamshire he died of the
smallpox, December, 1683.
Oldham's poems consist partly of odes, formal and elaborate
compositions, and partly of the satires which in his age in some measure
supplied the place of the modern journal and review. A secret and
unconscious harmony pervades all branches of the contemporary art of
every epoch; and in the stately and somewhat stilted lyrics of Oldham
and his compeers we discern the counterpart of the elaborate
frontispieces with temples and triumphal arches, chariots and
cornucopias, tritons and nereids, which the engravers of the age
prefixed to its literature. The engraving is hardly art, and the verse
is hardly poetry; we are nevertheless conscious of a vigour and a
substance which command respect. The work is compact and solid at any
rate, and displays much of the force of the Giants, if little of the
inspiration of the Gods. Oldham would fain be extravagant in praise of
wine; but there is not the least trace of genuine Bacchic frenzy in his
laboured dithyramb. The epicedion on his friend Mouvent is a serious
composition indeed, forty-two mortal stanzas, with, nevertheless,
sufficient good things to justify the praise bestowed on it by Pope. The
ode to Ben Jonson is remarkable as expressing the feelings of the men of
the Restoration towards the poet who they really thought had reformed
the stage, and delivered it from the reprehensible licentiousness of
Shakespeare. Like Oldham's other lyrical compositions, it abounds with
most dissonant lines, but has also some noble ones, as these, for
example:
'Let meaner spirits stoop to low precarious fame,
Content on gross and coarse applause to live
And what the dull and senseless rabble give;
Thou didst it still with noble scorn contemn,
Nor wouldst that wretched alms receive,
The poor subsistence of some bankrupt, sordid name:
Thine was no empty vapour, raised beneath,
And formed of common breath,
The false and foolish fire, that's whisked about
By popular air, and glares awhile, and then goes out;
But 'twas a solid, whole, and perfect globe of light,
That shone all over, was all over bright,
And dared all sullying clouds, and feared no darkening night.'
Oldham's principal celebrity, however, is derived from his satires. He
had the knack of stinging invective, and has been not unjustly compared
to Churchill. His _Satires on the Jesuits_ exactly suited the time of
the Popish Plot, at present they repel by their one-sidedness. All
satire, except that inspired by fancy, is apt to become repulsive by
its natural tendency to dwell upon the meanest and lowest aspects of
human nature; and this is pre-eminently the case with Oldham, who is
always ridiculing or denouncing, always drawing his illustrations from
the base and offensive, and seldom diversifies his low matter with an
ennobling thought. Yet he evinces so much manly sense, and his style is
so nervous, that it is impossible not to admire his vigour, and wish him
a more inviting subject. His metre and rhyme frequently stand in need of
Dryden's generous apology:
'O early ripe! to thy abundant store
What could advancing age have added more?
It might, what Nature never gives the young,
Have taught the smoothness of thy native tongue.
But satire needs not these, and wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.'
All this notwithstanding, Oldham had the root of the matter in him, and
has described, as only a poet could, the ambition, the toil, and the
triumph of a poet:
''Tis endless, Sir, to tell the many ways
Wherein my poor deluded self I please:
How, when the fancy lab'ring for a birth,
With unfelt throes, brings its rude issue forth:
How, after, when imperfect, shapeless thought
Is, by the judgment, into fashion wrought:
When at first search, I traverse o'er my mind,
None, but a dark and empty void I find:
Some little hints, at length, like sparks break thence,
And glimm'ring thoughts, just dawning into sense:
Confus'd, awhile, the mixt ideas lie
With nought of mark to be discover'd by;
Like colours undistinguish'd in the night,
Till the dusk images mov'd to the light,
Teach the discerning faculty to choose,
Which it had best adopt, and which refuse.
Here rougher strokes, touch'd with a careless dash,
Resemble the first setting of a face:
There finish'd draughts in form more full appear,
And in their justness ask no further care,
Meanwhile, with inward joy, I proud am grown,
To see the work successfully go on;
And prize myself in a creating-power,
That could make something, what was nought before.
Sometimes a stiff unwieldy thought I meet,
Which to my laws, will scarce be made submit:
But when, after expense of pains and time,
'Tis manag'd well, and taught to yoke in rhime,
In triumph, more than joyful warriors would,
Had they some stout and hardy foe subdu'd:
And idly think, less goes to their command,
That makes arm'd troops in well-placed order stand,
Than to the conduct of my words, when they
March in due ranks, are set in just array.
Sometimes on wings of thought I seem on high, }
As men in sleep, tho' motionless they lie, }
Hedg'd by a dream, believe they mount and fly: }
So witches some inchanted wand bestride, }
And think they thro' the airy regions ride, }
Where fancy is both trav'ller, way and guide: }
Then straight I grow a strange exalted thing,
And equal in conceit at least a king:
As the poor drunkard, when wine stums his brains,
Anointed with that liquor, thinks he reigns;
Bewitch'd by these delusions, 'tis I write,
(The tricks some pleasant devil plays in spite)
And when I'm in the freakish trance, which I,
Fond silly wretch, mistake for ecstacy,
I find all former resolutions vain,
And thus recant them, and make new again.
"What was't I rashly vow'd? shall ever I
Quit my beloved mistress, Poetry?
Thou sweet beguiler of my lonely hours,
Which thus glide unperceiv'd, with silent course:
Thou gentle spell, which undisturb'd dost keep
My breast, and charm intruding care asleep:
They say thou'rt poor, and un-endow'd, what tho'?
For thee, I this vain, worthless world forego:
Let wealth and honour be for fortune's slaves,
The alms of fools, and prize of crafty knaves:
To me thou art, whate'er th'ambitious crave,
And all that greedy misers want or have.
In youth or age, in travel or at home;
Here, or in town, at London, or at Rome;
Rich, or a beggar, free, or in the Fleet,
What'er my fate is, 'tis my fate to write."'
Oldham's talent, depending upon masculine sense and vigour of expression
rather than upon the more ethereal graces of poetry, was of the kind to
expand and mellow by age and practice. Had he lived longer he would
undoubtedly have left a name conspicuous in English literature. As it
is, he can only be regarded as a bright satellite revolving at a
respectful distance around the all-illumining orb of Dryden. Before
passing to Marvell and Butler, the only two really original poets after
Dryden besides the veterans Cowley and Waller, who belong to the
preceding period, it will be convenient to despatch a group of minor
bards, whose inclusion in the standard collections of poetry, involving
memoirs by a master of biography, has given them more celebrity than
they in most instances deserve.
[Sidenote: Lord Rochester (1647-1680).]
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), is principally known to
posterity by his vices and his repentance. The latter has helped to
preserve the memory of the former, which have also left abiding traces
in a number of poems not included in his works, and some of which, it
may be hoped, are wrongly attributed to him. For a number of years
Rochester obtained notoriety as, after Buckingham, the most dissolute
character of a dissolute age; but at the same time a critic and a wit,
potent to make or mar the fortunes of men of letters. 'Sure,' says Mr.
Saintsbury, 'to play some monkey trick or other on those who were
unfortunate enough to be his intimates.' Many a literary cabal was
instigated by him, many a libel and lampoon flowed from his pen, among
others, _The Session of the Poets_, correctly characterized by Johnson
as 'merciless insolence.' Worn out by a life of excess, he died at
thirty-three, and his penitence, largely due to the arguments and
exhortations of Burnet, afforded the latter material for a narrative
which Johnson, entirely opposed as he was to the author's political and
ecclesiastical principles, declares that 'the critic ought to read for
its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its
piety.'
Rochester's acknowledged poems fall into two divisions of unequal merit.
The lyrical and amatory are in general very insipid. The more serious
pieces, especially when expressing the discomfort of a sated votary of
pleasure, frequently want neither force nor weight. Four particularly
fine lines, quoted without indication of authorship in Goethe's
_Wahrheit und Dichtung_, have frequently occasioned speculation as to
their origin. They come from Rochester's _Satyr against Mankind_, and
read:
'Then Old Age and Experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to Death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.'
Goldsmith's 'best-natured man, with the worst-natured muse,' is
purloined from Rochester, who is also the propounder of the paradox,
'All men would be cowards if they durst.' Some of his songs are not
devoid of merit. After all, however, nothing of his is so well known as
the anticipatory epitaph on Charles II., ascribed sometimes to him,
sometimes to Buckingham, and very likely due to neither:
'Here lies our mutton-eating king,
Whose word no man relies on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.'
Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon (1633?-1684), was a very different
character, both as a man and as a poet. He is accused of no fault but a
love of gaming, and the purity of his Muse merited the well-known
eulogium:
'In all Charles's days
Roscommon only boasts unsullied bays.'
But he has nothing of the salt and savour of Rochester's more serious
poetry, and is at best an elegant versifier, who, in his only
considerable original poem, the _Essay on Translated Verse_, thinks
justly, reasons clearly, and expresses himself with considerable spirit
when the subject requires. The most original feature of his literary
character is his preference in a rhyming age for blank verse, which he
enforces in theory, but is far from recommending by his practice. In his
rhymed pieces he is a better versifier than poet, and in his blank verse
the contrary. Milton's eyes were just closed; Shakespeare and Fletcher
were still acted; but the secret of beautiful versification, apart from
rhyme, seems to have been entirely lost.
[Sidenote: John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721).]
Poetry afforded a subject for verse to another noble writer, John
Sheffield, successively Earl of Mulgrave, Marquis of Normanby, and Duke
of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721), who achieved real if moderate
distinction as soldier, statesman, and scholar. As a poet his reputation
rests entirely upon his _Essay on Poetry_, which contains many just
thoughts expressed in pleasing numbers, although the author's deference
to the conventional dicta of criticism leads him into idolatry, not only
of Homer and Virgil, but of Bossu. To have fostered the genius of Pope
by judicious praise is the highest distinction of 'Granville the polite
and knowing Walsh.' Congreve, to be treated more fully as a dramatist,
stands somewhat higher than these as an inditer of heroic couplets; but
a severer criticism must be passed, if any criticism is needed, upon
Pomfret, Duke, Stepney, and the other versifiers of the day who have
burrowed their way into the stock collections of poetry.
[Sidenote: Andrew Marvell (1621-1678).]
Andrew Marvell was a virtuous man whose good qualities contrast so
forcibly with the characteristic failings of his age, that he appears by
contrast even more virtuous than he actually was. His integrity made him
the hero of legend, for, although the Court would no doubt have been
glad to gain him, it is hardly credible that the prime minister should
by the king's order have personally waited upon him 'up two pair of
stairs in a little court in the Strand.' But the apocryphal anecdote
attests the real veneration inspired by his independence in a venal age.
Born in the neighbourhood of Hull on March 31st, 1621, he studied at
Cambridge, travelled for some years on the Continent, and settled down
about 1650 as tutor to the daughter of Lord Fairfax. At this period he
wrote his exquisite poem, _The Garden_, and other pieces of a similar
character. He also wrote in 1650 the poem on Cromwell's return from
Ireland, which may have gained for him in 1653 the appointment of tutor
to Cromwell's ward, William Dutton. Other pieces of a like description
followed, and in 1657 Marvell became joint Latin secretary with Milton,
an office for which Milton had recommended him four years previously.
His poem on the Protector's death in the following year is justly
declared by Mr. Firth to be 'the only one distinguished by an accent of
sincerity and personal affection.' He was elected for Hull to Richard
Cromwell's Parliament, and continued to sit for the remainder of his
life. He was the last Member of Parliament who received a salary from
his constituents, to whose interests he in return attended so diligently
that upwards of three hundred letters from him upon their concerns and
general politics are extant in the Hull archives.
Marvell could scarcely be called a republican. He had been devoted to
the Protectorate, and would probably have been easily reconciled to the
Restoration if the government had been ably and honestly conducted. In
wrath at the general maladministration he betook himself to satires,
which circulated in manuscript. At first he attacked Clarendon, but
eventually concluded that the only remedy would be the final expulsion
of the house of Stuart. In 1672 and 1673 he appeared in print as a prose
controversialist with _The Rehearsal Transprosed_, a witty attack on a
work by Parker, Bishop of Oxford, wherein, in the author's own words,
'the mischiefs and inconveniences of toleration were represented, and
all pretences pleaded in behalf of liberty of conscience fully
answered.' He silenced his opponent, and escaped being himself silenced
through the interposition of Charles II., whose native good sense and
easiness of temper inclined him to toleration, and who promoted the
freedom of Nonconformists as a means of obtaining liberty for the Church
of Rome. Marvell, however, was not to be reconciled, and in 1677 put
forth an anonymous pamphlet to prove, what was but too true, that a
design had long been on foot to establish absolute monarchy and subvert
the Protestant religion. His sudden death on August 18th, 1678, was
attributed to poison, but, according to a physician who wrote some years
afterwards, was occasioned by that prejudice of the faculty against
Peruvian bark which is recorded by Temple and Evelyn.
As a writer of prose, Marvell is both powerful and humorous, but is not
a Junius or a Pascal to impart permanent interest to transitory themes,
and make the topics of the day topics for all time. As a poet he ranks
with those who have been said to be stars alike of evening and of
morning. His earliest and most truly poetical compositions belong in
spirit to the period of Charles I., when the strains of the Elizabethan
lyric were yet lingering. After passing through a transition stage of
manly verse still breathing a truly poetical spirit, but mainly
concerned with public affairs, he settles down as a satirist endowed
with all the vigour, but, at the same time, with all the prosaic
hardness of the Restoration. His most inspired poem, _Thoughts in a
Garden_, written under the Commonwealth, and originally composed in
Latin, nevertheless rings like a voice from beyond the Civil Wars. Here
are the three loveliest of nine lovely stanzas:
'What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
'Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
'Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
There whets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.'
'These wonderful verses,' says Mr. Palgrave of the entire poem, 'may be
regarded as a test of any reader's insight into the most poetical
aspects of poetry.'
As a satirist it is Marvell's error to confound satire with lampoon. He
has the _saeva indignatio_ which makes the avenger, but spends too much
of it upon individuals. Occasionally some fine personification gives
promise of better things, but the poet soon relapses into mere
personalities. This may be attributed in great measure to the
circumstances under which these compositions appeared. They could only
be circulated clandestinely, and the writer may be excused if he did not
labour to exalt what he himself regarded as mere fugitive poetry. The
most celebrated of these pieces are the series of _Advices to a
Painter_, in which the persons and events of the day are described to an
imaginary artist for delineation in fitting, and therefore by no means
flattering, colours. It is to Marvell's honour that he succeeds best
with a fine subject. When, in his poems on the events of the
Commonwealth, he escapes from mere sarcasm and negation, and speaks
nobly upon really noble themes, he soars far above the Marvell of the
Restoration, though even here his verse is marred by lapses into the
commonplace, and by his besetting infirmity of an inability to finish
with effect, leaving off like a speaker who sits down rather from the
failure of his voice than the exhaustion of his theme. The panegyric on
Cromwell's anniversary, and the poem on his death, abound nevertheless
with fine, though faulty passages, of which the following may serve as
an example:
'O human glory vain! O Death! O wings!
O worthless world! O transitory things!
Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed,
That still, though dead, greater than death he laid,
And in his altered face you something feign
That threatens Death he yet will live again.
Not much unlike the sacred oak which shoots
To heaven its branches, and through earth its roots,
Whose spacious boughs are hung with trophies round,
And honoured wreaths have oft the victor crowned,
When angry Jove darts lightning through the air
At mortal sins, nor his own plant will spare,
It groans and bruises all below, that stood
So many years the shelter of the wood.
The tree, erewhile foreshortened to our view,
When fallen shows taller yet than as it grew;
So shall his praise to after times increase,
When truth shall be allowed, and faction cease;
And his own shadows with him fall; the eye
Detracts from objects than itself more high;
But when Death takes from them that envied state,
Seeing how little, we confess how great.'
Marvell's position as the satirist of his era from the Puritan and
Republican point of view, was filled upon the Cavalier side by Samuel
Butler, who, if general reputation and excellence in his own walk of
verse are to be allowed as criterions, may claim to be the third poet of
the age after Milton and Dryden. It is true that Butler, though endowed
with abundance of fancy, was, strictly speaking, no poet; that he is
entirely destitute of the dignity and tenderness which Marvell can
display with a congenial theme; and that he possesses nothing of
Dryden's power of exalting unpromising subjects into poetry. But he
infinitely surpasses Marvell when they meet on the common ground of
satire; and though he cannot be said to surpass Dryden, their methods
are so different that no proper comparison can be drawn. When writing in
Dryden's manner Butler is respectable, but he has the field of
burlesque epic entirely to himself. Supremacy in a low style of
composition is a surer passport to fame than moderate merit in a high
one. With all the defects of Restoration literature, it had a faculty
for producing masterpieces, and it must be admitted that Butler's
_Hudibras_ stands as decidedly at the head of its class as _Paradise
Lost_, or _Absalom and Achitophel_, or _Pilgrim's Progress_, or Pepys's
_Diary_ at the head of theirs.
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler (1612-1680).]
Samuel Butler was born near Worcester in 1612. His father, a small
farmer, procured him a good education at the Worcester Grammar School.
His first employment was that of clerk to a country justice named
Jefferys. He afterwards entered the household of Elizabeth, Countess of
Kent, at Wrest, in Bedfordshire, and subsequently acted as clerk to
various justices of the peace, one of whom, Sir Samuel Luke, of Cople
Hoo, near Bedford, served as the original of Hudibras. It is curious to
reflect that John Bunyan was at the same time going through his
spiritual conflicts in the same county. He seems to have also travelled
in France and Holland. He published nothing until 1659, when an
anonymous tract in favour of the restoration of the monarchy, entitled
_Mola Asinaria_, appeared from his pen. The service was recompensed by
the appointment of secretary to the Earl of Carbury, Lord President of
Wales, who made him steward of Ludlow Castle, where _Comus_ had been
performed nearly thirty years before. He resigned this charge upon
contracting what seemed a wealthy marriage, but the lady's money was
lost, and, notwithstanding the great literary success _Hudibras_, the
remainder of the author's life was spent in poverty. The first part of
_Hudibras_, stated in the title to have been written during the Civil
War, and if so at least fifteen years old, was published in 1663. Its
success was instantaneous, though neither the Puritans nor Mr. Pepys
could quite see the joke. The merit of the performance, however, was
fully apparent to a better and more influential judge, the king, who
encouraged the author by giving numerous copies away, though history
does not say at whose expense. But this was all he gave, and the poet
who had rendered such essential service to the royalist cause by his
writings was as completely neglected by the Court as if he had been John
Milton. It is indeed said that he was in receipt of a pension of L100 at
his death; but this seems contradicted by the letter, already quoted, of
Dryden to the Lord High Treasurer within two years after Butler's death,
where he says: ''Tis enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and
starved Mr. Butler.'[5] Oldham's lines, written at the same time, are
still more emphatic:
'On Butler who can think without just rage,
The glory and the scandal of the age?
Fair stood his hopes when first he came to town,
Met everywhere with welcomes of renown,
Courted and loved by all, with wonder read,
And promises of princely favour fed;
But what reward for all had he at last,
After a life of dull expectance passed?
The wretch at summing up his misspent days
Found nothing left but poverty and praise;
Of all his gains by verse he could not save
Enough to purchase flannel and a grave;
Reduced to want, he in due time fell sick,
Was fain to die, and be interred on tick;
And well might bless the fever that was sent
To rid him hence, and his worse fate prevent.'
These spirited verses are certainly exaggerated. Butler, though, as his
biographer says, 'personally known to few,' partook on the same
authority of the munificence of Dorset, and dying on September 25th,
1680, was buried on September 27th in the churchyard of St. Paul's,
Covent Garden, at the expense of another friend, William Longueville,
bencher of the Inner Temple, who had previously endeavoured to obtain
his interment in Westminster Abbey, where, Atterbury being dean, a tardy
monument was erected to him in 1721 by Alderman Barber. Very little is
known of the latter years of his life, except that he lived in Rose
Street, Covent Garden, and that he suffered much from the gout. He had
published a second part of _Hudibras_ in 1664, and a third in 1678,
containing many allusions to events much later than the Civil War. He
bequeathed his posthumous papers to Longueville, by whom they were
carefully preserved, and a large portion eventually came to be published
in 1759. They will be treated of in another place. Not much is known of
Butler's personal character and habits. He must evidently have been a
man of extensive reading, and versed in several languages and
literatures. It seems natural to attribute the neglect of so popular an
author to some infirmity in his own temper, but the little testimony we
have makes the other way. Wood describes him as 'a boon and witty
companion;' and Aubrey says, 'A severe and sound judgment, a good
fellow.' It must be remembered that he was forty-eight at the
Restoration, and had spent almost all his life in the country; we shall
also find reason to believe that he was neither enough of a churchman
nor enough of a loyalist to be entirely agreeable to his own party.
The defect in _Hudibras_ pointed out by Dr. Johnson, the want of logical
sequence in the action, undoubtedly exists, but is almost inherent in
the conception of such a performance. A more serious drawback, the
disproportion between the hero's deeds and his words, probably arises
from the poem having been written at different periods of the author's
life. When he began to write his invention was lively and vigorous, but
it naturally flagged after middle age, although his wit remained
unimpaired. In the first and part of the second canto disquisition and
adventure are so evenly blended that each supports the other; in the
latter part of the poem the burden falls almost entirely upon the
former. Hence the picturesque and cleverly varied incident of the
bear-baiting, with the varied characters it brings upon the scene, will
always be the favourite passage of the poem, unless an exception be made
for the portraits of Hudibras and Ralpho. There is, however,
considerable inconsistency in the character of Hudibras. He is
represented as a fool, yet half the good things of the book are, from
sheer necessity, put into his mouth. We are to suppose him a coward, yet
he takes and deals cuffs and bangs in the spirit of a pugilist; and his
attack upon the seven champions of bear-baiting, one of them an Amazon,
is so far from cowardice, that it more resembles temerity. The more
odious traits of his character hardly seem properly to belong to it; and
in fact Butler probably commenced his poem without too curiously
considering how he was to conduct it, or rather where it was to conduct
him, and scribbled away in the spirit of his own maxim--
'One for sense, and one for rhyme,
Is quite sufficient at one time'--
trusting to the humour ever springing up under his pen to redeem his
verse from the imputation of doggrel. This it certainly did; for
although _Hudibras_ as a whole is rambling, ill-compacted, and wordy,
the terseness of many individual passages is as remarkable as their
humour:
'A tool
That knaves do work with, called a fool.'
'Cerberus himself pronounce
A leash of languages at once.'
'Hudibras wore but one spur,
As wisely knowing, could he stir
To active trot one side of 's horse
The other would not hang.'
'For as on land there is no beast,
But in some fish at sea's exprest;
So in the wicked there's no vice
Of which the saints have not a spice.'
'Quoth she, There are no bargains driven,
Nor marriages clapped up in heaven,
And that's the reason, as some guess,
There is no heaven in marriages.'
Butler's _Hudibras_ may perhaps be best defined as a metrical parody
upon _Don Quixote_, with a spice of allusion to the _Faerie Queene_, in
which the nobility and pathos of the originals are designedly
obliterated, and the humour exaggerated into farce to suit the author's
polemic purpose. His design is to kill Presbyterianism and Independency
by ridicule, and he is consequently compelled to shut his eyes to
everything in them except their occasional tendency to baseness, and
their perpetual liability to cant. This is the constant Nemesis of the
satirist; but Butler is even more of a caricaturist than the situation
called for. The endurance of his poem to our own times, however, is
sufficient proof that, although a caricature, it was not a libel, and
amid the enthusiastic reaction of the Restoration it may well have
passed for a fair portrait. The machinery is closely modelled upon _Don
Quixote_. Presbyterianism is incarnated in the doughty justice of the
peace, Sir Hudibras; Independency and new light sectarianism in general
in his squire, Ralpho; and the two sally forth in quest of adventure
quite in the style of Don Quixote and Sancho, except that the Don's
great aim is to deliver damsels, and Hudibras's to imprison them. Though
the scene appears to be laid in the west of England, there is no reason
to doubt the tradition that the prototype of Hudibras's satire was
Butler's master, the Bedfordshire magistrate, Sir Samuel Luke, who is
evidently alluded to where a rhyme to _Mameluke_ is left blank to be
supplied by the reader's ingenuity. If, as is more than probable, this
worthy justice was given to suppressing bear-baitings, Butler would need
no more material for his burlesque; and the first part of the poem, at
all events, may well have been written while he was in Sir Samuel's
employment. It seems, from internal evidence, to have been composed
before Cromwell had ejected the Long Parliament, and its general
atmosphere almost precludes the idea of its having been written after
the execution of Charles I. The second part has many allusions to later
events. The description of Hudibras, mind and body, is so vivid and
precise as to present internal evidence of having been drawn from a
living model, while Ralpho is in comparison vague. Soon after sallying
forth the pair find themselves at odds with a crowd about to revel in
the amusement of bear-baiting, which they proceed to interrupt; not, as
has been remarked, out of compassion to the bear, but out of grudge to
the public. This brings on a fight, most amusingly described, but at
somewhat too great length; the 'fatal facility' of the octosyllabic
couplet being nowhere more conspicuous than in Butler's humorous
doggrel. After various turns of fortune, the knight and squire find
themselves in the stocks, where they sit until Hudibras's lady-love, a
frolicsome widow with a jointure, appears to the rescue:
'No sooner did the Knight perceive her,
But straight he fell into a fever,
Inflam'd all over with disgrace,
To be seen by her in such a place;
Which made him hang his head, and scowl,
And wink, and goggle like an owl.
He felt his brains begin to swim,
When thus the Dame accosted him,
This place (quoth she) they say's enchanted,
And with delinquent spirits haunted,
That here are tied in chains, and scourged,
Until their guilty crimes be purged:
Look, there are two of them appear
Like persons I have seen somewhere.
Some have mistaken blocks and posts
For spectres, apparitions, ghosts,
With saucer-eyes, and horns, and some
Have heard the Devil beat a drum:
But if our eyes are not false glasses,
That give a wrong account of faces,
That beard and I should be acquainted,
Before 'twas conjur'd and enchanted;
For tho' it be disfigured somewhat,
As if 't had lately been in combat,
It did belong t' a worthy Knight,
Howe'er this goblin is come by it.
When Hudibras the lady heard,
Discoursing thus upon his beard,
And speak with such respect and honour,
Both of the beard, and the beard's owner;
He thought it best to set as good
A face upon it as he cou'd,
And thus he spoke: Lady, your bright
And radiant eyes are in the right;
The beard's th' identic beard you knew,
The same numerically true:
Nor is it worn by fiend or elf,
But its proprietor himself.
Oh Heav'ns! quoth she, can that be true?
I do begin to fear 'tis you;
Not by your individual whiskers,
But by your dialect and discourse,
That never spoke to man or beast
In notions vulgarly exprest.
But what malignant star, alas!
Has brought you both to this sad pass?
Quoth he, The fortune of the war,
Which I am less afflicted for,
Than to be seen with beard and face
By you in such a homely case.
Quoth she, Those need not be asham'd
For being honourably maim'd;
If he that is in battle conquer'd,
Have any title to his own beard,
Tho' yours be sorely lugg'd and torn,
It does your visage more adorn,
Than if 'twere prun'd, and starch'd and lander'd,
And cut square by the Russian standard.
A torn beard's like a tatter'd ensign,
That's bravest which there are most rents in,
That petticoat about your shoulders
Does not so well become a soldier's,
And I'm afraid they are worse handled,
Although i' th' rear, your beard the van led;
And those uneasy bruises make
My heart for company to ache,
To see so worshipful a friend
I' th' pill'ry set at the wrong end.'
The mischievous lady, nevertheless, only consents to liberate Hudibras
upon condition that he shall administer a sound flogging to himself.
Hudibras willingly promises this, and is released, but next day he
thinks better of it, and consults Ralpho whether he is actually bound by
his oath. Ralpho's reply abounds with the pithy couplets so frequent in
_Hudibras_, which have become a part of the language:
'Oaths were not purposed, more than law,
To keep the good and just in awe,
But to confine the bad and sinful,
Like moral cattle in a pinfold.'
'The Rabbins write, when any Jew
Did make to God or man a vow
Which afterward he found untoward
And stubborn to be kept, or too hard;
Any three other Jews of the nation
Might free him from his obligation.
And have not two saints power to use
A greater privilege than three Jews?'
'Does not in Chancery every man swear
What makes best for him in his answer?'
'He that imposes an oath makes it,
Not he that for convenience takes it;
Then how can any man be said
To break an oath he never made?'
'That sinners may supply the place
Of suff'ring saints is a plain case.
Justice gives sentence many times
On one man for another's crimes.
Our brethren of New England use
Choice malefactors to excuse,
And hang the guiltless in their stead,
Of whom the churches have less need:
As lately 't happened in a town,
There liv'd a cobler, and but one,
That out of doctrine could cut use,
And mend men's lives as well as shoes.
This precious brother having slain,
In times of peace, an Indian,
(Not out of malice, but mere zeal,
Because he was an infidel)
The mighty Tottipottymoy
Sent to our elders an envoy;
Complaining sorely of the breach
Of league, held forth by brother Patch,
Against the articles in force
Between both churches, his and ours,
For which he crav'd the saints to render
Into his hands, or hang th' offender:
But they maturely having weigh'd
They had no more but him o' th' trade,
(A man that serv'd them in a double
Capacity, to teach and cobble,)
Resolv'd to spare him; yet to do
The Indian Hoghgan Moghgan too
Impartial justice, in his stead did
Hang an old weaver that was bed-rid.'
Hudibras, however, is but half convinced, or rather, doubts whether
conviction can be brought to the minds of others. He bethinks himself of
a middle course, and suggests that the whipping shall be inflicted by
proxy, and that Ralpho shall be the proxy. To this Ralpho demurs, and an
impending rupture is only averted by a new adventure, which seems
invented for the purpose. When it is over Hudibras has profited by the
interval of reflection to resolve to consult the wizard Sidrophel, who
is apparently intended for Lilly. The scene affords Butler an
opportunity of venting the dislike to physical science which he shared
with so many other literary men, and to which he gave more definite
expression in _The Elephant in the Moon_. The interview terminates in a
scuffle, in which Hudibras overthrows Sidrophel, and, thinking he has
killed him, makes off, leaving Ralpho, as he deems, to bear the brunt.
The trusty squire, however, has already gone to the lady with the tale
of Hudibras's perjury, which insures the knight a warm reception. Here
the action of the story ends, the remainder of the poem being chiefly
occupied by 'heroical epistles' between the parties, which do not help
it on, and by a digression on the downfall of the Rump, chiefly
remarkable for allusions to politics of later date.
One of the most noticeable phenomena in Butler is, that after all this
Cavalier poet is little of a Cavalier, and this assailant of Puritanism
little of a Churchman. His loyalty is but hatred of anarchy, and his
religion but hatred of cant. The genuineness of both these feelings is
attested by the detached thoughts found among his papers; otherwise it
might fairly have been doubted whether his motive for espousing the
royalist cause had been any other than the infinitely greater scope
which Puritanism and Republicanism offered to the shafts of a satirist.
The follies of the Cavalier party proved that things may be absurd
without being ridiculous; those of their opponents demonstrated that
ridicule may justly attach to things not intrinsically absurd. It is
clear, notwithstanding, from Butler's prose remains, that he was
constitutionally hostile to liberty in politics and to the inward light
in religion, and that he obeyed his own sincere conviction in attacking
them. But it is equally clear that his preference for monarchy was
solely utilitarian, and that his preferences in religion were determined
simply by taste. The ground of his acquiescence in the Church of England
is thus frankly stated by himself in one of his detached thoughts:
'Men ought to do in religion as they do in war. When a man of
honour is overpowered, and must of necessity surrender himself
up a prisoner, such are always wont to endeavour to do it to
some person of command and quality, and not to a mere
scoundrel. So, since all men are obliged to be of some church,
it is more honourable, if there were nothing else in it, to be
of that which has some reputation, than such a one as is
contemptible, and justly despised by all the best of men.'
This is not the language of a very fervent churchman; and Butler's
royalism is like his religion, a _pis aller_. Nowhere does his aversion
for Puritanism kindle into enthusiasm for its contrary, any more than
his humour ever rises into poetry. In his verse he is a satirist; in his
prose a sceptic; and his satire and his scepticism are alike rooted in a
low opinion of human nature, and a disbelief that things can ever be
much better than they are. He is a strong spirit, but of the earth,
earthy. At the same time he is not one of the satirists who make their
readers cynics; on the contrary, his hearty geniality puts the reader
into good humour with mankind, and suggests that if there is not much to
admire there is also but little to condemn. It is unnecessary to dilate
on his peculiar merits, which are of universal notoriety. Few have
enriched the language with so many familiar quotations; few have so much
fancy along with a total absence of sentiment; few have been so fertile
in odd rhymes and quaint illustrations and comparisons; few have so
thoroughly combined the characters of wit and humorist.
In 1759 a quantity of MS. compositions of Butler's, which had remained
unpublished during his life, and had come into the possession of his
friend Longueville, were edited by R. Thyer, librarian of the Chetham
Library at Manchester. The most important, his characters in the manner
of Theophrastus, and detached thoughts in prose, will be noticed along
with the prose essayists. Of the metrical compositions, the most
elaborate is _The Elephant in the Moon_, a satire on the appetite for
marvels displayed by some of the members of the then infant Royal
Society, which exists in two recensions, one in Hudibrastic, the other
in heroic verse. The other pieces are also for the most part satirical,
with a strong affinity to _Hudibras_, except where they parody the style
of some poet of the day. They are always clever, sometimes very humorous
and pointed, and, with Marvell's satires, form a transition from the
unpolished quaintness of Donne to the weight and splendour of Dryden.
Butler in one instance appears a downright plagiarist; in another he
would seem, were the thing possible, to have been copied by a later and
more illustrious writer. In his satire against rhyme, he writes:
'When I would praise an author, the untoward
Damned sense says Virgil, but the rhyme says Howard.'
This is undoubtedly Boileau's 'La raison dit Virgile, et la rime
Quinault.' In _Cat and Puss_, on the other hand, an amusing parody of
the rhyming tragedy of his day, he observes of the feline Lothario:
'At once his passion was both false and true,
And the more false, the more in earnest grew.'
Can Tennyson, who borrowed and improved so much, have been to Butler for
'His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true'?
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Mr. Churton Collins, by a clerical error, prints _Waller_.