NOTES,

HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND EXPLANATORY.

PART III. CANTO II.

Argument.-V. 1-2. The saints engage in fierce contests About their carnal interests.] The whole of this Canto is entirely independent of the adventures of Hudibras and Ralpho: neither of our heroes make their appearance, but others are introduced, and a new vein of satire is exhibited. The poet steps for a little while out of his road, and jumps from the time when these adventures happened, to Cromwell's death, and from thence to the dissolution of the Rump Parliament. This conduct is allowable in a satirist, whose privilege it is to ramble wherever he pleases, and to stigmatize vice, faction, and rebellion, where and whenever he meets with them. He is not tied down to the observance of unity of action, time, or place; though he has hitherto had a regard to such decorums. But now, and here only, he claims the privilege of a satirist, and deviates from order, time, and uniformity, and deserts his principal actors. He purposely sends them out of the way, that we may attend to a lively representation of the principles and politics of Presbyterians, Independents, and Republicans, upon the dawning of the restoration. He sets before us a full view of the treachery and underminings of each faction; and sure it is with pleasure we see the fears and commotions they were in upon the happy declension of their tyrannical power and government.

V. 1-2. The learned write, an insect breeze

Is but a mongrel prince of bees.] Breezes often bring with them great quantities of insects, which some are of opinion

are generated from viscous exhalations in the air; but our author makes them to proceed from a cow's dung, and afterwards become a plague to that whence it received its original. He probably alludes to the method of repairing the bee kind, mentioned by Virgil, and thus translated by Dryden :

""Tis time to touch the precepts of an art
Th' Arcadian master did of old impart;
And how he stock'd his empty hives again,
Renew'd with putrid gore of oxen slain :-
First, in a place by nature close, they build
A narrow flooring, gutter'd, wall'd, and til❜d.
In this four windows are contriv'd, that strike
To the four winds oppos'd, their beams oblique.
A steer of two years old they take, whose head
Now first with burnish'd horns begins to spread:
They stop his nostrils, while he strives in vain
To breathe free air, and struggles with his pain.
Knock'd down he dies, his bowels bruis'd within,
Betray no wound on his unbroken skin:

Extended thus on his obscene abode,

They leave the beast, but first fresh flowers are strew'd
Beneath his body, broken boughs and thyme,
And pleasing cassia just renew'd in prime.
This must be done ere Spring makes equal day,
When western winds on curling waters play;
Ere painted meads produce their flow'ry crops,
Or swallows twitter on the chimney-tops.
The tainted blood, in this close prison pent,
Begins to boil, and through the bones ferment:
Then, wondrous to behold, new creatures rise,
A moving mass at first, and short of thighs;
Till, shooting out with legs, and imp'd with wings,
The grubs proceed to bees, with pointed stings;
And more and more affecting air, they try
Their tender pinions, and begin to fly:

At length, like Summer storms from spreading clouds,
They burst at once, and pour impetuous floods:

Or flights of arrows from the Parthian bows,
When from afar they gall embattl❜d foes;

With such a tempest through the skies they steer,
And such a form the winged squadrons bear."

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V. 8. Religion spawn'd a various rout.] Swift, in his tale of a Tub, probably alludes to this, where, speaking of Jack, or the Calvinist, he observes, That he was a person of great design and improvement in devotion, having introduced a new divinity, who has since met with a great number of worshippers, by some called Babel, by others Chaos, who had an ancient temple, of Gothic structure, upon Salisbury Plain." And in the Collection of Loyal songs, there are the following lines :—

"Take and his club, and Smec and his tub,

Or any sect old or new;

The devil's in the pack, if choice you can lack,

We are fourscore religions strong now."

V. 10. The maggots of corrupted texts.] The Independents, (says Dr. Grey,) were literally so, having corrupted that text, Acts vi. 3. to give the people a right to choose their own pastors: "Wherefore, brethren, look ye out from among ye seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost, whom ye (instead of we) may appoint over this business." Dr. Grey adds, "I have been informed that the first printer of this forgery had 1,500l. for it." Cowley in his Puritan and Papist, says,

They a bold power o'er sacred Scriptures take,

Blot out some clauses, and some new ones make." And they are described by Dryden, in his Religio Laici, in the following lines:

'Study and pains were now no more their care,

Texts were explain'd by fasting and by prayer :
This was the fruit the private spirit brought,
Occasioned by great zeal and little thought;
While crowds unlearn'd, with rude devotion warm,
About the sacred viands buz and swarm.
The fly-blown text creates a crawling brood,
And turns to maggots what was meant for food.

A thousand daily sects rise up and die,
A thousand more the perished race supply;

So all the use we make of heaven's discover'd will

Is not to have it, but to use it ill.

The danger's much the same on several shelves,

If others wreck us, or we wreck ourselves."

V. 13-4. For as the Persian Magi once

Upon their mothers got their sons.] The Magi were priests and philosophers among the Persians, entrusted with the government both civil and ecclesiastical, and much addicted to the observation of the stars. Some writers have reported of them, that it was their custom to have incestuous commerce with their mothers, in order to preserve and continue their families; but this seems to have been advanced without any sufficient foundation.

V. 17-8. So Presbyter begot the other

Upon the good old cause, his mother.] The author of the Dialogue between Mr. Guthry and Mr. Giffan, 1661, sets forth their relation in the following manner:

Giff. "They say they're of a near relation to you,

Your younger brothers, and the wiser too.

Gu. "I confess they did follow our pattern a long time, but it was with a design to spoil our copy, and they supplanted us by the same artifice we used, a greater seeming austerity of life and conversation."

V. 24. Get quarter for each other's beards.] The Presbyterians, when they were at the head of affairs, were very unwilling to grant a toleration to the Independents and other sectaries. When the famous preacher Calamy demanded of them what they would do with the Anabaptists, Antinomians, &c. they said they would not meddle with their consciences, but with their bodies and estates. V. 77-8. And laid about as hot and brain-sick

As th' utter barrister of Swanswick.] William Prynne, of Lincoln's-Inn, Esq. born at Swanswick, who styled himself utter barrister, a very warm person, and voluminous writer, and after the restoration keeper of the records in the Tower.

V. 80. As men with sand-bags did of old.] Warburton says, "When the combat was demanded in a legal way by knights and gentlemen, it was fought with sword and lance; and when by yeomen, with sand-bags fastened to the end. To this custom Ben Jonson alludes, in his Underwood, in the King's Entertainment.

"Go, Captain Stub, lead on, and show

What house you come on, by the blow
You give Sir Quintin, and the cuff

You 'scape o' th' sand-bag's counter buff."

V. 87. Poor Presbyter was now reduc'd.] When Oliver Cromwell and the Independents had obtained the supreme authority, they deprived the Presbyterians of all the power which the Lords and Commons had previously bestowed on them. Fry, a member of parliament at this period, speaking of them, says, "That rigid Sir John Presbyter was desperately sick, and that he would as soon put a sword into the hands of a madman as into the hands of a high-flying Presbyterian." And in a humorous publication of the same period (1647-8,) entitled the last Will and Testament of Sir John Presbyter, are the following lines.

"Here lies Jack Presbyter, void of all pity,

Who ruin'd the country, and fooled the city;

He turn'd preaching to prating and telling of lies,
Caus'd jars and dissensions in all families.

He invented new oaths, rebellion to raise,
Deceiving the Commons, whilst on them he preys.
He made a new creed, despised the old:

King, state, and religion, by him bought and sold.
He four years consulted, and yet could not tell
The Parliament the way Christ went into hell:
Resolved therein he never would be,

Therefore in great haste he's gone thither to see."

V. 88. Secluded, and cashier'd, and chous'd.] Alluding to the seclusion of the Presbyterian faction by the army, preparatory to the trial of the king.

V. 92. And glad to turn itinerant.] Walker, in his History of Independency, informs us, "that April 12, 1649, it was referred to a committee to consider of a way how to raise pensions and allowances out of dean and chapter lands, to maintain supernumerary ministers, who should be authorised to go up and down, compassing the earth, and adulterating other men's pulpits and congregations." The famous Hugh Peters advises, in one of his tracts, that two or three itinerarant preachers may be sent by the state into every county; and a committee of godly men, to send out men of ho