Ass eared. The ears of the Puritans were rendered more conspicuous by the shortness of their hair, which was cut close round about their heads. When some of the leading men of the party first went to court after they had adapted this fashion, the queen, Henrietta Maria, inquired who those round-headed men were? Hence came the appellation of ROUND-HEADS, by which the Parliamentarians came to be distinguished in opposition to the CAVALIERS, who followed the fortunes of the king, and retained the old fashion of wearing their hair. V. 11. 12. And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with fist instead of a stick.] Butler here alludes to the vehement action which the Presbyterian preachers used in the pulpit, and their beating the cushion before them with their fists, as if they were beating a drum. It was said of them, "that they had the action of a thresher rather than of a divine;" and Dr. Echard, speaking of one of these threshing preachers, said, "that he shrunk up his shoulders, and stretched himself, as if he was going to cleave a bullock's head." Some of our modern tabernacle fanatics have gone nearly as far into this extravagance, as the old Puritans. Their action in the pulpit, and precise hy pocritical behaviour in other respects, is alluded to in the following lines: "Both Cain and Judas back are come, In vizards most divine; God bless us from a pulpit drum, And preaching Cataline." V. 13. Then did Sir Knight, &c.] It has been a matter of controversy whether Butler had not some particular person in view in his delineation of the character of Hudibras. It is highly probabic that he had; and tradition reports his hero to have been Sir Simon Lake, with whom Butler, though his principles were sound and loyal, lived some time. V. 14. And out he rode a-colonelling.] That is, he took the field in the capacity of an officer in the parliamen tary service. It is to be observed there, that the Knight is now entering upon his proper office, full of pretended pious and sanctified resolutions for the good of his country; and his future peregrinations and adventures are so consistent with his office and humour, and with the spirit of the times, that they cannot be looked upon as fabnions or improbable. V. 15. A wight he was, &c.] The word wight was often used by our old writers to imply person, but it had become nearly obsolete in Butler's time, and he probably used it in a ridiculous sense, as we do at present, when we say, a luckless wight. V. 16. Mirrour of Knighthood.] Don Quixote is frequently called by Cervantes the Mirrour of Chivalry; and in his library was a book entitled the " Mirrour of Knighthood," which the curate ordered to be committed to the flames. V. 19-20. Nor put up blow, but that which laid Right worshipful on shoulder blade.] Which conferred dignity upon him, alluding to the ceremony of making a knight, when the person kneels, and the king lays his sword upon his shoulder. V. 22. Either for chartel, &c.] Chartel signifies a letter of defiance or challenge to a duel, in use when' combats were allowed to decide difficult controversies. not otherwise to be determined by law. A trial (and the last) of this kind was intended between the Marquis of Hamilton and Lord Rea in the year 1631, but the king (Charles I.) put an end to the dispute. V. 22. Or for warrant.] Hudibras being a justice of the peace, possessed authority to issue warrants, and therefore was to be considered as a formidable person, both in respect to his military capacity, and his office as a civil magistrate. In the following line the poet calls him "Great on the bench, great in the saddle," by which he means that he was equaily renowned as a justice and as a man of war. V. 24. That could as well bind o'er as swaddle] Swaddle implies to bang, drub, or cudgel: the Knight is therefore represented as equally able to bind a cul prit to the peace by virtue of his authority as justice, or to drub them into good behaviour by force of arms. V. 34. Outweigh'd his rage, &c.] By rage is to be understood that enthusiastic principle by which Sir Hudibras and the reformers of his day were actuated. The word is used in the same sense at present, when we say such a fashion is the rage. V. 38-9. As Montaigne, playing with his cat, Complains she thought him but an ass.]. "When I am playing with my cat," says Montaigne in his Essays, book 11, chap. 12, "who knows whether she has more sport in dallying with me than I have in gaming with her? We entertain each other with mutual apish tricks." Dr. Grey, in his comments upon this passage, seems to think that it was intended to ridicule the simple humour of Montaigne, but this is not a very reasonable supposition. Montaigne was a writer in high estimation when Butler wrote, and he was too sound a judge of the lively old Frenchman's merit purposely to ridicule him. V. 40. Much more she would Sir Hudibras.] Whence Butler derived the name of his knight is uncertain. Geoffrey of Monmouth makes mention of a British king of the name of Hudibras, who lived about the time of Solomon, and reigned thirty-nine years: he composed all dissentions among his people, and built Kaerlem or Canterbury, Kaergaen or Winchester, and the town of Paladur, now Shaftesbury. Spenser, in his Fairy Queen, has a knight of the name of Hudi bras, and probably Butler borrowed from him. "He that made love unto the eldest dame Was hight Sir Hudibras, an hardy man; Since errand arms to sew [follow] he first began." V. 51-2. Besides, 'tis known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak.] In the pane gyrical verses by Lionel Cranfield, prefixed to Coriat's Crudities, is the following passage; "He Greek and Latin speaks with equal ease That hogs eat acorns, and tame pigeons pease." V. 534. That Latin was no more difficile, Than for a blackbird 'tis to whistle.] In Don Quixote, Sancho Panza observes, that his master is a great scholar, Latins it hugely, and talks his mother tongue as well as one of your university doctors." In the time of the grand rebellion it was very common for preachers to interlard their sermons with scraps of Latin; and as a proof that the people in those days were fond of hearing Latin in sermons, it appears from the life of Dr. Pocock, the great oriental scholar," that one of his friends, passing through Childrey, which was the doctor's living, inquired who was the minister, and how they liked him? and received from them this answer: our parson is one Mr. Pocock, a plain, honest man; but, Master, said they, he is no Latiner." Pocock, independent of great merit as an orientalist, was one of the first clas sical scholars of his age, but he had too good a taste to introduce Latin quotations into his sermons, which probably would have been unintelligible to nine tenths of his hearers. This V. 55-6. Being rich in both, he never scanted His bounty unto such as wanted.] feature in the Knight's character is perfectly natural. A self-conceited fanatic is perpetually making a display of his opinions and learning, and the more ignorant the persons are with whom he converses, the higher he will advance his pretensions to superior knowledge, because what he says among illiterate persons is sure to be admired, though not understood. V. 59. For Hebrew roots, altho' they're found.] Dr. Echard tells us, "that some are of opinion that children may speak Hebrew at four years of age, if they be brought up in a wood, and suck of a wolf;" and Sir Thomas Browne, in his Vulgar Errors, observes, "that children in the school of nature, without institution, would naturally speak the primitive language of the world, was the opinion of the ancient heathens, and continued since by Christians, who will have it our Hebrew tongue, as being the language of Adam. V. 66. Profoundly skill'd in analytic.] Analytic method (one of the modes of logic) takes the whole compound as it finds it, whether it be a species or an individual, and leads us into the knowledge of it, by resolving it into its principles or parts, its generic nature, and special properties; and is called the method of resolution. V. 75. A calf an alderman, &c.] The corporation of London, in the time of the civil war, were decisively hostile to the court; and, in fact, without their support the parliament would never have ventured the lengths it did. This, perhaps, may in some degree account for Butler's antipathy to alderinen. V. 75. A goose a justice.] Lord Clarendon, in his His tory of the Rebellion, observes, "that after the declaration of no more addresses to the king, they who were not above the ordinary condition of constables five or six years before, were now justices of the peace, who execnted the commands of the parliament in all the counties with vigour and tyranny, as was natural for such persons to use over and towards those upon whom they had looked at such a distance. The whole government of the nation remained in a manner wholly in their hands, who, in the beginning of the parliament, were scarcely ever heard of, or their names known, but in the places where they inhabited. It appears from another author," that at the commencement of the rebellion, the town of Chelmsford, in Essex, was governed by a tinker, two coblers, two tailors, and two pedlars." Such were the magistrates under whose authority the nation was placed, and whom Butler so justly lashes. V.75. And rooks committee men, &c.] In several of the counties, particularly the associated ones, Middlesex, Kent, Surry, Sussex, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire, eon.mittees were erected of such men as were for the good cause, as they called it, (that is, Puritanism) who had anthority from the members of the two honses at |