Westminster to fine and imprison whom they pleased; and, as might be expected from such persons, harassing the country in a most arbitrary and rapacions manner, they were on that account, with great propriety, called rooks. The gaming tables and the turf still retain the phrase, and a rook is there considered as synonymous with a blacklegs.

V. 79. All this by syllogism, true.] A syllogism is an argument in logic consisting of three propositions, wherein some things being supposed, or taken for granted, a conclusion is drawn different from the thing supposed.

V. 93. ▲ Babylonish dialect.] A confusion of languages, like what a conceited pedant may be thought most likely to explain himself in.

V. 98. Like fustian heretofore on satin.] This was a fashion where the coarse fustian was pinked, or cut into holes, that the fine satin might appear through it.

V. 100. As if h' had talk'd three parts in one.] This phrase alludes to the old catches in three parts.

V. 101-2. Which made some think when he did gabble, Th' had heard three labourers of Babel.] Speaking Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Or this may allude to some fantastic doctrine then in vogue, on the origin of languages.

V. 103. Or Cerberus himself pronounce,

A leash of languages at once.] Cerberus was the name which the poets gave to a dog with three heads, which they feigned guarded the entrance of heil, and caressed the unfortunate souls sent thither, and devoured them that would get out again: yet Hercules overcame him. By this allegory the poets meant the past, the present, and the time to come, which receive, and as it were, devour all things. Hercules got the better of him, which shows that heroic actions are always victorious over time, because they are present in the memory of posterity.

V. 103-10. For he could coin or counterfeit

New words, with little or no wit.] The

author of the Spectator (No. 458) observes, "that those swarms of sectaries that overran the nation in the time of the great rebellion carried their hypocrisy so high, that they had converted our whole language into a jargon of enthusiasm." The words which the Presbyterians coined were out of number; among others of their invention were parliamentdom, councildom, and committeedom, and having a rooted dislike to the word kingdom, they expunged it from the Lord's prayer, and substituted in its place "thy commonwealth come." In this piece of fanaticism the French revolutionists trod exactly in the footsteps of the English Puritans. It has been calculated that the revolution added 5000 words to the French language. A dictionary of them has been published, which has been thought of a sufficient importance to be translated into English.

V. 115-6. That had the orator, who once

Did fill his mouth with pebble stones.] The poet here alludes to Demosthenes, who having an impediment in his speech, is said to have filled his mouth with pebble stones in order to remove it.

V. 120. Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater.] The first was an eminent Danish astronomer, of whom all the particulars worthy to be known, are to be found in the biographical dictionaries. By Erra Pater, some have supposed that Butler meant the Wandering Jew, the imaginary personage who is supposed to be doomed. to continue on the earth till the second coming of our Saviour; others think he meant William Lilly, the famous astrologer of those times, to whom the name of Erra Pater was given as a mark of pre-eminence; but the most reasonable interpretation is, that he meant astrologers in general, and wished it to be understood that his hero was familiarly acquainted with the jargon and mysteries of their science.

V. 122. Could take the size of pots of ale.] An oid satire says,

"For well his worship knows, that ale-house sins.

Maintain himself in gloves, his wife in pins."

As justice of the peace our knight had a right to inspect weights and measures.

V. 132. For every why he had a wherefore.] This is an old English proverbial expression, which is still in use among the vulgar. The meaning of the poet is, that Hudibras could answer one question by proposing another, and elude one difficulty by starting another. V. 139-40. His notions fitted things so well,

That which was which he could not tell.] This is an exquisite stroke of satire, aimed at those philosophers who took their ideas of substances to be the combinations of nature, and not the arbitrary workmanship of the human mind; and that the essence of each sort is no more than the abstract idea.

V. 143. He could reduce, &c.] The old philosophers thought to extract notions out of natural things, as chymists do spirits and essences; and when they had refined them into the nicest subtilties, gave them as insignificant names as those operators do their extractions. But, as Seneca says, the subtiller things are rendered, they are but the nearer to nothing, so are all their definitions of things by acts the nearer to non

sense.

V. 145-6. Where entity and quiddity,

The ghost of defunct bodies, Ay.] Butler calls the abstracted notions of entity and quiddity very properly the ghosts of bodies, thereby lashing the too nice distinctions of metaphysicians, who distinguish body, entity, and substance so finely from each other, that they say the two latter ideas or notions may remain when the body is gone and perished.

V. 148. Like words congeal'd in northern air.] The vulgar formerly believed that words spoken in winter, in the high northern latitudes, where the cold is intensely severe, remained frozen until the warm weather thawed them. Whence so ridiculous an error could come it is not easy to say. Rabelais treated upon it in his account of the bloody fight between the Arimasphians and the Nephelebites, upon the confines of the Frozen sea; and a modern wit (the author of

Munchausen's Travels) has also an amusing chapter upon the same subject.

V. 152. As he that hight, Irrefragable.] Hight sig nifies called, or named. In this sense it is used by Chaucer,

"A worthy duke that hight Pirithons,

That fehow was to Duke Theseus."

Irrefragable.] Alexander Hales, so called. He was an Englishunan, born in Gloucestershire, and flourished about the year 1236, at the time when school-divinity was much in vogue; in which science he was so deeply read, that he was called Dr. Irrefragabilis, or the Invincible Doctor, whose arguments could not be resisted. Pope said of these schoolmen,

Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread : Who knew most sentences was deepest read; Faith, gospel, all seem'd made to be disputed, And none had sense enough to be confuted. Scotists and Thomists now in peace remain Amid their kindred cobwebs in Duck-lane." V. 153-4. A second Thomas, or at once

To name them all another Duns.] Thoinas Aquinas, a celebrated schoolman, and a Dominician friar, was born in 1224, and studied in Cologne and at Paris. He new-modelled the school divinity, and was therefore called the Angelic Doctor, and Eagle of Divines. The most illustrions persons of his age sought his friendship, and put a high value on his merits, so that they offered him bishoprics, which he refused. He died in the fiftieth year of his age, and was canonized by Pope John XXII. His works are voluminous, and have been often printed. Dunce or Dunse [Johannes Dunscotas] was a very learned man, who lived about the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is uncertain whether he was born in Scotland or England; but from the epitaph on his tomb it appears, that he was born in Scotland, carried into England, received his education in France, and died in Germany. His fame was so great, that when at Oxford he is said to have

been attended by 30,000 scholars; and when at Paris, his arguments and authority carried it for the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, so that they appointed a festival on that account, and would admit no scholars to degrees, but such as subscribed to the same opinion. Dunscotus was a great opposer of Thomas Aquinas's doctrine, and being a very acute logician, was called Doctor Subtilis, or the Subtile Doctor. V. 155-6. Profound in all the nominal

And real ways beyond them all.] These are terms of logic which were in use among the old schoolmen. Gulielmus Becham was the father of the Nominals, and Johannes Dunscotus of the Reals. V. 157-8. For he a rope of sand could twist

As tough as learned Sorbonist.] To twist a rope of sand is an old English proverb, implying any impracticable or fruitless application. One of the commentators upon Butler supposes him to allude in this passage to the following story. "A gentleman of Paris, who was reduced in circumstances, walking in the fields in a melancholy manner, was met by a person in the habit of a doctor of the Sorbon, who, inquiring into his case, told him, that he had acquired so much by his studies, that it was in his power to relieve him, and he would do it, provided the gentleman would be at his devoirs when he could no longer employ him. The agreement was made, and the cloven foot soon began to appear; for the gentleman set the Sorbonist to fill a sieve with water, which he performed, after stopping the holes with wax: then he ordered him to make a rope of sand, which the devil not being able to do, scratched his head, and marched off in confusion." The name of Sorbonist is derived from the college of Sorbonne, the most famous in the university of Paris. It was founded in the reign of St. Lewis by Robert Sorbonne, and Cardinal Richlieu, in the reign of Louis XIII. rebuilt it with extraordinary magnificence: previous to the late unhappy revolution, it contained lodging for thirty-six doctors, who were called the Society of Sorbonne. Those who were re