the sacrament and faith, tells his hearers, that Christ is a treasury of all wares and commodities, and therefore, opening his wide throat, cries aloud, " Good people, what do you lack, what do you buy? Will you buy any balm of Gilead and eye salve, any myrrh, aloes, or cassia? Shall I fit you with a robe of righteousness, or with a white garment? See here! What is it you want? Here is a very choice armoury; shall I show you a helmet of salvation, a shield or breast plate of faith? Will you please to walk in and see some precious stones, a jasper, a sapphire, a chalcedony? Speak, what do you buy?" Dr. Echard remarks upon this extravagant, profane rant, very properly, "now for my part. I must needs say, and I much fancy I speak the minds of thousands, that it had been much better for such an impudent and ridiculous bawler as this was, to have been condemned to have cried oysters and brooms, than to discredit, at this unsanctified rate, his. profession and our religion."

V. 507-8. A light that falls down from on high,

For spiritual trades to cozen by.] Butler probably here designs a quibble on the spiritual lights which the Presbyterian visionaries pretended to, and which he compares to the show lights which certain trade's people use to set off their commodities to the best advantage. Mercers, silkmen, drapers, &c. have a particular light which comes from the top of their shops, by which their goods are shown with a better effect; and the same, it is well known, is the case with exhibitions of pictures, which are always seen to the best advantage, when the light is so managed as to proceed from the top of the exhibition room.

V.509. An ignis fatuus, &c.] A resplendent exhalation of the earth, caused, as it is most generally supposed, by the decomposition of putrid substances. This phos

phoric exhalation is known in country parts by the name of a Jack o'lanthorn, or Will with the wisp, and, according to vulgar tradition, often causes people to wander out of their way, and leads them into pools and ditches. The reason of this, which can be ex

plained upon natural principles, is, that these exhalations most frequently arise in damp and marshy places, and consequently that those who approach to take a nearer view of them, are liable to fall into the swamps from whence they proceed.

V. 511-2. To make them dip themselves, and sound For Christendom in dirty pond.] Butler, like Shakespeare, when he starts a good idea, seems to think he can never make enough of it: his ignis fatuus naturally enough leads the saints into pools and ditches, but instead of leaving them there ashamed of their folly, their enthusiasm still sits closely by them, and he represents them diving for salvation, and fishing to catch regeneration. Nothing can be more exquisite than the humour of this passage, nothing more unconstrained and unforced than the application of it. This will be obvious to the meanest reader, when he is informed that the sectaries to whom Butler more particularly alludes here, were the Anabaptists, or dippers, as they were then called in derision, who maintained that regeneration was not granted to sinners, unless the whole body was immersed in the waters of baptism. Accordingly men and women were often publicly baptised before large bodies of people, the priest accompanying them into the water, and remain. ing there, in the severest seasons, to the conclusion of the ceremony. Of the abuses to which such a practice would be liable, not a word need here be said: they are sufficiently ridiculed in the following lines, taken from a satire against hypocrites.

"Men say there was a sacred wisdom then,

That rul'd the strange opinions of these men;
For by much washing child got cold i' th' head,
Which was the cause so many saints snuffied.
On, cry'd another sect, let's wash all o'er,
The parts behind, and eke the parts before.
Then, full of sauce and zeal, up steps Elnathan,
This was his name now, once he had another,
Until the ducking pond made him a brother,
A deacon and a buffeter of Satan."

The Anabaptists of the present day support their principal doctrine upon those words of our Saviour, "He that believeth, and is baptised, shall be saved." Now, as adults, or grown persons, are alone capable of believing, they argue that none but adults are fit to be baptized. The modern Anabaptists baptize their converts in baths in their chapels of worship, in the face of the congregation, but they are never entirely naked when they are immersed; as was the case with the ancient disciplinants of their sect.

V. 515-6. This light inspires and plays upon
The nose of saint, like bagpipe drone.]

The sectaries in Cromwell's time were most of them men of the meanest education and lowest habits, and consequently utter enemies to all refinements of literature, or graces, or polish of elocution. The drawl and twang of a vulgar Methodist of the present day, will furnish us with a lively notion of the Puritan preachers, to whom Butler here alludes. and whom another poet of his own age describes as,

"With face and fashion to be known

For one of pure election;

With eyes all white, and many a groan,
With neck aside to draw in tone,

And harp in's nose, or he is none."

V. 520. But spiritual eaves-droppers can hear.] Per haps it would be an emendation to this passage to read can bear: i. e. they speak in a language so harsh, dissonant, and uncouth, that none but spiritual eaves-droppers, gifted brethren like themselves, can listen to them with patience: or, our poet may have meant by hear to understand, i. e. that the preachers spoke so unintelligibly that none but the sanctified like themselves could possibly understand them. Eaves-droppers are reputed in law, malicious persons who listen to the discourses of the unwary, in order to inform against them; but Butler probably intended no more by the words, than listeners of the worst class.

V. 525-6-7. Thus Ralph became infallible,

As three or four legg'd oracle,
Or ancient cup, or modern chair.]

Among the numerous sects of fanatics into which the nation was split in Cromwell's time, there was not one, perhaps, which did not think itself the only true, infallible church. The squire belonged to the most sour and austere sect of fanatics, and therefore was the more likely to be presuming in his spiritual gifts and graces. He looked upon himself as no ordinary man; but as one whom pious exercises and meditations had made perfect, In a word, he was one of those hotheaded enthusiasts who can persuade themselves into the belief of any thing, and have so superior an opinion of their own judgment, that they can never allow themselves to be in the wrong. Hence Butler says, in a fine strain of humour, Ralph became infallible, as three or four legged oracle, the ancient cup, or modern chair. The three legged oracle refers to the tripos, or three footed stool, upon which the priestess of Delphos sat, when she delivered her oracles: the four legged oracles may probably allude to the elephants which the kings of Siam, and other eastern potentates, kept for the purpose of divination, and which they believed in as implicitly as the ancients did in the oracles of Apollo. The ancient cup has reference to Joseph's divination cup, mentioned in the book of Genesis; and the mo dern chair implies the papal throne, (which the Popes in their affected humility call our chair,) from which all the infallible bulls and decretals of the see of Rome, in the technical language of those instruments, are said to proceed.

V. 529. Spoke truth point-blank, tho' unaware.] The ancient oracles were supposed to be unacquainted with the real meaning of the responses they delivered, which were left to the sagacity of those who consulted them to interpret, or for time to discover. Hence, when they stumbled upon truth point-blank, they might well be said to speak unawares. When Alexander, previous to his Persian expedition, went to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the priestess refused to ascend the tripos, till Alexander obliged her by force, when, unable to resist any longer, she cried out, "thou

PART I. art invincible," and these words were accepted by the hero without any further oracle.

V. 530. In magic talisman and cabal.] Magic talismans were, anciently, of various kinds, and for various uses. The charms used by the common people in the days of fanaticism, were similar in every point, except identity of substance, to the talismans which the ancient Persian magi fabricated. They were to preserve the wearers or owners of them against particular dangers; as, according to a vulgar notion, that skinny membrane, called a cawl, with which some children are born, is thought to be an infallible preservative against drowning, though the opinion is justly exploded by all persons of sense. The orientalists of the present day are still famous for their talismans, but in modern Europe, if we except the Turkish provinces in Europe, some parts of Poland and the Russian empire, this superstitious delusion is nearly extinct. The cabal is a superstition of Hebrew origin, which consisted in a fantastic interpretation of the Old Testament, according to the dreams of the rabbins, by giving every text a triple meaning: 1. The simple or literal meaning; 2. The abstruse or allegorical meaning; 3. The numeric meaning, taking the letters of each word for cyphers or arithmetical numbers. This folly prevailed throughout Christendom to a wonderful extent at one period, and they are still to be found interpreters of the Apocalypse, who deal in such reveries.

V. 532. As far as Adam's first green breeches.] Butler, in this passage, probably meant to ridicule the Calvinistic, or Geneva translation of the Bible, published in English with notes, in 4to. and 8vo. in the year 1557, and in folio in 1615, in which, in Genesis iii. 7. are the following words: "And they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves breeches," instead of aprons, as in the authorised translation.

V, 533. Deep sighted in intelligences.] Intelligences were those spirits or angels, which were supposed to regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies; for as the squire to his theological acquirements added that of