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47

much learning and reason one of the first scholars of his age thought necessary, to prove that it was no crime to throw a die, or play at cards, or to hide a shilling for the reckoning'.

Astrology however, against which so much of the satire is directed, was not more the folly of the Puritans than of others. It had in that time a very extensive dominion. Its predictions raised hopes and fears in minds which ought to have rejected it with contempt. In hazardous undertakings care was taken to begin under the influence of a propitious planet; and when the king was prisoner in Carisbrook Castle, an astrologer was consulted what hour would be found most favourable to an escape 3. 48 What effect this poem had upon the publick, whether it shamed imposture or reclaimed credulity, is not easily determined. Cheats can seldom stand long against laughter. It is certain that the credit of planetary intelligence wore fast away; though some men of knowledge, and Dryden among them, continued to believe that conjunctions and oppositions had a great part in the distribution of good or evil, and in the government of sublunary things 5.

49

Poetical action ought to be probable upon certain suppositions, and such probability as burlesque requires is here violated only by one incident. Nothing can shew more plainly the necessity of doing something, and the difficulty of finding something to do, than that Butler was reduced to transfer to his hero the flagellation of Sancho, not the most agreeable fiction of Cervantes; very suitable indeed to the manners of that age and nation, which

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South, preaching on Prov. xvi. 33, 'The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing of it is of the Lord,' says: "I cannot think myself engaged from these words to discourse of lots, as to their nature, use, and allowableness; and that, not only in matters of moment and business, but also of recreation; which latter is indeed impugned by some, though better defended by others.' Sermons, i. 201.

2 In 1643 Parliament appointed a Licenser of the Press for the Mathematicks, Almanacks, and Prognostications.'" Rushworth's Hist. Coll. v. 336. In Feb. 1651-2, certain leading Independent divines petitioned Parliament 'to take some speedy course for the utter suppressing of that abominable cheat of

Judicial Astrology.' Masson's Milton, iv. 392.

3

Lilly, the astrologer, says that, 'with his Majesty's consent,' he was asked to ascertain by his art, 'in what quarter of this nation he might be most safe,' if he escaped. At a second consultation he 'elected a day and hour when to receive the Commissioners' sent by Parliament; and, after agreeing to what they proposed, 'with all speed to come up with them to London.' He does not say that he was consulted about the hour of escape. Lilly's Life and Times, 1826, pp. 61, 63.

4

See post, AKENSIDE, 6, for Johnson's attack on 'Shaftesbury's foolish assertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the discovery of truth.'

5 Post, DRYDEN, 191.

ascribed wonderful efficacy to voluntary penances, but so remote from the practice and opinions of the Hudibrastick time that judgement and imagination are alike offended.

The diction of this poem is grossly familiar, and the numbers 50 purposely neglected, except in a few places where the thoughts by their native excellence secure themselves from violation, being such as mean language cannot express1. The mode of versification has been blamed by Dryden, who regrets that the heroick measure was not rather chosen 2. To the critical sentence of Dryden the highest reverence would be due, were not his decisions often precipitate and his opinions immature3. When he wished to change the measure, he probably would have been willing to change more. If he intended that when the numbers were heroick the diction should still remain vulgar, he planned a very heterogeneous and unnatural composition. If he preferred a general stateliness both of sound and words, he can be only understood to wish that Butler had undertaken a different work. The measure is quick, spritely, and colloquial, suitable to the 51 vulgarity of the words and the levity of the sentiments. But

The following passages are instances of this:

'The moon pull'd off her veil of light, That hides her face by day from sight

(Mysterious veil of brightness made,
That's both her lustre and her shade),
And in the lanthorn of the night
With shining horns hung out her
light,' &c. Hudibras, ii. 1. 905.
'For though outnumber'd, over-
thrown,

And by the fate of war run down,
Their duty never was defeated,
Nor from their oaths and faith re-
treated;

For loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shin'd upon.'
lb. iii. 2. 169.

2 The choice of his numbers is suitable enough to his design, as he has managed it; but in any other hand the shortness of his verse, and the quick returns of rhyme, had debased the dignity of style. And besides, the double rhyme (a necessary companion of burlesque writing) is not so proper for manly satire, for it

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such numbers and such diction can gain regard only when they are used by a writer whose vigour of fancy and copiousness of knowledge entitle him to contempt of ornaments, and who, in confidence of the novelty and justness of his conceptions, can afford to throw metaphors and epithets away. To another that conveys common thoughts in careless versification, it will only be said, 'Pauper videri Cinna vult, et est pauper. The meaning and diction will be worthy of each other, and criticism may justly doom them to perish together.

52 -Nor even though another Butler should arise, would another Hudibras obtain the same regard. Burlesque consists in a disproportion between the style and the sentiments, or between the adventitious sentiments and the fundamental subject. It therefore, like all bodies compounded of heterogeneous parts, contains in it a principle of corruption. All disproportion is unnatural; and from what is unnatural we can derive only the pleasure which novelty produces. We admire it awhile as a strange thing; but, when it is no longer strange, we perceive its deformity. It is a kind of artifice, which by frequent repetition detects itself; and the reader, learning in time what he is to expect, lays down his book, as the spectator turns away from a second exhibition of those tricks, of which the only use is to shew that they can be played 3.

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Fielding, in the Preface to Joseph Andrews, writing of burlesque, says: 'But though we have sometimes admitted this in our diction, we have carefully excluded it from our sentiments and characters; for there it is never properly introduced, unless in writings of the burlesque kind, which this is not intended to be. Indeed, no two species of writing can differ more widely than the comic and the burlesque; for as the latter is ever the exhibition of what is monstrous and unnatural, and where our delight, if we examine it, arises from the surprising absurdity, as in appropriating the manners of the highest to the lowest, or e converso, so in the former we should ever confine ourselves strictly to nature, from the just imitation of which will flow all the pleasure we can this way convey to a sensible reader.'

ROCHESTER

OHN WILMOT, afterwards Earl of Rochester, the son of 1

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Henry, Earl of Rochester, better known by the title of Lord Wilmot, so often mentioned in Clarendon's History', was born April 10, 16472, at Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. After a grammatical education at the school of Burford, he entered a nobleman into Wadham College in 1659, only twelve years old; and in 1661, at fourteen, was, with some other persons of high rank, made master of arts by Lord Clarendon in person 3.

He travelled afterwards into France and Italy; and, at his 2 return, devoted himself to the Court. In 1665 he went to sea with Sandwich, and distinguished himself at Bergen by uncommon intrepidity; and the next summer served again on board [the ship commanded by 5] Sir Edward Spragge, who, in the heat of the engagement, having a message of reproof to send to one of his captains, could find no man ready to carry it but Wilmot, who, in an open boat, went and returned amidst the storm of shot.

But his reputation for bravery was not lasting: he was 3 reproached with slinking away in street quarrels and leaving his companions to shift as they could without him; and Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, has left a story of his refusal to fight him 7.

''Wilmot loved debauchery, but shut it out from his business; never neglected that, and seldom miscarried in it. Goring had a much better understanding, and a sharper wit, except in the very exercise of debauchery, and then the other was inspired.' CLARENDON, Hist. v. 2. See also ib. iv. 472.

2 'He was born anno 1647, on April the 1st day, 11h. 7m. a.m., and endued with a noble and fertile muse. The sun governed the horoscope, and the moon ruled the birth hour. The conjunction of Venus and Mercury in M. Coeli, in sextile of Luna, aptly denotes his inclination to poetry. The great reception of Sol with Mars and Jupiter posited so near the latter, bestowed a large stock of generous

and active spirits, which constantly attended on this excellent native's mind, insomuch that no subject came amiss to him.' Gadbury's Ephemeris, 1698, quoted in Ath. Oxon. iii. 1230 n. Burnet places his birth in 1648. Some passages of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester, 1680, p. 1.

3 He was admitted very affectionately into the fraternity by a kiss on the left cheek from the Chancellor of the University.' Ath. Oxon. iii. 1229. Life, by Burnet, p. 9.

4

5 These four words, omitted also in the first edition, are supplied from Burnet's Life, p. 10.

6 Ib. p. II.

7

Post, SHEFFIELD, 3. If Rochester was cowardly, Sheffield was a ruffian. They were, he says, to fight on horse

4 He had very early an inclination to intemperance, which he totally subdued in his travels; but when he became a courtier he unhappily addicted himself to dissolute and vitious company, by which his principles were corrupted and his manners depraved. He lost all sense of religious restraint; and, finding it not convenient to admit the authority of laws which he was resolved not to obey, sheltered his wickedness behind infidelity.

5

6

As he excelled in that noisy and licentious merriment which wine incites, his companions eagerly encouraged him in excess, and he willingly indulged it, till, as he confessed to Dr. Burnet, he was for five years together continually drunk, or so much inflamed by frequent ebriety as in no interval to be master of himself".

In this state he played many frolicks, which it is not for his honour that we should remember, and which are not now distinctly known. He often pursued low amours in mean disguises, and always acted with great exactness and dexterity the characters which he assumed.

7. He once erected a stage on Tower-hill, and harangued the populace as a mountebank; and, having made physick part of his study, is said to have practised it successfully 3.

8 He was so much in favour with King Charles that he was made one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and comptroller of Woodstock Park +.

back, because 'Lord Rochester told me he was so weak with a distemper that he found himself unfit to fight at all any way, much less a-foot.... My anger against him being quite over, because I was satisfied that he never spoke those words I resented, I took the liberty of representing what a ridiculous story it would make if we returned without fighting.... I must be obliged in my own defence to lay the fault on him, by telling the truth of the matter.' His second spread it abroad. Works, 1729, ii. 8.

Scott, quoting the passage, twice speaks of Rochester's infamy, but passes over in silence the other's brutality. Scott's Dryden, xv. 215. For Rochester's cowardly brutality to Dryden see post, DRYDEN, 105.

His father was charged with 'want of mettle' early in the Civil War. Clarendon's Hist. iii. 188 n.

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Life, p. 11.

2 'Not all the while under the visible effects of it, but his blood was so inflamed that he was not, in all that time, cool enough to be perfectly master of himself.' Life, p. 12. See also Hearne's Collections, ed. C. E. Doble, 1889, iii. 263.

3 'He set up in Tower Street for an Italian mountebank, where he practised physic for some weeks not without success. He took pleasure to disguise himself as a porter, or as a beggar; sometimes to follow some mean amours. He would go about in odd shapes, in which he acted his part so naturally that even those who were in the secret could perceive nothing by which he might be discovered.' Life, p. 27. See also Burnet's History, i. 294.

4 6

'He was raunger of Woodstockparke, and lived often at the lodge at

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