he was pleased to make his _kind and hospitable patron_ the hero. We
defy the history of Whiggism to match this anecdote,"[310] as if it
could not be matched! Whigs and Tories are as like as two eggs when they
are wits and satirists; their friends too often become their victims! If
Sir Samuel resembled that renowned personification, the ridicule was
legitimate and unavoidable when the poet had espoused his cause, and
espoused it too from the purest motive--a detestation of political and
fanatical hypocrisy.[311] Comic satirists, whatever they may allege to
the contrary, will always draw largely and most truly from their own
circle. After all, it does not appear that Sir Samuel sat for Sir
Hudibras; although from the hiatus still in the poem, at the end of Part
I., Canto I., his name would accommodate both the metre and the rhyme.
But who, said Warburton, ever compared a person to himself? Butler might
aim a sly stroke at Sir Samuel by hinting to him how well he resembled
Hudibras, but with a remarkable forbearance he has left posterity to
settle the affair, which is certainly not worth their while. But
Warburton tells, that a friend of Butler's had declared the person was a
Devonshire man--one Sir Harry Rosewell, of Ford Abbey, in that county.
There is a curious life of our learned wit, in the great General
Dictionary; the writer, probably Dr. Birch, made the most authentic
researches, from the contemporaries of Butler or their descendants; and
from Charles Longueville, the son of Butler's great friend, he obtained
much of the little we possess. The writer of this Life believes that Sir
Samuel was the hero of Butler, and rests his evidence on the hiatus we
have noticed; but with the candour which becomes the literary historian,
he has added the following marginal note: "Whilst this sheet was at
press, I was assured by Mr. Longueville, that Sir Samuel Luke _is not
the person_ ridiculed under the name of HUDIBRAS."

It would be curious, after all, should the prototype of Hudibras turn
out to be one of the heroes of "the Rolliad;" a circumstance which, had
it been known to the copartnership of that comic epic, would have
furnished a fine episode and a memorable hero to their line of descent.
"When BUTLER wrote his Hudibras, _one Coll. Rolle_, a Devonshire man,
lodged with him, and was exactly like his description of the Knight;
whence it is highly probable, that it was this gentleman, and not Sir
Samuel Luke, whose person h