copied from those of the poet's former employer, Sir Samuel
Luke. For this, Butler has been accused of ingratitude, but the nature of
their connection does not seem to have been such as to warrant the charge.
Ralph the squire, the humble Sancho of the poem, is a cross-grained
dogmatic Independent.

These two the poet sends forth, as a knight-errant with a squire, to
correct existing abuses of all kinds--political, religious, and
scientific. The plot is rambling and disconnected, but the author
contrives to go over the whole ground of English history in his inimitable
burlesque. Unlike Cervantes, who makes his reader always sympathize with
his foolish heroes, Butler brings his knight and squire into supreme
contempt; he lashes the two hundred religious sects of the day, and
attacks with matchless ridicule all the Puritan positions. The poem is
directly historical in its statement of events, tenets, and factions, and
in its protracted religious discussions: it is indirectly historical in
that it shows how this ridicule of the Puritans, only four years after the
death of Cromwell, delighted the merry monarch and his vicious court, and
was greatly acceptable to the large majority of the English people. This
fact marks the suddenness of the historic change from the influence of
Puritanism to that of the restored Stuarts.

Hudibras is written in octosyllabic verse, frequently not rising above
doggerel: it is full of verbal "quips and cranks and wanton wiles:" in
parts it is eminently epigrammatic, and many of its happiest couplets seem
to have been dashed off without effort. Walpole calls Butler "the Hogarth
of poetry;" and we know that Hogarth illustrated Hudibras. The comparison
is not inapt, but the pictorial element in Hudibras is not its best claim
to our praise. This is found in its string of proverbs and maxims
elucidating human nature, and set forth in such terse language that we are
inclined to use them thus in preference to any other form of expression.

Hudibras is the very prince of _burlesques_; it stands alone of its kind,
and still retains its popularity. Although there is much that belongs to
the age, and much that is of only local interest, it is still read to find
apt quotations, of which not a few have become hackneyed by constant use.
With these, pages might be filled; all readers will recognize the
following:

He speaks of the knight thus:

On either side he would dispute,
Confute, change ha