onditional acceptance of the unlucky knight; the latter's deliberations on
the means of eluding his vow; the Skimmington; the visit to Sidrophel, the
astrologer; the attempt to cajole the lady, with its woeful consequences;
the consultation with the lawyer, and the immortal pair of letters to which
this gives rise, complete the argument of the whole poem. But the story is
as nothing; throughout we have little really kept before us but the sordid
vices of the sectaries, their hypocrisy, their churlish ungraciousness,
their greed of money and authority, their fast and loose morality, their
inordinate pride. The extraordinary felicity of the means taken to place
all these things in the most ridiculous light has never been questioned.
The doggerel metre, never heavy or coarse, but framed as to be the very
voice of mocking laughter, the astounding similes and disparates, the
rhymes which seem to chuckle and to sneer of themselves, the wonderful
learning with which the abuse of learning is rebuked, the subtlety with
which subtle casuistry is set at nought can never be missed. Keys like
those of L'Estrange are therefore of little use. It signifies nothing
whether Hudibras was Sir Samuel Luke of Bedfordshire or Sir Henry Rosewell
of Devonshire, still less whether Ralph's name in the flesh was Robinson or
Pendle, least of all that Orsin was perhaps Mr Gosling, or Trulla possibly
Miss Spencer. Butler was probably as little indebted to mere copying for
his characters as for his ideas and style. These latter are in the highest
degree original. The first notion of the book, and only the first notion,
Butler undoubtedly received from _Don Quixote_. His obligations to the
_Satyre Menippee_ have been noticed by Voltaire, and though English writers
have sometimes ignored or questioned them, are not to be doubted. The art,
perhaps the most terrible of all the weapons of satire, of making
characters without any great violation of probability represent themselves
in the most atrocious and despicable light, was never perhaps possessed in
perfection except by Pithou and his colleagues and by Butler. Against these
great merits some defects must certainly be set. As a whole, the poem is no
doubt tedious, if only on account of the very blaze of wit, which at length
almost wearies us by its ceaseless demands on our attention. It should,
however, be remembered that it was originally issued in parts, and
therefore, it may be supposed, intended to be r