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HUDIBRAS.
[PART I.
At twenty miles an hour pace,
And yet ne'er stirs out of the place.1160
On top of this there is a spire,
On which Sir Knight first bids the Squire
The fiddle, and its spoils,[1] the case,
In manner of a trophy, place.
That done, they ope the trap-door gate,1165
And let Crowdero down thereat.
Crowdero making doleful face,
Like hermit poor in pensive place,[2]
To dungeon they the wretch commit,
And the survivor of his feet;1170
But th' other, that had broke the peace,
And head of knighthood, they release,
Tho' a delinquent false and forged,
Yet b'ing a stranger he 's enlarged;[3]
While his comrade, that did no hurt, 1175
Is clapp'd up fast in prison for't.
So justice, while she winks at crimes,
Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
- ↑ That is, its hide, skin, or covering; as in "spoils of the chase."
- ↑ This is the first line of a love-song, in great vogue about the year 1650. It is given entire in Walton's Angler (Bohn's edit. p. 159).
- ↑ This alludes to the case of Sir Bernard Gascoign, who was condemned at Colchester with Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, but respited from execution on account of his being a foreigner, and a person of some interest in his own country (Italy). See Clarendon's Rebellion.
