So did our champion's arms defend
All of him but the other end,
His head and ears, which in the martial145
Encounter lost a leathern parcel;
For as an Austrian archduke once
Had one ear, which in ducatoons
Is half the coin, in battle par'd
Close to his head,[1] so Bruin far'd;150
But tugg'd and pull'd on th' other side,
Like scriv'ner newly crucify'd;[2]
Or like the late-corrected leathern
Ears of the circumcised brethren.[3]
But gentle Trulla into th' ring155
He wore in's nose convey'd a string.
With which she march'd before, and led
The warrior to a grassy bed,
As authors write, in a cool shade,[4]
Which eglantine and roses made;160
Close by a softly murm'ring stream,
Where lovers use to loll and dream:
There leaving him to his repose,
Secured from pursuit of foes,
- ↑ Albert, archduke of Austria, brother to the emperor Rodolph the Second, had one of his ears grazed by a spear, when he had taken off his helmet, and was endeavouring to rally his soldiers, in an engagement with Prince Maurice of Nassau, ann. 1598. A ducatoon is half a ducat.
- ↑ In those days lawyers or scriveners, guilty of dishonest practice, were sentenced to lose their ears.
- ↑ Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, who were placed in the pillory, and had their ears cut off, by order of the Star-chamber, in 1637, for writing seditious libels. They were banished into remote parts of the kingdom; but recalled by the parliament in 1640. At their return the populace received them with enthusiasm. They were met, near London, by ten thousand persons, carrying boughs and flowers; and the members of the Star-chamber, concerned in punishing them, were fined £4000 for each.
- ↑ The passage which commences with this line is an admirable satire on the romance writers of those days; who imitated the well-known passages in Homer and Virgil, which represented the care taken by the deities of their favourites, after combats. "In this passage (says Ramsay) the burlesque is maintained with great skill, the imagery is descriptive, and the verse smooth; showing that the author might, had he chosen, have produced something in a very different strain to 'Hudibras'; though of less excellence, he perhaps knew the true bent of his genius, and probably felt a contempt for the easy smoothness and pretty feebleness of his contemporaries, of whom Waller and Denham were the two most striking examples."
