And wanting nothing but a song,[1]165
And a well-tuned theorbo[2] hung
Upon a bough, to ease the pain
His tugg'd ears suffer'd, with a strain.[3]
They both drew up, to march in quest
Of his great leader, and the rest.170
For Orsin, who was more renown'd
For stout maintaining of his ground
In standing fights, than for pursuit,
As being not so quick of foot,
Was not long able to keep pace175
With others that pursu'd the chase,
But found himself left far behind,
Both out of heart and out of wind;
Griev'd to behold his bear pursu'd
So basely by a multitude, 180
And like to fall, not by the prowess,
But numbers, of his coward foes.
He rag'd, and kept as heavy a coil as
Stout Hercules for loss of Hylas;[4]
Forcing the vallies to repeat185
The accents of his sad regret:
He beat his breast, and tore his hair,
For loss of his dear crony bear;
That Echo, from the hollow ground,[5]
His doleful wailings did resound190
- ↑ The ancients believed that Music had the power of curing haemorrhages, gout, sciatica, and all sorts of sprains, when once the patient found himself capable of listening to it. Thus Homer, Odyssey, book xix. line 531 of Pope.
- ↑ A large lute for playing a thorough bass, used by the Italians.
- ↑ In Grey's edition it is thus pointed;
His tugg'd ears suffer'd; with a strain
They both drew up—
But the poet probably meant a well-tuned theorbo, to ease the pain with a strain, that is, with music and a song. - ↑ Hercules, when he bewails the loss of Hylas. See Val. Flac. Aegon. iii. 593, and Theocritus, Idyl. xiii. 58.
- ↑ A fine satire (says Grey) on that false kind of wit which makes an Echo talk sensibly, and give rational answers. Echoes were frequently introduced by the ancient poets (Ovid. Metam. iii. 379; Anthol. Gr. iii. 6, &c.), and had become a fashion in England from the Elizabethan era to the time when Butler wrote. Addison, see Spectator 59, reproves this, as he calls it, "silly
