Hudibras operated wonderfully in beating down the hypocrisy and false patriotism of the time. Mr Hayley gives a character of the author in four lines with great propriety:
"Unrivall'd Butler! blest with happy skill
To heal by comic verse each serious ill,
By wit's strong flashes reason's light dispense,
And laugh a frantic nation into sense."
For one great object of our poet's satire is to unmask the hypocrite, and to exhibit, in a light at once odious and ridiculous, the Presbyterians and Independents, and all other sects, which in our poet's days amounted to near two hundred, and were enemies to the king; but his further view was to banter all the false, and even all the suspicious, pretences to learning that prevailed in his time, such as astrology, sympathetic medicine, alchymy, transfusion of blood, trifling conceits in experimental philosophy, fortune-telling, incredible relations of travellers, false wit, and injudicious affectations of poets and romance writers. Thus he frequently alludes to Purchas's Pilgrimes, Sir Kenelm Digby's books, Bulwer's Artificial Changeling, Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar Errors, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Lilly's Astrology, and the early transactions of the Royal Society. These books were much read and admired in our author's days.
The adventure with the widow is introduced in conformity with other poets, both heroic and dramatic, who hold that no poem can be perfect which hath not at least one Episode of Love.
It is not worth while to inquire, if the characters painted under the fictitious names of Hudibras, Crowdero, Orsin, Talgol, Trulla, &c., were drawn from real life, or whether Sir Roger L'Estrange's key to Hudibras[1] be a true one. It matters not whether the hero were designed as the picture of Sir Samuel Luke, Colonel Rolls, or Sir Henry Rosewell; he is, in the language of Dryden, Knight of the Shire, and represents them all, that is, the whole body of the Presbyterians, as Ralpho does that of the Independents. It would be degrading the liberal spirit and universal genius of Mr Butler, to narrow his general satire to a particular libel on any characters, however marked and prominent. To a single rogue, or
- ↑ First published in 1714.
