reader is grossly mistaken if he imagines, that because Butler was the author of Hudibras, he favored either the politics or the manners of the court, to which his writings were so serviceable in its distress. The satire in question, in enumerating the outward circumstances that create the weakness and misery of man, has the following lines:

"Yet as no barbarousness beside

Is half so barbarous as pride,

Nor any prouder insolence

Than that, which has the least pretence,

We are so wretched, to profess

A glory in our wretchedness;

To vapor sillily, and rant

Of our own misery and want.

And grown vain-glorious on a score,
We ought much rather to deplore,
Who, the first moment of our lives,
Are but condemn'd, and giv'n reprieves;
And our greatest grace is, not to know
When we shall pay 'em back, nor how;
Begotten with a vain caprich

And live as vainly to that pitch.

"Our pains are real things, and all
Our pleasures but fantastical;
Diseases of their own accord,
But cures come difficult and hard;
Our noblest piles, and stateliest rooms
Are but out-houses to the tombs;
Cities, though e'er so great and brave,
But mere warehouses to the grave;

Our brav'ry's but a vain disguise,
To hide us from the world's dull eyes,

* Finery.

The remedy of a defect,

With which our nakedness is deckt;

Yet makes us swell with pride, and boast,

As if w' had gain'd by being lost."

After some other very fine reflections of the same caste, he concludes in the following noble and splendid strain:

"That wealth, that bounteous fortune sends

As presents to her dearest friends,

Is oft laid out upon a purchase

Of two yards long in parish churches;

And those too happy men that bought it,

Had liv'd, and happier too, without it.
For what does vast wealth bring, but cheat,
Law, luxury, disease, and debt,

Pain, pleasure, discontent, and sport,

And easy-troubled life, and short?*

"But all these plagues are nothing near

Those far more cruel and severe,

Unhappy man takes pains to find

Tinflict himself upon his mind;

Though this satire seems fairly transcribed for the press, yet on a vacancy in the sheet opposite to this line, I find the following verses, which probably were intended to be added: but as they are not regularly inserted, I choose rather to give them by way of note:

"For men ne'er digg'd so deep into

The bowels of the earth below,
For metals that are found to dwell
Near neighbor to the pit of hell,
And have a magic pow'r to sway
The greedy souls of men that way;
But with their bodies have been fain
To fill those trenches up again;
When bloody battles have been fought
For sharing that, which they took not.
For wealth is all things, that conduce
To man's destruction, or his use;
A standard both to buy and sell
All things from heaven down to hell."

And out of his own bowels spins
A rack and torture for his sins:
Torments himself, in vain, to know
That most, which he can never do;
And the more strictly 'tis denied,
The more he is unsatisfied:

Is busy in finding scruples out,
To languish in eternal doubt;
Sees spectres in the dark, and ghosts,
And starts, as horses do at posts,
And, when his eyes assist him least,
Discerns such subtle objects best:
On hypothetic dreams and visions
Grounds everlasting disquisitions,
And raises endless controversies
On vulgar theorems and hearsays:
Grows positive and confident

In things so far beyond th' extent
Of human sense, he does not know,
Whether they be at all, or no;

And doubts as much in things, that are

As plainly evident, and clear:
Disdains all useful sense, and plain,
T' apply to th' intricate and vain;
And cracks his brains in plodding on
That, which is never to be known;
To pose himself with subtleties,
And hold no other knowledge wise;
Although, the subtler all things are,
They're but to nothing the more near:
And the less weight they can sustain,
The more he still lays on in vain,
And hangs his soul upon as nice

And subtle curiosities,

As one of that vast multitude,

That on a needle's point have stood:

Weighs right and wrong, and true and false,
Upon as nice and subtle scales,

As those that turn upon a plane

With the hundredth part of half a grain;

And still the subtler they move,

The sooner false and useless prove.

So man, that thinks to force and strain
Beyond its natural sphere his brain;

In vain torments it on the rack,
And, for improving, sets it back;
Is ignorant of his own extent,
And that to which his aims are bent;
Is lost in both, and breaks his blade
Upon the anvil, where 'twas made:
For, as abortions cost more pain
Than vig'rous births, so all the vain
And weak productions of man's wit,
That aim at purposes unfit,

Require more drudgery, and worse

Than those of strong and lively force."

The satire that follows is, what the author calls, in long verse, and is upon the licentious age of Charles the Second, contrasted with the puritanical one that preceded it. In this satire, which is the sequel of the former, we have the following masterly lines:

"For those, who heretofore sought private holes,
Securely in the dark to damn their souls,
Wore vizards of hypocrisy, to steal
And slink away, in masquerade, to hell;
Now bring their crimes into the open sun,
For all mankind to gaze their worst upon,

As eagles try their young against its rays,

To prove, if they're of generous breed, or base;

Call heaven and earth to witness, how they've aim'd

With all their utmost vigor to be damn'd."

The satire that follows is, we dare say, addressed to Sir William Davenant, whose name our editor has been so delicate as to suppress, and is a piece of sterling wit. Speaking of rhyme and sense, he says:

"I, whom a lewd caprich, (for some great crime

I have committed) has condemn'd to rhyme,

With slavish obstinacy vex my brain

To reconcile 'em, but, alas! in vain,

Sometimes I set my wits upon the rack,

And, when I would say white, the verse says black;
When I would praise an author, the untoward

Damn'd sense, says Virgil, but the rhyme

Speaking of the plague of rhyme, Mr. Pope has nothing in all his works more splendid and musical than the following lines:

"Without this plague, I freely might have spent

My happy days with leisure and content;

Had nothing in the world to do, or think,

Like a fat priest, but whore, and eat, and drink;

Had pass'd my time as pleasantly away,

Slept all the night, and loiter'd all the day.

* Ned Howard. [The Honorable Edward Howard, brother-in-law of Dryden; author of the "British Princes," an heroic poem, the "Usurper," a tragedy, and several other pieces which subjected him to the ridicule of the wits and satirists of the day, and among the rest Butler.]