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No one has done a better and more concise review of Samuel Butler's great poem, Hudibras, than the Reverend George Gilfillan. The Reverend was no fan of Mr. Butler, yet he could be fair in the appraisal of his poetry. Following is his sketch of the poem.
"The general object of "Hudibras" is to satirize the Roundheads (Puritans); but, besides this, the author has no objections to take a little sport out of all the parties and persons who come across his path; and the bad poetry, the pretentious philosophy, the fashions, manners, the arts and sciences, of his age, are all saluted with a touch ean passant more or less withering.
FIRST PART -
In the FIRST CANTO, he sends out Hudibras and Ralpho upon an expedition
against the follies and amusements of the age. Hudibras is generally
supposed to be Sir Samuel Luke. This is founded upon the fact that Butler,
in some of his other works, expressly calls Sir S. Luke, Hudibras. Yet some
subtle writers, understanding the author's meaning better than himself; will
have it that Hudibras was one Sir Henry Rosewell, of Devonshire. To the
honour of being Ralpho, too, there have been several pretenders - the
principal being one Isaac Robinson, a zealous butcher in Moorfields, and one
Pemble, a tailor. Hudibras is a Presbyterian, and Ralpho an Independent - a
diversity which the author employs in reflecting ridicule and contempt on
both these sections of the Puritanic body. The first 600 lines are occupied
in a description of the persons, gifts, and principles of this redoubted
pair, diversified with the keenest side-satirical touches at the parties to
which they belonged, and at certain of their more remarkable members, as
well as at scholastic theologians and men of science generally. His heroes
sally out in search of adventures, and reach Breutford, a market town eight
miles west of London, where a bear-baiting (a bear tied to a stake is set
upon by dogs) is about to take place. The knight, agreeably to his
principles, determines to prevent what he deems a heathenish practice, and
propounds the propriety of doing so to Ralpho. They hold some logical
discussion on the subject, in the course of which the author takes occasion
to deal hard blows at "the Cause," as the Puritans called it, at Liberty of
Conscience, the Solemn League and Covenant, the Assembly of Divines, and at
the division of churches, made by the Presbyterians, into parishes, classes
(i.e., a number of parishes united into one jurisdictive body), provincial
synods, and national synods. The worthy pair are about to go to loggerheads
in the argument, when Hudibras, seeing the field of battle in sight,
peremptorily shuts the debate, tells Ralpho to prepare for war, and spurs
his own wall-eyed steed toward the scene of contest.
In the SECOND CANTO, Hudibras and Ralpho reach the spot, and find their enemies assembled in full force - and them the author pauses to describe. There is, first, Crowdero, the fiddler, who, according to L' Estrange, was one Jackson, a milliner in the Strand, who had lost a leg in the Parliamentary service, and been reduced to fiddle for his bread. Then comes Orsin, " marshal to the champion bear," an alias it is said for one Joshua Gisling, a Roundhead, who kept bears in Paris Garden, Southwark. (One would think that as Dante put all the Guelph faction in Hell, Butler had determined to put all the Roundheads in Hudibras.) Then comes Bruin, whom alone of this crew commentators cannot identify with any one of the hated party. Talgol is next, and he was, it appears, a butcher in Newmarket - name unknown - who obtained a captain's commission by his courage on the Parliamentary side, at Naseby. Then comes Magnano; otherwise Simon Wait, a tinker and a preacher, quoth L' Estrange why not, say we, John Bunyan, the immortal tinker, preacher, and dreamer of Elstowe Then appears Trulla, said to be daughter of one James Spencer. Cerdon comes next, a one-eyed cobbler, brother to Colonel Hewson, a renowned Roundhead. And lastly, Colon, namely Ned Perry, a hostler, brings, if we may be permitted a bad pun, this list to a period. Sooth to say, we have little faith in these identifications of L'Estrange. He says he got them from Butler himself but, in the confusion of their cups, mistakes might be expected. It is a matter of little consequence. Each name in the list is chiefly valuable as a peg on which the author has hung his learning, his wit, and those sarcasms which break off at every angle, to scarify and scorch his opponents. The fight is just beginning, when the bold knight presses forward, and raises his voice in one of the lengthiest and most ludicrous orations in all the poem. To this, Talgol angrily replies, and then a fierce contest commences between them, in which, according to Homeric example, they are straightway joined by their squires - Ralpho, and the - incomparable Cerdon." The issue, after various success, is, that Hudibras routs the bear, disperses the rest of the crew, seizes on poor Crowdero, and puts him in the stocks, humorously described as a bastile.
In the THIRD CANTO, the discomfited rout rally, and, greatly through the exertions of Trulla, turn the tide of victory - seize upon Hudibras and the squire, and clap them in the place of the fiddler, whom they relieve from his brief bondage. The twain, in no small degree irritated by their defeat, are left contesting the merits and demerits of their different systems of Presbytery and Independency. The whole of this canto is enlivened by right-hand and left-hand hits at scriveners and synods, at poets and presbyters, at war and at women, but especially at the thanksgiving-days and self-denying ordinances of the Puritans, and the lights and gifts of their brethren, the Ranters.
PART II
The FIRST CANTO of Part II introduces us mere particularly to the heroine of
the tale, who had been alluded to in the former canto. This is a wealthy
widow, whom Hudibras has been courting for her jointure, but to little
purpose. Hearing that he is in durance; she visits him with her train, and
engages him in a long dialogue, less decorous than witty. She doubts the
sincerity of his attachment, and after drawing him by a kind of Socratic
dialogue into ridiculous dilemma after dilemma, she offers to relieve him
from the stocks, and promises farther favours if he will prove his love by
self-flagellation; an incident imitated from Cervantes, and, as Johnson
says, very suitable to the manners of that age and nation, which ascribed
wonderful efficacy to voluntary penances, but so remote from the practice
and opinions of the Hudibrastic time, that judgement and imagination are
alike offended." He swears to whip himself accordingly, and is released,
but prudently determines to defer the whipping till next day. The object of
this canto is evidently to satirize the ordinary kinds of love and love
poetry, and more than to insinuate that the saints of that age were as
sensual, and more worldly in their loves than their neighbours.
CANTO SECOND opens with the released knight and squire riding to the spot where he had sworn to whip himself. Reluctant to fulfill his engagement, Hudibras starts the question whether saints are bound by ordinary oaths? He thinks decidedly not; and Ralpho betters the instruction, and in reference to the whipping, suggests that some one might lawfully become a substitute for the knight. Very adroitly, Hudibras suggests that no one would make a better scape-goat than Ralpho himself The worthy squire backs out instantly from his proposal. This puts Hudibras in high chafe, and matters are looking serious and martial between them, when, hark! an extraordinary noise is heard, and a rabble rout are seen approaching. This is the famous old procession of the Skimming ton (a triumphal procession in honour of female supremacy, Part II, Canto II, line 650). Hudibras, as usual, sets his face against the amusement, and has begun to harangue the mob, when a volley of rotten eggs, assailing him and his squire, compel them to spur their horses out of the field. The sting of this canto lies in the attempt made to identify the casuistic notions of the Jesuits, in regard to the obligation of oaths, with those of the Puritans, and to show how extremes may meet. Of course, we deem the view taken altogether unfair, but it is argued with marvelous dexterity.
In CANTO THREE, Butler flies at somewhat different game. The knight on his way to the lady's house is seized with doubts as to his success in courtship, and wonders if as a saint he may consult a fortune-teller. Ralpho opines that he might consult the devil for that matter, and proposes that they should visit Sidrophel, a noted Rosicrucian. We need not detail the particulars of this very amusing canto. Sidrophel is said to be meant for William Lilly, the famous astrologer of that age, who in his yearly almanacs foretold victories for the Parliamentary army; and Whachum, his assistant, was one Tom Jones, a foolish Welchman. The romance of Kenilworth may be consulted as perhaps the best commentary on this canto; which is meant to cut with a double edge - first, against the quack salvers of that day and their dupes; and, second, against the Puritans, who, while pretending to be enemies of superstition, were believed secretly to tamper with, and to try to turn it to their own purposes.
There follows an heroical epistle of Hudibras to Sidrophel, which is said to have been occasioned by Sir Paul Neal, a conceited virtuoso, who constantly denied that Butler was the author of "Hudibras." He is served up to the reader here along with a sauce of the bitterest contempt, and we find him again treated in the same way in "the Elephant in the Moon," a story founded on a mouse having got into his telescope, and being mistaken for an elephant. The unlucky wight is now the mouse in the telescope of "Hudibras" for ever more.
PART III
In the FIRST CANTO of Part III, the knight visits the lady, who has
previously, however, been primed by the treacherous Ralph(o), and who after
he has told a tissue of lies about his flagellation, frightens him by
pretended hobgoblins and devils (Sidrophel aiding), till he is compelled in
reply to a kind of catechism to confess all the hypocritical arts and
selfish objects with which his party were charged.
CANTO SECOND is entirely independent of Hudibras and Ralpho who are never mentioned. It is a general satire upon the Puritans. Cromwell and his son(s), Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert, are attacked by name; so are Calamy, Case, Byfield, Lentham; and that favourite of Butler's wrath, Pryn. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, the versatile statesman, figures as "The Politician;" and that Ishmaelite, "free-born John" Lilburn, who opposed alike Charles and Cromwell, is the "brother haberdasher."
In CANTO THIRD, the knight tries to gain the lady, or at least her hand, by applying to a lawyer, which gives the satirist a good opportunity of lashing the pettifoggers of his day. The lawyer advises him to draw her into an ensnaring correspondence, in order to get her to entrap herself Hudibras accordingly indites an artful epistle; only the lady's reply, when it comes, baffles his purpose, and closes the poem.
The knight's letter contains some sly allusions to those "gifted teachers" who were suspected of inveigling women's hearts; and the lady's answer, amidst many other palpable hits, satirizes Charles the Second for being so much governed by his mistresses, and forms thus the first earnest of that flood of bitter vengeance, which, we have ventured before to assert, death only prevented Butler from outpouring on the faithless and heartless tyrant."
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The Poetical Works of Samuel Butler with the Life and Critical Dissertation
and Explanatory Notes by Reverend George Gilfillan, Vol I, pp xx. xxv,
Edinburgh, James Nichol, 1854.
Hudibras by Samuel Butler, from most anyone of various publishers and editions. The annotations by Zachary Grey far surpasses those of Treadway Nash in providing the historic background to this masterpiece of the English peoples (and their literature.)
Those familiar with Don Quixote will enjoy the touch-and-go between Hudibras and Ralpho as Butler draws heavily on the intercourse between Don and Sancho to build his satire.
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