PART II.--CANTO III. ARGUMENT. 3. Rosicrucian. Cf. I. i. 545, and note. 8. = CANTO III. catch larks by night. Alluding to the 'low bell' (low, like glow, light), an old means of catching birds by night. Confused by the noise of a bell and dazzled by the light of a lantern they readily fly into the nets. 11. receipt recipe. Cf. 'Write dull receipts how poems may be made.' POPE, Essay on Criticism, 1. 115. 30. Aruspicy and Augury. The Haruspex was the soothsayer whose special office it was to examine the entrails of victims slain in sacrifice, and thence to deduce omens. The Augur was originally a diviner of omens in the flight of birds, but the word acquired a wider signification, and the augur's observations extended to atmospheric phenomena of all kinds (ex caelo), to the behaviour of the sacred chickens (ex tripudiis) or of quadrupeds (ex quadrupedibus), as well as of birds generally (ex avibus). Much interesting etymology is connected with the practices of the augurs. They first marked out (réμva) a division of the heavens within which to take the observations, called a templum, a name afterwards extended to the sacred inclosure (temple) in which they stood to contemplate.' Haruspex is hira, the entrails, and the root spec, 'behold.' 31. garbages of cattle. The Haruspices are alluded to. Cf. 'Per idem tempus Uticae forte G. Mario per hostias deis supplicanti magna atque mirabilia portendi haruspex dixerat ; proinde, quae animo agitabat, fretus deis ageret, fortunam quam sæpissume experiretur, cuncta prospere eventura.'—SALLUST, Bell. Jug. c. 63. 33. chickens pecking. The allusion is doubtless to the story of the Roman Consul P. Claudius, who in the year B.C. 249, was cut to pieces in a naval engagement against the Carthaginians outside the harbour of Drepanum. The sacred chickens that accompanied Roman expeditions, on this occasion refused to eat, and the 'Pullarii' besought the Consul not to engage. Then let them drink,' he replied, and ordered them to be thrown into the sea;-an impiety for which he was considered to be justly punished by the total rout of his fleet. The tale is, however, doubtful, though the defeat is historical; and Mommsen, following Polybius, says nothing about the chickens. 57. pen'worth of his thought the whole sum and value of it. Cf. the common saying-'A penny for your thoughts.' 60. on the tenters. Tenters are hooks on which anything is stretched (tendo), as cloth for working, &c. 88. knight of the post. Cf. I. i. 583, and note. 93. problem. enucleate. Take out the kernel of a nut,--solve a 106. Sidrophel. The original of this character is generally supposed to be William Lilly, who has already been alluded to under the name of Erra Pater, I. 1. 120. But in this case, as in that of Hudibras himself, it is not probable that Butler adheres strictly to any one original. 113. pullen = poultry (Fr. poule). Seduced in the proper sense of led away. 114. chowsed. To cheat out of something. A word now more common in the north than in other parts of England. It would appear that the interpreter to the Turkish embassy was called a chiaus, and in 1609 this official defrauded his government of some £4000. The magnitude of the swindle gave the name of · Chiaus' to any kind of cheating transaction. Cf.— 'What do you think of me That I am a Chiaus?' BEN JONSON, Alchemist, Act I. Sc. i. The Alchemist was published in 1610, and the above lines would therefore have been one of the current allusions with which playwrights have always been accustomed to draw a cheer. 140. ledger, a resident ambassador. The word occurs twice in Shakspeare in the form leiger 'Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven, Where you shall be an everlasting leiger.' Measure for Measure, III. i. 5 7. 'I have given him that Which if he take shall quite unpeople her Cymbeline, I. v. 78. The particular ledger' referred to is one Matthew Hopkins who styled himself the Witchfinder General.' In one year he hanged threescore women in Suffolk only on pretence of having identified them as witches. The miserable victims were frequently compelled to confess by the most cruel tortures, some of which are alluded to in the text. A common test was to tie the toes and thumbs of the suspected witch together and lower her gently into water. If she floated it was because the water refused to receive her, and her guilt was clear. Since according to the specific gravity of the human body very few persons would sink under these circumstances, of course conviction almost always followed this method of trial. 146. sitting above ground. Alluding to the method of testing the supposed witch by seating her on the ground with her legs tied tightly across, and so keeping her for twenty-four hours without food or sleep. After the first few hours the torture became acute, and many poor wretches confessed to their witchcraft under it, deliberately preferring death to its further endurance. 153. proved himself a witch. "These two last verses I suppose relate to that which I have often heard, that Hopkins went on searching and swimming the poor creatures, till some gentleman, out of indignation at the barbarity, took him and tied his own thumbs and toes as he used to tye others, and when he was put into the water he himself swam as they did. That cleared the country of him, and it was a great deal of pity that they did not think of the experiment sooner.'-D. HUTCHINSON, Historical Essay on Witchcraft, Edit. 1720, p. 86. 155. to Martin Luther. Luther was a firm believer in witchcraft and in the visible appearances of the Devil. His Table Talk, and the work De Missa Privata, contain many allusions to these beliefs. He claimed to have driven away the fiend by jeering at him with jests quite unfit for ears polite. He is even reported to have once shied his inkstand at the Devil's head, though it is not reported that the scholarly missile encountered anything but the wall. 160. at Antwerp. During the Civil Wars of Flanders the cathedral at Antwerp was broken open and ransacked by a mob. Strada tells that devils were seen aiding them. Cf. 'Sane si non centimani fuere qui tam brevi tam multa demoliti sunt, non absurdum sit credere (quod aliquos tum suspicatos scio) Daemones hominibus immistos operam in id suam praevalide consociasse.'-STRADA, De Bello Belgico, Lib. V. Vol. I. p. 154, Edit. Romae, 1640. 161. Mascon, in Burgundy, where a devil adopted the unusual course of singing psalms. So at least declared M. Perreaud, a minister of the Genevan sect, in whose house the performance took place. Sometimes licentious verses or lampoons took the place of the psalms. Perreaud published an account of the whole affair, which was translated into English by Peter de Moulin. 163. Kelly. Edward Kelly was assistant to the famous Dr. Dee. (Cf. 1. 235.) 164. nun of Loudun. Grandier, canon of Loudun was charged with having bewitched some Ursuline nuns, and burned · alive 1634. His real crime seems to have been that he gave offence to Richelieu; and the chief evidence against him was supplied by the devils of whom he had rendered the nuns possessed. A 'Histoire des Diables de Loudun' was published at Amsterdam in 1693. 166. passim. 169. Woodstock. See Sir Walter Scott's Woodstock Withers. Cf. I. i. 646, and note. Cf. also- Where wretched Withers, Ward, and Gildon rest.' He was a Puritan officer and a miserable poet, who tells a long tale in verse of a cavalier soldier who drank a health to the devil, and was promptly carried off by the fiend through a pane of glass. 171-2. Lilly gives, in his Autobiography, many particulars of his employment by the Parliament, which may not improbably be no more true than his prophecies. 196. Gymnosophist. Butler must use this word here simply because it is long and hard, to ridicule the use by the knight of any word, whether he understood it himself or not, provided only that it were sufficiently high-sounding. There is no reason in the history of the Gymnosophists why the wizard should be called by their name. The Gymnosophists or Naked Philosophers (Gr. qvuvós, naked) were an ancient sect of philosophers in India. They held that happiness was to be found in uprooting all desires. They lived on the natural fruits of the earth, abjured marriage, and used as little clothing as possible, whence their name. Their chief importance in the history of philosophy is due to the influence they exerted on the mind of Pyrrho, who following Alexander in his campaigns in India, and so coming into contact with the Gymnosophists, was afterwards much swayed by their doctrines when he founded the sect of the Sceptics. 211. to climb the wheel. Cf. 'Dear Thomas, did'st thou never pop Moved in the orb, pleased with the chimes MATTHEW PRIOR, A Simile. 224. Hodge Bacon. Roger Bacon. Bob Grosted. Robert Grosseteste. Cf. I. ii. 225. I. i. 140. and note. th' intelligible world. Cf. notes on I. i. 536, and 235. Dee. John Dee was born in London and educated at Cambridge. He obtained much repute as a mathematician, and in that age of superstition, was too erudite to be safe. He was so strenuously suspected of commerce with evil spirits that he seems at last to have come to believe it himself. Taking Kelly (cf. 1. 163) as his assistant he set up as wizard, and seems to have entirely deceived Prince Laski of Piradia, who was then travelling in England, and at whose request Dee and Kelly accompanied him back to the Continent. Returning after various adventures to England, Dee was well received by Elizabeth, and ultimately appointed Warden of Manchester College. The old suspicions, however, clung to him, and after vainly petitioning King James to be brought to trial, so as to have an opportunity of clearing himself, he finally died in poverty at Westlake. Amongst many mathematical and other works, few of which were ever actually published, he wrote a Preface to Euclid. 237. Kelly. Cf. 1. 163, and note. 238. Lascus. This is the Prince Laski of the note above. 240. almanac well-willer. The makers of the prophetic almanacs were self-styled well-willers to learning or 'Philomaths,' the title taken by the Irish village schoolmaster in Lover's Rory O'More. The word occurs in CLEVELAND, Character of a Diurnal Maker: 'He is the first tincture and rudiment of a writer, dipped as yet in the primitive blew, like an almanack well-willer.-Works, Edit. 1699, p. 80. |