SAMUEL BUTLER: 1612-1680.

Butler, the son of a farmer in Worcestershire, is celebrated as the author of Hudibras, a cavalier burlesque of the extravagant ideas and rigid manners of the English Puritans of the Civil War and Commonwealth. It is the best composition of the kind in the language. The particulars of Butler's life are obscure, but it is certain that he was allowed to die in such poverty that the expense of his funeral was defrayed by a friend.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF HUDIBRAS. From Hudibras.

When civil dudgeon first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why:
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,
Set folks together by the ears: ...
When gospel-trumpeter, surrounded
With long-eared rout, to battle sounded,
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,

Was beat with fist, instead of a stick:
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a-colonelling.

A wight he was, whose very sight would
Entitle him mirror of knighthood;
That never bowed his stubborn knee
To anything but chivalry;

Nor put up blow, but that which laid
Right-worshipful on shoulder-blade:
Chief of domestic knights and errant,
Either for chartel or for warrant :

Great on the bench, great on the saddle,
That could as well bind o'er, as swaddle:
Mighty he was at both of these,
And styled of war as well as peace.
(So some rats, of amphibious nature,
Are either for the land or water.)
But here our authors make a doubt,
Whether he were more wise or stout;
Some hold the one, and some the other:
But howsoe'er they make a pother,
The diff'rence was so small, his brain
Outweighed his rage but half a grain;

Which made some take him for a tool

That knaves do work with, called a fool. . . .
He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundly skilled in analytic;

He could distinguish, and divide

A hair 'twixt south and south-west side;
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute;
He'd undertake to prove by force
Of argument a man's no horse;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl-

A calf, an alderman-a goose, a justice-
And rooks, committee-men and trustees.
He'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination:
All this by syllogism, true

In mood and figure, he would do.
For rhetoric, he could not ope

His mouth but out there flew a trope;
And when he happened to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
He had hard words, ready to shew why,
And tell what rules he did it by:
Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talked like other folk;
For all a rhetorician's rules

Teach nothing but to name his tools.

But, when he pleased to shew 't, his speech In loftiness of sound was rich;

A Babylonish dialect,

Which learned pedants much affect:
It was a party-coloured dress

Of patched and piebald languages;
'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin,
Like fustian heretofore on satin.
It had an odd promiscuous tone,
As if he had talked three parts in one;
Which made some think, when he did gabble,
Th' had heard three labourers of Babel.

JOHN DRYDEN: 1631-1700.

Dryden, one of the great masters of English verse, was the son of a gentleman in Worcestershire. He was educated at Westminster School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Soon after the accession of Charles II. he appears to have established himself in London as a poet and dramatist, and in 1668 he became poet-laureate, which office he held until the Revolution. Dryden was the principal writer in England of the heroic or rhyming plays, modelled after the French plays of Racine and Corneille. His plays, twenty-seven in number, have now fallen completely into oblivion. Most of his poems were written upon passing events and characters, and of this class the most celebrated are Annus Mirabilis (The Year of Wonders), commemorative of the events of the year 1666; Absalom and Achitophel, a satire upon the Whig leaders of the time of Charles II., considered to be the finest in the language; Mac-Flecknoe, another vigorous satire; Religio Laici, written to defend the Church of England against the Dissenters; The Hind and the Panther, an allegorical poem personifying the Roman and Anglican Churches, and defending the measures adopted by James II. in favour of the Roman Catholic Church;1 The Ode for St Cecilia's Day-Alexander's Feast, the loftiest and most imaginative of all his compositions; and his Fables, or imitations of Boccaccio (an Italian writer) and Chaucer. He also translated the works of Virgil, the Satires of Persius, part of the Satires of Juvenal, and portions of other classic authors, into English epic verse. (For specimen of Dryden's prose, see Readings in English Prose, p. 58.)

ODE TO THE MEMORY OF MRS ANNE KILLEGREW,

Excellent in the Two Sister-Arts of Poesy and Painting.

Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wandering race,
Or, in procession fixed and regular,
Mov'st with the heaven's majestic pace;
Or, called to more superior bliss,

Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss:

1 Dryden became a convert to Roman Catholicism in 1686, a year before this was written.

Whatever happy region is thy place,
Cease thy celestial song a little space;
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.

Hear, then, a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse,
In no ignoble verse;

But such as thine own voice did practise here,
When thy first-fruits of poesy were given;
To make thyself a welcome inmate there:
While yet a young probationer,

And candidate of heaven.

If by traduction came thy mind,
Our wonder is the less to find

A soul so charming from a stock so good;
Thy father was transfused into thy blood:
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain,
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.
But if thy pre-existing soul

Was formed at first with myriads more,
It did through all the mighty poets roll,

Who Greek or Latin laurels wore,

And was that Sappho1 last, which once it was before.
If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind!
Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore:

Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find

Than was the beauteous frame she left behind. Return to fill or mend the choir of thy celestial kind. . . . When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,

To raise the nations under ground;

When in the valley of Jehoshaphat,

The judging God shall close the book of fate; .
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,

And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are covered with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the quire shalt go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to shew,
The way which thou so well hast learnt below.

1 A celebrated Grecian poetess.

FROM ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

CHARACTER OF THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY AS ACHITOPHEL.

[The Earl of Shaftesbury (Achitophel) and the Duke of Buckingham (Zimri) were leaders of the party of the Duke of Monmouth (Absalom), son of Charles II. (David). Their object was to exclude the Duke of York from the succession.]

Of these the false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleased with the danger when the waves went high,

He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state:
To compass this, the triple bond he broke,1
The pillars of the public safety shook,

And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke :2

Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name;

1 Shaftesbury is said to have been a principal adviser of the Dutch war in 1672, by which The Triple Alliance between England, Sweden, and Holland was broken.

2 Fitted England for the yoke of France.