HUDIBRAS. This satirical mock-epic by Samuel Butler, perhaps the wittiest poem ever written in the English language, consists of 11,000 lines of so-called
verse (Iambic tetrameter, with burlesque rhymes), and is divided into three parts, each of several cantos. The action, which fills only about 1,800 lines, is constantly interrupted by digressions upon a variety, of themes. It is often stated that Hudibras is a kind of rhymed parody of
Quixote,' which is frequently, alluded to and is even travestied in several of its minor incidents; but, except for the idea of a crazy knight and his squire setting out to reform the world, Butler owes little to Cervantes, and (Hudibras) might have been substantially the same had (Don Quixote' never have been writ ten. The initial suggestion might have come as well from the (Fairy Queen' or from the
The story concerns Sir Hudibras, a religious mad Presbyterian, and Ralpho, his squire, who set forth to reform social abuses banned by the Puritans. Their fight with the bear-baiters and their defeat; Hudibras in the stocks and his release by his Lady; his oath of flagellation —which he breaks; their rout by the merry makers; their visit to the astrologer Sidro phel — whom they rob; plots and counter-plots by both Hudibras and Ralpho, each in turn in league with the Lady, are the main incidents of the disconnected story, which breaks off but does not end. The characterization is weak and inconsistent; the characters being in the main mere nicknames for absurdities. Hudi bras, perhaps in part a caricature of Sir Samuel Luke, once an employer of Butler's, is a mixture of incongruous traits, knight errant plus Presbyterian magistrate, who, although meant to be ridiculous and cowardly, at times talks good sense and fights right valiantly. Minor characters have been identified with various members of the Puritan party, but such identi fication is uncertain and unimportant. The character of Sidrophel the astrologer is cer tainly meant for William Lilly, a notorious impostor of the day. This portrait of the uni versal and permanent quack is Butler's master piece; but the portraits of Shaftsbury and Lilburn are also admirable, and perhaps fur nished Dryden with models for his 'Absolom and Achitophel.' The story itself, with its satire on Puritan ism, serves merely as a frame on which Butler hangs his ridicule of the many excesses of con temporary life. A conservative in politics and
a rationalist in religion, he was a royalist and an Episcopalian not through sentiment or re ligious conviction but through hatred of excess and dislike of change. Of strong, well-balanced mind and of eminent good sense, he saw in royalty and in an established church the safety of the state. Satire makes no fine distinctions, and Butler's portrait of Puritanism is of course the grossest and most unfair caricature; but in his burlesque of Puritan habits of mind and speech there was enough truth to render his satire wonderfully telling. He touches upon religion in general apart from Puritanism; upon contemporary science (the researches of the Royal Society he especially ridicules) ; upon matrimony; upon astrology and kindred super stitions; upon lawyers, with incidental satire on a large variety of political, moral, social and literary themes. The enormous whole forms a "commonplace-book)) of satire, for which Butler's prose notebooks furnished the material, gathered through an entire life of observation and reflection and in parts talked out many a time over a bottle with his friends. 'Hudibras' is utterly devoid of poetry or sentiment. This is amply compensated for by its brilliant and pervasive wit, which, though so often based upon the local, or the temporary, or the recondite as to be unintelligible without the aid of explanatory notes, occasionally at tains the universal, and in such passages has become a part of the language. The style of the poem, compounded of its peculiarities of metre, diction and figures of speech, is so original and individual as simply to be termed Butler employs the old iambic tetrameter but gives it a twist of his own by means of astonishing rhymes. He changes the vowel sounds, forces two monosyllabic words to rhyme with a dissyllable, and employs fre quent trisyllabic rhymes that are always out rageous but often irresistibly comic. For all this he gained hints from his predecessors, such as Ben Jonson and John Taylor, the poet"' but he was the first to popularize the practice. Working with the rhyme to make the burlesque effect is Butler's habit of levying upon all fields of knowledge for his illustra tions, of alluding even to the most recondite, almost unheard-of things in history, science, pseudo-science, mediaeval lore of •all kinds. Rabelais and Burton in prose and Cleveland in verse satire had done something of this kind, but Butler is without a peer in the range of his material and in his extravagant use of it.