^{page 528 note 1} Samuel Butler: Characters and Passages from Note-Books, edited by A. E. Waller, M. A., Cambridge University Press, 1908.

^{page 528 note 2} E. C. Baldwin, Ben Jonson's Indebtedness to the Greek Character-Sketch, in Modern Language Notes, November, 1901; The Relation of the English Character to its Greek Prototype, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. xviii, No. 3; La Bruyère's Influence upon Addison, ibid., Vol. xii, No. 4; The Relation of the Seventeenth Century Character to the Periodical Essay, ibid., Vol. xix, No. 1.

^{page 531 note 1} Hudibras, P. ii., C. 2, ll. 247–250.

^{page 532 note 1} Dryden, who derived the rules governing the construction of satire from the practice of the Latin satirists Horace, Juvenal, and Persius, says in his Discourse concerning the Origin and Progress of Satire: “The poet is bound, and that ex officio, to give his reader some one precept of moral virtue, and to caution him against some one particular vice or folly. Other virtues, subordinate to the first, may be recommended under that chief head; and other vices or follies may be scourged, besides that which he principally intends. But he is chiefly to inculcate one virtue, and insist on that.”

^{page 532 note 2} In the Introduction to his edition of Butler's Poetical Works.

^{page 533 note 1} Quoted with a slight variation from Hudibras, P. i., C. 1, ll. 215–16.

^{page 533 note 2} Alden, The Rise of Formal Satire in England under Classical Influence, Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, 1899.

^{page 535 note 1} These engravings most of us recall as having formed a part of the parlor splendors of some New England homestead. They represented a group of people, who, perhaps, had never met in the body, and who seemed even in the picture a little awkward and ill at ease, standing or sitting in angular attitudes, apparently for the express purpose of showing their faces. For the identification of the faces there hung beside the engraving a small outline sketch in which were numbers corresponding to a numbered list of the persons represented.

^{page 535 note 2} That the Characters furnish a complete explanation of all the obscurities in the poem, like the “Key to the Scriptures” in use among some of our Christian brethren is not, of course, meant to be implied.

^{page 536 note 1} Ralph was selected, not because he alone exemplifies the usefulness of the Characters as a source for notes on the text of Hudibras, but because he serves as well as any of the others would, and because to treat in this way all the persons that figure in the epic would require too much space.

^{page 536 note 2} “When he writes Anagrams. he uses to lay the Outsides of his Verses even (like a Bricklayer) by a line of Ryme and Acrostic, and fill the Middle with Rubbish.—In this he imitates Ben Jonson, but in nothing else.”—A Small Poet.

“When he writes, he commonly steers the Sense of his Lines by the Rhyme that is at the End of them, as Butchers do Calves by the Tail. For when he has made one Line, which is easy enough; and has found out some sturdy hard Word, that will but rhyme, he will hammer the Sense upon it, like a Piece of hot Iron upon an Anvil, into what Form he Pleases.”—Ibid.

^{page 536 note 3} “He lives much more by his Faith than good Works; for he gains more by trusting and believing in one that pays him at long running, than six that he works for, upon an even accompt, for ready money.”—A Taylor.

^{page 536 note 4} “He calls Stealing damning, by a Figure in Rhetoric called the Effect for the Efficient, and the Place where he lodges all his Thieveries Hell, to put him in mind of his latter End.”—Ibid.

^{page 537 note 1} “The great Secret, which they can prove to be the golden Bough, that served Æneas for a pass to go to Hell with.”—An Hermetic Philosopher.

^{page 537 note 2} “He cries down Learning, as he does the World, because it is not within his Reach, and gives unjust Judgment upon that, which he understands nothing of. … The prodigious Height of Confidence, he has arrived to, is not possible to be attained without an equally impregnable Ignorance.”—An Anabaptist.

“He calls his supposed Abilities Gifts. … He owes all his Gifts to his Ignorance, as Beggars do the Alms they receive to their Poverty.”—A Fanatic.

“And this he finds useful to many Purposes; for it does not only save him the Labour of Study, which he disdains as below his Gifts, but exempts him from many other Duties, and gives his idle Infirmities a greater Reputation among his Followers than the greatest Abilities of the most Industrious.”—An Hypocritical Nonconformist.

“… he and his Brethren have with long and diligent Practice found out an Expedient to make that Dullness, which would become intolerable if it did not pretend to something above Nature, pass for Dispensations, Light, Grace, and Gifts,”—Ibid.

^{page 538 note 1} “He is very free of his faith because he comes easily by it; for it costs him no consideration at all, and he is sure he can hardly part with it, for less than it is worth.”—A Credulous Man.

^{page 538 note 2} “He gathers Churches on the Sunday, as the Jews did Sticks on their Sabbath, to set the State on Fire. He humms and hahs high Treason, and calls upon it, as Gamesters do on the Cast they would throw. He groans Sedition, and, like the Pharisee, rails, when he gives Thanks.”—A Fifth-Monarchy-Man.

^{page 538 note 3} “He controuls his fellow Labourers in the Fire with as much Empire and authority, as if he were sole Overseer of the great Work, to which he lights his Reader like an ignis fatuus, which uses to mislead Men into Sloughs and Ditches;. …”—An Hermetic Philosopher.

“He finds out Sloughs and Ditches, that are aptest for launching of an Anabaptist; for he does not christen, but launch his Vessel.”—An Anabaptist.

“He does not like the use of Water in his Baptism, as it falls from Heaven in Drops, but as it runs out of the Bowels of the Earth, or stands putrefying in a dirty Pond.”—Ibid.

^{page 539 note 1} “His Tongue is like a Bagpipe Drone, that has no Stop, but makes a continual ugly Noise, as long as he can squeeze any Wind out of himself.”—An Haranguer.

^{page 539 note 2} “The pity of his suppos'd sufferings works much on the tender sex the sisters, and their benevolence is as duly paid as the husbands; for whatsoever they are to their spouses, they are sure to be his helpers, and he as sure to plow with their heifers.”—A Silenc'd Presbyterian.

“And the better to set this off, he uses more artificial Tricks to improve his Spirit of Utterance either into Volubility or Dullness, that it may seem to go of itself, without his Study or Direction, than the old Heathen Orators knew, that used to liquor their Throats, and harangue to Pipes. For he has fantastic and extravagant Tones, as well as Phrases, … in a Kind of stilo recitativo between singing and braying; …”—An Hypocritical Nonconformist.

^{page 539 note 3} “For they will undertake to teach any Kind of mysterious Learning in the World by Way of Diet; and therefore have admirable Receipts, to make several Dishes for Talisman, Magic, and Cabal, in which Sciences a Man of an ingenious Stomach may eat himself into more Knowledge at a Meal, than he could possibly arrive at by seven Years Study.”—An Hermetic Philosopher.

^{page 540 note 1} “(He) derives the Pedigree of Magie from Adam's first green Britches because Fig-leaves being the first Cloaths, that Mankind wore, were only used for Covering, and therefore are the most ancient Monuments of concealed Mysteries.”—Ibid.

^{page 540 note 2} “They are better acquainted with the intelligible World, than they are with this; and understand more of Ideas than they do of Things. This intelligible World is a kind of Terra incognita, a Psittacorum Regio, of which Men talk what they do not understand. They would have us believe that it is but the Counterpart of the elementary World; and that there is not so much as an individual Beard upon the Face of the Earth, that has not another there perfectly of the same Colour and Cut to match it.”—Ibid.

“Democracy is but the Effect of a crazy Brain; ‘tis like the intelligible World, where the Models and Ideas of all Things are, but no Things; and ‘twill never go further.”—Ibid.

^{page 540 note 3} “He adores Cornelius Agrippa as an Oracle, yet believes he understands more of his Writings than he did himself; for he will not take his own Testimony concerning his three books of occult Philosophy, which he confesses to have written without Wit or Judgment.”—An Hermetic Philosopher.

^{page 540 note 4} “No doubt a very strange Landscape, and not unlike that, which Anthroposophus has made of the invisible Mountain of the Philosophers.”—Ibid.

^{page 540 note 5} “They have made Spectacles to read Jacob Boehmen and Ben Israel with, which, like those Glasses that revert the Object, will turn the wrong End of their Sentences upwards, and make them look like Sense.” —Ibid.

^{page 540 note 6} “The best you may suppose is laid up carefully; for he always tells you what he could tell you, whereby it appears the Purpose of his Writing is but to let you know that he knows, which if you can but attain to, you are sufficiently learned, and may pass for vere adeptus though otherwise he will not allow any Man to be free of the Philosophers, that has not only served out his Time to a Furnace, but can cant and spit Fire like a Jugler.”—Ibid.

^{page 541 note 1} “… for they profess to understand the Language of Beasts and Birds, as they say Solomon did, else he never would have said—The Fowls of the Air can discover Treason against Princes.”—Ibid.

^{page 541 note 2} “Though they believe their own Senses base and unworthy of their Notice (like that delicate Roman, who being put in his Litter by his Servants, asked, whether he sat or no) yet they never apply themselves to any Thing abstruse or subtile, but with much Caution; and commonly resolve all Questions of that Nature by Numbers—Monades, Triades, and Decades, are with them a kind of philosophical Fulhams, with which, like cunning Gamesters, they can throw what they please, and be sure to win, for no Body can disprove them.”—Ibid.

“These Numbers they believe to be the better sort of Spirits, by the Largeness of their Dominion, which extends from beyond the intelligible World, through all the inferior Worlds, to the Center, which is the uttermost bound of their Empire that Way.”—Ibid.

^{page 541 note 3} “… they are very sovereign to clear the Eyes of the Mind, and make a blear-eyed Intellect see like a Cat in the Dark, though it be stark blind in the Light.”—Ibid.

^{page 542 note 1} “But after so many Precepts and Rules delivered with the greatest Confidence and Presumption of Certainty, they will tell you, that this Art is not to be attained but by divine Revelation, and only to be expected by holy and sanctified Persons, that have left behind them all the Concernments of this ”World; whereby it seems, this Shadow of Art follows those that fly it, and flies from those that follow it.“—Ibid.

^{page 542 note 2} “He keeps as many Knights of the Post to swear for him, as the King does poor Knights at Windsor to pray for him.”—A Litigious Man.

Is a retailer of Oaths, a Deposition-Monger, an Evidence-Maker that lives by the Labour of his Conscience. He takes Money to kiss the Gospel, as Judas did Christ, when he betrayed him. As a good conscience is a continual Feast; so an ill one is with him his daily Food. He plys at a Court of Justice, as Porters do at a Market; and his Business is to bear Witness, as they do Burthens, for any man that will pay them for it. He will swear his Ears through an Inch-Board, and wears them merely by Favour of the Court; for being Amicus curiœ, they are willing to let him keep the Pillory out of Possession, though he has forfeited his Right never so often; For when he is once outed of his Ears, he is past his Labour, and can do the Commonwealth of Practisers no more Service. He is a false Weight in the Ballance of Justice; and as a Lawyer's Tongue is the Tongue of the Ballance, that inclines either Way, according as the Weight of the Bribe inclines it, so does his. He lays one Hand on the Book, and the other in the Plaintiff's or Defendant's Pocket. He feeds upon His Conscience, as a Monkey eats his Tail. He kisses the Book to show he renounces, and takes his leave of it—Many a parting Kiss has he given the Gospel. He pollutes it with his Lips oftener than a Hypocrite. He is a sworn Officer of every Court, and a great Practiser; is admitted within the Bar, and makes good what the rest of the Council say. The Attorney and Solicitor fee and instruct him in the Case; and he ventures as far for his Client, as any Man, to be laid by the Ears: He speaks more to the Point than any other, yet gives false Ground to his Brethren of the Jury, that they seldom come near the Jack. His Oaths are so brittle, that not one in twenty of them will hold the Taking, but fly as soon as they are out. He is worse than an ill Conscience; for that bears true Witness, but his is always false, and though his own Conscience be said to be a thousand Witnesses, he will out-swear and out-face them all. He believes it no Sin to bear false Witness for his Neighbour, that pays him for it, because it is not forbidden, but only to bear false Witness against his Neighbour.“

^{page 543 note 1} “These Influences, they would make us believe, are a Kind of little invisible Midwives, which the Stars employ at the Nativities of Men, to swathe and bind up their Spirits. … And yet it should seem, these Influences are but a kind of Mock-destinies, whose Business it is to tamper with all Men, but compel none.—This the learned call inclining not nccessitating. They have a small precarious Empire, wholly at the Will of the Subject; they can raise no Men but only Volunteers, for their Power does not extend to press any. Their Jurisdiction is only to invite Men to the Gallows, or the Pillory in a civil Way, but force none so much as to a Whipping, unless, like Catholic Penitents, they have a mind to it, and will lay it on themselves. They are very like, if not the same, to the Temptations of the Devil. …”—An Hermetic Philosopher.

^{page 543 note 2} “He talks with them by dumb Signs, and can tell what they mean by their twinckling and squinting upon one another, as well as they themselves. He is a Spy upon the Stars, and can tell what they are doing by the Company they keep, and the Houses they frequent.”—An Astrologer.

^{page 544 note 1} “They have found out an admirable Way to decide all Controversaries, and resolve Doubts of the greatest Difficulty by Way of horary Questions, for as the learned Astrologers, observing the Impossibility of knowing the exact Moment of any Man's Birth, do use very prudently to cast the Nativity of the Question (like him, that swallowed the Doctor's bill instead of the Medicine) and find the Answer as certain and infallible, as if they had known the very Instant, in which the Native, as they call him, crept into the World. ”—An Hermetic Philosopher.

^{page 544 note 2} “As little Good as Hurt can they do any Man against his Will—they cannot make a private Man a Prince, unless he have a very strong Desire to be so; nor make any Man happy in any Condition whatsoever, unless his own Liking concur. … As for the Wise, the Learned tell us, they have nothing to do with them; and if they make any Attempt upon them, it is to no Purpose: for when they incline a Man to be a Knave, and prevail upon him, he must be a Fool (for they have no Power over the Wise) and so all their Labour is lost.”—Ibid.

Is a public Officer, intrusted to rob the Church by Virtue of his Place, as long as he is in it. He has a very great Care to eat and drink well upon all public Occasions, that concern the Parish: for a good Conscience being a perpetual Feast, he believes, the better he feeds, the more Conscience he uses in the Discharge of his Trust; and as long as there is no Dry-money-cheat used, all others are allowed, according to the Tradition and Practice of the Church in the purest Times. When he lays a tax upon the Parish he commonly raises it a fourth Part above the Accompt, to supply the Default of Houses that may be burnt, or stand empty; or Men that may break and run away; and if none of these happen, his Fortune is the greater, and his Hazard never the less; and therefore he divides the Overplus between himself and his Colleagues, who were engaged to pay the whole, if all the Parish had run away, or hanged themselves. He over-reckons the Parish in his Accompts, as the Taverns do him, and keeps the odd Money himself, instead of giving it to the Drawers. He eats up the Bell-ropes like the Ass in the Emblem, and converts the broken Glass-Windows into whole Beer-Glasses of Sack; and before his Year is out, if he be but as good a Fellow as the drinking Bishop was, pledges a whole Pulpit full. If the Church happen to fall to decay in his Time, it proves a Deodand to him; for he is Lord of the Manor, and does not make only make what he pleases of it, but has his Name recorded on the Walls among Texts of Scripture and leathern Buckets, with the Year of his Office, that the Memory of the Unjust, as well as the Just may last as long as so transitory a Thing may. He interprets his Oath as Catholics do the Scripture, not according to the Sense and Meaning of the Words, but the Tradition and Practice of his Predecessors; who have always been observed to swear what other please, and do what they please themselves.“

^{page 545 note 1} “And therefore promises ought to oblige those only to whom they are made, not those who make them; for he that expects a Man should bind himself is worse than a thief, who does that Service for him, after he has robbed him on the High-way. Promises are but Words, and Words Air, which no Man can claim a Propriety in, but is equally free to all and incapable of being confined; …”—A Modern Politician.

^{page 546 note 1} “For as strong Bodies may freely venture to do and suffer that, without any Hurt to themselves, which would destroy those that are feeble: so a Saint, that is strong in Grace, may boldly engage himself in those great Sins and Iniquities, that would easily damn, a weak brother, and yet come off never the worse.”—A Ranter.

“He preaches the Gospel in despite of itself; for though there can be no Character so true and plain of him, as that which is there copied from the Scribes and Pharisees, yet he is not so weak a brother to apply any Thing to himself, that is not perfectly agreeable to his own Purposes; nor so mean an Interpreter of Scripture, that he cannot relieve himself, when he is prest home with a Text, especially where his own Conscience is Judge: For what Privilege have the Saints more than the Wicked, if they cannot dispense with themselves in such Cases?”—An Hypocritical Nonconformist.

“He canonises himself a Saint in his own Life-time, as Domitian made himself a God; and enters his Name in the Rubric of his Church by Virtue of a Pick-lock, which he has invented, and believes will serve his Turn, as well as St. Peter's Keys.”—An Anabaptist.

^{page 547 note 1} “The handkerchief, he wore about his neck at the institution of his order here, was a type, that in process of time, he should be troubled with a sore throat, and since it is fulfill'd.”—A Silenc'd Presbyterian.

^{page 547 note 2} “He never forsook him in his greatest Extremities, but eat and drunk truly and faithfully upon him, when he knew not how to do so anywhere else: for all the service he was capable of doing his Master was the very same with that of Bel and the Dragon's Clerks, to eat up his meat, and drink up his Drink for him.”—A Risker.

“David was eaten up with the Zeal of God's House; but his Zeal quite contrary eats up God's House; and as the words seem to intimate, that David fed and maintained the Priests; so he makes the Priests feed and maintain him. …”—A Zealot.

“… for he thinks that no man ought to be much concerned in it (religion) but Hypocrites, and such as make it their Calling and Profession; who, though they do not live by their Faith, like the Righteous, do that which is nearest to it, get their living by it; …”—A Modern. Politician.

^{page 548 note 1} “An Anabaptist is a Water-Saint, that like a Crocodile, sees clearly in the Water, but Dully on Land.”—An Anabaptist.