For when y' have try'd all sorts of ways,
What fools d'we make of you in plays ?
While all the favours we afford,
Are but to girt you with the sword,
To fight our battles in our steads,
And have your brains beat out o' your
Encounter, in despite of nature,
And fight at once with fire and water,
With pirates, rocks, and storms, and seas,
Our pride and vanity t' appease;

Kill one another, and cut throats,

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heads;

350

For our good graces, and best thoughts;

To do your exercise for honour,

And have brains beat out the sooner;

your

Or crack'd, as learnedly, upon

Things that are never to be known:

And still appear the more industrious,

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The more your projects are prepost'rous; 360 square the circle of the arts,

To

And run stark mad to shew your parts;

Expound the oracle of laws,

And turn them which way we see cause;

Be our solicitors and agents,

And stand for us in all engagements.

And these are all the mighty pow'rs You vainly boast, to cry down ours; And what in real value's wanting, Supply with vapouring and ranting:

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370

Because yourselves are terrify'd,
And stoop to one another's pride;

Believe we have as little wit

To be outhector'd and submit:

By your example, lose that right

In treaties, which we gain'd in fight:
And terrify'd into an awe,

Pass on ourselves a Salique law:

Or, as some nations use, give place,
And truckle to your mighty race,
Let men usurp th' unjust dominion,
As if they were the better women.

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THE

ELEPHANT

IN THE

MOON.

A LEARN'D Society of late,
The glory of a foreign state,

ELEPHANT IN THE MOON.

1. If the method of explaining Hudibras, resorted to in the preceding part of this volume, be subject to any doubt, that doubt will be removed on a perusal of a few notes upon another Poem, attributed to the same Samuel Butler, the received author of Hudibras. This Poem, in no degree less ingenious than Hudibras itself, is the Elephant in the Moon, written, as it is said, in satire of the Royal Society of the day. The way in which the satire operates, is by imputing the fruits of their lucubrations to the influence of lunacy, under which idea I shall enter upon an illustration of the poem in the same manner as I have endeavoured to throw light upon Hudibras.

2. If, as will presently be seen, the characters of this Poem are to be traced to the moon, that will sufficiently explain the epithet foreign, as the moon's brightness accounts for the term glory.

Agreed, upon a summer's night,

To search the moon by her own light;
To take an inventory of all

Her real estate, and personal;

And make an accurate survey
Of all her lands, and how they lay,
As true as that of Ireland, where

The sly surveyors stole a shire:

5

10

T'observe her country, how 'twas planted,

With what sh' abounded most, or wanted;

And make the proper'st observations

For settling of new plantations,

If the society should incline

15

T'attempt so glorious a design.

This was the purpose of their meeting,
For which they chose a time as fitting,
When, at the full, her radiant light
And influence too were at their height.

20

10. Several of the characters introduced in the poem of Hudibras, are brought into action in this poem also; this arrangement may be easily understood, if, instead of a cudgel, a whip, or a sword, conceived to be in the hands. of those characters in the former, we now suppose them to have, for the most part, a telescope in their hands. We are now, indeed, to fancy the prototypes of those different characters in the moon, to be themselves employed in looking at the moon, where, in fact, the tenth line insinuates them to be stationed.

And now the lofty tube, the scale
With which they heaven itself assail,
Was mounted full against the moon
And all stood ready to fall on,
Impatient who should have the honour
To plant an ensign first upon her.
When one, who for his deep belief
Was virtuoso then in chief,

Approv'd the most profound and wise
To solve impossibilities

Advancing gravely to apply

To th' optic glass his judging eye,

Cry'd, strange !-then reinforc'd his sight
Against the moon with all his might,
And bent his penetrating brow
As if he meant to gaze her through ;
When all the rest began to admire,
And, like a train from him took fire,

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30

35

27. The first member of the society noticed by the poet has precisely the same prototype as Sidrophel in Hudibras, whose position in the moon has been already pointed out in the note on his figure, numbered, ante, 33, to which I beg to refer the reader: he has only to suppose the moon itself to be the object now observed, instead of a

star.

38. On the head of this first character are those streaks of light, before pointed out on various occasions, which, being now supposed to resemble a train of gunpowder