Which in success oft disinherits,
For spurious causes, noblest merits.
Great actions are not always true sons
Of great and mighty resolutions;
Nor do the bold'st attempts bring forth
Events still equal to their worth:
But sometimes fail, and in their stead,
Fortune and cowardice succeed.
Yet we have no great cause to doubt,
Our actions still have borne us out;
Which tho' they're known to be so ample,
We need not copy from example;
We're not the only person durst
Attempt this province, nor the first.
In northern clime a val'rous Knight
Did whilom kill his Bear in fight,
And wound a Fiddler; we have both
Of these the objects of our wroth,
And equal fame and glory from
Th' attempt of victory to come.
'Tis sung, there is a valiant Mamaluke
In foreign land, yclep'd

1

To whom we have been oft compared
For person, parts, address, and beard;

Both equally reputed stout,

And in the same cause both have fought :
He oft, in such attempts as these,
Came off with glory and success ;

Nor will we fail in th' execution,
For want of equal resolution.
Honour is like a widow, won

With brisk attempt and putting on;

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1Yclep'd:' some supply 'Sir Samuel Luke.' He was Governor of NewportPagnel in Bucks, and a Puritan.

With ent'ring manfully, and urging,
Not slow approaches, like a virgin.

This said, as erst the Phrygian Knight,
So ours with rusty steel did smite
His Trojan horse,' and just as much
He mended pace upon the touch;
But from his empty stomach groan'd,
Just as that hollow beast did sound,
And
angry answer'd from behind,

With brandish'd tail, and blast of wind.
So have I seen, with armed heel,

A wight bestride a Commonweal,2

While still the more he kick'd and spurr'd,
The less the sullen jade has stirr'd.

915

920

CANTO II.

THE ARGUMENT.

The catalogue and character
Of th' enemies' best men of war,

Whom, in a bold harangue, the Knight
Defies, and challenges to fight:

H' encounters Talgol, routs the Bear,

And takes the Fiddler prisoner,

Conveys him to enchanted castle,

There shuts him fast in wooden Bastile.

THERE was an ancient sage philosopher,
That had read Alexander Ross 3 over,

1 'His Trojan horse,' &c. : alluding to Laocoon, who, suspecting the treachery of the Grecians, smote their wooden horse with a spear.—2 'A wight bestride a Commonweal:' alluding probably to Richard Cromwell.-3 Alexander Ross' was a Scotch divine, and one of the chaplains to King Charles I.: he wrote a book, entitled 'A View of all Religions in the World from the Creation to his own Time.'

And swore the world, as he could prove,
Was made of fighting and of love.
Just so romances are, for what else

Is in them all but love and battles?

O' th' first of these we have no great matter
To treat of, but a world o' th' latter,
In which to do the injured right,

We mean, in what concerns just fight;
Certes our authors are to blame,
For to make some well-sounding name
A pattern fit for modern knights
To copy out in frays and fights

(Like those that a whole street do raze,
To build a palace in the place), 1
They never care how many others
They kill, without regard of mothers,
Or wives, or children, so they can

Make up some fierce dead-doing man,
Composed of many ingredient valours,
Just like the manhood of nine tailors.
So a wild Tartar, when he spies
A man that's handsome, valiant, wise,
If he can kill him, thinks t' inherit
His wit, his beauty, and his spirit ;
As if just so much he enjoy'd
As in another is destroy'd:

For when a giant's slain in fight,

And mow'd o'erthwart, or cleft downright

It is a heavy case, no doubt,

A man should have his brains beat out

1 'A whole street do raze,-To build a palace in the place:' alluding probably to the building of Somerset House in the Strand, in the reign of King Edward VI., for which many churches and other buildings were pulled down.

Because he's tall, and has large bones,
As men kill beavers for their stones.
But as for our part, we shall tell
The naked truth of what befel;

And as an equal friend to both

The Knight and Bear, but more to Troth,
With neither faction shall take part,
But give to each his due desert;
And never coin a formal lie on't,

To make the knight o'ercome the giant.
This being profess'd, we've hopes enough,
And now go on where we left off.

They rode, but authors having not
Determined whether pace or trot
(That is to say, whether tollutation,
As they do term't, or succussation),
We leave it, and go on, as now
Suppose they did, no matter how :
Yet some from subtle hints have got
Mysterious light, it was a trot.
But let that pass: They now begun
To spur their living engines on:

For as whipp'd tops and bandy'd balls,
The learned hold, are animals;

So horses they affirm to be

Mere engines made by geometry,

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50

And were invented first from engines,

As Indian Britons 2 were from Penguins.

So let them be, and, as I was saying,

They their live engines ply'd, not staying

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''The learned:' Des Cartes.-2 Indian Britons :' a hit at those who, from the word Penguin, the name of a bird, held that American Indians were sprung from the Britons. They might as well,' means Butler to say, 'be sprung from the birds themselves.'

Until they reach'd the fatal champain
Which th' enemy did then encamp on ;
The dire Pharsalian plain, where battle
Was to be waged 'twixt puissant cattle,
And fierce auxiliary men

That came to aid their brethren,
Who now began to take the field,

As Knight from ridge of steed beheld.

For as our modern wits behold,
Mounted a pick-back on the old,
Much further off, much further he,
Raised on his aged beast, could see;
Yet not sufficient to descry
All postures of the enemy:

Wherefore he bids the Squire ride further,
T'observe their numbers and their order;
That when their motions he had known,
He might know how to fit his own.
Meanwhile he stopp'd his willing steed,
To fit himself for martial deed:
Both kinds of metal he prepared,
Either to give blows, or to ward ;
Courage and steel, both of great force,
Prepared for better, or for worse.
His death-charged pistols he did fit well,
Drawn out from life-preserving victual;
These being primed, with force he labour'd
To free 's sword from retentive scabbard ;
And after many a painful pluck,
From rusty durance he bail'd tuck :
Then shook himself, to see that prowess
In scabbard of his arms sat loose :
And, raised upon his desp'rate foot,
On stirrup-side he gazed about,