Again, when Bruin had been lugged and worried

in the dirt,

-gentle Trulla into th' ring.

He wore in 's nose convey'd a string,
With which she march'd before, and led
The warrior to a grassy bed

(As authors write) in a cool shade,
Which eglantine and roses made;
Close by a softly-murmuring stream,
Where lovers us'd to loll and dream:
There leaving him to his repose,
Secured from the pursuit of foes,
And wanting nothing but a song,
And a well-tun'd theorbo, hung
upon a bough, to ease the pain

His tugg'd ears suffer'd, &c.

That Butler wrote such burlesque, rather in the spirit of parody, than from any predisposition to vulgarity, is apparent from the purer strain, into which, in spite of himself, his muse will occasionally break forth. Saving a characteristical hit at the sonnetteers, the following verses, for instance, would hardly be taken for a part of Hudibras.

The sun grew low, and left the skies,
Put down (some write) by ladies' eyes.
The moon pull'd off her veil of light,
That hides, by day, her face from sight,-
Mysterious veil of brightness made,
That's both her lustre, and her shade,-
And in the lantern of the night,
With shining horns, hung out her light;
For darkness is the proper sphere,
Where all false glories use t' appear.

The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day:

Her two blue windows faintly she up heaveth,
Like the fair Sun, when, in his fresh array,

He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth:
And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,

So is her face illumin'd by her eye.

The twinkling stars began to muster,
And glitter with their borrow'd lustre,
While sleep the wearied world reliev'd
By counterfeiting death reviv'd.

Thus he could describe the evening. Morning finds him in the usual mood:

The sun had long since, in the lap
Of Thetis, taken out his nap.
And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn.

In this meagre sketch, we have omitted to mention the author's smaller poems. They generally consist of parodies, or original drollery; and are such as the assiduity of his editors alone has rendered public.

HUDIBRAS.

IN THREE PARTS.

TO THE READER.

POETA nascitur, non fit, is a sentence of as great truth as antiquity; it being most certain that all the acquired learning imaginable is insufficient to complete a poet, without a natural genius and propensity to so noble and sublime an art. And we may, without offence, observe, that many very learned men, who have been ambitious to be thought poets, have only rendered themselves obnoxious to that satirical inspiration our author wittily invokes ;

Which made them, though it were in spite
Of Nature and their stars, to write.

On the other side, some who have had very little human learning, but were endued with a large share of natural wit and parts, have become the most celebrated poets of the age they lived in. But as these last are rare aves in terris; so when the Muses have not disdained the assistances of other arts and sciences, we are then blessed with those lasting monuments of wit and learning which may justly claim a kind of eternity upon earth: and our au