Page:Hudibras - Volume 1 (Butler, Nash, Bohn; 1859).djvu/103

PART I.CANTO II.

ARGUMENT.

The catalogue and character
Of th' enemy's best men of war;^[1]
Whom, in a bold harangue, the Knight^[2]
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.

1. Butler's description of the combatants resembles the list of warriors in the Iliad and Æneid, and especially the laboured characters in the Theban war, both in Æschylus and Euripides. See Septem contra Thebas, v. 383; Supplices, v. 362; Phœnis. v. 1139.
2.  In the first edition this and the next two lines stand thus:
   To whom the Knight does make a Speech,

   And they defie him: after which

   He fights with Talgol, routs the Bear,