PART I.CANTO II.
HERE was an ancient sage philosopher[1]
That had read Alexander Ross over,[2]
And swore the world, as he could prove,
Was made of fighting, and of love.
Just so romances are, for what else 5
Is in them all but love and battles?[3]
O' th' first of these w' 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. 10
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 do a whole street raze, 15
To build a palace in the place;[4]
They never care how many others
They kill, without regard of mothers,
- ↑ Empedocles, a Pythagorean philosopher and poet, held that, concord and discord were the two principles (one formative, the other destructive) which regulated the four elements that compose the universe. The great anachronism in these two celebrated lines increases the humour. Empedocles lived about 2100 years before Alexander Ross.
- ↑ Alexander Ross was a very voluminous writer, and chaplain to Charles the First. He wrote a "View of all Religions," which had a large sale; an answer to Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudoxia and Religio Medici; Commentaries on Hobbes; Mystagogus Poeticus, or the Muses' Interpreter; and many other works. Addison, in the Spectator, No. 60, says, he has heard these lines of Hudibras more frequently quoted than the finest pieces of wit in the whole poem, observing that the jingle of the double rhyme has something in it that tickles the ear.
- ↑ Mr Butler, in his MS. Common Place-book, says,
Love and fighting is the sum
Of all romances, from Tom Thumb
To Arthur, Gondibert, and Hudibras. - ↑ Alluding, it is supposed, to the Protector Somerset, who, in the reign of Edward VI., pulled down two churches, part of St Paul's, and three bishops' houses, to build Somerset House in the Strand.
