We leave it, and go on, as now
Suppose they did, no matter how; 50
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 bandied balls,55
The learned hold, are animals;[1]
So horses they affirm to be
Mere engines made by geometry;
And were invented first from engines,
As Indian Britons were from Penguins.[2] 60
So let them be, and, as I was saying.
They their live engines plied,[3] not staying
Until they reach' d the fatal champaign
Which th' enemy did then encamp on;
The dire Pharsalian plain,[4] where battle 65
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. 70
- ↑ Alluding to the atomic theory. Democritus, Epicurus, &c., and some of the moderns likewise, as Des Cartes, Hobbes, and others, deny that there is a vital principle in animals, and maintain that life and sensation are generated from the contexture of atoms, and are nothing but local motion and mechanism. By which argument tops and balls in motion are presumed to be as much animated as dogs and horses.
- ↑ This is meant to ridicule the opinion adopted by Selden, that America had formerly been discovered by the Britons or Welsh; inferred from the similarity of some words in the two languages, especially Penguin, the British name of a bird with a white head, which in America signifies a white rock. Butler implies, that it is just as likely horses were derived from engines, as that the Britons came from Penguins. Mr Selden, in his note on Drayton's Polyolbion, says, that Madoc, brother to David ap Owen, Prince of Wales, made a sea-voyage to Florida, about the year 1170, and Humphry Llwyd, in his history of Wales, reports, that one Madoc, son of Owen Gwynedd, Prince of Wales, some hundred years before Columbus discovered the West Indies, sailed into those parts, and planted a colony; an idea which Southey has beautifully developed in his "Madoc."
- ↑ That is, Hudibras and his Squire spurred their horses.
- ↑ Alluding to Pharsalia, where Julius Cæsar gained his signal victory over Pompey the Great, of which see Lucan's Pharsalia.
