Ill has he read, that never hit 415
On him in muses' deathless writ.
He had a weapon keen and fierce,[1]
That thro' a bull-hide shield would pierce,
And cut it in a thousand pieces,
Tho' tougher than the Knight of Greece his,[2] 420
With whom his black-thumb'd ancestor[3]
Was comrade in the ten years' war:
For when the restless Greeks sat down
So many years before Troy town,
And were renown'd, as Homer writes, 425
For well-soled boots no less than fights;[4]
They owed that glory only to
His ancestor, that made them so.
Fast friend he was to Reformation,
Until 'twas worn quite out of fashion; 430
Next rectifier of wry law,
And would make three to cure one flaw.
Learned he was, and could take note,
Transcribe, collect, translate, and quote:
But preaching was his chiefest talent,[5] 433
Or argument, in which being valiant,
He used to lay about, and stickle,
Like ram or bull at conventicle:
For disputants, like rams and bulls,
Do fight with arms that spring from skulls. 440
- ↑ That is, a sharp knife, with which he cut leather.
- ↑ The shield of Ajax. See Description of it in Iliad, v. 423 (Pope)
- ↑ According to the old distich:
The higher the plum-tree, the riper the plum;
The richer the cobbler, the blacker his thumb. - ↑ "Well-greaved Achaeans: "the "greave" (κνημὶς) was armour for the legs, which Butler ludicrously calls boots. In allusion, no doubt, to a curious "Dissertation upon Boots "(in the Phœnix Britannicus, p. 268,) written in express ridicule of Col. Howson, and perhaps having in mind Alexander Ross, who says that Achilles was a shoemaker's boy in Greece, and had he not pawned his boots to Ulysses, would not have been pierced in the heel by Paris. In further illustration, the Shakspearian reader will remember Hotspur's punning reply to Owen Glendower's brag, "I sent thee bootless home," Henry IV. p. 1, Act iii. sc. 1.
- ↑ The encouragement of preaching by persons of every degree amongst the laity was one of the principal charges brought against the dominant party under the Commonwealth, by their opponents.
