CANTO I.]
HUDIBRAS.
149
Seiz'd on his club, and made it dwindle[1]355
T' a feeble distaff, and a spindle.
'Twas he made emperors gallants
To their own sisters and their aunts;[2]
Set popes and cardinals agog,
To play with pages at leap-frog;[3]360
'T was he that gave our senate purges,
And flux'd the house of many a burgess;[4]
Made those that represent the nation
Submit, and suffer amputation:
And all the grandees o' th' cabal,365
Adjourn to tubs, at spring and fall.
He mounted synod-men, and rode 'em
To Dirty-lane and Little Sodom;[5]
Made 'em curvet, like Spanish gennets,
And take the ring at Madam ———.[6]370
'Twas he that made Saint Francis do
More than the devil could tempt him to;[7]
- ↑ See Ovid's Epistle of Dejanira to Hercules. (Bohn's Ovid. vol. iii. p.81.)
- ↑ See Suetonius, Tacitus, and other historians of the Roman Empire.
- ↑ The name of Alexander Borgia (Pope Alexander VI.) continues to be the synonyme for the unspeakable abominations of the Papal Court, in the times that were not long past when Butler wrote.
- ↑ This alludes to the exclusion of the opponents of the army from the Parliament, called "Pride's Purge."
- ↑ Dirty-lane was not an unfrequent name for a place like that referred to; Maitland names five, in his time. One was in Old Palace Yard, and may have been meant by Butler. Little Sodom was near the Tower, on the site now occupied by St Catharine's Docks. These and other charges brought against the Puritan and Parliamentary leaders, will be found in Echard's History of England, and Walker's History of Independency. Cromwell, when he expelled the Long Parliament, himself called Martyn and Wentworth, "whoremasters."
- ↑ Sir Roger L'Estrange's "Key" fills up the blank with the name of "Stennet," the wife of a "broom-man" and lay-elder; and the same name is given in our contemporary MS. She is said to have followed "the laudable employment of bawding, and managed several intrigues for those brothers and sisters, whose piety consisted chiefly in the whiteness of their linen." The Taller mentions a lady of this stamp, called Bennet.
- ↑ In the Life of St Francis, we are told that, being tempted by the devil in the shape of a virgin, he subdued his passion by rolling himself naked in the snow.
