When Hudibras, whom thoughts and aching
'Twixt sleeping kept all night and waking,
Began to rouse his drowsy eyes,35
And from his couch prepar'd to rise;
Resolving to despatch the deed
He vow'd to do with trusty speed:
But first, with knocking loud and bawling,
He rous'd the Squire, in truckle lolling;[1] 40
And after many circumstances,
Which vulgar authors in romances
Do use to spend their time and wits on,
To make impertinent description,
They got, with much ado, to horse,45
And to the castle bent their course,
In which he to the dame before
To suffer whipping-duty swore:[2]
Where now arriv'd, and half unharnest,
To carry on the work in earnest,50
He stopp'd and paus'd upon the sudden,
And with a serious forehead plodding,[3]
Sprung a new scruple in his head,
Which first he scratch'd, and after said;
Whether it be direct infringing55
An oath, if I should wave this swingeing,
And what I've sworn to bear, forbear,
And so b' equivocation swear;[4]
- ↑ See Don Quixote, Part ii. ch. 20. A truckle-bed is a little bed on wheels, which runs under a larger bed.
- ↑ In the first edition it is duly, but is corrected to duty in the Errata to the second edition of 1664.
- ↑ The Knight's "new scruple" is an excellent illustration of the quibbles by which unscrupulous consciences find excuses for violating oaths and promises.
- ↑ The equivocations and mental reservations of the Jesuits were loudly complained of, and by none more than by the Sectaries. When these last came into power, the Royalists had too often an opportunity of bringing the same charge against them. Walker observes of the Independents, that they were tenable by no oaths, principles, promises, declarations, nor by any obligations or laws, divine or human. And Sanderson, in his "Obligation of Promissory Oaths," says: "They rest secure, absolving themselves from all guilt and fear of perjury; and think they have excellently provided for themselves and consciences, if, during the act of swearing, they can make any shift to defend themselves, either as the Jesuits do, with some equivocation, or mental reservation; or by forcing upon the words some
