Locke,[1] Addison,[2], Pope[3] and Congreve, all failed in their attempts; perhaps they are more to be felt than explained, and to be understood rather from example than precept. "If any one," says Nash, "wishes to know what wit and humour are, let him read Hudibras with attention, he will there see them displayed in the brightest colours: there is brilliancy resulting from the power of rapid illustration by remote contingent resemblances; propriety of words, and thoughts elegantly adapted to the occasion: objects which possess an affinity and congruity, or sometimes a contrast to each other, assembled with quickness and variety; in short, every ingredient of wit, or of humour, which critics have discovered, maybe found in this poem. The reader may congratulate himself, that he is not destitute of taste to relish both, if he can read it with delight."
Hudibras is to an epic poem what a good farce is to a tragedy; persons advanced in years generally prefer the former, having met with tragedies enough in real life; whereas the comedy, or interlude, is a relief from anxious and disgusting reflections, and suggests such playful ideas, as wanton round the heart and enliven the very features.
The hero marches out in search of adventures, to suppress those sports, and punish those trivial offences, which the vulgar among the Royalists were fond of, but which the Presbyterians and Independents abhorred; and which our hero, as a magistrate of the former persuasion, thought it his duty officially to suppress. The diction is that of burlesque poetry, painting low and mean persons and things in pompous language and a magnificent manner, or sometimes levelling sublime and pompous passages to the standard of low imagery. The principal actions of the poem are four: Hudibras's victory over Crowdero—Trulla's victory over Hudibras—Hudibras's victory over Sidrophel—and the Widow's antimasquerade: the rest is made up of the adventures of the Bear, of the Skimmington, Hudibras's conversations with the Lawyer and Sidrophel, and his long disputations with Ralpho and the Widow. The verse consists of eight syllables, or four feet; a measure which, in unskilful hands, soon becomes
- ↑ Essay on Human Understanding, b.ii. c.2.
- ↑ Spectator, No. 35 and 32.
- ↑ Essay concerning Humour in Comedy, and Corbyn Morris's Essay on Wit, Humour, and Raillery.
