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34
HUDIBRAS.
[PART I.
Unless by providential wit,
Or force, we averruncate[1] it.
For what design, what interest,
Can beast have to encounter beast? 760
They fight for no espoused Cause,
Frail privilege, fundamental laws,[2]
Nor for a thorough Reformation,
Nor Covenant, nor Protestation,[3]
Nor liberty of consciences,[4] 765
Nor lords' and commons' ordinances;[5]
Nor for the church, nor for church-lands,
To get them in their own no hands;[6]
Nor evil counsellors to bring
To justice, that seduce the king; 770
Nor for the worship of us men,
Tho' we have done as much for them.
Th' Egyptians worshipp'd dogs,[7] and for
Their faith made internecine war.
Others adored a rat,[8] and some 775
For that church suffer'd martyrdom.
- ↑ To eradicate, or pluck up by the root.
- ↑ The lines that follow recite the grounds on which the Parliament began the war against the king, and justified their proceedings. Butler calls the privileges of parliament frail, because they were so very apt to complain of their being broken. Whatever the king did, or refused to do, contrary to the sentiments, they voted a breach of their privilege; his dissenting to any of the bills they offered him was a breach of privilege; his proclaiming them traitors, who were in arms against him, was a high breach of their Privilege: and the Commons at last voted it a breach of privilege for the House of Lords to refuse assent to anything that came from the lower house.
- ↑ The Protestation was a solemn vow entered into, and subscribed, the first year of the long parliament.
- ↑ The early editions have it Nor for free liberty of conscience; and this reading Bishop Warburton approves; "free liberty" being, as he thinks, a satirical periphrasis for licentiousness, which is what the author here hints at.
- ↑ The king being driven from the Parliament, no legal acts could be made. An ordinance (says Cleveland, p. 109) is a law still-born, dropt before quickened by the royal assent. "'Tis one of the parliament's by-blows, Acts only being legitimate, and hath no more sire than a Spanish gennet, that is begotten by the wind."
- ↑ No hands here mean paws.
- ↑ Anubis, one of their gods, was figured with a dog's face. The Egyptians also worshipped cats; see an instance in Diodorus Siculus of their putting a Roman noble to death for killing a cat, although by mistake.
- ↑ The Ichneumon, or water-rat of the Nile, called also Pharaoh's rat, which destroys the eggs of the Crocodile.
