290
HUDIBRAS.
[PART III.
Without distinction of degree,Condition, age, or quality;Admits no pow'r of revocation,Nor valuable consideration, 620 Nor writ of error, nor reverseOf judgment past, for better or worse;Will not allow the privilegesThat beggars challenge under hedges,Who, when they're griev'd, can make dead horses 625 Their spiritual judges of divorces;[1]While nothing else but rem in re,Can set the proudest wretches free;A slavery beyond enduring,But that 'tis of their own procuring. 630 As spiders never seek the fly,But leave him, of himself, t' apply;So men are by themselves betray'd,To quit the freedom they enjoy'd,And run their necks into a noose, 635They'd break 'em after to break loose.As some, whom death would not depart,[2]Have done the feat themselves by art.Like Indian widows, gone to bedIn flaming curtains to the dead;[3] 640 And men has often dangled for 't,And yet will never leave the sport.Nor do the ladies want excuseFor all the stratagems they use,To gain th' advantage of the set,[4] 645And lurch the amorous rook and cheat. For as the Pythagorean soulRuns thro' all beasts, and fish, and fowl,[5]
- ↑ The gipsies, it is said, are satisfied of the validity of such decisions.
- ↑ Alluding to several revisions of the Common Prayer before the last, where it stood, "til death us depart," and then was altered to, "til death us do part."
- ↑ They used to burn themselves on the funeral piles of their husbands; a custom which has but recently been abolished.
- ↑ Set, that is, the game, a term at tennis.
- ↑ The doctrine of metempsychosis. Pythagoras, according to Heraclides,
John Doe and Richard Roe, or Caius and Titus, in the civil law. See an amusing paper on the subject in Spectator, 577. But Butler has humorously changed John o' Nokes into a female.
