I'd go no further in this courtship,
To hazard soul, estate, and worship:100
For tho' an oath obliges not,
Where anything is to be got,[1]
As thou hast prov'd, yet 'tis profane
And sinful when men swear in vain.
Quoth Ralph, Not far from hence doth dwell105
A cunning man, hight Sidrophel,[2]
That deals in destiny's dark counsels.
And sage opinions of the moon sells,[3]
To whom all people far and near,
On deep importances repair:110
When brass and pewter hap to stray,[4]
And linen slinks out of the way;
When geese and pullen are seduc'd,[5]
And sows of sucking pigs are chows'd;[6]
When cattle feel indisposition,115
And need th' opinion of physician;
When murrain reigns in hogs or sheep.
And chickens languish of the pip;
When yeast and outward means do fail,
And have no pow'r to work on ale;120
- ↑ The accommodating notions of dissenters with regard to oaths have already been stated in some preceding cantos.
- ↑ Sidrophel was no doubt intended for William Lilly, the famous astrologer and almanack maker, who, till the king's affairs declined, was a cavalier, but after the year 1645, engaged body and soul in the cause of the Parliament, and was one of the close committee to consult about the king's execution. He was consulted by the Royalists, with the king's privity, whether the king should escape from Hampton-court, whether he should sign the propositions of the Parliament, &c., and had twenty pounds for his opinion. See the Life of A. Wood, Oxford, 1772, p.101, 102, and his own Life, in which are many curious particulars. Some have thought that Sir Paul Neal was intended, which is a mistake: but Sir Paul Neal was the Sidrophel of the Heroical Epistle, printed at the end of this canto. Hight, that is, called, is from the Anglo-Saxon haten, to call.
- ↑ i.e. the omens which he collects from the appearance of the moon.
- ↑ Lilly professed to be above this profitable branch of his art, which he designated the shame of astrology; but he was accused of practising it, in a pamphlet written against him by Sir John Birkenhead.
- ↑ Pullen, that is, poultry, from the French Poulet.
- ↑ This was a new word in Butler's time, having originated in the frauds committed by a "chiaous," or messenger attached to the Turkish Embassy in 1609. See Gifford's Ben Jonson, the Alchemist, Act i. sc. 1.
