346
HUDIBRAS.
[PART III.
For tho' his topics, frail and weak, 455Cou'd ne'er amount above a freak,He still maintain'd 'em like his faults,Against the desp'ratest assaults;And back'd their feeble want of sense,With greater heat and confidence:[1] 460As bones of Hectors, when they differ,The more they 're cudgell'd, grow the stiffer.[2]Yet when his profit moderated,[3]The fury of his heat abated;For nothing but his interest 465Could lay his devil of contest:It was his choice, or chance, or curse,T' espouse the Cause for better or worse,And with his worldly goods and wit,And soul and body, worshipp'd it:[4] 470But when he found the sullen trapesPossess'd with th' devil, worms, and claps;The Trojan mare, in foal with Greeks,[5]Not half so full of jadish tricks,Tho' squeamish in her outward woman, 475As loose and rampant as Doll Common;[6]He still resolv'd to mend the matter,T' adhere and cleave the obstinater;And still the skittisher and looserHer freaks appeared, to sit the closer; 480For fools are stubborn in their way,As coins are harden'd by th' allay:[7]
- ↑ When Lilburn was arraigned for treason against Cromwell, he pleaded at his trial that no treason could be committed against such a government, and what he had done was in defence of the liberties of his country.
- ↑ A pun upon the word stiffer.
- ↑ That is, swayed and governed him.
- ↑ Alluding to the words in the office of matrimony: "With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow."
- ↑ Alluding to the stratagem of the Wooden Horse at the siege of Troy. See Virgil's Æneid, Book II.
- ↑ A prostitute in Ben Jonson's play of The Alchymist.
- ↑ Allay and alloy were in Butler's time used indifferently, although now employed in an opposite sense. The more copper a silver coin contains, the harder it is; gold coins contain two parts, in every twenty-four, of alloy.
