CANTO II.]
HUDIBRAS.
351
Who, when our fate can be no worse,
Are fitted for the bravest course;
Have time to rally, and prepare 585
Our last and best defence, despair:
Despair, by which the gallant'st feats
Have been achiev'd in greatest straits,
And horrid'st dangers safely wav'd,
By b'ing courageously outbrav'd; 590
As wounds by wider wounds are heal'd,
And poisons by themselves expell'd:[1]
And so they might be now agen,
If we were, what we should be, men;
And not so dully desperate, 595
To side against ourselves with fate:
As criminals, condemn'd to suffer,
Are blinded first, and then turn'd over.
This comes of breaking covenants,
And setting up exempts of saints,[2] 600
That fine, like aldermen, for grace,
To be excus'd the efficace:[3]
For sp'ritual men are too transcendent,
That mount their banks for independent,[4]
To hang, like Mah'met, in the air,[5] 605
Or St Ignatius, at his prayer,[6]
Are fitted for the bravest course;
Have time to rally, and prepare 585
Our last and best defence, despair:
Despair, by which the gallant'st feats
Have been achiev'd in greatest straits,
And horrid'st dangers safely wav'd,
By b'ing courageously outbrav'd; 590
As wounds by wider wounds are heal'd,
And poisons by themselves expell'd:[1]
And so they might be now agen,
If we were, what we should be, men;
And not so dully desperate, 595
To side against ourselves with fate:
As criminals, condemn'd to suffer,
Are blinded first, and then turn'd over.
This comes of breaking covenants,
And setting up exempts of saints,[2] 600
That fine, like aldermen, for grace,
To be excus'd the efficace:[3]
For sp'ritual men are too transcendent,
That mount their banks for independent,[4]
To hang, like Mah'met, in the air,[5] 605
Or St Ignatius, at his prayer,[6]
- ↑ Sneering at Sir Kenelm Digby, and others, who asserted that the sting of a scorpion was curable by its own oil. See v. 1029 of this canto.
- ↑ Dispensing, in particular instances, with the covenant and obligations. In the early editions, exempts is printed exauns, according to the old French pronunciation.
- ↑ Persons who are nominated to an office, and pay the accustomed fine, are considered to have performed the service. Thus, some of the sectaries, if they paid handsomely, were deemed saints, and full of grace, though, from the tenor of their lives, they merited no such distinction; compounding for their want of real grace, that they might be excused the drudgery of good works; for spiritual men are too transcendent to grovel in good works, namely, those spiritual men that mount their banks for independent. Efficace signifies actual performance.
- ↑ Etre sur les bancs is to hold a dispute, to assert a claim, to contest a right or an honour; to be a competitor.
- ↑ They need no such support as the body of Mahomet; which legends averred was suspended in the air, by being placed in a steel coffin, between two magnets of equal power.
- ↑ Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. An old soldier: at the siege of Pampeluna by the French he had both his legs wounded, the left
