CANTO II.]
HUDIBRAS.
377
Where Henderson and th' other masses,[1]
Were sent to cap texts, and put cases: 1240
To pass for deep and learned scholars,
Altho' but paltry Ob and Sollers:[2]
As if th' unseasonable fools
Had been a coursing in the schools.[3]
Until they 'd prov'd the devil author 1245
O' th' Covenant, and the Cause his daughter;
For when they charg'd him with the guilt
Of all the blood that had been spilt,
They did not mean he wrought th' effusion
In person, like Sir Pride, or Hughson,[4] 1250
But only those who first begun
The quarrel were by him set on;
And who could those be but the saints,
Those reformation termagants?
But ere this pass'd, the wise debate 1255
Spent so much time it grew too late;[5]
Were sent to cap texts, and put cases: 1240
To pass for deep and learned scholars,
Altho' but paltry Ob and Sollers:[2]
As if th' unseasonable fools
Had been a coursing in the schools.[3]
Until they 'd prov'd the devil author 1245
O' th' Covenant, and the Cause his daughter;
For when they charg'd him with the guilt
Of all the blood that had been spilt,
They did not mean he wrought th' effusion
In person, like Sir Pride, or Hughson,[4] 1250
But only those who first begun
The quarrel were by him set on;
And who could those be but the saints,
Those reformation termagants?
But ere this pass'd, the wise debate 1255
Spent so much time it grew too late;[5]
- ↑ That is, the other divines. Ministers in those days were called masters, as they are at the 854th line of this canto. One of this order would have been styled, not the reverend, but master, or master doctor such an one; and sometimes, for brevity's sake, and familiarly, mas, the plural of which, our poet makes masses. See Ben Jonson, and Spectator, No. 147. Butler is here guilty of anachronism; for the treaty at the Isle of Wight was two years after the death of Henderson. The divines employed there, were Marshal, Vines, Caryl, Seaman, Jenkyns, and Shurston. Henderson was present at the Uxbridge treaty, and disputed with the king at Newcastle when he was in the Scottish army; soon after which he died, as some said, of grief, because he could not convince the king, but, as others said, of remorse, for having opposed him.
- ↑ That is, although only contemptible dabblers in school logic. So in Burton's Melancholy, "A pack of Obs and Sollers." The polemic divines of that age and stamp filled the margins both of their tracts and sermons with the words Ob and Sol; the one standing for objection, the other for solution.
- ↑ Coursing is a term used in the university of Oxford for some exercises preparatory to a master's degree.
- ↑ Pride was said to have been a drayman, and to have been knighted by Cromwell with a stick, whence in derision he is called Sir Pride. Hughson, or Hewson, was at first a shoemaker or a cobbler, but afterwards one of Oliver's Upper House.
- ↑ The negotiation at the Isle of Wight was protracted in order to give Cromwell time to return from Scotland, by which artifice the settlement of the kingdom was effectually frustrated.
