CANTO III.]
HUDIBRAS.
409
So th' emperor Caligula,
That triumph'd o'er the British sea,[1] 360
Took crabs and oysters prisoners,
And lobsters, 'stead of cuirassiers,[2]
Engag'd his legions in fierce bustles
With periwinkles, prawns, and muscles,
And led his troops with furious gallops, 365
To charge whole regiments of scallops;
Not like their ancient way of war,
To wait on his triumphal car;
But when he went to dine or sup,
More bravely ate his captives up, 370
And left all war, by his example,
Reduc'd to vict'ling of a camp well.
Quoth Ralph, By all that you have said,
And twice as much that I cou'd add,
'Tis plain you cannot now do worse 375
Than take this out-of-fashion'd course;
To hope, by stratagem, to woo her;
Or waging battle to subdue her;
Tho' some have done it in romances,
And bang'd them into am'rous fancies; 380
As those who won the Amazons,
By wanton drubbing of their bones;
And stout Rinaldo gain'd his bride[3]
By courting of her back and side.
That triumph'd o'er the British sea,[1] 360
Took crabs and oysters prisoners,
And lobsters, 'stead of cuirassiers,[2]
Engag'd his legions in fierce bustles
With periwinkles, prawns, and muscles,
And led his troops with furious gallops, 365
To charge whole regiments of scallops;
Not like their ancient way of war,
To wait on his triumphal car;
But when he went to dine or sup,
More bravely ate his captives up, 370
And left all war, by his example,
Reduc'd to vict'ling of a camp well.
Quoth Ralph, By all that you have said,
And twice as much that I cou'd add,
'Tis plain you cannot now do worse 375
Than take this out-of-fashion'd course;
To hope, by stratagem, to woo her;
Or waging battle to subdue her;
Tho' some have done it in romances,
And bang'd them into am'rous fancies; 380
As those who won the Amazons,
By wanton drubbing of their bones;
And stout Rinaldo gain'd his bride[3]
By courting of her back and side.
- ↑ Caligula, having ranged his army on the sea-shore, and disposed his instruments of war in the order of battle, on a sudden ordered his men to gather up the shells on the strand, and fill their helmets and bosoms with them, calling them the spoils of the ocean, as if by that proceeding he had made a conquest of the British sea. Suetonius, Life of Caligula.
- ↑ Sir Arthur Hazelrig had a regiment nicknamed his lobsters; and it has been thought by some, that the defeat at Roundway-down was owing to the ill-behaviour of this regiment. Cleveland, in his character of a London diurnal, says of it: "This is the William which is the city's champion, and the diurnal's delight. Yet, in all this triumph, translate the scene but at Roundway-down, Hazelrig's lobsters were turned into crabs, and crawled backwards."
- ↑ Rinaldo is hero of the last book of Tasso; but he did not win his Armida thus; perhaps the poet, quoting by memory, intended to mention Ruggiero in Ariosto. See also Midsummer Night's Dream.
trails, and all, to satiate their hunger. See Harleian Miscellany, vol. iii. No. xii. p. 494, 498.
