ANSWER.]
HUDIBRAS.
445
And 'cause we do not make it known,
Nor publicly our int'rests own,
Like sots, suppose we have no shares 265
In ord'ring you, and your affairs,
When all your empire and command,
You have from us, at second-hand:
As if a pilot, that appears
To sit still only, while he steers, 270
And does not make a noise and stir,
Like ev'ry common mariner,
Knew nothing of the card, nor star,
And did not guide the man of war:
Nor we, because we don't appear 275
In councils, do not govern there:
While, like the mighty Prester John,
Whose person none dares look upon.[1]
But is preserv'd in close disguise,
From b'ing made cheap to vulgar eyes, 280
W' enjoy as large a pow'r unseen,
To govern him, as he does men:
And, in the right of our Pope Joan,
Make emp'rors at our feet fall down;
Or Joan de Pucelle's braver name,[2] 285
Our right to arms and conduct claim;
Nor publicly our int'rests own,
Like sots, suppose we have no shares 265
In ord'ring you, and your affairs,
When all your empire and command,
You have from us, at second-hand:
As if a pilot, that appears
To sit still only, while he steers, 270
And does not make a noise and stir,
Like ev'ry common mariner,
Knew nothing of the card, nor star,
And did not guide the man of war:
Nor we, because we don't appear 275
In councils, do not govern there:
While, like the mighty Prester John,
Whose person none dares look upon.[1]
But is preserv'd in close disguise,
From b'ing made cheap to vulgar eyes, 280
W' enjoy as large a pow'r unseen,
To govern him, as he does men:
And, in the right of our Pope Joan,
Make emp'rors at our feet fall down;
Or Joan de Pucelle's braver name,[2] 285
Our right to arms and conduct claim;
- ↑ The name or title of Prester John has been given by travellers to the king of Tenduc in Asia, who, like the Abyssinian emperors, preserved great state, and did not condescend to be seen by his subjects more than three times a year, namely, Christmas day, Easter day, and Holyrood day in September. (See Purchas's Pilgrimes, vol. ii. p. 1082.) He is said to have had seventy kings for his vassals. Mandeville makes Prester John sovereign of an archipelago of isles in India beyond Bactria, and says that "a former emperor travelled into Egypt, where being present at divine service, he asked who those persons were that stood before the bishop? And being told they were prestres, or priests, he said he would no more be called king or emperor, but priest; and would take the name of him that came first out of the priests, and was called John; since which time all the emperors have been called Prester John."—Cap. 99.
- ↑ Joan of Arc, called also the Pucelle, or Maid of Orleans. She was born at the town of Domremi, on the Meuse, daughter of James de Arc and Isabelle Romée, and was bred up a shepherdess in the country. At the age of eighteen or twenty she asserted that she had received an express commission from God to go to the relief of Orleans, then besieged by the English, and defended by John Compte de Dennis, and almost reduced to the
