And vended here among the rabble,
For staple goods, and warrantable?
Like money by the Druids borrow'd, 975
In th' other world to be restored.[1]
Quoth Sidrophel, To let you know
You wrong the art and artists too:
Since arguments are lost on those
That do our principles oppose, 980
I will, altho' I've don't before.
Demonstrate to your sense once more,
And draw a figure that shall tell you
What you, perhaps, forget befell you;
By way of horary inspection,[2] 985
Which some account our worst erection.
With that, he circles draws, and squares,
With cyphers, astral characters,
Then looks 'em o'er to understand 'em,
Altho' set down hab-nab at random.[3] 990
Quoth he. This scheme of th' heavens set,
Discovers how in fight you met,
At Kingston, with a may-pole idol,[4]
And that y' were bang'd both back and side well;
- ↑ That is, astrologers, by endeavouring to persuade men that the stars have dealt out to them their future fortunes, are guilty of a similar fraud with the Druids, who borrowed money on a promise of repaying it after death. This practice among the Druids was founded on their doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Purchas speaks of some who barter with the people upon bills of exchange to be paid a hundred for one, in heaven.
- ↑ The horoscope is the point of the heavens which rises above the eastern horizon, at any particular moment.
- ↑ Nares says, habbe or nabbe; have or have not, hit or miss, at a venture: quasi, have or n'ave, i.e. have not; as nill for will not. "The citizens in their rage imagining that every post in the churche had bin one of their souldyers, shot habbe or nabbe, at random." Holinshed, Hist. of Ireland. F. 2, col. 2.
- ↑ Butler here alludes to the spurious second part of Hudibras, published 1663. The first annotator informs us that "there was a notorious idiot, here described by the name of Whacum, who had counterfeited a second part of Hudibras, as untowardly as Captain Po, who could not write himself, and yet made shift to stand in the Pillory for forging other men's hands, as this fellow Whacum no doubt deserved. In this spurious production, the rencounters of Hudibras at Brentford, the transactions of a mountebank whom he met with, and probably these adventures of the may-pole at Kingston, are described at length. By drawing ou that spurious pub-
