temporary of Shakespeare, and afterwards the celebrated divine, whose life has been so beautifully written by Izaak Walton, wrote some excellent satires. But before him Mr. Hannay rightly classes Bishop Hall, "as the great opener of our formal and classic satire, i. e., the special satirical poem in the heroic metre." As Hall's satires have been almost eclipsed by his later writings as a divine, a specimen of his poetic powers will probably be found interesting. Warton truly says, "The figure of a famished gallant, or beau, in this satire is much better drawn than any of the old comedies." I extract these lines from Mr. Singer's admirable edition of Hall,

"See'st thou how gaily my young master goes,
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes;
And pranks his head upon his dagger's side;
And picks his glutted teeth since late noontide?
'Tis Ruffio; trow'st thou where he din'd to-day?
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humfray.'
Many good welcomes and much gratis cheer,
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier.
An open house, haunted with great resort;
Long service mix'd with musical disport.
Many fair yonker with a feather'd crest,
Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest,
To fare so freely with so little cost,
Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say,
He touch'd no meat of all this livelong day.
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess,
His eyes seem sunk for very hollowness.
But could he have (as I did it mistake)
So little in his purse, so much upon his back?
So nothing in his maw? Yet seemeth by his belt

That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt.

See'st thou how side [loose] it hangs beneath his hip?
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip.

To dine with Duke Humphrey was to fast. The allusion is to a tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral-a common resort of the idle and needy in that age.

HALL-DONNE.-BUTLER.

Yet for all that how stiffly struts he by,
All trapp'd in the new found bravery.
The nuns of new-won Cales his bonnet lent
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.

What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain
His grandam could have lent with lesser pain?
Though he perhaps ne'er pass'd the English shore
Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.

His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head,
One lock, Amazon-like, dishevelled,

As if he meant to wear a native cord

If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin
Close notched is his beard both lip and chin;
His linen collar labyrinthian set

Where thousand double turnings never met:
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look and cast mine eyes below
What monster meets my eyes in human show?
So slender waist with such an abbot's loin
Did never sober nature so conjoin.

Lik'st a strawne scarecrow in the new-sown field
Rear'd on some stick the tender corn to shield.

207

Both Hall's and Donne's satires, however, had grown antiquated even in Pope's time, and the little-great Alexander tried to modernise much that Donne had written; but who would not rather read Donne in his own language than in Pope's?

Butler's "Hudibras" is, perhaps though never completed the most perfect work of its kind ever written. "We know little about Butler's history, says Dr. Johnson; "all that we know of him with certainty is that he was poor." To this we may add, that he was admired to be neglected, and that he wrote a learned, odd, and witty satire that will live as long as our tongue lasts. Hypocrisy, and religious hypocrisy especially, gets well mauled, beaten, and handled in

such lines as these against those who would by force

make people good:

Such as do build their faith upon

The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery;

And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks :
Call Fire, and Sword, and Desolation,
A godly thorough Reformation,
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done;
As if religion were intended

For nothing else but to be mended;
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies

That with more care keep holiday
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to.

Throughout this satiric poem, in which the Puritans of
the great civil war are severely lashed, there is such a
plethora of wit and learning that one gets tired of its
very
richness. But it is a capital book. It is full of
true stuff; many of its lines have permanently taken a
place in the English language. Any young man who
chooses to buy Butler, to read him by day, and study
him by night, to absorb him, in fact, and to trace his
multifarious reading, cannot but become a wittier and
readier man than he was before. The author was
born in 1612, and died in 1680, having been a per-
sonal witness of the events of which he so humorously
treated.

HE preceding chapter closed with the
name of Samuel Butler. In the same
reign, but taking a very different view of
the Puritan cause, and, after Cromwell's
death, daring to write thus of him,

His grandeur he derived from Heaven above,
For he was great ere Fortune made him so,
And wars, like mists that rise against the sun,

Made him not greater seem, but greater grow,

lived John Dryden, a true poet, and one of the greatest of our satirists. Certainly, in the satire of heroic or tensyllable verse, no one can on the whole be compared with Dryden, although in ease, majesty, and fluency of expression, Charles Churchill comes very near him. The great political satires of the former are now admired simply for their wonderful power of delineating individual character; but they are so great, in all essentials of satire, that one almost regrets that the poet did not write more generally. Take, however,

P

as a finished picture, that of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, or that of Shaftesbury, or even that of Settle.

Dryden was a busy literary workman, and "whatever he touched he adorned." He not only translated Virgil, but assisted in a translation of Juvenal, thus bringing to our doors, in sound, healthy English, the most vigorous of Latin satirists. How honestly this

manly writer hated vice and folly we can judge from the ease with which the splendid living lines leap from his pen. His life was, for a literary man, not unprosperous; he worked hard for his bread, was the recognized chief of authors, and when he died was buried in Westminster Abbey, leaving no greater master of the English language behind him: he was a model for all English satirists. After him, between his death and the rise and culmination of Pope (1688-1744), there was a pause in the singing. Mediocre poets and base imitators had possession of the stage; foolish noblemen, who wrote because it was fashionable, and young clergymen, or Templars, who thought that living by literature was an easy profession, sprung up, and swelled the "mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease." This interval, however, was but short; for, as a critic has remarked, old John Dryden bore fruit to the last, and young Pope was early in flower and in fruit.

The satires of Alexander Pope are particularly worthy of careful perusal by the student bent on self-improvement. Our author's nature as a man had, as is always the case, an immense effect in moulding his character as an author. Small, delicate, deformed; of weak health, and of a timid, retiring disposition, the young poet had a vivid, quick, and correct intellect, prompt to seize, ready to analyze character, and eager to note