other men do their pains." The character of " a small poet" has some general traits in it :-" he calls a slovenly nasty description great Nature, and dull flatness strange easiness.” It is meant, however, as the author is at no trouble to hide, for Edward Benlowes. The Rosicrucian philosophers are portrayed with equal care, and with much less ill-will: "they are now carrying on a thorough Reformation in the celestial world—they have repaired the old spheres, that were worn as thin as a cob-web, and fastened the stars in them with a screw, by which means they may be taken off and put on again at pleasure." Among the more general descriptions there are not wanting strokes as cutting as the jerk of the rhymes of Hudibras. As in the account of the Ranter:- "he is a monster produced by the madness of this latter age, but if it had been his fate to have been whelp'd in old Rome, he had past for a prodigy, and had been received among raining of stones and the speaking of bulls, and would have put a stop to all public affairs until he had been expiated." In the more conventional characters it is not infrequent to come upon pieces of wit like this variation on the old theme of the moralists —pride in clothes—“his soul dwells in the outside of him, like that of a hollow tree". -a figure that is poetically right, and imaginative.

The style of the Characters was fixed by tradition when Butler wrote, and he does not reject the established form, except occasionally in the greater length of some of his essays, and in the personal references. Of his other writings many are burlesque or mock-heroic-the Speech made at the Rota, John Audland's Letter to William Prynne, and William Prynne's to John Aud- ̧ land, and the Occasional Reflection on Dr. Charlton's Feeling a Dog's Pulse at Gresham College, by R. B., Esq. The Two Speeches made in the Rump Parliament, when it was restored by the Officers of the Army in the year 1659, are more serious arguments, in which the Presbyterians and the Independents are made dramatically to annihilate one another. In The Royal Martyr vindicated against John Cook, and several others, Pains-takers in the Mysteries of Rebellion, Butler uses the common weapons of serious controversy.

W. P. KER.

A RABBLE

A RABBLE is a congregation or assembly of the states-general sent from their respective shops, stalls, and garrets. They are full of controversy, and every one of a several judgment concerning the business under present consideration, whether it be mountebank, show, hanging, or ballad-singer. They meet, like Democritus's atoms in vacuo, and by a fortuitous justling together produce the greatest and most savage beast in the whole world : for, though the members of it may have something of human nature while they are asunder, when they are put together, they have none at all; as a multitude of several sounds make one great noise unlike all the rest, in which no one particular is distinguished. They are a great dunghill, where all sorts of dirty and nasty humours meet, stink, and ferment; for all the parts are in a perpetual tumult. 'Tis no wonder they make strange churches, for they take naturally to any imposture, and have a great antipathy to truth and order, as being contrary to their original confusion. They are a herd of swine possessed with a dry devil, that run after hanging, instead of drowning. Once a month they go on pilgrimage to the gallows, to visit the sepulchres of their ancestors, as the Turks do once a week. When they come there they sing psalms, quarrel, and return full of satisfaction and narrative. When they break loose they are like a public ruin, in which the highest parts be undermost, and make the noblest fabrics heaps of rubbish. They are like the sea, that is stirred into a tumult with every blast of wind that blows upon it, till it becomes a watery Appennine, and heaps mountain billows upon one another, as once the giants did in the war with heaven. A crowd is their proper element, in which they make their way with their shoulders, as pigs creep through hedges. Nothing in the world delights them so much as the ruin of great persons, or any calamity in which they have no share, though they get nothing by it. They love nothing but themselves in the likeness of one another, and, like sheep, run all

that way the first goes, especially if it be against their governors, whom they have a natural disaffection to.

(From the Remains.)

AN OPINIONATER

AN opinionater is his own confidant, that maintains more opinions than he is able to support. They are all bastards commonly and unlawfully begotten; but being his own, he had rather, out of natural affection, take any pains, or beg, than they should want a subsistence. The eagerness and violence he uses to defend them argues they are weak, for if they were true, they would not need it.

How false soever they are to him he is true to them; and as all extraordinary affections of love or friendship are usually upon the meanest accounts, he is resolved never to forsake them, how ridiculous soever they render themselves and him to the world. He is a kind of a knight errant, that is bound by his order to defend the weak and distressed, and deliver enchanted paradoxes, that are bewitched, and held by magicians and conjurors in invisible castles. He affects to have his opinions as unlike other men's as he can, no matter whether better or worse, like those that wear fantastic clothes of their own devising. No force of argument can prevail upon him; for, like a madman, the strength of two men in their wits is not able to hold him down. His obstinacy grows out of his ignorance; for probability has so many ways, that whosoever understands them will not be confident of any one. He holds his opinions as men do their lands, and, though his tenure be litigious, he will spend all he has to maintain it. He does not so much as know what opinion means, which always supposing uncertainty, is not capable of confidence. The more implicit his obstinacy is, the more stubborn it renders him; for implicit faith is always more pertinacious than that which can give an account of itself; and as cowards, that are well backed, will appear boldest, he that believes as the Church believes is more violent, though he knows not what it is, than he that can give a reason for his faith, and as men in the dark endeavour to tread firmer than when they are in the light, the darkness of his understanding makes him careful to stand fast wheresover he happens, though it be out of his way. (From the Same.)

A REBEL

A REBEL is a voluntary bandit, a civil renegade, that renounces his obedience to his prince, to raise himself upon the public ruin. He is of great antiquity, perhaps before the creation, at least a preadamite; for Lucifer was the first of his family, and from him he derives himself in an indirect line. He finds fault with the government, that he may get it the easier into his own hands, as men use to undervalue what they have a desire to purchase. He is a botcher of politics, and a state-tinker, that makes flaws in the government, only to mend them again. He goes for a public-spirited man, and his pretences are for the public good, that is, for the good of his own public spirit. He pretends to be a great lover of his country, as if it had given him love powder, but it is merely out of natural affection to himself. He has a great itch to be handling of authority, though he cut his fingers with it; and is resolved to raise himself, though it be but upon the gallows. He is all for peace and truth, but not without lying and fighting. He plays a game with the hangman for the clothes on his back, and when he throws out, he strips him to the skin. He dies in hempen sheets, and his body is hanged, like his ancestor Mahomet's, in the air. He might have lived longer, if the destinies had not spun his thread of life too strong. He is sure never to come to an untimely end; for by the course of law his glass was out long before. He calls rebellion and treason laying out of himself for the public; but being found to be false unlawful coin, he was seized upon, and cut to pieces, and hanged for falsifying himself. His espousing of quarrels proves as fatal to his country as the Parisian wedding did to France. He is like a bell, that is made on purpose to be hanged. He is a diseased part of the body politic, to which all the bad humours gather. He picks straws out of the government like a madman, and startles at them when he has done. He endeavours to raise himself, like a boy's kite, by being pulled against the wind. After all his endeavours and designs he is at length promoted to the gallows, which is performed with a cavalcade suitable to his dignity; and after much ceremony he is installed by the hangman, with the general applause of all men, and dies singing like a (From the Same.)

swan.

AN HECTOR

Is master of the noble science of offence and defence, a mungrel knight-errant, that is always upon adventures. His calling is to call those to accompt, that he thinks have more money, and less to show for their valour than himself. These are his tributaries, and when he is out of repair, he demands reparation of them. His skill consists in the prudent conduct of his quarrels, that he may not be drawn to fight the enemy but upon advantages. He is all for light skirmishes and pickeering, but cares not to engage his whole body, but where he is sure to come off. He is an exact judge of honour, and can hit the very mathematic line between valour and cowardice. He gets more by treaties than fights, as the French are said to have done by the English. When he finds himself overpow'r'd, he draws up his forces as wide in the front as he can, though but three deep, and so faces the enemy, while he draws off in safety, tho' sometimes with the loss of his baggage, that is, his honour. He is as often employ'd as a herald, to proclaim war, defy the enemy, and offer battle, in which desperate service he behaves himself with punctual formality, and is secur'd in his person by the law of nations. He is Py-powder of all quarrels, affronts, and misprisions of affronts, rencounters, rants, assaults, and batteries, and invasions by kick, cudgel, or the lye, that fall out among the sons of Priam, the brethren of the hilt and scabbard, that have taken the croysade upon them, to fight against the Infidel, that will not trust; and he determines whether they are actionable, and will bear a duel, or not. He never surrenders without flying colours, and bullet in mouth. He professes valour but to put it off, and keeps none for his own use, as doctors never take physic, nor lawyers go to law. When he is engag'd in a quarrel, he talks and looks as big as he can, as dogs when they fall out, set up the bristles of their backs, to seem taller than they are. It is safer for a man to venture his life than his conversation upon him.

(From MSS. in British Museum.)