at length, almost like special pleading; it has nothing to confirm it in the apparent good humour or impartiality of the writer. It is something revolting to see an author persecute his characters, the cherished offspring of his brain, in this manner, without mercy. Hudibras and Ralpho have immortalised Butler; and what has he done for them in return, but set them up to be "pilloried on infamy's high and lasting stage?" This is ungrateful!

The rest of the characters have, in general, little more than their names and professions to distinguish them. We scarcely know one from another, Cerdon, or Orsin, or Crowdero, and are often obliged to turn back, to connect their several adventures together. In fact, Butler drives only at a sect of obnoxious opinions, and runs into general declamations. His poem in its essence is a satire, or didactic poem. It is not virtually dramatic or narrative. It is composed of digressions by the author. He instantly breaks off in the middle of a story, or incident, to comment upon and turn it into ridicule. He does not give characters but topics, which would do just as well in his own mouth without agents, or machinery of any kind. The long digression in Part III, in which no mention is made of the hero, is just as good and as much an integrant part of the poem as the rest. The conclusion is lame and impotent, but that is saying nothing; the beginning and middle are equally so as to historical merit. There is no keeping in his characters, as in Don Quixote; nor any enjoyment of the ludicrousness of their situations, as in Hogarth Indeel, it requires a considerable degree of sympathy to enter into and describe to the life even the ludicrous eccentricities of others, and there is no appearance of sympathy or liking to his subject in Butler His humour is to his wit, "as one grain of wheat in a bushel of chaff, you shall search all day, and when you find it, it is not worth the trouble" Yet there are exceptions. The .nost decisive is, I think, the description of the battle between Bruin and his foes, Part I, Canto iii, and again of the triumphal procession in Part II, Canto it, of which the principal features are copied in Hogarth's election print, the Chairing of the Su cessful Candidate. The account of Sidrophel and Whackum is

another instance, and there are some few others, but rarely sprinkled up and down.*

The following are nearly all I can remember:

"Thus stopp'd their fury and the basting
Which towards Hudibras was hasting."

The beginning of the account of the procession in Part II. is as follows:"Both thought it was the wisest course

To wave the fight and mount to horse,
And to secure, by swift retreating,
Themselves from danger of worse beating:
Yet neither of them would disparage
By uttering of his mind his courage.
Which made 'em stoutly keep their ground,
With horror and disdain wind-bound.
And now the cause of all their fear
By slow degrees approached so near,
They might distinguish different noise
Of horns and pans, and dogs and boys,
And kettle-drums, whose sullen dub
Sounds like the hooping of a tub."
D*

The widow, the termagant heroine of the poem, is still more disagreeable than her lover: and her sarcastic account of the passion of love, as consisting entirely in an attachment to land and houses, goods and chattels, which is enforced with all the rhetoric the author is master of, and hunted down through endless similes, is evidently false. The vulgarity and meanness of sentiment which Butler complains of in the Presbyterians, seems at last, from long familiarity and close contemplation, to have tainted his own mind. Their worst vices appear to have taken root in his imagination. Nothing but what was selfish and groveling sunk into his memory, in the depression of a menial situation under his supposed hero. He has, indeed, carried his private grudge too far into his general speculations. He even makes out the rebels to be cowards and well beaten, which does not accord with the history of the times. In an excess of zeal for church and state, he is too much disposed to treat religion as a cheat and liberty as a farce It was the cant of that day (from which he is not free) to cry down sanctity and sobriety as marks of disaffection, as it is the cant of this to hid them up as proofs of loyalty and staunch monarchical principles. Religion and morality are, in either case, equilly subservient to the spirit of party, and a stalking-horse to the love of power Finally, there is a want of pathos and humour, but no want of interest in Hudibras. It is difficult to lay it down. One thought is inserted into another; the links in the chain of reasoning are so closely rivetted, that the attention seldom flags, but is kept alive (without any other assistance) by the mere force of writing There are occasional indications of poetical fancy, and an eye for natural beauty, but these are kept under or soon discarded, judiciously enough, but it should seem, not for lack of power, for they are certainly as masterly as they are rare Such is the burlesque description of the stocks, or allegorical prison, in which first Crowdero and then Hudibras are confined the passage beginning

"As when an owl that's in a barn,

Bees a mouse creeping in the corn

Sits still and shuts his round blue eyes,

As if he slept,” &c.

And the description of the moon going down in the early morning, which is as pure, original, and picturesque as possible.

Butler is sometimes scholastic, but he makes his learning tell to good account; and for the purposes of burlesque, nothing can be better fitted than the scholastic style.

Butler's 'Remains' are nearly as good and full of sterling genius as his principal poem. Take the following ridicule of the plan of the Greek tragedies as an instance:

"Reduce all tragedy, by rules of art,
Back to its ancient theatre, a cart,

And make them henceforth keep the beaten roads
Of reverend choruses and episodes;

Reform and regulate a puppet-play,
According to the true and ancient way;
That not an actor shall presume to squeak
Unless he have a licence for 't in Greek;
Nor devil in the puppet-play be allowed
To roar and spit fire, but to fright the crowd,
Unless some god or demon chance to have piques
Against an ancient family of Greeks;

That other men may tremble and take warning
Now such a fatal progeny they're born in ;

For none but such for tragedy are fitted

That have been ruined only to be pitied;

And only those held proper to deter

Who have th' ill luck against their wills to err;
Whence only such as are of middling sizes,

Betwixt morality and venial vices,

Are qualified to be destroyed by fate,
For other mortals to take warning at."

Upon Critics.

His ridicule of Milton's Latin style is equally severe, but not so

well founded.

I have only to add a few words respecting the dramatic writers about this time, before we arrive at the golden period of our comedy. Those of Etherege are good for nothing, except 'The Man of Mode,' or Sir Foping Flutter,' which is, I think, a more exquisite and airy picture of the manners of that age than any other extant. Sir Fopling himself is an inimitatie coxcomb, but pleasant withal. He is a suit of clothes personified. Doriman (supposed to be Lord Rochester) is the genius of grace, gallantry, and gaiety. The women in this courtly play have very much the look and air (but something more demure and significant) of Sir Peter Lely's beauties. Harriet, the mistress of Dorimant, who "tames his wild heart to her loving hand," is the flower of the piece. Her natural, untutored grace and spirit, her meeting with Dorimant in the Park, bowing and mimicking him, and the luxuriant description which is given of her fine person, altogether form one of the chefs-d'auvre of dramatic painting. I should think this comedy would bear revi ving; and if Mr. Liston were to play Sir Fopling, the part would shine out with double lustre, "like the morn risen on mid-noon." Dryden's comedies have all the point that there is in ribaldry, and all the humour that there is in extravagance I am sorry I can say nothing better of them He was not at home in this kind of writing, of which he was himself conscious His play was horse-play. His wit (what there is of it) is ingenious and scholar-like, rather than natural and dramatic. Thus Burr, in the Wild Gallant,' says to Failer, "She shall sooner cut an atom than part us" His plots are pure voluntaris in absurdity, that bend and shift to his purpose without any previ ous notice or reason, and are governed by final causes Sur Martin Marall,' which was taken from the Duchess of Newcastle, is the best of his plays, and the origin of the Busy Body' Otway's comedies do no sort of credit to him on the contrary, they are as desperate as his fortunes. The Duke of Buckingham's famous Rehearsal,' which has made, and deservedly, so much noise in the world, is in a great measure taken fr Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle,' which

• ' Love in a Tub,' and 'She Would if She Could