Hudibras - Samuel Butler (story reading txt) 📗

a minute.
’Tis well, quoth he.⁠—Sir, you’ll excuse
This rudeness I am forc’d to use:
It is a scheme and face of Heaven,
As th’ aspects are dispos’d this even,
I was contemplating upon
When you arriv’d; but now I’ve done.

Quoth Hudibras, If I appear
Unseasonable in coming here
At such a tone, to interrupt
Your speculations, which I hop’d
Assistance from, and come to use,
’Tis fit that I ask your excuse.

By no means, Sir, quoth Sidrophel;
The stars your coming did foretel:
I did expect you here, and knew,
Before you spake, your bus’ness too.

Quoth Hudibras, Make that appear,
And I shall credit whatsoe’er
You tell me after on your word,
Howe’er unlikely or absurd.

You are in love, Sir, with a widow,
Quoth he, that does not greatly heed you,
And for three years has rid your wit
And passion without drawing bit;
And now your bus’ness is to know,
If you shall carry her or no.

Quoth Hudibras, You’re in the right;
But how the devil you came by’t
I can’t imagine; for the stars,
I’m sure, can tell no more than a horse;
Nor can their aspects (though you pore
Your eyes out on ’em) tell you more
Than th’ oracle of sieve and sheers,
That turns as certain as the spheres:
But if the devil’s of your counsel,
Much may be done, my noble Donzel;
And ’tis on his account I come,
To know from you my fatal doom.

Quoth Sidrophel, If you suppose,
Sir Knight, that I am one of those,
I might suspect, and take the alarm,
Your bus’ness is but to inform;
But if it be, ’tis ne’er the near;
You have a wrong sow by the ear;
For I assure you, for my part,
I only deal by rules of art,
Such as are lawful, and judge by
Conclusions of astrology:
But for the dev’l, know nothing by him;
But only this, that I defy him.

Quoth he, Whatever others deem ye,
I understand your metonymy:
Your words of second-hand intention,
When things by wrongful names you mention;
The mystic sense of all your terms,
That are, indeed, but magic charms
To raise the devil, and mean one thing,
And that is downright conjuring;
And in itself more warrantable,
Than cheat or canting to a rabble,
Or putting tricks upon the moon,
Which by confed’racy are done.
Your ancient conjurers were wont
To make her from her sphere dismount,
And to their incantations stoop:
They scorn’d to pore through telescope,
Or idly play at bo-peep with her,
To find out cloudy or fair weather,
Which ev’ry almanac can tell,
Perhaps, as learnedly and well
As you yourself.⁠—Then, friend, I doubt
You go the farthest way about.
Your modern Indian magician117
Makes but a hole in th’ earth to piss in,
And straight resolves all questions by’t,
And seldom fails to be i’ th’ right.
The Rosy-crucian way’s more sure,
To bring the devil to the lure;
Each of ’em has a sev’ral gin
To catch intelligences in.
Some by the nose with fumes trepan ’em,
As Dunstan did the devil’s grannam;
Others with characters and words
Catch ’em, as men in nets do birds;
And some with symbols, signs, and tricks,
Engrav’d with planetary nicks,
With their own influences will fetch ’em
Down from their orbs, arrest, and catch ’em;
Make ’em depose and answer to
All questions, ere they let them go.
Bombastus kept a devil’s bird118
Shut in the pummel of his sword,
That taught him all the cunning pranks
Of past and future mountebanks.
Kelly did all his feats upon
The devil’s looking-glass, a stone;
Where playing with him at bo-peep,
He solv’d all problems ne’er so deep.
Agrippa kept a Stygian pug,119
I’ th’ garb and habit of a dog,
That was his tutor, and the cur
Read to th’ occult philosopher,
And taught him subt’ly to maintain
All other sciences are vain.

To this, quoth Sidrophello, Sir,
Agrippa was no conjurer,
Nor Paracelsus, no, nor Behmen;
Nor was the dog a Cacodaemon,
But a true dog, that would show tricks
For th’ emperor, and leap o’er sticks;
Would fetch and carry; was more civil
Than other dogs, but yet no devil;
And whatsoe’er he’s said to do,
He went the self-same way we go.
As for the Rosy-cross philosophers,
Whom you will have to be but sorcerers,
What they pretend to is no more,
Than Trismegistus did before,
Pythagoras, old Zoroaster,
And Apollonius their master;
To whom they do confess they owe
All that they do, and all they know.

Quoth Hudibras, Alas! what is’t t’ us,
Whether ’twas said by Trismegistus,
If it be nonsense, false, or mystic,
Or not intelligible, or sophistic?
’Tis not antiquity nor author,
That makes Truth truth, altho’ Time’s daughter;
’Twas he that put her in the pit
Before he pull’d her out of it;
And as he eats his sons, just so
He feeds upon his daughters too.
Nor does it follow, ’cause a herald
Can make a gentleman, scarce a year old,
To be descended of a race
Of ancient kings in a small space,
That we should all opinions hold
Authentic that we can make old.

Quoth Sidrophel, It is no part
Of prudence to cry down an art,
And what it may perform deny,
Because you understand not why
(As Averrhois play’d but a mean trick120
To damn our whole art for eccentric:)
For who knows all that knowledge contains
Men dwell not on the tops of mountains,
But on their sides, or rising’s seat;
So ’tis with knowledge’s vast height.
Do not the hist’ries of all ages
Relate miraculous presages,
Of strange turns in the world’s affairs,
Foreseen b’ astrologers, soothsayers,
Chaldeans, learn’d Genethliacs,
And some that have writ almanacs?
The Median emp’ror dreamt his daughter121
Had pist all Asia under water,
And that a vine sprung from her haunches,
O’erspread his empire with its branches:
And did not soothsayers expound it,
As after by th’ event he found it?
When Caesar in the senate fell,122
Did not the sun eclips’d foretel,
And in resentment of his slaughter,
Look’d pale for almost a year after?
Augustus having b’ oversight,123
Put on his left shoe ’fore his right,
Had like to have been slain that day
By soldiers mutin’ing for pay.
Are there not myriads of this sort,
Which stories of all times report?
Is it not ominous in all countries
When crows and ravens croak upon trees?
The Roman senate, when within124
The city walls an owl was seen
Did cause their clergy, with lustrations
(Our synod calls humiliations,)
The round-fac’d prodigy t’avert
From doing town or country hurt:
And if an owl had so much pow’r,
Why should not planets have much more,
That in a region far above
Inferior fowls of the air move,
And should see further, and foreknow
More than their augury below?
Though that once serv’d the