Hudibras - Samuel Butler (story reading txt) 📗

men have supposed, because they had no need of them. ↩

Music is said to be invented by Pythagoras, who first found out the proportion of notes from the sounds of hammers upon an anvil. ↩

Muhammad had a tame dove, that used to pick seeds out of his ear that it might be thought to whisper and inspire him. His ass was so intimate with him, that the Muhammadans believed it carried him to heaven, and stays there with him to bring him back again. ↩

He made a vow never to cut his beard until the Parliament had subdued the King; of which order of fanatic votaries there were many in those times. ↩

Taliacotius was an Italian surgeon, that found out a way to repair lost and decayed noses. This Taliacotius was chief surgeon to the Great Duke of Tuscany, and wrote a treatise, De Curtis Membris, [Of Cutoff Parts] which he dedicates to his great master wherein he not only declares the models of his wonderful operations in restoring of lost members, but gives you cuts of the very instruments and ligatures he made use of therein; from hence our Author (cum poetica licentia) has taken his simile. ↩

Aeneas was the son of Anchises and Venus; a Trojan, who, after long travels, came to Italy, and after the death of his father-in-law, Latinus, was made king of Latium, and reigned three years. His story is too long to insert here, and therefore I refer you to Virgil’s Aeneids. Troy being laid in ashes, he took his aged father Anchises upon his back, and rescued him from his enemies. But being too solicitous for his son and household gods, he lost his wife Creusa; which Mr. Dryden, in his excellent translation, thus expresseth:

Haste my dear father (’tis no time to wait,)
And load my shoulders with a willing freight.
Whate’er befals, your life shall be my care;
One death, or one deliv’rance, we will share.
My hand shall lead our little son; and you,
My faithful consort, shall our steps pursue.

↩

Who this Arthur was and whether any ever reigned in Britain, has been doubted heretofore, and is by some to this very day. However, the history of him, which makes him one of the nine worthies of the world, is a subject, sufficient for the Poet to be pleasant upon. ↩

The capital city of New Castile, in Spain, with an archbishopric and primacy. It was very famous, amongst other things, for tempering the best metal for swords, as Damascus was, and perhaps may be still. ↩

Oliver Cromwell and Colonel Pride had been both brewers. ↩

Julius Caesar had a horse with feet like a man’s. Utebatur equo insigni; pedibus prope humanis, et in modum digitorum ungulis fissis. [He rode a horse with this distinction; it had feet like a man’s, having the hooves split like toes] —⁠Suet., in Jul. Cap. 61 ↩

Dido, Queen of Carthage, who bought as much land as she could compass with an ox’s hide, which she cut into small thongs, and cheated the owner of so much ground as served her to build Carthage upon. ↩

Aeneas, whom Virgil reports to use a golden bough for a pass to hell; and tailors call that place hell where they put all they steal. ↩

Read the great Geographical Dictionary, under that word. ↩

Talisman is a device to destroy any sort of vermin, by casting their images in metal, in a precise minute, when the stars are perfectly inclined to do them all the mischief they can. This has been experienced by some modern virtuosi upon rats, mice, and fleas, and found (as they affirm) to produce the effect with admirable success.

Raymund Lully interprets cabal, out of the Arabic, to signify Scientia superabundans; which his commentator, Cornelius Agrippa, by over-magnifying, has rendered a very superfluous foppery. ↩

The author of Magia Ademica endeavours to prove the learning of the ancient Magi to be derived from that knowledge which God himself taught Adam in Paradise before the fall. ↩

The intelligible world is a kind of Terra Del Fuego, or Psittacorum Regio [Land of Parrots], etc. discovered only by the philosophers, of which they talk, like parrots, what they do not understand. ↩

No nation in the world is more addicted to this occult philosophy than the wild Irish are, as appears by the whole practice of their lives; of which see Camden in his description of Ireland. ↩

They who would know more of Sir Cornelius Agrippa, here meant, may consult the Great Dictionary. ↩

Anthroposophus is only a compound Greek word, which signifies a man that is wise in the knowledge of men, as is used by some anonymous author to conceal his true name.

Dr. Floud was a sort of an English Rosy-crucian, whose works are extant, and as intelligible as those of Jacob Behmen. ↩

The fraternity of the Rosy-crucians is very like the sect of the ancient Gnostici, who called themselves so from the excellent learning they pretended to, although they were really the most ridiculous sots of mankind.

Vere Adeptus is one that has commenced in their fanatic extravagance. ↩

This Vickars was a man of as great interest and authority in the late Reformation as Pryn or Withers, and as able a poet. He translated Virgil’s Aeneids into as horrible travesty in earnest, as the French Scaroon did in burlesque, and was only outdone in his way by the politic author of Oceana. ↩

This speech is set