Chapter XVIII: Section III: Butler's Hudibras

It is quite the contrary in England. When we scratch the covering of an Englishman's morality, the brute appears in its violence and its deformity. One of the English statesmen said that with the French an unchained mob could be led by words of humanity and honor,[227] but that in England it was necessary, in order to appease them, to throw to them raw flesh. Insults, blood, orgie, that is the food on which the mob of noblemen, under Charles II, precipitated itself. All that excuses a carnival was absent; and, in particular, wit. Three years after the return of the king, Butler published his "Hudibras"; and with what _éclat_ his contemporaries only could tell, while the echo of applause is kept up even to our own days. How low is the wit, with what awkwardness and dulness he dilutes his revengeful satire. Here and there lurks a happy picture, the remnant of a poetry which has just perished; but the whole work reminds one of a Scarron, as unworthy as the other, and more malignant. It is written, people say, on the model of Don Quixote; Hudibras is a Puritan knight, who goes about, like his antitype, redressing wrongs, and pocketing beatings. It would be truer to say that it resembles the wretched imitation of Avellaneda.[228] The short metre, well suited to buffoonery, hobbles along without rest and limpingly, floundering in the mud which it delights in, as foul and as dull as that of the "Enéide Travestie."[229] The description of Hudibras and his horse occupies the best part of a canto; forty lines are taken up by describing his beard, forty more by describing his breeches. Endless scholastic discussions, arguments as long as those of the Puritans, spread their wastes and briers over half the poem. No action, no simplicity, all is would-be satire and gross caricature; there is neither art, nor harmony nor good taste to be found in it; the Puritan style is converted into an absurd gibberish; and the engalled rancor, missing its aim by its mere excess, spoils the portrait it wishes to draw. Would you believe that such a writer gives himself airs, wishes to enliven us, pretends to be funny? What delicate raillery is there in this picture of Hudibras's beard!

"His tawny beard was th' equal grace Both of his wisdom and his face; In cut and die so like a tile, A sudden view it would beguile: The upper part whereof was whey, The nether orange, mix'd with grey. This hairy meteor did denounce The fall of sceptres and of crowns: With grisly type did represent Declining age of Government, And tell with hieroglyphic spade Its own grave and the state's were made."[230]

Butler is so well satisfied with his insipid fun, that he prolongs it for a good many lines:

"Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew In time to make a nation rue; Tho' it contributed its own fall, To wait upon the public downfall.... 'Twas bound to suffer persecution And martyrdom with resolution; T' oppose itself against the hate And vengeance of the incens'd state, In whose defiance it was worn, Still ready to be pull'd and torn, With red-hot irons to be tortur'd, Revil'd, and spit upon, and martyr'd. Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast As long as monarchy should last; But when the state should hap to reel, 'Twas to submit to fatal steel, And fall, as it was consecrate, A sacrifice to fall of state, Whose thread of life the fatal sisters Did twist together with its whiskers, And twine so close, that time should never, In life or death, their fortunes sever; But with his rusty sickle mow Both down together at a blow."[231]

The nonsense increases as we go on. Could anyone have taken pleasure in humor such as this?

"This sword a dagger had, his page, That was but little for his age; And therefore waited on him so As dwarfs upon knights-errant do.... When it had stabb'd, or broke a head, It would scrape trenchers, or chip bread.... 'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth Set leeks and onions, and so forth."[232]

Everything becomes trivial; if any beauty presents itself, it is spoiled by burlesque. To read those long details of the kitchen, those servile and crude jokes, people might fancy themselves in the company of a common buffoon in the market-place; it is the talk of the quacks on the bridges, adapting their imagination and language to the manners of the beer-shop and the hovel. There is filth to be met with there; indeed, the rabble will laugh when the mountebank alludes to the disgusting acts of private life.[233] Such is the grotesque stuff in which the courtiers of the Restoration delighted; their spite and their coarseness took a pleasure in the spectacle of these bawling puppets; even now, after two centuries, we hear the ribald laughter of this audience of lackeys.