SOURCE: "Hudibras Considered as Satiric Allegory," in The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. XVI, No. 2, February, 1953, pp. 141-60.

I

The Game of identifying particular individuals in Hudibras has exercised such fascination for scholars that their investigation of the poem has largely been an exploring of possible models for Butler's characters.¹ Literary critics, on the other hand, have been so bewitched by the brilliance of the couplets that one even suggests discarding the bulk of the poem in order to display its units,² feeling apparently that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Professor Ricardo Quintana has the distinction of presenting the large philosophic perspective from which the poem is conceived and its clear moral purpose;³ but he does not analyze it as a work of art. E. A. Richards, who does so consider it, confines himself to a study of it as burlesque.⁴ These writers are enlightening; but Hudibras still demands consideration as satiric allegory. Such a consideration throws light on the virtues and defects of the poem which have been fairly consistently pointed out at least since Johnson's Life of Butler.⁵ Furthermore, it can reasonably be suggested that such a treatment conforms to Butler's own view of Hudibras.

Butler's pondering over the use of allegory is repeatedly revealed in his Characters and Miscellaneous Observations. The wide scattering of his comments makes them the more emphatic testimony to his preoccupation with the purpose of indirection in art. He says concerning Books and Authors:

Men take so much Delight in lying that Truth is sometimes forcd to disguise herself in the habit of Falshood to get entertainment as in Fables and Apologues frequently usd by the Ancients, and in this she is not at all unjust, for Falshood do's very commonly usurp her Person.⁶

In discoursing of Reason, he had already projected the same view of fiction:

Betweene this [Falshood], and Truth, ly's the Proper Sphere of wit, which though it seeme to incline to falshood, do's it only to give Intelligence to Truth. For as there is a Trick in Arithmetique, By giving a False Number, to finde out a True one: So wit by a certaine slight of the Minde, deliver's things otherwise than they are in Nature, by rendring them greater or lesse then they really are (which is cal'd Hyperbole) or by putting them into some other condition then Nature ever did … But when it imploys those things which it borrows of Falshood, to the Benefit and advantage of Truth, as in Allegories, Fables, and Apologues, it is of excellent use, as making a Deeper impression into the mindes of Men then if the same Truths were plainely deliver'd. So likewise it becomes as pernicious, when it take's that from Truth which it use's in the service of Error and Falshood; as when it wrest's things from their right meaning to a sense that was never intended.⁷

He clings to the old conception of fiction as falsehood in a comment in which, though he thrusts it into the character of A Player in a thoroughly offhand manner, he seems almost to define for himself the province of the art of representation:

It is not strange that the world is so delighted with fiction, and so averse to truth, since the mere imitation of a thing is more pleasant than the thing it self, as a good picture of a bad face is a better object than the face itself.⁸

The inadequacy, even the perversity, of human reason,⁹ which forms the basis of Butler's view of the purpose of fable, is succinctly put in his observations on Books and Authors:

He that would write obscure to the People neede's write nothing but plaine Reason, and Sense, then which Nothing can be more Mysterious to them. For those to whom Mysterious things are plaine, plain Things must be mysterious.¹⁰

This same human predilection for the lie is expressed in Hudibras itself:

The World is nat'rally averse
To all the Truth, it sees or hears
But swallows Nonsense, and a Lie,
With Greediness and Gluttony.¹¹
(III.ii.805-808)

Butler is clear-cut and implacable about the moral function of allegory:

Allegories are only usefull when they serve as Instances, to illustrate Some obscure Truth: But when a Truth, Plaine enough, is forcd to serve an Allegory, it is a proepostorous mistake of the end of it; which is to make obscure things Plaine, not Plaine things obscure; and is no less foolish, then if wee should looke upon things that ly before us with a Perspective, which is so far from assisting the sight, that it utterly obstructs it beside the Prepostorous Difficulty of forcing things against their Naturall inclinations, which at the best do's but discover how much wit a man may have to no purpose; there being no such Argument of a slight minde as an elaborate Triffle.¹²

His conception of the moral purpose of satire is just as clear in a little conceit which is itself an allegorical satire in small:

A Satyr is a kinde of Knight Errant that goe's upon Adventures, to Relieve the Distressed Damsel Virtue, and Redeeme Honor out of Inchanted Castles, And opprest Truth, and Reason out of the Captivity of Gyants or Magitians: and though his meaning be very honest, yet some believe he is no wiser then those wandring Heros usd to be, though his Performances and Atchievements be ever so Renownd and Heroicall. And as those worthys if they Livd in our Days, would hardly be able to Defend themselves against the Laws against vagabonds, So our modern Satyr has enough to do to secure himselfe against the Penaltys of Scandalum Magnatum, and Libells.¹³

It is hard to believe that in such comments Butler does not have his own principal work in mind. At least he is shaping the creed by which it is written.

II

Since, as Quintana makes clear, the object of mockery in the satire was to be the misuse of the mind, all the extravagances of unreason, Butler chose the strongest illustration available to him in the religious bickerings of the mid-century. In the quarrels of the Saints he saw illustrated the human faults that most repelled him: argumentativeness and a manipulation of reason for the rationalization of false arguments, together with a setting aside of reason to trust individual, irrational manifestations of so-called truth. Combined with and accentuating these defects of intellect were those of spirit: avarice as a motive, self-righteous arrogance, hypocrisy about virtue of behavior, and dishonor regarding oaths. Such was Butler's view of the Puritans as it is directly set forth in one biting portrait after another in his Characters. The characters and miscellaneous writings not only clarify the habit of mind and total philosophic attitude manifest in Hudibras, but even depict with straightforward scorn the very traits Butler is ridiculing in the poem. Philosophically they are illuminating as to the basic ideas, the fundamental judgments, in terms of which Hudibras is conceived. Furthermore, A Quarreler, An Obstinate Man, An Hypocrite, and many more give positive help in interpreting particular characters in the poem.¹⁴ But artistically they are even more illuminating in a negative way, for they are written without the help of any fiction; and biting as their directness is, they do not take hold of the imagination as the poem does. Because of the allegorical representation, Hudibras makes "a Deeper impression into the mindes of Men then if the same Truths were plainely deliver'd."¹⁵ The characters are the same people, observed by the same keen, skeptical intelligence; but we see the truth more clearly in Hudibras because, in keeping with his artistic theory, Butler is there giving us the help of a lie. Even in the Characters, with all their definiteness, Butler is dealing with universal human weaknesses. Especially in the ones depicting modern types, we are conscious that the general and the particular are closely related. The sharpness of the criticism comes from the positive set of values in terms of which Butler is viewing the follies which are defections from it. The character of A Fifth-Monarchy Man and An Anabaptist owe something to that of A Fanatic.

In Hudibras the standard of values is the same. So is the choice of illustrations, though its range is more limited, for in the Characters, Roman Catholics draw as much of Butler's fire as do Dissenters, whereas the poem concentrates on Presbyterians, Independents, and other sectaries. But there is still the feeling that Butler is saying something about human traits in terms of particular human beings. The "Late Wars" afford the amplest illustrations of the points he wants to make. This time, however, instead of writing directly about the figures of the day who illustrate his views, he is using the wit which "by a certaine slight of the Minde, deliver's things otherwise then they are in Nature, … [employing] those things which it borrows of Falshood, to the Benefit and advantage of Truth, as in Allegories, Fables, and Apologues." The poem is a convincing demonstration of the claim which he makes for such imaginative indirection that "it is of excellent use, as making a Deeper impression into the mindes of Men then if the same Truths were plainely deliver'd."¹⁶

By choosing to couch his satire in allegory, he creates for himself the problems of conceiving appropriate fictional characters to embody his meaning and of involving them in appropriate action to sustain his point. Of all the varieties of fable open to Butler, he chooses perhaps the most difficult: simply a set of adventures of a mock hero in a real world. He gives himself none of the help of the writer of animal allegory or the creator of fantastic worlds, for whom the levels of the apparent story and the real story are so obviously distinct that once he leads us into making the initial adjustment, he can write almost straightforwardly and trust that the vehicle and the tenor of the metaphor will be grasped almost simultaneously. Butler's characters, while they may be freaks, are still human beings; and their actions, while they may be fantastic, must be possible for human beings. Yet their distinctness from the world of fact must be preserved. The proximity of the planes of reality and representation is what makes the neatness and the difficulty of the problem. The world in which the creatures of Butler's imagination function is the English world in which bear baitings and skimmingtons and the rogueries of astrologers and lawyers took place. The world of the surface narrative is part of the same world which Presbyterians and Independents would inhabit if they were being portrayed directly. Thus in both character and action Butler is dealing with the familiar and the actual, simply out of focus. It is a peculiarly complicated mode of indirection which he employs, a peculiarly intellectual one, involving constant adjustments of judgment as well as of imagination. Butler is not wholly successful in sustaining it; but it is a brilliant choice of imaginative framework for what he wishes to communicate. Hudibras is a burlesque, a caricature of a proper human being, just as the traits which he represents are in reality distortions of the proper mind of man. The actions in which he is involved are fantastic, just as the behavior of real people in its baseness and irrationality is a travesty of behavior appropriate to man.

In order to establish the impression of Hudibras, Butler gives us first a survey of the confusion of his mental traits. His stoutness is mentioned early (I.i.30); but it is not until page nine of Waller's edition¹⁷ that we have any extended description of his person. This makes the object of Butler's satire unmistakably clear in the very beginning; but it is also unmistakable that the intention is mockery through distortion, not straightforward analysis and condemnation. Each trait in turn is held up to the refracting mirror of Butler's mind. Hudibras is "shy of using" his wit; he displays tags of learning inappropriately; he corrupts logic for hair splitting; he uses geometry for measuring food and drink; by divination he can tell

Whether the Serpent, at the fall
Had cloven Feet, or none at all;
(I.i.183-84)

he proves his religion by contentiousness. The couplet:

A Sect, whose chief Devotion lies
In odd perverse Antipathies,
(I.i.207-208)

might be taken for the summarizing of his mind. Perversity in the use of his powers, misapplication of what talents he has, make him already a caricature of a person. So far Hudibras might be one of the Characters, or a combination of An Hypocritical Nonconformist and An Hermetic Philosopher. Only after establishing the impression of his temperament does Butler make use of physical description. The oddity of the knight's mind has prepared us for the craziness of his appearance. Butler is reversing the common practice of the satiric aliegorist of alluring our imagination first through sense impressions in order to spring his trap. But the use of physical detail when it does come is deft. Butler uses it to complete the winning of poetic faith in his knight as hero of a fictitious action rather than of a character essay. Once we have seen the knight's beard, with its upper part of whey and its "nether orange mixed with grey" (I.i.246) as a "hairy meteor," we are convinced of his artistic existence. But the physical is the enforcement of the mental image. Hudibras wears his beard unshorn until the king shall be overthrown; and such a bizarre use of his beard fits the description of his mind. Butler proceeds in exactly the same way in the description of his figure. He barely pauses to make us see the hunched back and huge paunch before he uses the size of the paunch as a point of departure to speak of the gluttony of his hero, a subject which is continued in the description of his breeches. Such physical details as there are, are all extravagant; but they simply enforce the impression of the mind "perverse and opposite" (I.i.217). His physical actions, too, come now as the expression and accompaniment of a mind we know already as ridiculous. The lack of physical coördination suggests that of his mental motions.

But first with nimble active Force
He got on th'Outside of his Horse,
For having but one Stirrup ty'd
T'his Saddle, on the further Side,
It was so short, h'had much ado
To reach it with his desp'rate Toe.
But after many Strains and Heaves,
He got up to the Saddle-Eaves.
From whence he vaulted into th'Seat,
With so much Vigour, Strength and Heat,
That he had almost tumbled over
With his own Weight, but did recover,
By laying hold on Tail and Main;
Which oft he us'd instead of Rein.
(I.i.405-18)

We cannot see this picture of bodily awkwardness without feeling that it betokens mental absurdity. At least we cannot do so reading it in context, for Butler has begun by convincing us of the absurdity of the mind of Hudibras. This impression is sustained whenever Butler uses physical representation. Oddly enough, it is only when Hudibras speaks, as he does repeatedly and at length, that we occasionally lose the impression. But when we see him falling on the bear, or running from the skimmington, or picking Sidrophel's pockets, we are convinced that we have to do with part knave and part the tool "that Knaves do work with, call'd a Fool" (I.i.36).

In the description of Ralph, the procedure is curious. There is not a single detail of his appearance; what is being mocked is first the low social status of the Independents and second their pretension to "Gifts" and "New-light" (I.i.482). But there is such a wealth of physical detail in the imagery that we have the impression of seeing Ralph.¹⁸ The crosslegged knights (I.i.471) that give us at once an image of Templars and of tailors, the "Dark-Lanthorn of the Spirit, Which none see by but those that bear it" (I.i.505-506) with its property of leading men to dip themselves in dirty ponds, and playing upon "The Nose of Saint, like Bag-pipe Drone" (I.i.516—all this wealth of sense impression gives us the feeling of seeing Ralph, when actually all we have before us is his mind, ignorant and misled by fancied inspiration.

The company of grotesques who make up the bearbaiting group are much more briefly dealt with, the presentation of the whole group comprising fewer lines than the description of Hudibras. But the procedure is much the same. We are presented with a quarrelsome crew; and the few physical details sharpen the impression of roughness. Crowdero is most completely described with his warped ear, grisly beard, and leg of oak; Orsin is stout, but the description concentrates on his stoutness of mind, and more space is given to his pouch of quack medicines than to his person. Bruin's visage is formidably grim; and Trulla is simply a lusty virago. The treatment of Talgol is taken up with a mock heroic presentation of his exploits of butchering cows and sheep, that of Magnano with the same sort of suggestion of his tinker's calling, and the one of Cerdon with references to his cobbler's trade. Finally Colon, the hostler, is presented in terms of equestrian exploits. The object is to present them as a group of low combatants. But the presentation has been so vigorous, so full of lively detail that we have the impression of seeing them, of experiencing both physically and intellectually an angry crowd. Professor Hardin Craig's identification of them as Parliamentary leaders is ingenious¹⁹ and not out of keeping with Butler's own comment:

[I] am content (since I cannot helpe it) yt everyman should make what applications he pleases of it, either to himselfe or others, Butt I Assure you my cheife designe was onely to give ye world a Just Acco[un]t of ye Ridiculous folly & Knavery of ye Presbiterian & Independent Factions then in power.²⁰

However the antagonists of Hudibras and Ralph are particularly identified, the point of the bickering among dissenting groups is roundly made. The hilarious rough and tumble of the fight is perfectly suited to these common folk, whether Butler means the extra implication to be a slur upon the lowly origins of the upstart sectaries or a slur upon the temper of mind that makes important people act like hoodlums. Their coarse violence is exposed in any case, and through it the contentiousness of the Puritans and of man. The episode is one of the funniest low comedy scenes in the poem. The quality of the actors, the kind of action, and the mocking point to be made—all concur to produce the desired effect. It is a perfect little allegorical satire in itself with its point completely digested into the imaginative scheme and yet completely made.

Hudibras himself is steadily absurd in his behavior as the figure in the fable; but the overweening, dictatorial temper of the Presbyterians, and of a certain sort of human beings exemplified in them, is never far from our minds. Though the way Hudibras conducts himself is ludicrous, it is not entirely cowardly. Indeed, he often displays a reckless daring, what Butler calls a "high, outrageous Mettle" (I.ii.1104), from his first rant, preaching peace among the saints by surveying their past combativeness, to his last misguided blow against Trulla. In this connection, perhaps Johnson's criticism should be met:

If Hudibras be considered as the representative of the presbyterians it is not easy to say why his weapons should be represented as ridiculous or useless, for, whatever judgment might be passed upon their knowledge or their arguments, experience had sufficiently shewn that their swords were not to be despised.²¹

To be sure the pistol of Hudibras is made ridiculous:

But Pallas came in Shape of Rust,
And 'twixt the Spring and Hammer thrust
Her Gorgon Shield.
(I.ii.782-84)²²

But Hudibras comes off victorious in the first battle; and the shot he lets fly at random in the second does considerable damage. It is true that he is afraid at the approach of the skimmington which creates the center of action in Part II; but he rebukes the procession as boldly as he had done the bear baiters. In Canto III of Part II he attacks Sidrophel with violence, though he does flee, supposedly leaving Ralph to take the blame when he thinks Sidrophel dead. He is afraid to give himself the whipping penance prescribed by the widow and is fearful of the devils' drubbing he receives at her house. Yet Butler does not make him wholly a coward. His alternations of fear and rash boldness show the perversity and inconsistency which is his only consistency. Butler uses both the fear, which makes him betray his promise to the widow, and his flight from her house as opportunities for the mordantly satiric passages of rationalization about the setting aside of oaths (II.ii.67-564) and of the mock philosophy of war ending with the description of Caligula:

That triumph'd o'er the British Sea
Took Crabs and Oysters Prisoners,
And Lobsters, 'stead of Cuirasiers;
Engag'd his Legions in fierce Bustles,
With Periwinckles, Prawns, and Muscles;
And led his Troops with furious Gallops,
To charge whole Regiments of Scallops;
Not like their ancient Way of War,
To wait on his triumphal Carr:
But when he went to dine or sup,
More bravely eat his Captives up;
And left all War, by his Example,
Reduc'd to vict'ling of a Camp well.
(III.iii.360-72)

Hudibras is rather irrational and hypocritical than cowardly.

But Johnson's objection raises the whole question of Butler's fairness in his portrayal, for as Root suggests, "To be completely successful, the satiric portrait must be drawn with at least the appearance of fairness."²³ Veldkamp in his study of Butler begins a section entitled "Faults and abuses of the time imputed to Puritanism" by saying, "Yet many other things are ridiculed in Hudibras which had nothing to do with Puritanism, but which Butler ridicules in the doings and sayings of the Presbyterian Knight. This is of course not quite fair even in an author whose set aim is ridicule, burlesque, satire."²⁴ Veldkamp especially objects to the mockery of Presbyterians as believers in astrology and witchcraft; but actually Hudibras has little faith in astrology. He is hostile to Sidrophel, and his whole conversation with him is an expression of disbelief. It is Ralpho who urges consulting the astrologer, saying:

Do not our great Reformers use
This Sidrophel to forbode News.
(II.iii.171-72)

Certainly William Lilly, who was at least one of the models for Sidrophel, was consulted by Parliament.²⁵ Veldkamp himself really acknowledges the charge of witchcraft; and Hopkins, the notorious witch hunter, was a Puritan.²⁶ Veldkamp further objects to Butler's attributing licentiousness to the Puritans. Yet in point of morality, what Butler is mocking is clearly not the special immorality of the Puritans, but their claim to saint-hood, the sins which "Saints have title to" (I.ii.1018).

For Saints may do the same Things by
The Spirit, in Sincerity,
Which other Men are tempted to,
And at the devil's Instance do.
(II.ii.235-38)

In any case, the love story of Hudibras is a story of the love of wealth. Cupid takes his stand "upon a Widow's Jointure land" (I.iii.312). Hudibras is perfectly frank about this:

Let me your Fortune but possess,
And settle your Person how you please.
(II.i.477-78)

The lady is equally candid:

'Tis not those Orient Pearls, our Teeth,
That you are so transported with;
But those we wear about our Necks,
Produce those amorous Effects.
Nor is't those Threads of Gold, our Hair,
The Perriwigs you make us wear;
But those bright Guineas in our Chests
That light the Wild-fire in your Breasts.
(The Lady's Answer, ll.65-72)

The avarice of the knight is what Butler is ridiculing. Veldkamp's final charge against Butler is that he satirizes "the perverted chivalry of the time … in the person of 'the Presbyter Knight.'" Chivalry is not one of the objects of satire at all, but an external part of the scheme for presenting the satire. Butler is not writing another Don Quixote, but merely using Cervantes' scheme of action to give a framework for his allegory. The perverted chivalry of Hudibras is part of the disguise, the "falshood," which Butler is using to present his truth. To consider this part of the device for conveying the point as being itself one of the objects of satire is to this extent to miss the sense of the fable. The very obviousness with which Butler thrusts references to Romance into the narrative, as for instance at the beginning of Part I, Canto II, suggests that he feels the need of a reminder that he has employed the terms of chivalry for his framework. All of Veldkamp's charges can be dismissed if we subscribe to the view of Butler's central purpose set forth above.

But the comparison with Cervantes suggests a score on which the fairness of Hudibras may be challenged: whether Butler seems to be dealing justly with the kind of folly he castigates. When Root declares that the satiric portrait must be drawn with the appearance of fairness, he is setting up an artistic rather than a moral criterion. It is the feeling of fairness to be communicated to the reader which concerns him in judging Pope and which properly concerns the critic of Hudibras as well. Butler's artistic point of view is perfectly consistent. It is an angle of vision that creates steady distortion and persistently reveals the perverted human mind that he scorns. But it is exactly his unmitigated scorn which prevents the final success of his point of view. The reader is likely to share Johnson's feeling: "But for poor Hudibras, his poet had no tenderness; he chuses not that any pity should be shewn or respect paid him: he gives him up at once to laughter and contempt, without any quality that can dignify or protect him."²⁷ Butler has fallen into the difficulty inherent in the kind of representation he has chosen. If distortion is his medium, consistency of distortion should be a virtue, but the excess of the virtue here makes a defect. The portrait is so full of vitality that we are scarcely conscious of any lack as we read. But if it leaves us artistically disturbed rather than satisfied, the reason for uneasiness may be Butler's excess of zeal in heaping opprobrium on his creature. What is important is not so much whether the Presbyterians had each particular folly displayed by Hudibras, but whether he is a satisfying symbol of human extravagance of mind. His not quite being so is what keeps him from supreme artistic fitness. We cannot entirely equate the knight with what he stands for. The portrait seems overdrawn so that our reception of Hudibras as an artistic creation is jarred by the question of whether the human mind is as distempered as this image of it.

Though probability, once "certain suppositions"²⁸ have been made, is the important artistic consideration, the questions just considered lead to the constantly teasing one of whether the characters stand for persons who actually existed. Grey in the preface to his edition makes it part of his praise "that the greatest part of the Poem contains a Series of Adventures that did really happen: all the real Persons shadow'd under fictitious Characters will be brought to view from Sir Roger L'Estrange, who being personally acquainted with the Poet, undoubtedly received the Secret from him."²⁹ The key attributed to L'Estrange was published with Butler's Posthumous Works in 1715; and perhaps the game of identifying the actors in Butler's drama had begun before that, as a demand for a key would imply. Scholars in our own century suggest a key quite different from that of L'Estrange. One of the most detailed studies of identity analyzes the change in the model for Sidrophel,³⁰ which Grey had already pointed out.³¹ Another shifts the weight of evidence from Sir Samuel Luke to Sir Henry Rosewel in the controversy over the prototype for Hudibras,³² without making the point that Butler might have used both men in forming his fictitious character.³³ It is perfectly conceivable, and indeed in keeping with the mode of composition suggested by his commonplace books, that he noted traits from a great number of sources and then put them together as they fitted his purposes. The characters are dramatized representations of general types that may be drawn from as wide a variety of sources as the pictures of A Modern Politician and A Dunce in the Characters. It is possible, and indeed likely, that Butler's intention is to make them stand only for habits of mind as do the inhabitants of Brobdingnag, rather than for individuals as do Flimnap and Reldresal and other figures in Lilliput. In any case, it is their vitality in displaying persistent follies which gives them their enduring interest. The excitement of linking them with particular people who did live in history comes from the fact that they do live in art, not the other way around.

III

The other part of Grey's sentence, "that the greatest part of the Poem contains a Series of Adventures that did really happen," brings us to a consideration of the action in which the characters are involved. Grey seems to mean no more than that bear baitings, for instance, did take place and were subjects of controversy. He observes in a note signed Mr. B. (called in the Preface "the worthy and ingenious Mr. Christopher Byron") "that we have the exact characters of the usual Attendants at a Bear-bating."³⁴ Such praise seems curiously misplaced. Literal realism, where it exists at all, is obviously the least of Butler's concerns. Just as we know from the beginning that the knight is more than a knight, so we know that his adventures are more than attempts to stop a bear baiting and a skimmington, more than courtship of a widow and consultation with an astrologer and a lawyer. But again, as in judging the characters, we wonder if the episodes prefigure actual events or simply a kind of event that the civil wars had made familiar. Butler's own statement: "Butt I Assure you my cheife designe was onely to give ye world a Just Acco[un]t of ye Ridiculous folly & Knavery of ye Presbiterian & Independent Factions then in power,"³⁵ gives us no help, for he could have been just in using either sort of allegorical representation. It is a temptation to see particular historical events in the episodes; but any close analogy breaks down. Professor Craig has made a clever suggestion about the bear episode,³⁶ but there are difficulties in his interpretation, as he himself points out. Any attempt to make the events of the story yield their secret drives us to the conclusion that they simply have nothing to conceal in specific historical event. What they hold is the "Truth in Person" like "Words congeal'd in Northern Air" (I.i.148), but it is a truth about the kind of mad action Butler had witnessed during the period of the wars, not about the particular events of those wars.

For Butler's purpose this was a wise choice. In the first place, it fits the conception of his characters. They are absurdly distorted actors representing absurd distortions of human intellect as especially manifest in "the Late Wars." The action in which they are involved is appropriate to them in the mode in which they exist. These grotesques are engaged in grotesque adventures. For Hudibras to have eggs thrown at his beard and devils pummel him fits the world of fantastic horseplay that he inhabits. A comparison with Book I of Gulliver is again illuminating. Since Swift is using a realistic mode with reduction of size as the only means of sharpening the effect of the Lilliputians as human beings, he can best make his point by involving them in adventures that exactly parallel real historical events, letting the absurdity of the small people come out in the pettiness of their actions. Since Butler's artistic mode is distortion, he would have to distort history to fit a scheme of exact correspondence and precisely in so doing the exact correspondence would break down. Furthermore, the wars were already a travesty of what history should be. The artist can better represent this general travesty by using a farcial representation of human actions of individuals for his allegory than by making a one-to-one equation of his metaphorical action with particular events.

The organization of the poem has been criticized often for lack of necessary connection between the episodes. But Butler forestalls this objection by choosing the framework of romance for his allegory. The adventures are all the adventures of the same mock hero except the straight historical drama in Part III, Canto II, which is frankly a digression. Hudibras is as unified as Don Quixote, from which its scheme of organization comes, or as the picaresque novels with which it has inherent affinity. A more important artistic consideration is whether the loose structure is allegorically sound. To this test it measures up admirably. Butler suggests that confusion and inconsequence of events are the inevitable result of the unsound principles of the participants in the events. The attempt to suppress the bear baiting and the love of the widow's jointure, which are juxtaposed in the poem, have no more to do with each other than have rigid, domineering self-righteousness and avarice, which were juxtaposed in the mind of the Puritan as Butler conceived him. The odd, perverse antipathies of the protagonists produce the inconsequence of the action.

If then the action is allegorically right in the buffoonery of the episodes and right in the rambling quality of the structure, what are its faults? There are two important ones. The poem is too long. However much we should like to know what further action Butler had in mind for his hero, we cannot really wish Hudibras longer than it is. A more serious defect is linked with the first. Part of the length of the poem is due to the length of the conversations. Much of the best wit is contained in the speeches of the characters so that it would be rash to wish them away; but they do not get wholly digested into the allegorical framework and so make a confusion of artistic effect. The conversation between Hudibras and Ralph in the first canto seems perfectly in character and in keeping with the metaphorical scheme that has been established. The jargon of Privilege, Fundamental Laws, thorough Reformation, etc., with which Ralph's speech is larded seems just part of his distorted view of bear baiting, and a legitimate reminder to us of what is being mocked. The conversation purports to be a discussion of bear baiting per se; any further meaning is conveyed entirely by implication. But with the harangue of Hudibras to the rabble, we move into a different imaginative mode. Butler is giving the history of actual events from 1638 to 1643. The old covenant (l. 546), the Bishops' Wars (l. 531), the et cetera oath (l. 651), the "Six Members quarrel" (l. 527), the Solemn League and Covenant (l. 510), and making war for the king against himself (l. 515) are all used as arguments to break up the bear baiting, the controversy over which must now be linked with these actual historical events as a quarrel among the saints. The only indirection in the rant of Hudibras is that Butler's own scorn of the Puritans is steadily revealed to the reader through Hudibras's honorific survey of their actions. The speech is extremely funny in itself and very pointed satire. But it departs from the allegorical world into which we have been projected in the presentations of the characters and into which we are again thrust when they begin to act. From that point on, we are never sure in which world the characters are going to speak. Ralpho congratulates Hudibras after the first encounter as a self-denying conqueror (l. 985); and we wonder for a moment if we have been concerned with the battle of Naseby. The rest of Ralph's speech is much better digested into the allegorical framework. His talk of revelation and Perfection-Truths has no special reference, it fits his character, which is altogether more consistent than that of Hudibras, and is a perfectly possible comment from such a person on the actual situation in the poem. But after the second round of the battle when Ralpho and Hudibras are in the stocks, we are again removed from the sphere of the allegorical representation of the foolish controversies of the saints to direct discussion of them. Again the shift is suddenly made. Hudibras, like the foolish knight originally presented to us, is comforting himself with ends of verse and philosophical tags, bolstering his self-esteem by saying:

If he, that in the Field is slain,
Be in the Bed of Honour lain;
He that is beaten may be sed
To lie in Honour's Truckle-Bed
(I.iii.1047-50)

when Ralpho speaks directly of Presbyterian zeal and wit (l. 1072); and from there on the quarrel is directly about synods as "mystical Bear-Gardens" (l. 1095). Again it is extremely clever satire in itself and succeeds in making both Presbyterians and Independents ridiculous. The gallimaufry of terms in Ralpho's speech: Gospel-Light, Dispensations, Gifts, Grace, Spiritual Calling, Regeneration, and a dozen more, make skilful mockery of the vocabulary which seemed to Butler pure cant. But the debate over "Synods or Bears" (l. 1267) repeatedly jerks us back and forth in the two modes of conception.

In Part II some of the speeches have the same effect. The harangue of Hudibras to the skimmington crowd, like that to the bear baiters, deals with straight history: the support of women to the Cause. The discussions of Hudibras and Ralpho on breaking oaths (II.ii.55-540) and on going to Sidrophel (II.iii.125-98), since saints may do what they please, present without allegory what Butler took to be Puritan attitudes. The discussion of oaths is perhaps the most mordant satire in the poem. But this discussion is full of reference to actual history which fits confusedly with the issue of whether Hudibras can swear with impunity that he has received the whipping and with the horseplay at the end when he attempts to give Ralph the whipping as his proxy.

The point of view in the poem is further confused by the fact that the conversations with the widow and with the lawyer are kept entirely away from history. The mockery of motive in them is general and is entirely wrought into the story of the knight as such. On the other hand in the second canto of Part III, after the section of narrative of historical events (which seems almost the straight telling of what has been allegorically presented), we have two speeches which also use historical events to make their points and are supposedly really uttered in the Rump, not in the imagined world of Hudibras and Ralph at all. Therefore the feeling of unwarranted confusion in the poem comes not from disorganization in the action, which fits the total conception, but from the shifts in focus in the speeches from allegory to straight satire and back again. Thus the consideration of the poem as allegory throws light on the prevailing feeling among literary critics that it is a collection of brilliant sections rather than a coherent work of art.

Notes

¹ See for instance J. T. Curtiss, "Butler's Sidrophel," PMLA [Publications of the Modern Language Association], XLIV, 1066-78; H. Craig, "Hudibras and the Politics of 1647," Manly Anniversary Studies, (Chicago, 1923), pp. 145-55; and R. Quintana, "Butler-Oxenden Correspondence," Modern Language Notes, XLVIII, 1-11.

² E. Blunden, "Some Remarks on Hudibras," London Mercury, XVIII, 172-77.

³ "John Hall of Durham and Samuel Butler: A Note," Mod. Lang. Notes, XLIV, 176-79; and "Samuel Butler: A Restoration Figure in a Modern Light," ELH [English Literary History], XVIII, 7-31.

⁴Hudibras in the Burlesque Tradition (New York, 1937).

⁵ Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1905), I, 101-18. Characteristic later treatments are W. J. Courthope, A History of English Poetry (London, 1903), III, 355-77; W. F. Smith, "Samuel Butler," The Cambridge History of English Literature (Cambridge, 1920), VIII, 58-79; and George Sherburn, "The Restoration and Eighteenth Century" in A Literary History of England, ed. A. C. Baugh (New York, 1948), pp. 734-38. Two famous comments of William Hazlitt bear quoting: "The greatest single production of wit of this period, I might my of this country, is Butler's Hudibras." And, "He has no story good for anything; and his characters are good for very little." (Complete Works, ed. P. P. Howe, [London, 1931], VI, 62 and 64.) The wit of the style is one of the chief instruments of Butler's mockery; but since it has been so much remarked by critic after critic, it will not be treated here. The present study concerns Hazlitt's other comment.

⁶ "Miscellaneous Observations and Reflections on Various Subjects," in Characters and Passages from Notebooks, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1908), p. 401. Hereafter referred to as M. O.

⁷ M. O., p. 336.

⁸Characters, p. 249.

⁹ See Quintana, "Samuel Butler: A Restoration Figure," for a systematic analysis of Butler's view of knowledge and reason. Much light is shed upon Butler's thought in the treatment of Pyrrhonism in L. I. Bredvold, The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (Ann Arbor, 1934), especially chapters II, III, and V.

¹⁰ M. O., p. 397.

¹¹ Quotations are from Zachary Grey's edition (London, 1744).

¹² M. O., p. 397.

¹³Characters, Appendix, p. 469.

¹⁴ See E. C. Baldwin, "A Suggestion for a New Edition of Butler's Hudibras, PMLA, XXVI, 528-48.

¹⁵ M. O., p. 336.

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷Hudibras, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1905).

¹⁸ The same method is followed in presenting Sidrophel (II. iii. 205-322); Whachum (II. iii. 323-98); and the widow (I. iii. 309-80).

¹⁹ But he gives up the attempt to identify Orsin and Trulla with important figures. It is hard to find a distinguished woman for Trulla to represent; but if the satire is general, the inclusion of a woman among the quarreling sectaries is perfectly appropriate. (For an account of the activities of women see J. Veldkamp, Samuel Butler the Author of Hudibras [Amsterdam, 1923], pp. 134-36.) If the bear is Charles, as Craig suggests, the dogs should be people too. It seems much more likely that the animals are simply animals and the people surrounding them the lowly and quarreling sects. Zachary Grey's notes to his edition of Hudibras (London, 1744), emphasize the roughness and ignorance of the sectaries. The divisions among them are summarized by Godfrey Davies, The Early Stuarts (Oxford, 1937), Chapter VIII. The number of sects that appear in Butler's Characters—A Fifth-Monarchy Man, A Ranter, A Quaker, An Anabaptist, as well as the more general A Fanatic and An Hypocritical Nonconformist—enforces the impression that they would find a place in Hudibras, which if it is to treat the Presbyterian, must almost of necessity treat the sectaries with whom he came in conflict, of whom "Edwards, in his dragnet of all heresies which he called The Gangraena, or a Catalogue and Discovery of Errours, Heresies and Blasphemies, counted up in the middle of the seventeenth century no less than one hundred and ninety-nine … that broke out to disturb the peace of the infallible minded Puritans in their hour of victory." (Rufus M. Jones, Mysticism and Democracy in the English Commonwealth [Cambridge, Mass., 1932], pp. 21-22). The quarrelling groups of nonconformists fit the characters of the bear baiters. For their intolerance and quarrelsomeness see L. F. Brown, The Political Activities of Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men (Washington, 1912), p. 138, and the Introduction to Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolation, ed. D. M. Wolfe (New York, 1944).

²⁰ Quoted by Quintana, "Butler-Oxenden Correspondence," p. 4.

²¹Lives of the Poets, I, 210.

²² It is possible that the fact that "his Toledo trusty For want of fighting was grown rusty" (I. i. 359-60) signifies no more than that there had been peace before the civil wars broke out.

²³ Robert K. Root, The Poetical Career of Alexander Pope (Princeton, 1938), p. 201.

²⁴Samuel Butler, p. 101. The section continues to p. 113.

²⁵ Sidney Lee, article on Lilly in DNB [Dictionary of National Biography].

²⁶ Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in England (Washington, 1911), p. 166.

²⁷Lives of the Poets, I, 210.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 216.

²⁹ Preface, p. ii.

³⁰ See Curtiss, "Butler's Sidrophel."

³¹ II, 7, and II, 105.

³² Quintana, "Butler-Oxenden Correspondence."

³³ That Whachum's character too has more than one specific source is apparent. See Grey's note, II, 34, and Butler's own note in Waller's edition of Hudibras, p. 193.

³⁴ I, 107.

³⁵ Quoted by Quintana, "Butler-Oxenden Correspondence," p. 4.

³⁶ In "Hudibras and the Politics of 1647."