Some hang who would not aid your trait'rous act, So witches, who their contracts have forsworn, V. 344. As Lapland witches bottled air.] The pretences of the Laplanders in this respect are thus described by Dr. Heywood: "The Finns and Laplands are acquainted well With such like spirits, and winds to merchants sell; To fill the sails: when you the third untie, Th' intemp❜rate gusts grow vehement and high." And Cleveland thus humourously alludes to the same subject: "The Laplanders, when they would sell a wind, What makes best for him in his answer.] This is probably an allusion to the fable of the Gentlemau and his Lawyer, in Sir Roger l'Estrange. "A gentleman that had a suit in chancery was called upon by his counsel to put in his answer, for fear of incurring a contempt. Well, says the cavalier, and why is not my answer put in then? How should I draw your answer, saith the lawyer, without knowing what you can swear? Pox on your scruples, says the client again, pray do you the part of a lawyer, and let me alone to do the part of a gentleman, and swear it.” V. 369-70. Nature has made man's breast no windows, To publish what he doth within doors.] Neptune, Vulcan, and Minerva (so the ancient fabulists relate) once contended which of them was the most skilful artificer; upon which Neptune made a bull, They appointed Minerva a house, and Vulcan a man Momus judge between them, and he censured them all three. He accused Neptune of imprudence, because he had not placed the bull's horns in his fo. ehead before his eyes; for then the bull might give a stronger and surer blow. He blamed Minerva, because her house was immoveable, so that it could not be carried away, if by chance it was placed among ill neighbours. But he said, that Vulcan was the most imprudent of them all, because he did not make a window in the man's breast, that he might see what his thoughts were, whether he designed some trick, or whether he intended what he spoke. V. 377-8. He that imposes an oath makes it, Not he that for convenience takes it.] The Knight is so fond of this false conceit, that he forgets he had asserted the same before, V. 275-6. The same observation may perhaps be applied to our present custom-house, excise, and other revenue oaths, which in nine cases out of ten cannot but be considered as so many prevocatives to perjury, for which in a moral sense those that take them are less blaineable than those that force them to be administered. V. 385-6. Honour is like that glassy bubble That finds philosophers such trouble.] A small glass tube, or globe, tapering at one end; they are commonly sold at the glass manufactories as a sort of toy, and being broken at the point, crumble into a small powder with a pretty sharp explosion. To find out the cause of this gave the philosophers of Butler's day some trouble, and one or more papers appeared in the Philosophical Transactions on the subject. It is now known that their explosion is occasioned by the rarified air within them. V. 409-10. Our brethren of New England use Choice malefactors to excuse.] Butler probably borrowed the story which he here relates, from Morton's English Canaan (i. e. the province of Massachussets :) "An Englishman having stolen a small parcel of corn from the savage owner; upon complaint, the chief commander of the company called a parliament of his people, where it was determined, that, by the laws of England, it was felony, and for an ex ample the person ought to be executed, to appease the savage: when straightways one arose, moved as it were with some compassion, and said, he could not well gainsay the former sentence, yet he had conceived within the compass of his brain, an embryo, that was of special consequence to be delivered and cherished. He said it would most aptly serve to pacify the savage complainant, and save the life of one that might (if need should be) stand them in good stead, being young and strong, fit for resistance against an enemy, which might come unexpectedly for any thing they knew. The oration made was liked of every one, and he entreated to proceed, to show the means how this might be performed. Says he, you all agree that one must die; and one shall die: this young man's clothes we will take off, and put upon one that is old and impotent, a sickly person, that cannot escape death such is the disease confirmed on him, that die he must: put the young man's clothes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other's stead. Amen, says one, and so many more. And the sentence had in this manner been executed, had it not been dissented from by one person, who exclaimed against it; and so they hanged up the real offender.” Dr. Grey quotes a letter from the committee of Staf ford, to Lenthall, the Speaker, desiring, "that Mr. Henry Steward, a soldier under the Governor of Hartleburgh castle, might be respited from execution, with an offer of two Irishmen to be executed in his stead." Sir Roger l'Estrange's case had like to have been of this kind; for he observes (in his Apology) that when he was imprisoned for his unsuccessful attempt upon Lynn Regis, in Norfolk, in the year 1644, the lords commanded Mills, the judge advocate,to bring his charge upon Wednesday; he appeared accordingly, but with an excuse, that he wanted time to prepare it; however upon Friday it should be ready. Q 2 It was then providentially demanded, whether they meant to hang me first, and then charge me; and if they intended to execute me in the interim? He told them, yes; for the Commons had passed an order, that no reprieve should stand good without the consent of both Houses." And Howell says, "Nothing was so common at that time, as a charge without an accuser, a sentence without a judge, and condemnation without a hearing." V. 419-20. Not out of malice, but mere zeal, Because he was an infidel.] So the Mahometans professed to make war, not for the purpose of conquest, but to propagate the Koran. Howell, in his Letters, relates a story of a Puritan fanatic in Wales, to which Dr. Grey, in his note upon this passage, refers. "There lived, a few years before the Long Parliament, near Clun Castle, in Wales, a good old widow that had two sons grown to men's estate, who, having taken the holy Sacrament on a first Sunday in the month, at their return home they entered into a dispute touching their manner of receiving it. The eldest brother, who was an orthodox Protestant (with the mother,) held it was very fitting, it being the highest act of devotion, that it should be taken in the humblest posture that could be, upon the knees; the other, being a Puritan, opposed it, and the dispute grew high, but it ended without much heat. The next day both being come home to their dinner from their business abroad, the elder brother, as it was his custom, took a nap upon a cushion at the end of the table that he might be the more fresh for labour; the Puritan brother, called Enoch Evans, spying his opportunity, fetched an axe which he had provided, it seems, on purpose, and stealing softly to the table, he chopped off his brother's head; the old woman hearing a noise came suddenly from the next room, and there found the body and head of the eldest son both asunder, and reeking in hot blood. O villain! cried she, thou hast murdered thy brother? Yes, quoth he, and you shall after him; and so striking her down, he dragged her body to the threshold of the door, and there chopped off her head also, and put them both into a bag. But thinking to fly, he was apprehended and brought before the next justice of peace, who chanced to be Sir Robert Howard; so the murderer the assize after' was condemned, and the law could but only hang bim, though he had committed matricide and fratricide." V. 421. The mighty Tottipottimoy.] This was probably some American chief, for Butler never uses names without authority, The modern Anglo-Americans have a psuedo saint in their calendar, called St. Tammony, whose anniversary they celebrate with the same sort of festivity that the Scotch and Irish do the festivals of their patron saints, St. Andrew and St. Patrick: whether Tottipottimoy was of St. Tammony's kindred, we have not the means of determining. V. 439-40. For all philosophers, but the sceptic, Hold whipping may be sympathetic.] "The Sceptics (says Dr. Middleton) observed a perfect neutrality towards all opinion; maintained all of them to be equally uncertain, and that we could not affirm any thing, that it was this or that, since there was as much reason for taking it for the other, or neither of them: thus they lived without engaging themselves on any side of the question." V. 445-6. I know thou wilt not, for my sake, The Knight's proposal here will not fail to remind the reader of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and the memorable adventure of Sancho's whipping to procure the disenchantment of Dulcinea del Toboso. Indeed Butler seems to have taken the hint of this whipping adventure wholly from Cervantes. V. 462. But vile, idolatrous, and popish.] In Catholic countries there are hired disciplinants, who will give themselves flagellation by way of penance for other persons. |
