The great fource of pleasure is variety. Uniformity must tire at last, though it be uniformity of excellence. We love to expect; and, when expectation is disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting. For this impatience of the prefent, whoever would please must make provifion. The fkilful writer irritat, mulcet, makes a due diftribution of the ftill and animated parts. It is for want of this artful intertexture, and thofe neceffary changes, that the whole of a book may be tedious, though all the parts are praised.

If inexhauftible wit could give perpetual pleasure, no eye would ever leave half-read the work of Butler; for what poet has ever brought fo many remote images fo happily together? It is fcarcely poffible to peruse a page without finding fome affociation of images that was never found before. By the first paragraph the reader is amufed, by the next he is delighted, and by a few more ftrained to aftonishment; but aftonishment is a toilfome pleafure; he is foon weary of wondering, and longs to be diverted.

Omnia vult belle Matho dicere, dic aliquando

Et bene, dic neutrum, dic aliquando male.

Imagination is useless without knowledge: nature gives in vain the power of combination, unless ftudy and obfervation fupply materials to be combined. Butler's treasures of knowledge appear proportioned to his expence: whatever topick employs his mind, he fhews himself qualified to expand and illuftrate it with all the acceffaries that books can furnifh: he is found not only to have travelled the beaten road, but the bye-paths of literature; not only to have

taken

taken general furveys, but to have examined particulars with minute inspection.

If the French boaft the learning of Rabelais, we need not be afraid of confronting them with Butler.

But the most valuable parts of his performance are those which retired ftudy and native wit cannot fupply. He that merely makes a book from books may be useful, but can fcarcely be great. Butler had not suffered life to glide befide him unseen or unobserved. He had watched with great diligence the operations of human nature, and traced the effects of opinion, humour, intereft, and paffion. From fuch remarks proceeded that great number of fententious diftichs which have paffed into converfation, and are added as proverbial axioms to the general ftock of practical knowledge.

When any work has been viewed and admired, the first question of intelligent curiofity is, how was it performed? Hudibras was not a hasty effusion; it was not produced by a fudden tumult of imagination, or a fhort paroxyfm of violent labour. To accumulate fuch a mass of fentiments at the call of accidental defire, or of fudden neceffity, is beyond the reach and power of the most active and comprehenfive mind. I am informed by Mr. Thyer of Manchester, that excellent editor of this author's reliques, that he could fhew fomething like Hudibras in profe. He has in his poffeffion the common-place book, in which Butler repofited not fuch events and precepts as are gathered by reading, but fuch remarks, fimilitudes, allufions, affemblages, or inferences, as occafion prompted, or meditation produced, those

thoughts that were generated in his own mind, and might be usefully applied to fome future purpose. Such is the labour of thofe who write for immortality.

*

But human works are not easily found without a perishable part. Of the antient poets every reader feels the mythology tedious and oppreffive. Of Hudibras, the manners, being founded on opinions, are temporary and local, and therefore become every day lefs intelligible, and less striking. What Cicero fays of philofophy is true likewife of wit and humour, that "time effaces the fictions of opinions, and con"firms the determinations of Nature." Such manners as depend upon standing relations and general paffions are co-extended with the race of man; but thofe modifications of life and peculiarities of practice, which are the progeny of error and perverfenefs, or at beft of fome accidental influence or tranfient perfuafion, muft perifh with their parents.

Much therefore of that humour which transported the last * century with merriment is loft to us, who do not know the four folemnity, the fullen fuperftition, the gloomy morofeness, and the ftubborn scruples, of the antient Puritans; or, if we knew them, derive our information only from books, or from tradition, have never had them before our eyes, and cannot but by recollection and ftudy understand the lines in which they are fatirifed. Our grandfathers knew the picture from the life; we judge of the life by contemplating the picture.

It is scarcely poffible, in the regularity and compofure of the prefent time, to image the tumult of abfurdity, and clamour of contradiction, which per

*The Seventeenth. N.

plexed doctrine, difordered practice, and difturbed both public and private quiet, in that age when fubordination was broken, and awe was hiffed away; when any unfettled innovator, who could hatch a half-formed notion, produced it to the publick; when every man might become a preacher, and almost every preacher could collect a congregation.

The wifdom of the nation is very reasonably fupposed to refide in the parliament. What can be concluded of the lower claffes of the people, when in one of the parliaments fummoned by Cromwell it was seriously proposed, that all the records in the Tower should be burnt, that all memory of things paft should be effaced, and that the whole fyftem of life fhould commence anew?

We have never been witneffes of animofities excited by the use of mince-pies and plumb-porridge; nor feen with what abhorrence thofe, who could eat them at all other times of the year, would fhrink from them in December. An old Puritan who was alive in my childhood, being at one of the feasts of the church invited by a neighbour to partake his cheer, told him, that if he would treat him at an alehouse with beer brewed for all times and feasons, he fhould accept his kindness, but would have none of his fuperftitious meats or drinks.

One of the puritanical tenets was the illegality of all games of chance; and he that reads Gataker upon Lots may fee how much learning and reafon one of the firft scholars of his age thought neceffary, to prove that it was no crime to throw a die, or play at cards, or to hide a fhilling for the reckoning.

Aftrology, however, against which fo much of the fatire is directed, was not more the folly of the Puritans than of others. It had in that time a very extenfive dominion. Its predictions raised hopes and fears in minds which ought to have rejected it with contempt. In hazardous undertakings care was taken to begin under the influence of a propitious planet; and, when the king was prifoner in Carifbrook Caftle, an aftrologer was confulted what hour would be found moft favourable to an escape.

What effect this poem had upon the publick, whether it shamed impofture, or reclaimed credulity, is not eafily determined. Cheats can feldom ftand long against laughter. It is certain that the credit of planetary intelligence wore faft away; though fome men of knowledge, and Dryden among them, continued to believe that conjunctions and oppofitions had a great part in the diftribution of good or evil, and in the government of fublunary things.

Poetical Action ought to be probable upon certain suppositions; and fuch probability as burlesque requires is here violated only by one incident. Nothing can fhew more plainly the neceffity of doing fomething, and the difficulty of finding fomething to do, than that Butler was reduced to transfer to his hero the flagellation of Sancho, not the most agreeable fiction of Cervantes; very fuitable indeed to the manners of that age and nation, which ascribed wonderful efficacy to voluntary penances; but fo remote from the practice and opinions of the Hudibraftick time, that judgment and imagination are alike offended,

The