Page:Hudibras - Volume 1 (Butler, Nash, Bohn; 1859).djvu/34

xii his new patron. At last, an appointment was made, and the place of meeting was agreed to be the Roebuck. Mr Butler and his friend attended accordingly: the Duke joined, them; but as the devil would have it, the door of the room where they sat was open, and his Grace, who had seated himself near it, observing a pimp of his acquaintance (the creature too was a knight) trip along with a brace of ladies, immediately quitted his engagement, to follow another kind of business, at which he was more ready than in doing good offices to those of desert, though no one was better qualified than he was, both in regard to his fortune and understanding. From that time to the day of his death, poor Butler never found the least effect of his promise." The character drawn by the poet of the Duke of Buckingham, which we annex in a note, "A Duke of Bucks is one that has studied the whole body of vice. His parts are disproportionate, and, like a monster, he has more of some and less of others than he should have. He has pulled down all that fabric which nature raised to him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. He has dammed up all those lights that nature made into the noblest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loopholes backwards, by turning day into night, and night into day. His appetite to his pleasures is diseased and crazy, like the pica in a woman, that longs to eat what was never made for food, or a girl in the green sickness, that cats chalk and mortar. Perpetual surfeits of pleasure have filled his mind with bad and vicious humours (as well as his body with a nursery of diseases), which makes him affect new and extravagant ways, as being tired and sick of the old. Continual wine, women, and music put false values upon things, which by custom become habitual, and debauch his understanding, so that he retains no right notion nor sense of things. And as the same dose of the same physic has no operation on those that are much used to it, so his pleasures require a larger proportion of excess and variety to render him sensible of them. He rises, cats, and goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others that go by the new style; and keeps the same hours with owls and the antipodes. He is a great observer of the Tartars' customs, and never eats till the great Cham, having dined, makes proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does not dwell in his house, but haunt it, like an evil spirit that walks all night to disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time, as men do their ways, in the dark; and as blind men arc led by their dogs, so he is governed by some mean servant or other that relates to him his pleasures. He is as inconstant as the moon, which he lives under; and, although he does nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all things very freely, that come will be conclusive that he was not likely to have received any favour at his hands.