Page:Hudibras - Volume 1 (Butler, Nash, Bohn; 1859).djvu/46

xxii blockhead, he disdained to stoop; the vices and follies of the age in which he lived were the quarry at which he flew; these he concentrated, and embodied in the persons of Hudibras, Ralpho, Sidrophel, &c., so that each character in this admirable poem should be considered, not as an individual, but as a species.

Meanings still more remote and chimerical than mere personal allusions, have by some been discovered in Hudibras and the poem would have wanted one of those marks which distinguish works of superior merit, if it had not been supposed to be a perpetual allegory. Writers of eminence, Homer, Plato, and even the Holy Scriptures themselves, have been most wretchedly misrepresented by commentators of this cast. Thus some have thought that the hero of the piece was intended to represent the parliament, especially that part of it which favoured the Presbyterian discipline. When in the stocks, he is said to personate the Presbyterians after they had lost their power; his first exploit against the bear, whom he routs, is assumed to represent the parliament getting the better of the king; after this great victory he courts a widow for her jointure, which is supposed to mean the riches and power of the kingdom; being scorned by her, he retires, but the revival of hope to the Royalists, draws forth both him and his squire, a little before Sir George Booth's insurrection. Magnano, Cerdon, Talgol, &c., though described as butchers, coblers, tinkers, are made to represent officers in the parliament army, whose original professions, perhaps, were not much more noble: some have imagined Magnano to be the Duke of Albemarle, and his getting thistles from a barren land, to allude to his power in Scotland, especially after the defeat of Booth. Trulla means his wife; Crowdero Sir George Booth, whose bringing in of Bruin alludes to his endeavours to restore the king; his oaken leg, called the better one, is the king's cause, his other leg the Presbyterian discipline; his fiddle-case, which in sport they hung as a trophy on the whipping-post, is the directory. Ralpho, they say, represents the Parliament of Independents, called Barebone's Parliament; Bruin is sometimes the royal person, sometimes the king's adherents: Orsin represents the royal party; Talgol the city of London; Colon the bulk of the people. All these joining together against the Knight, represent Sir George