Hudibras Samuel Butler (free novels to read TXT) 📖

Quoth Hudibras, You lie so ope,
That I, without a telescope,
Can mind your tricks out, and descry
Where you tell truth, and where you lie:
For Anaxagoras, long agone,125
Saw hills, as well as you, i’ th’ moon;
And held the sun was but a piece
Of red-hot ir’n, as big as Greece;
Believ’d the Heav’ns were made of stone,
Because the sun had voided one;
And, rather than he would recant
Th’ opinion, suffer’d banishment.

But what, alas! is it to us,
Whether i’ th’ moon men thus or thus
Do eat their porridge, cut their corns,
Or whether they have tails or horns?
What trade from thence can you advance,
But what we nearer have from France?
What can our travellers bring home,
That is not to be learnt at Rome?
What politics, or strange opinions,
That are not in our own dominions?
What science can he brought from thence,
In which we do not here commence?
What revelations, or religions,
That are not in our native regions?
Are sweating lanterns, or screen-fans,
Made better there than th’ are in France?
Or do they teach to sing and play
O’ th’ guitar there a newer way?
Can they make plays there, that shall fit
The public humour, with less wit?
Write wittier dances, quainter shows,
Or fight with more ingenious blows?
Or does the Man i’ th’ Moon look big,
And wear a huger periwig,
Show in his gait or face more tricks
Than our own native lunatics?
And if w’ outdo him here at home,
What good of your design can come?
As wind, i’ th’ hypocondries pent,
Is but a blast if downward sent,
But if it upward chance to fly,
Becomes new Light and prophecy;
So when your speculations tend
Above their just and useful end,
Although they promise strange and great
Discoveries of things far set,
They are but idle dreams and fancies,
And savour strongly of the ganzas.
Tell me but what’s the natural cause,
Why on a sign no painter draws
The full moon ever, but the half?
Resolve that with your Jacob’s staff;
Or why wolves raise a hubbub at her,
And dogs howl when she shines in water;
And I shall freely give my vote,
You may know something more remote.

At this deep Sidrophel look’d wise,
And staring round with owl-like eyes,
He put his face into a posture
Of sapience, and began to bluster:
For having three times shook his head
To stir his wit up, thus he said:
Art has no mortal enemies,
Next ignorance, but owls and geese:
Those consecrated geese in orders,
That to the Capitol were warders;
And being then upon patrol,
With noise alone beat off the Gaul:
Or those Athenian sceptic owls,
That will not credit their own souls;
Or any science understand,
Beyond the reach of eye or hand;
But meas’ring all things by their own
Knowledge, hold nothing’s to be known:
Those wholesale critics, that in coffee-
Houses cry down all philosophy,
And will not know upon what ground
In nature we our doctrine found,
Altho’ with pregnant evidence
We can demonstrate it to sense,
As I just now have done to you,
Foretelling what you came to know.
Were the stars only made to light
Robbers and burglarers by night?
To wait on drunkards, thieves, gold-finders,
And lovers solacing behind doors,
Or giving one another pledges
Of matrimony under hedges?
Or witches simpling, and on gibbets
Cutting from malefactors snippets?
Or from the pillory tips of ears
Of rebel saints and perjurers?
Only to stand by, and look on,
But not know what is said or done?
Is there a constellation there,
That was not born and bred up here;
And therefore cannot be to learn
In any inferior concern?
Were they not, during all their lives,
Most of ’em pirates, whores and thieves?
And is it like they have not still
In their old practices some skill?
Is there a planet that by birth
Does not derive its house from earth?
And therefore probably must know,
What is and hath been done below.
Who made the Balance, or whence came
The Bull, the Lion, and the Ram?
Did not we here the Argo rig?
Make Berenice’s periwig?
Whose liv’ry does the Coachman wear?
Or who made Cassiopeia’s chair?
And therefore, as they came from hence,
With us may hold intelligence.
Plato deny’d the world can be
Govern’d without geometry,
(For money b’ing the common scale
Of things by measure, weight, and tale,
In all th’ affairs of church and state,
’Tis both the balance and the weight);
Then much less can it be without
Divine astrology made out;
That puts the other down in worth,
As far as heav’n ’s above the earth.

These reasons (quoth the Knight) I grant
Are something more significant
Than any that the learned use
Upon this subject to produce;
And yet th’ are far from satisfactory,
T’ establish and keep up your factory.
Th’ Egyptians say, the Sun has twice
Shifted his setting and his rise;126
Twice has he risen in the west,
As many times set in the east:
But whether that be true or no,
The devil any of you know.
Some hold the heavens like a top,127
And kept by circulation up,
And, wer’t not for their wheeling round,
They’d instantly fall to the ground:
As sage Empedocles of old,
And from him modern authors hold.
Plato believ’d the Sun and Moon
Below all other planets run.128
Some Mercury, some Venus, seat
Above the Sun himself in height.
The learned Scaliger complain’d,
’Gainst what Copernicus maintain’d,129
That, in twelve hundred years and odd,
The Sun had left its ancient road,
And nearer to time earth is come
’Bove fifty thousand miles from home:
Swore ’twas a most notorious flam;
And he that had so little shame
To vent such fopperies abroad,
Deserv’d to have his rump well claw’d;
Which Monsieur Bodin hearing, swore
That he deserv’d the rod much more,
That durst upon a truth give doom,
He knew less than the Pope of Rome.
Cardan believ’d great states depend
Upon the tip o’ th’ Bear’s tail’s end;130
That, as she whisk’d it t’wards the Sun,
Strew’d mighty empires up and down;
Which others say must needs be false,
Because your true bears have no tails.
Some say the Zodiac constellations
Have long since chang’d their antique stations
Above a sign, and prove the same
In Taurus now, once in the Ram;
Affirm the trigons chopp’d and chang’d,
The wat’ry with the fiery rang’d:
Then