ed astronomers think they have made a great discovery, but it
is really owing to a mouse and some gnats having got into their
telescope."

The light, short metre in which Butler composed his comic narrative was
well suited to the subject, and corresponded to the "swift iambics" of
Archilochus. Dryden says that double rhymes are necessary companions of
burlesque writing. Addison, however, is of opinion that Hudibras "would
have made a much more agreeable figure in heroics," to which Cowden
Clarke replies, "Why, bless his head! the whole and sole intention of
the poem is _mock_ heroic, and the structure of the verse is burlesque,"
and he also tells us that Butler's rhymes constitute one feature of his
wit. Certainly he had some strange terminations to his lines. Hudibras
speaking of hanging Sidrophel and Whackum says:--

"I'll make them serve for perpendiclars
As true as e'er were used by bricklayers."

One of the bear-baiting mob annoys Rapho's steed, who

"Began to kick, and fling, and wince,
As if he'd been beside his sense,
Striving to disengage from thistle
That gall'd him sorely under his tail."

Again we have:--

"An ancient castle that commands
Th' adjacent parts, in all the fabric
You shall not see one stone, nor a brick."

The astrologers made an instrument to examine the moon to

"Tell what her diameter per inch is;
And prove that she's not made of green cheese."

By the interchange which often takes place between the poetical and
ludicrous, this roughness of versification, then allowable, appears now
so childish, that Lamb and Cowden Clark mistook it for humour. But we
might extract from the writers of that day many ridiculous rhymes,
evidently intended to be serious.

The humour of Butler was in his time more popular than the sentiment of
Milton, but he obtained no commensurate remuneration. Wycherley kindly
endeavoured to interest Buckingham on his behalf, and had almost
succeeded, when two handsome women passed by, and the Duke left him in
pursuit of them. John Wesley's father has written Butler's epitaph in
imperishable sarcasm:--

"See him when starved to death and turned to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust;
The poet's fate is here in emblem shown,
He asked for bread, and he received--a stone."

CHAPTER VIII.

Comic Drama of the Restoration--Etherege--Wycherley.

The example set by Beaumont and Fletcher seems to have been much
fol