98
HUDIBRAS.
[PART I.
So some diseases have been found
Only to seize upon the sound.[1]
He that gets her by heart, must say her
The back-way, like a witch's prayer.[2]
Meanwhile the Knight had no small task345
To compass what he durst not ask:
He loves, but dares not make the motion;
Her ignorance is his devotion:[3]
Like caitiff vile, that for misdeed
Hides with his face to rump of steed;[4]350
Or rowing scull, he 's fain to love,
Look one way and another move;
Or like a tumbler that does play
His game, and look another way,[5]
Until he seize upon the coney;355
Just so does he by matrimony.
- ↑ "It is common for horses, as well as men, to be afflicted with sciatica, or rheumatism, to a great degree, for weeks together, and when they once get clear of the fit, never perhaps hear any more of it while they live: for these distempers, with some others, called salutary distempers, seldom or never seize upon an unsound body." Bracken's Farriery Improved, ii. 46. The meaning then, from ver. 338, is this: As the widow loved none that were disposed to love her, so cowards fight with none that are disposed to fight with them: so some diseases seize upon none that are already distempered, but upon those only who, through the firmness of their constitution, seem least liable to such attacks.
- ↑ That is, the Lord's Prayer read backwards. The Spectator, No. 61, speaking of an epigram called the Witch's Prayer, says, it fell into verse whether read backwards or forwards, excepting only that it cursed one way and blessed the other." See Spectator, No. 110, 117, upon Witchcraft.
- ↑ A banter on the Papists, who, denying to the laity the use of the Bible or Prayer-book in the vulgar tongue, are charged with asserting, that "ignorance is the mother of devotion." The wit here is in making the widow's ignorance of his love the cause of the Knight's devotion.
- ↑ * Dr Grey supposes this may allude to five members of the army, who, on the 6th of March, 1648, were forced to ride in New Palace yard with their faces towards their horses' tails, had their swords broken over their heads, and were cashiered, for petitioning the Rump for relief of the oppressed commonwealth.
- ↑ A dog, called by the Latins Vertagus, that rolls himself in a heap, and tumbles over, disguising his shape and motion, till he is near enough to his object to seize it by a sudden spring. The tumbler was generally used in hunting rabbits. See Caius de Canibus Britannicis (Kay, on Englishe Dogges, sin. 4to, Lond. 1576), and Martial, lib. xiv. Epig. 200.
