CANTO II.]
HUDIBRAS.
207
'Twas well we made so resolute
A brave retreat, without pursuit;[1]
For if we had not, we had sped
Much worse, to be in triumph led;870
Than which the ancients held no state
Of man's life more unfortunate.
But if this bold adventure e'er
Do chance to reach the widow's ear,
It may, being destin'd to assert875
Her sex's honour, reach her heart:
And as such homely treats, they say,
Portend good fortune,[2] so this may.
Vespasian being daub'd with dirt[3]
Was destin'd to the empire for't;[4]880
And from a scavenger did come
To be a mighty prince in Rome:
- ↑ In both editions of 1664, this line ends "—t' avoid pursuit."
- ↑ The original of the coarse proverb here alluded to (Handbook of Proverbs, p. 131) was the glorious battle of Agincourt, when the English were so afflicted with the dysentery that most of them chose to fight naked from the girdle downward. It is thus cited in the Rump Songs, vol. ii. p. 39.
There's another proverb gives the Rump for his crest,
But Alderman Atkins made it a jest,
That of all kinds of luck, shitten luck is the best. - ↑ This and the five following lines were not in the two first editions, but were added in 1674.
- ↑ Suetonius, in the Life of Vespasian, sect., v., says, When he was ædile, Caligula, being enraged at his not taking care to keep the streets clean, ordered him to be covered with mud, which the soldiers heaped up even into the bosom of his prætexta; and there were not wanting those who foretold that at some time the state, trodden down and neglected through civil discord, would come into his guardianship, or as it were into his bosom," See Bohn's Suetonius, p. 446. But Dio Cassius, with all his superstition, acknowledges that the secret meaning of the circumstance was not discovered till after the event. Nash thinks that Butler might also have in view the following story told of Oliver Cromwell, afterward Lord Protector. When young he was invited by Sir Oliver Cromwell, his uncle and godfather, to some Christmas revels given for the entertainment of King James I,, when, indulging his love for fun, he went to the ball with his hands and clothes besmeared with excrement, to the great disgust of the company; for which outrage the master of misrule ordered him to be ducked in the horsepond. Noble's Memoirs of the Cromwell Family, vol. i. p. 98, and Bate's Elenchus Motuum,
