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PDFTh’ attempt of victory to come.
’Tis sung, there is a valiant Mamaluke
In foreign land, yclep’d —
To whom we have been oft compar’d 905
For person, parts; address, and beard;
Both equally reputed stout,
And in the same cause both have fought:
He oft in such attempts as these
Came off with glory and success; 910
Nor will we fail in th’ execution,
For want of equal resolution.
Honour is like a
With brisk attempt and putting on;
With ent’ring manfully, and urging; 915
Not slow approaches, like a virgin.
’Tis said, as yerst the Phrygian Knight,
So ours with rusty steel did smite
His Trojan horse, and just as much
He mended pace upon the touch;
920
But from his empty stomach groan’d
Just as that hollow beast did sound,
And angry answer’d from behind,
With brandish’d tail and blast of wind.
So have I seen, with armed heel,
925
A wight bestride a Common-weal;
While still the more he kick’d and spurr’d,
The less the sullen jade has stirr’d.
Notes to Part I, Canto I.
1. When civil a dudgeon, &c.] Dudgeon. Who made the alterations in the last Edition of this poem I know not, but they are certainly sometimes for the worse; and I cannot believe the Author would have changed a word so proper in that place as dudgeon for that of fury, as it is in the last Edition. To take in dudgeon, is inwardly to resent some injury or affront; a sort of grumbling in the gizzard, and what is previous to actual fury.
24 b That could as well, &c.] Bind over to the Sessions as being a Justice of the Peace in his County, as well as Colonel of a Regiment of Foot in the Parliament’s army, and a committee-Man.
38 c As Montaigne, &c.] Montaigne, in his Essays, supposes his cat thought him a fool, for losing his time in playing with her.
62 d To make some, &c.] Here again is an alteration without any amendment; for the following lines,
And truly, so he was, perhaps,
Not as a Proselyte, but for Claps,
Are thus changed,
And truly so, perhaps, he was;
’Tis many a pious Christian’s case.
The Heathens had an odd opinion, and have a strange reason why Moses imposed the law of circumcision on the Jews, which, how untrue soever, I will give the learned reader an account of without translation, as I find it in the annotations upon Horace, wrote by my worthy and learned friend Mr. William Baxter, the great restorer of the ancient and promoter of modern learning. Hor. Sat. 9. Sermon. Lib. I. — Curtis; quia pellicula imminuti sunt; quia Moses Rex Judoeorum, cujus Legibus reguntur, negligentia PHIMOZEIS medicinaliter exsectus est, & ne soles esset notabi omnes circumcidi voluit.
