propensity to plagiarism is the more to be regretted, as he possessed wherewithal to subsist respectably without it. The Knight of the Kirk was probably intended as the commencement of a work of some length: the part which Meston completed, has no action in it, and consists of a somewhat wearisome detail of the mental and bodily endowments of Sir John Presbyter, the personification of the Scottish Kirk, his dress, arms, opinions, and accomplishments.

"Now since you have our hero's name,
Our epick poem should be lame,
Unless his pedigree we trace,

And tell whence he derives his race;
Without the help of divination,
"Tis hard to tell his generation;

For as it happens in old states,

Which have outliv'd our common dates,
The longer time they have endur'd,
Their origin is more obscur'd,

And if you trace their births and æras,
You'll meet with nothing but chimæras.
Yea, some of them have been so vain,
As all ancestors to disdain,
Except our common mother earth,
To which alone they ow'd their birth,
As if like mushrooms they had sprung
From heaps of rotten earth and dung;
For, trace the old and young, you'll still
Find, that they meet on the dunghill.
So some alledge our doughty knight
Was come of Chaos and old Night,
Proving that he came from that border
Because he hates all form and order.
Could we believe himself, he'll tell us,
He is one of th' apostles' fellows,
With whom he did sit cheek by jowl,
And voted when they made their poll,
As member of their first assembly,

Which makes him be with them so homely.
He'll not call any of them saint

Unless they'd take the covenant;

But this is what few will allow him,
For the apostles never knew him.

As bravest soldiers are seen,

In time of war, to look most keen,

Who hang their head and droop their snout,

When peace comes in and war goes out;
Or as some herbs that love the shade,
But in the sun-shine die or fade;
Or as the owl that hates the light,
And only seems to live in night:
Just so, Sir John, in time of war,
Appeared like a blazing star,

But languished with sore disease,
And droop'd in times of peace and ease.
No wonder then if still he hates
All peaceful and well-order'd states;
For, to his glory or his shame,
He cannot live but in a flame.

He's still resolv'd, whate'er betide him,
That none shall live in peace beside him.
A pair of gauntlet gloves he had,
For boxing, and for preaching made,
With which he dealt his deadly blows,
And thump'd the pulpit and his foes;
Well vers'd he was in both these trades,
Of handling texts and rusty blades;
In both he had such matchless skill,
With either he could wound or kill;
And

many a head had got contusions
With both these weapons, in confusions;
For when he kill'd not by the word,
He did it with the powerful sword,
And made his enemies perplex'd
Either with awful sword or text.
He was content to fright his foes,
Either with paraphrase or blows;
And if the one did not succeed,
The other knock'd them in the head.
But far less vict'ry he had got
By texts, than blows and musket-shot;
For like the wight with the tame pigeon,
He cudgell'd men into religion."

Meston's Works.

The following definition of truth is neatly written.

"Truth is an atom or a point

Which never man could yet disjoint,

And make two contradictions share it;
For if you try to eke or pare it,

Or to dissect it, or dispose it,
"Twixt contradictions you will lose it;
For tho' this little thing, we know,
Can either lodge in yea or no:
Yet 'twixt these two it will not vary,
Whenever they are found contrary,
Nor like a trimmer take it's post,
With either side that rules the roast:

It dwells not with these luke-warm sinners,
Who for no side will lose their dinners,
But shift about and chuse the upper-

Side, where they get the better supper."

Meston's Works.

Meston's Mob contra Mob, and some of his Mother Grim's Tales, are close imitations of Butler; but we have already devoted a sufficient space to his productions.

Whatever quantum of merit these imitations may possess, they have one distinguishing characteristic unlike their great original: whether written for purposes of mirth or malice, they never rise above their subject. Butler's path was equally narrow, but it could not narrow his mind. He crowds into his confined circle all the treasures of wit and the accumulations of learning. He gives full measure to his readers, heaped up, and running over. Thought crowds upon thought and witticism upon witticism, in rapid and dazzling succession. Every topic and every incident is made the most of: his bye-play always tells. Many of his happiest sallies appear to escape him as if by accident; many of his hardest hits appear to be merely chance-blows. A description of a bear-ward brings in a sneer at Sir Kenelm Digby and his powder of sympathy, and an account of a tinker's doxey introduces a pleasantry on Sir William Davenant's Gondibert. There is always an under current of satiric allusion beneath the main stream of his satire. juggling of astrology, the besotting folly of alchemy, the transfusion of blood, the sympathetic medicines, the learned trifling of experimental philosophers, the knavery of fortune-tellers and the folly of their dupes, the marvellous relations of travellers, the subtleties of the school-divines, the freaks of fashion, the fantastic extravagancies of lovers, the affectations of poetry, and the absurdities of romance, are interwoven with his subject, and soften down and relieve his dark delineation of fanatical violence and perfidy. Of this continuity of satire, Butler's imitators had no conception, or were too poor in spirit and invention to attempt to follow in his steps. They seem to have taken it into their heads that they had only to bid defiance to grammar and decency, to be vulgar in thought and coarse in

The

expression, to clip and torture the English language without remorse, to split occasionally an unfortunate word in two, and to attach the dislocated syllables to different lines, adding a due proportion of double and treble rhymes, to be perfectly Hudibrastic. Indeed, much of their versification is so rugged and uneven as to vie with the jolting of the road known by the name of the Devil's back-bone. They display occasionally some share of humour, but in wit they are poor indeed. Butler was by no means deficient in humour, but it was cast into a dim eclipse by the predominance of his wit. His characters do not show themselves off unconsciously as fools or coxcombs-they are set up as marks at which the author levels all the shafts of his ridicule and sarcasm. These imitations in general are much too long a burlesque in a dozen cantos is too serious a joke.

To conclude: we consider the manner of Butler as peculiarly easy of imitation, (which may account for the number of works at the head of this article); his matter as inimitable, except by an equal or a greater genius. We do not look upon successfu! imitators as little better than the mocking-bird, who copies the melody of other songsters without possessing any note of its own. To catch not only the style and turn of thought of another writer, but to express the same thoughts, clothed in the same language, which that writer would, in all probability, have thought and written on a given subject, requires a considerable portion of the genius of the original, as well as a thorough insight into the mechanism of his mind. The author of the most successful series of imitations which perhaps has ever appeared (the Rejected Addresses) has shown himself an original poet of no ordinary powers. Sir Walter Scott's imitations of Crabbe and Moore are eminently happy, and Hogg's half-serious, halfludicrous imitations, in the Poetic Mirror, almost strike us as fac-similes. We have no doubt Lord Byron could write an excellent imitation either of Milton or Butler, though, we confess, we have no wish to see him attempt either. We shall conclude with an extract from some scholastic pleasantries by Mr. Moore, which, as they are not very likely to be familiar to our Hudibrastic readers, we shall make no apology for introducing. If they have not the terseness and pregnant brevity of Butler, they have much of his point and ingenious subtlety.

"But, to begin my subject rhyme—
"Twas just about this dev'lish time,
When scarce there happen'd any frolics,

That were not done by Diabolics,

A cold and loveless son of Lucifer,

Who woman scorn'd, nor knew the use of her;

A branch of Dagon's family,

(Which Dagon, whether he or she,

Is a dispute that vastly better is
Referr'd to Scaliger et cæteris,)
Finding that in this cage of fools,
The wisest sots adorn the schools,
Took it at once his head Satanic in,
To grow a great scholastic mannikin;
A doctor, quite as learn'd and fine as
Scotus John or Tom Aquinas,
Lully, Hales irrefragabilis,
Or any doctor of the rabble is!
In languages, the polyglotts,
Compar'd to him, were Babel sots;
He chatter'd more than ever Jew did,
Sanhedrim and priest included.
Priest and holy Sanhedrim

Were one-and-seventy fools to him!

But chief the learned dæmon felt a

Zeal so strong for gamma, delta,

That, all for Greek and learning's glory,

He nightly tippled ' Græco more,'

And never paid a bill or balance
Except upon the Grecian Kalends;

From whence your scholars, when they want tick,
Say, to be at-tick's to be on tick!
In logics, he was quite Ho Panu!
Knew as much as ever man knew.
He fought the combat syllogistic
With so much skill and art eristic,

That though you were the learned Stagyrite,
At once upon the hip he had you right!
Likewise to show his mighty knowledge, he,
On things unknown in physiology,
Wrote many a chapter to divert us,
Like that great little man Albertus,
Wherein he shew'd the reason why,
When children first are heard to cry,
If boy the baby chance to be
He cries O A!-if girl, O E!—
They are, says he, exceeding fair hints
Respecting their first sinful parents;
'Oh Eve!' exclaimeth little madam,
While little master cries, 'Oh Adam!'
In point of science astronomical,
It seem'd to him extremely comical
That once a year the frolic sun
Should call at Virgo's house for fun,