“Here at the fountain’s sliding foot Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside My soul into the boughs does glide: There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.” And this other bit, from his “Appleton House” (Nuneaton), still more full of rural spirit: “How safe, methinks, and strong behind These trees, have I encamped my mind, Where beauty aiming at the heart Bends in some tree its useless dart, And where the world no certain shot Can make, or me it toucheth not. “Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines, Curl me about, ye gadding vines, And, oh, so close your circles lace That I may never leave this place! But, lest your fetters prove too weak Ere I your silken bondage break, Do you, O brambles, chain me too, And, courteous briars, nail me through!” This is better than Rochester’s “Nothing,” and has no smack of Nell Gwynne or of Charles’s court. _Author of Hudibras._ It is altogether a different, and a far less worthy character that I now bring to the notice of the reader. The man is Samuel Butler,[76] and the book _Hudibras_--a jingling, doggerel poem, which at the time of its publication had very great vogue in London, and was the literary sensation of the hour in a court which in those same years[77] had received the great epic of Milton without any noticeable ripple of applause. For myself, I have no great admiration for _Hudibras_, or for Mr. Samuel Butler. He was witty, and wise in a way, and coarse, and had humor; but he was of a bar-room stamp, and although he could make a great gathering of the court people stretch their sides with laughter, it does not appear that he had any high sense of honor, or much dignity of character. Mr. Pepys (whose memoirs you have heard of, and of whom we shall have more to tell) says that he bought the book one day in the Strand because everybody was talking of it--which is the only reason a good many people have for buying books; and, he continues--that having dipped into it, without finding much benefit, he sold it next day in the Strand for half-price. But poor Mr. Pepys, in another and later entry, says, “I have bought _Hudibras_ again; everybody does talk so much of it;” which is very like Mr. Pepys, and very like a good many other buyers of books. _Hudibras_ is, in fact, a great, coarse, rattling, witty lunge at the stiff-neckedness and the cropped heads of the Puritans, which the roistering fellows about the palace naturally enjoyed immensely. He calls the Presbyterians,