HUDIBRAS BY SAMUEL BUTLER Transcriber's Notes: Credits: This e-text was scanned, proofed and edited with a glossary and translations from the Latin by Donal O' Danachair. (kodak_seaside@hotmail.com). The text is that of an edition published in London, 1805. This e-text is hereby placed in the public domain. Spelling and punctuation: These are the same as in the book as far as possible. The AE and OE digraphs have been transcribed as two letters. Greek words have been transliterated. Notes: The notes are identified by letters in the text, thus: <a>. In a few cases the note has no text reference: these are indicated <>. Layout: the line numbers all end in col. 65. View this e-text in a monospaced font such as Courier and they will all line up in the right margin. Latin: All translations are by the transcriber. In the notes, they immediately follow the Latin text in [square brackets]. Translations of Latin phrases in the poem are in the glossary. Disclaimer: these translations are probably very inaccurate - I am no great Latin scholar. HUDIBRAS IN THREE PARTS WRITTEN IN THE TIME OF THE LATE WARS --------------------- BY SAMUEL BUTLER, ESQ. --------------------- WITH ANNOTATIONS AND AN INDEX ------ TO THE READER. Poeta nascitur non fit, [poets are born, not made] is a sentence of as great truth as antiquity; it being most certain, that all the acquired learning imaginable is insufficient to compleat a poet, without a natural genius and propensity to so noble and sublime an art. And we may, without offence, observe, that many very learned men, who have been ambitious to be thought poets, have only rendered themselves obnoxious to that satyrical inspiration our Author wittily invokes: Which made them, though it were in spight Of nature and their stars, to write. On the one side some who have had very little human learning, but were endued with a large share of natural wit and parts, have become the most celebrated (Shakespear, D'Avenant, &c.) poets of the age they lived in. But, as these last are, "Rarae aves in terris," so, when the muses have not disdained the assistances of other arts and sciences, we are then blessed with those lasting monuments of wit and learning, which may justly claim a kind of eternity upon earth. And our author, had his modesty permitted him, might, with Horace, have said, Exegi monumentum aere perennius: [I have raised a memorial more lasting than bronze] Or, with Ovid,