Mr. Lowell illustrated his criticism by copious quotations from “Hudibras.” He concluded thus: It would not be just to leave Butler without adding that he was an honest and apparently disinterested man. He wrote an indignant satire against the vices of Charles the Second’s court. Andrew Marvel, the friend of Milton, and the pattern of incorruptible Republicanism, himself a finer poet and almost as great a wit as Butler--while he speaks contemptuously of the controversialists and satirists of his day, makes a special exception of “Hudibras.” I can fancy John Bunyan enjoying it furtively, and Milton, if he had had such a thing as fun in him, would have laughed over it. Many greater men and greater poets have left a less valuable legacy to their countrymen than Butler, who has made them the heirs of a perpetual fund of good humor, which is more nearly allied to good morals than most people suspect. LECTURE IX POPE (_Thursday Evening, February 6, 1855_) IX There is nothing more curious, whether in the history of individual men or of nations, than the reactions which occur at more or less frequent intervals. The human mind, both in persons and societies, is like a pendulum which, the moment it has reached the limit of its swing in one direction, goes inevitably back as far on the other side, and so on forever. These reactions occur in everything, from the highest to the lowest, from religion to fashions of dress. The close crop and sober doublet of the Puritan were followed by the laces and periwigs of Charles the Second. The scarlet coats of our grandfathers have been displaced by as general a blackness as if the world had all gone into mourning. Tight sleeves alternate with loose, and the full-sailed expanses of Navarino have shrunk to those close-reefed phenomena which, like Milton’s Demogorgon, are the _name_ of bonnet without its appearance. English literature, for half a century from the Restoration, showed the marks of both reaction and of a kind of artistic vassalage to France. From the compulsory saintship and short hair of the Roundheads the world rushed eagerly toward a little wickedness and a wilderness of wig. Charles the Second brought back with him French manners, French morals, and French taste. The fondness of the English for foreign fashions had long been noted. It was a favorite butt of the satirists of Elizabeth’s day. Everybody remembers what _Portia_ says of the English lord: “How oddly is he suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behavior everywhere.”