SOURCE: "From Polemic Character to Verse Satire: Hudibras Part One," in The Polemic Character, 1640-1661, University of Nebraska Press, 1955, pp. 115-26.

In the following essay, Boyce asserts that Butler's "biting wit and astonishing satiric allusion" make Hudibras the "best-known satire upon the Puritans."

The best-known satire upon the Puritans, although composed by a Character-writer,¹ was not a Character. It was, indeed, a work of much greater literary inspiration and artistic complexity than any of the Theophrastan and polemic sketches of this period. Yet part of the success of Hudibras was due to biting wit and astonishing satiric allusion of the sort exploited in the Characters of Presbyterian and Independent, caviller and diurnalist, projector and fanatic, published both in prose and in verse from 1640 to 1661. Butler later composed his own Characters not infrequently with the assistance of ideas and witticisms from Overbury and Earle, and it is not surprising...