SOURCE: "Patterns of Anarchy and Oppression in Samuel Butler's Hudibras," in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, Winter, 1971, pp. 294-314.

In the following essay, Seidel outlines Butler's use of satire in his depiction of anarchy, oppression, and the individual and social degeneration of mankind.

Dr. Johnson said of Hudibras that if "inexhaustible wit could give perpetual pleasure no eye would ever leave half-read the work of Butler."¹ It is partly because Butler's wit is indeed inexhaustible that many people, like Johnson, have praised him, calling his major work, Hudibras, "one of those compositions of which a nation may justly boast."² But because Butler himself, apart from his wit, seems exhaustible, many people have left off Hudibras "half-read." Not only is Butler considered long-winded and a bit preposterous, but his reputation as a poet appears to have followed the same course as that of his own Sir Hudibras as a knight...