Of Butler himself we know little; he is one of the most obscure figures in our literature.  During the days of Cromwell’s Protectorate he was in the employ of Sir Samuel Luke, a crabbed and extreme type of Puritan nobleman, and here he collected his material and probably wrote the first part of his burlesque, which, of course, he did not dare to publish until after the Restoration.

Hudibras is plainly modeled upon the Don Quixote of Cervantes.  It describes the adventures of a fanatical justice of the peace, Sir Hudibras, and of his squire, Ralpho, in their endeavor to put down all innocent pleasures.  In Hudibras and Ralpho the two extreme types of the Puritan party, Presbyterians and Independents, are mercilessly ridiculed.  When the poem first appeared in public, in 1663, after circulating secretly for years in manuscript, it became at once enormously popular.  The king carried a copy in his pocket, and courtiers vied with each other in quoting its most scurrilous passages.  A second and a third part, continuing the adventures of Hudibras, were published in 1664 and 1668.  At best the work is a wretched doggerel, but it was clever enough and strikingly original; and since it expressed the Royalist spirit towards the Puritans, it speedily found its place in a literature which reflects every phase of human life.  A few odd lines are given here to show the character of the work, and to introduce the reader to the best known burlesque in our language: 

      He was in logic a great critic,
    Profoundly skilled in analytic;
    He could distinguish, and divide
    A hair ’twixt south and southwest side;
    On either which he would dispute,
    Confute, change hands, and still confute;
    He’d undertake to prove, by force
    Of argument, a man’s no horse;
    He’d run in debt by disputation,
    And pay with ratiocination. 
    For he was of that stubborn crew
    Of errant saints, whom all men grant
    To be the true Church Militant;
    Such as do build their faith upon
    The holy text of pike and gun;
    Decide all controversies by
    Infallible artillery;
    And prove their doctrine orthodox
    By apostolic blows and knocks;
    Compound for sins they are inclined to,
    By damning those they have no mind to.

HOBBES AND LOCKE.  Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is one of the writers that puzzle the historian with a doubt as to whether or not he should be included in the story of literature.  The one book for which he is famous is called Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth (1651).  It is partly political, partly a philosophical book, combining two central ideas which challenge and startle the attention, namely, that self-interest is the only guiding power of humanity, and that blind submission to rulers is the only true basis of government.[179] In a word, Hobbes reduced human nature to its purely animal aspects, and then asserted confidently that there was nothing more to study.  Certainly, therefore, as a reflection of the underlying spirit of Charles and his followers it has no equal in any purely literary work of the time.