Butler, Samuel, Hudibras, A Poem, […], With Notes selected From Grey and other Authors; To which are prefixed, A Life of the Author, and a Preliminary Discourse on the Civil War, &c. In Two Volumes. A New Edition, Embellished with Engravings. Printed by W. Lewis for Thomas M’Lean, 1819

2 vols., large 8vo., contemporary half leather binding with green leather, gilt-lettered labeling to spine and raised bands, spine divided into 6 compartments with gilt ornamentation, deckle edges and ample margins, pp. lxxiv (‘Advertisement’, ‘The Life of Samuel Butler’, Preliminary Discourse on the Civil War and Usurpation’), 444; 494, with 12 hand-coloured plates, after I. Clark, illustrating the poem. Butler’s verse satire against Puritanism, with extensive notes by Rev. Treadway Russel Nash. Written in the seventeenth century and published only four years after Charles II had been restored to the throne and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell being completely over, the poem found an appreciative audience. The satire is not balanced as Butler was fiercely royalist and only the parliamentarian side are singled out for ridicule. Butler also uses the work to parody some of the dreadful poetry of the time. The epic tells the story of Sir Hudibras, a knight errant who is described dramatically and with laudatory praise that is so thickly applied as to be absurd, and the conceited and arrogant person is visible beneath.