his engagement to follow another kind of business, at which he was more ready than in doing good offices to men of desert, though no one was better qualified than he, both in regard to his fortune and understanding, to protect them; and, from that time to the day of his death, poor Butler never found the least effect of his promise!' He nevertheless produced the third part of Hudibras in 1678; and died, leaving the poem unfinished, in 1680. He was buried at the expense of his relation, Mr. Longueville, in the church-yard of Covent Garden; and, about sixty years after his death, a Mr. Barber, a printer, and mayor of London, raised a monument to him in Westminster Abbey.

M. S.

SAMUELIS BUTLERI

Qui Stranshamiae in agro Vigorn. nat. 1612.
Obiit Lond. 1680.

Vir doctus imprimis, acer, integer;
Operibus Ingenii, non item præmiis, fœlix:
Satyrici apud nos Carminis Artifex egregius;
Quo simulatæ Religionis Larvam detraxit,
Et Perduellium scalera liberrime exagitavit;
Scriptorum in suo genere, Primus et Postremus.
Ne, cui vivo deerant fere omnia,
Deesset etiam mortuo Tumulus,

Hoc tandem posito marmore, curavit
JOHANNES BARBER, Civis Londinensis, 1721.

Such a repository of wit, and, we may add, of wisdom, as Butler's Hudibras, would be a complete wonder, if we had not been let into the process, by which it was brought into being. 'I am informed (says Dr. Johnson) by Mr. Thyer of Manchester, that excellent editor of this author's reliques, that he could show something like Hudibras in prose. He has in his possession the common-place book, in which Butler reposited not such events and precepts as are gathered from books, but such re

marks, similitudes, allusions, assemblages, or inferences, as occasion prompted, or meditation produced, those thoughts that were generated in his own mind, and might be usefully applied to some future purpose.' From the multiplicity of historical allusions, in every page of the poem, we cannot believe, that the common-place book of our author was exclusively confined to such thoughts only as arose in his own mind; and, indeed, it is the skilful application of such facts and reflections as books alone could afford, that constitutes the chief excellency of this singular performance. The more rational account seems to be, that Butler never opened a book, or looked into the volume of nature, without finding something worthy of annotation and reflection. His mind seems to have challenged and examined every passing thought and occurrence; and he is one of the few, who have taught us by example, that there is no event, in life, no idea of the mind,- -no phenomena, in short, either in the heavens, or upon the earth,-which may not, some time or other, be a source of profit or amusement. Who, but Butler, for instance, would have made any practical use of a common advertisement of a house to let?

And weave fine cobwebs, fit for scull
That's empty when the moon is full;
Such as take lodgings in a head
That's to be let unfurnished.

Pt. I. Cant. 1.

Nor must the naked vulgarity, at which Butler so constantly aims, be reprobated without some qualification. He was preceded by a long line of foppish poets, who would die of a rose, or live upon a sigh;* and who, at the touch of their pens, turned * On a sigh of pity I a year can live; One tear will keep me twenty at least; Fifty a gentle look will give; &c.

Cowley,

every spot of ground into a flower-bed, and every dwelling into a band-box. The excessive refine

We may take this occasion to remark, that Butler's dialogue between Orsin and Echo is a mere parody of one of Cowley's

sonnets.

Philetus for the loss of his Mistress.

'Oh! what hath caus'd my killing miseries?"
'Eyes,' Echo said. "What has detain'd my ease?"
'Ease,' straight the reasonable nymph replies.
"That nothing can my troubled mind appease?"
'Peace,' Echo answers. What, is any nigh?"
Philetus said; she quickly utters. 'Aye.'
'Is 't Eeho answers? Tell me then thy will:'
'I will,' she said. What shall I get,' says he,
'By loving still?' To which she answers, Ill.'
'Ill? Shall I, void of wish'd for pleasure, die?"
'Aye.' Shall not I, who toil in ceaseless pain,
'Some pleasure know?' 'No,' she returns again:
"False and inconstant Nymph! thou ly'st,' said he,
'Thou ly'st,' she said: 'and I deserv'd her hate,
'If I should thee believe.' 'Believe,' said she.
'For why? Thy words are of no weight.'
'Wait,' she answers. 'Therefore I'll depart.'
To which resounding echo answers `Part.'

Orsin, for the loss of his Bear.

Quoth he, O whither, wicked Bruin
Art thou fled? to my'-Echo, 'Ruin.'

'I thought th' hadst scorn'd to budge a step,
For fear. Quoth Echo. 'Marry quep.'

'Am not I here to take thy part?

Then what has quail'd thy stubborn heart?

Have these bones rattled, and this head
So often in thy quarrel bled?

Nor did I ever winch or grudge it

Cowley.

For thy dear sake.' Quoth she, 'Mum budget.'
'Think'st 'twill not be laid i' th' dish

Thou turned'st thy back? Quoth Echo, Pish.'

To run from those th' hadst overcome
So cowardly? Quoth Echo, Mum.'

Butler.

6

ment of these poets,-their fastidious horror of any thing vulgar, and the extremity, to which they carried their efforts to separate the essences of things from their commitants,' and take the representation from the best side of the reality,-seems to have so much disgusted the homely taste of Butler, that he verged into the opposite extreme; and, instead of selecting those circumstances, which would show the truth of things, without their grossness, he appears to take a malicious delight in protruding the grossness on the view, and in studiously seizing upon those very particulars, which, of all others, his predecessors would have been the most solicitous to avoid. Take, for instance, the manner in which Ralpho rouses the knight, when unhorsed in the first encounter:

This said, he gently rais'd the knight,
And set him on his bum upright.
To rouse him from lethargic dump,
He tweak'd his nose, with gentle thump,
Knock'd on his breast, as if 't had been
To raise the spirits lodg'd within:
They, waken'd with the noise, did fly
From inward room to window eye,
And gently opening lid, the casement,
Look'd out, but yet with some amazement.
This gladed Ralpho much to see,
Who thus bespoke the knight. Quoth he,
Tweaking his nose, 'You are, great sir,
A self-denying conqueror,' &c.*

*In this passage, the author had his eye upon two stanzas of Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis. After the obduracy of the latter had thrown the goddess into a swoon, he takes fright, lest she should die in earnest, and begins to set about measures for her revival:

He wrings her nose, he strikes her on her cheeks,
He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard;
He chafes her lips, a thousand ways he seeks,
To mend the heart that his unkindness marr'd;

He kisses her; and she, by her good will.
Will never rise, so he will kiss her stilk

Again, when Bruin had been lugged and worried

in the dirt,

gentle Trulla into th' ring.

He wore in 's nose convey'd a string,
With which she march'd before, and led
The warrior to a grassy bed

(As authors write) in a cool shade,
Which eglantine and roses made;
Close by a softly-murmuring stream,
Where lovers us'd to loll and dream:
There leaving him to his repose,
Secured from the pursuit of foes,
And wanting nothing but a song,
And a well-tun'd theorbo, hung
upon a bough, to ease the pain
His tugg'd ears suffer'd, &c.

That Butler wrote such burlesque, rather in the spirit of parody, than from any predisposition to vulgarity, is apparent from the purer strain, into which, in spite of himself, his muse will occasionally break forth. Saving a characteristical hit at the sonnetteers, the following verses, for instance, would hardly be taken for a part of Hudibras.

The sun grew low, and left the skies,
Put down (some write) by ladies' eyes.
The moon pull'd off her veil of light,
That hides, by day, her face from sight,-
Mysterious veil of brightness made,
That's both her lustre, and her shade,-
And in the lantern of the night,
With shining horns, hung out her light;
For darkness is the proper sphere,
Where all false glories use t' appear.

The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day:
Her two blue windows faintly she up heaveth,

Like the fair Sun, when, in his fresh array,

He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth:
And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,

So is her face illumin'd by her eye.