one of the few, who gained, the reward of their services, at the restoration. He was made secretary to the earl of Carbury, president of the principality of Wales; who, when the Court of the Marches was revived, conferred on him the stewardship of Ludlow castle. He now married a lady, or rather, perhaps, a fortune; which was lost by bad securities. In 1663, he published the three first cantos of Hudibras; which, when introduced at court by the earl of Dorset, were quoted, studied, and praised by all good royalists: but quotation and applause was all that the author received. The second part appeared in 1664; when, had not his grace, the duke of Buckingham, preferred a mistress to a poet, Butler would probably have received some compensation for his deserts, Mr. Wycherley,' says Packe, his biographer, 'has always laid hold of an opportunity which offered of representing to the Duke of Buckingham how well Butler had deserved of the royal family, by writing his inimitable Hudibras; and that it was a reproach to the court, that a person of his loyalty and wit, should suffer in obscurity, and under the wants he did. The Duke always seemed to hearken to him with attention enough; and, after some time, undertook to recommend his pretensions to his majesty. Mr. Wycherley, in hopes to keep him steady to his word, obtained of his Grace to name a day, when he might introduce that modest and unfortu nate poet to his new patron. At last an appointment was made, and the place of meeting was agreed to be the Roebuck. Mr. Butler and his friend attended accordingly; the Duke joined them; but, as the Devil would have it, the door of the room where they sat was open, and his Grace, who had seated himself near it, observing a pimp of his acquaintance (the creature too was a knight) trip by with a brace of ladies, immediately quitted 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. Vir doctus imprimis, acer, integer; Hoc tandem posito marmore, curavit 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 Pt. 1. 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; 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 be tween 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? 'Wait,' she answers. 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, 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.' Thou turned'st thy back? Quoth Echo, ‘Pish.' 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, * 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 chafes her lips, a thousand ways he seeks, He kisses her; and she, by her good will. |