required a strong act of faith to believe him the author of "Hudibras." He compared him accordingly to a nine-pin, little at both ends, but great in the middle. Dr Johnson's words are striking, "In this mist of obscurity passed the life of Butler, a man whose name can only perish with the language. The date of his birth is doubtful; the mode and place of his education are unknown; the events of his life are variously narrated, and all that can be told with certainty is that he was poor."

In this he resembled Burns, as well as in some other traits of his character and genius. Like him, he was the wittiest of men. Like him, he loved to warm himself with wine. Like him, he arose instantly into fame. And like him, the bright tropical morning was soon overcast, and so continued till after death. The wittiest and most gifted man in Scotland was sent by his noble patrons and his grateful country to gauge ale-firkins, quarrel with supervisors, and measure the longitude and latitude of tallow candles, at a salary of £70 a year. The wittiest man in England was handed over by the king and courtiers-to the maintenance of whose worthless ascendancy he had sacrificed his whole genius-to the tender mercies of bailiffs, and to all the ills of which poverty is ever the legal heir. Burns, however, was in one point happier than Butler. His fierier temperament and stronger passions conducted him to an earlier grave; and, in another point, he was happier still-having written, not for a party, but for a people; his popularity has been of a far more enviable kind, and promises to be more enduring.

As soon as Burns was dead, his country's concealed and crushed love for him burst out in various ways: in new editions of his works-in subscriptions for his widow-and in the ascription to him of poems and songs which he never wrote. This mark of respect, at least, was speedily paid to Butler's memory also. Three small volumes of his "Remains" in verse and poetry appeared; but all of them were spurious, except some lines on Duval, a noted highwayman, and two or three prose fragments of little moment or merit. Mr. Thyer, a keeper of a public library in Manchester, and a

contemporary of Johnson and Warburton, published in 1759 a collection of "Remains," in two large volumes, of prose and verse, undoubtedly genuine, which are now included in his works. He had obtained them through the descendants of Mr Longueville, Butler's friend. He told Dr Johnson that he had in his possession the common-place book of the poet, containing Hudibras in germ-the greatest part of those witty remarks and pithy apothegms which were afterwards to be worked into the tissue of the poems, noted down in prose. But it, and some other unpublished productions-such as a French Dictionary, and part of a Tragedy on Nero, which are said to have been seen by Bishop Atterbury-seem now irrecoverably lost, and though they were found, would probably be of very little value. Since, imitations of " Hudibras," too numerous to be recounted, have proved its great popularity.

Such is really all we can tell about Butler himself, unless it be to add, that, according to Aubrey, "he was of a middle stature, strong-set, high-coloured, with a head of sorrel hair, a good fellow, and latterly much troubled with the gout." We pass to speak of his genius and writings.

Aubrey, in the passage we have just quoted, calls him a man of a severe and sound judgment," and says that he showed it by the great disdain he felt for the poetry of Waller. No reader of " Hudibras," or his other productions, can doubt that honest Aubrey is in this correct. Butler had one of the sharpest and most sagacious of intellects-an intellect which, if not much conversant either with the heights or the depths of ideal and metaphysical thought, pierced far below the surfaces, and saw most distinctly the angles and edges of things. His mind had all that brawny commonsense, that natural inevitable insight which distinguished Swift, Cobbett, and Burns. What a number of strong pointed sentences—noticeable still more for their truth and sense, than for their wit— could be picked out from his writings in proof of this! We have often had occasion to remark, that if a man happen to possess one mental quality in great abundance, the world in its haste, and the ordinary fry of critics in their conceit, imme

diately proceed to deny him every other, or to derogate from the quality of those they are obliged to concede. This has been very much the case with Butler. Wit being his most singular, has been called his sole property-for his enormous learning, of course, is only held to prove his diligence! Now, in fact, Butler had some other qualities, higher in value, if not so wonderful in vastness, as his wit. He had, as we have asserted above, much home-spun, clear-sighted, practical wisdom. But he had also, we intend to prove, not a little of the real vis-vivida-the fire, fancy, and inspiration of a poet. Some authors have wit and imagination in nearly equal quantities, and it is their temperament, or circumstances, or creed, which decides the question, which of the two they shall specially use or cultivate. Had Butler been a Puritan, instead of a Cavalier, he could have indited noble, serious poetry. As it is, he has interspersed, amid the profuse wit and ridicule of "Hudibras," some exquisite touches of grave poetry-touches sometimes as delicate as they are few-always as striking in effect as they are brief in the time of execution. Take the picture of Bruin, in all its shaggy, picturesque perfection. Laugh at him, if ye dare!

"The gallant Bruin march'd next him,
With visage formidably grim,

And rugged as a Saracen,

Or Turk of Mahomet's own kin,

Clad in a mantle della guerre,
Of rough impenetrable fur;
And in his nose, like Indian king,
He wore for ornament a ring;
About his neck a threefold gorget,
As rough as trebled leathern target ;
Armed, as heralds, cant and langued,
Or, as the vulgar say, sharp-fanged."

Or hear this fine love-flourish, which ought to have been sincere.

"The sun and day shall sooner part,
Than love or you shake off my heart,
The sun, that shall no more dispense
His own, but your bright influence.

I'll carve your name on barks of trees,
With true love-knots and flourishes,
That shall infuse eternal spring
And everlasting flourishing:

Where'er you tread, your foot shall set
The primrose and the violet ;
Nature her charter shall renew,

And take all lives of things from you."

Why, this might have come from the fair Rosalind, in the Forest of Arden, and sounds softly as an enamoured wave breaking in whispers upon a shore of silver sand!

We give only two others.

First

"For as we see th' eclipsed sun

By mortals is more gazed upon,
Than when, adorn'd with all his light,
He shines in serene sky most bright;
So valour in a low estate

Is most admired and wonder'd at."

The second makes Warburton (not the warmest of critics) break out into a rapture—

"The moon pull'd off her veil of light,
That hides her face by day from sight,
(Mysterious veil, of brightness made,
That's both her lustre and her shade),
And in the lanthorn of the night,

With shining horns, hung out her light;
For darkness is the proper sphere

Where all false glories used t' appear."

The reader will notice, too, that all his descriptions of battles, all his similes, and all his single serious lines, are amazingly spirited, and were they severed from the ludicrous context, would produce the effects of high poetry. Through his smaller productions, too, such as his "Lines on Drunkenness," on "Plagiarism," and on "The Abuse of Human Learning," we find scattered not a little genuine and manly poetry. "Hudibras" has incomparably less imagination than "Don Juan:" it has much more than Swift's poetry or prose. But Butler resembles these two writers in thisthat he is constantly jerking us down from rather lofty and

imaginative heights, to the meanest and most laughable conceptions. All burlesque writers, of course, try this-it is one essential part of their art; but few have done it so quietly, yet quickly, with such invisible art and magical dexterity, as the three we have thus classed together. They go to their work of burlesque with as much determination as if it were the most important work in the world. They lose no opportunity of interjecting low and ludicrous images. They never spare their own finest passages, but dash in, without remorse, some odd incongruity or coarse word, which damages their serious effect, and secures their ludicrous triumph. Thus Byron closes his powerful picture of the ship's crew escaping from the wreck with the lines

"They grieved for those that perish'd with the cutter

And also for the biscuit casks, and butter.”

And thus to name one out of a thousand examplesButler, at the close of the passage formerly quoted about love, says―

"Only our loves shall still survive,
New worlds and natures to outlive;
And, like to herald's moons, remain

All crescents, without change or wane.”

One main feature, we repeat, of burlesque poetry, undoubtedly lies in this merciless mangling of its own beautiful creations. But when the creations are, as sometimes with Butler, and often with Byron, consummately fine, we feel regret that the necessities of their plan compel them to such a sacrifice—and think of a Hercules degrading himself into a Harlequin.

Of the three, Butler has much less humour, but incomparably more wit. The odd analogies, the quaint quirks of fancy, the images, brought from such distant and opposite regions, to confront each other, and wonder how they ever came to meet the jumble of all sublime and all ridiculous, all lofty and all low objects and ideas, in Hudibras are amazing, and remind you of what the great Sydenham Exhibition would become, were an earthquake, without swallowing