LIFE OF BUTLER. ix time that he is said to have commenced his cele- brated poem. At the restoration of the exiled monarch, when loyalty expected the reward of its fidelity and the recompense of its losses, Butler appears to have suffered the same disappointment that met other claimants; and silently and unobtrusively retreating from the conflict of avarice and importunity, he accepted the Secretaryship to Richard, 6 It is supposed that Sir Samuel Luke is ridiculed under the character of Hudibras: the reason of the conjecture is founded on Hudib. P. i. c. 1. ver. 904 : 'Tis sung, there is a valiant Mamaluke, In foreign land yclep'd - ; and the ballad entitled " A Tale of the Cobbler and Vicar of He that made love unto the eldest dame It is supposed that Lilly the astrologer was represented Bought wrote his and has Thohire, man, godsd potly like his desery hence it is highlin pir he cave reason shar ting his poem Auditras, was because the o tatilor soint of Dreonshire was Hugh. son, he had it Earl of Carbury, Lord President of the Principality of Wales, who made him Steward of Ludlow Castle, where the court of the marches was removed. About this time, he married Mrs. Herbert, a gentlewoman of good family, but who had lost most of her fortune, by placing it on bad securities, in those very dangerous and uncertain times. A. Wood says, that he was Secretary to George, Duke of Buckingham, when he was Chancellor of Cambridge, that the Duke treated him with kindness and generosity; and that in common with almost all men of wit and learning, he enjoyed the friendship of the celebrated Earl of Dorset. The author of his Life, prefixed to his Poems, says, that the integrity of his life, the acuteness of his wit, and the easiness of his conversation, rendered him acceptable to all; but that he avoided a multiplicity of acquaintance. The accounts both of the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham and the Secretaryship are disbelieved by Dr. Johnson, on the following grounds: -"Mr. Wycherley," says Major Packe, “had always laid hold of an opportunity which offered of representing to the Duke of Buckingham how well Mr. 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 388. 105. 1st edit.; and Nash's Hudibras, vol. ii. p. 308. that Whachum was meant for Sir George Wharton, does not appear to rest on any proof; v. Biographia, Art. Sherborne, note (B). 7 A. Wood says, that she was a widow, and that Butler supported himself by her jointure, deriving nothing from the practice of the law. 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 unfortunate 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 to do good offices to those 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." This story may be believed or not; to me, I confess, it appears more like a well-dressed fiction of Wycherley's than the truth; why the accidental interruption of the interview should never after have been repaired, does not appear; but there is a better testimony in some verses of Butler, which were published by Mr. Thyer: "which are written (says Johnson) with a degree of acrimony, such as neglect and disappointment might naturally excite, and such as it would be hard to ima Butler was allowed a yearly pension of a hundred pounds; but this, as Johnson says, is contradicted by all tradition, by the complaints of Oldham,3 and the reproaches of Dryden. About sixty years after, Mr. Barber, whose name is familiar to all persons conversant with the literature of that time, who was printer and mayor of London, erected a monument in Westminster Abbey to the poet's memory; the inscription will prove how warmly he approved his principles. M. S. SAMUELIS BUTLERI, Qui Strenshamiæ in agro Vigorn. nat. 1612, Vir doctus imprimis, acer, integer; " After his death, three small volumes were published bearing the title of his posthumous pieces in 3 See Oldham's Satire against Poetry,' and Dryden's Hind and Panther,' and Otway's 'Prologue to the Tragedy of Constantine the Great.' Butler twice transcribed the following distich in his Common-place Book: thefe To think how Spenser died, how Cowley mourn'd, How Butler's faith and service were return'd. ▲ In the additions to Pope's works, published by George Steevens, i. p. 13, are some lines said to be written by Pope on this monument erected by Barber. Respect to Dryden Sheffield justly paid, "..rate: it is th verse and prose; 5 they are, however, all spurious, But whence this Barber? that a name so mean The lines also by Samuel Wesley are well known (vide Poems, 4to. 1736, p. 62.) Helly had a deses See him, when starved to death and turn'd to dust, . Presented with a monumental bust. The poet's fate is here in emblem shown, He ask'd for bread, and he received a stone. 5 See Delineation of Butler's Monument in Dart's Westminster Abbey, pl. 3, tom. 1, pp. 78, 79. With regard to the monument erected in 1786, when the church was repaired, at the expense of some of the parishioners, on the south side of the church (inside) with the inscription, see Nash's Life of Butler, xiii. See engraving of it in Nash's Life of Butler, p. xxxix. An engraving of the monument in Westminster Abbey is in the same work, p. 678. 6 What genuine remains of Butler Thyer did not publish, were all in the hands either of Dr. R. Farmer or Dr. Nash, and had been seen by Atterbury. See Life by Nash, xvi. James Massey, Esq. of Rosthern, Cheshire, had Butler's Common Place Book. Some law cases from Coke upon Littleton, drawn up in Norman-French by Butler, were bought by Dr. Nash of Butler's relation in Buckinghamshire. He had also a French dictionary compiled by him, and part of a tragedy of Nero. mean thinks he has sind -not believe they have next as for Refor |