ended. The Duke of Buckingham, according to Wycherley, appointed a meeting with him one day at the Roebuck, with the intention of being of service, and, along with Wycherley, they met accordingly; when, lo! the door of the chamber being left accidentally open, two ladies of a certain character crossed in company with a creature of his own, and the volatile Duke leapt up, followed, and, in the disgraceful pursuit, entirely forgot the poet. Clarendon was constantly flattering him with the hope of places and employments of value, but it was never fulfilled. It is said, indeed, that the king once ordered him a present of 300 guineas (some say 3000), but there is no proper foundation for the story. He published the second part of Hudibras in 1664, and the third part fourteen years later, in 1678, and this still leaves the work unfinished. His manner of life, his circumstances, and habitudes during these years, are almost wholly unknown. We know nothing, except that he had left the country, and was resident entirely in London; that he had become very poor; that bitterness was beginning to gather on his spirit; and that, while his book was increasing the gaiety of the three kingdoms, he was himself struggling with mean miseries which were never even to receive the poor compensation of being particularly recorded for the instruction and the indignation of posterity. Had a fourth part of Hudibras been written, its satire, its increased severity, and concentrated spirit of gall, would have testified to the souring process through which his mind had passed. It was possible, even, that he would have loosened his satirical vengeance upon the rotten-hearted faction which had so neglected their Laureate, and proclaimed their levity to be heartlessness, their ridicule to be itself ridiculous, their laughter to be folly, and their loyalty a farce. But the opportunity was not afforded him. Two years after the appearance of the third part, its neglected author breathed his last; of what disease we know not, as accounts vary; probably of a complication of minor maladies, ranging around the central complaint—a broken heart. It was on the 25th of September 1680, when he had reached the age of sixty-eight. He died in Rose Street, a mean street in Covent Garden, where he had resided for several years. He died poor; but, like Burns, with no debt. His friend, a Mr Longueville of the Temple, who proved the truth of the proverb, "There is a friend who sticketh closer than a brother," and whose name shall long be cherished for the sake of his disinterested attachment to Butler, solicited for him a public funeral in Westminster Abbey. It was refused, as afterwards in Byron's case, but for a different reason. Byron's dust was rejected on account of his profanity-Butler's, on account of his poverty. Could any good thing come out of Rose Street? Could a man who had left scarcely enough money to buy a shroud, be permitted to lie down with the kings and the nobles of the land—aye, even in Poet's corner? He found a grave, however, in the churchyard of St Paul's, Covent Garden. A very few persons followed him to his last resting-place, and made a procession, the shivering smallness of which might almost have provoked a shout of laughter from within the coffin of the great comic writer they were committing to the dust. His grave he had desired to be deep, as if wishing a quantum sufficit of earth, since no other landed property was, or ever had been his; and there, six feet deep, at the west end of the churchyard, Dr Patrick, afterwards Bishop of Ely, reading the funeral service, Butler was buried. It was forty years afterwards ere Mr Barber, Mayor of London, erected the monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey, and carved an inscription which proves that he was actuated to the deed as much by admiration of Butler's principles as of his poetry. The parishioners of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, too, testified their respect for his memory, by erecting him a monument on the south side of that church in 1786. He is reported to have been in private, a worthy, honest, and modest man. Like Addison, it required the key of the grape to unlock the treasures of his wit and wisdom; although he never, like Addison, became intoxicated. One who dined with him at a tavern, found him during the first bottle, very flat and heavy; during the second, extremely lively, witty, and altogether delightful; and after the third, although not drunk, so heavy and stupid, that it 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, poverty is ever the legal heir. point happier than Butler. 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. and to all the ills of which Burns, however, was in one His fierier temperament and 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 apophthegms 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 in`evitable 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 witcould 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, And rugged as a Saracen, Or Turk of Mahomet's own kin, Or hear this fine love-flourish, which ought to have been sincere. "The sun and day shall sooner part, |