Recet 0 11-23-32 JW THE LIFE AND WORKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER. WE have hitherto, in this edition of the "Poets," had chiefly to do with the authors of grave and serious song-men who felt, and who enacted the feeling, that poetry was an earnest matter-a minor, but real religion-a proclamation, in various forms and measures, of the truth that is in beauty, or else of the beauty that is in truth. We come now to one of the earliest, and one of the ablest, of those writers of English verse, who have sought for their inspiration in ridicule, and who have tried rather to travesty truth, than to enforce or illustrate it in their poetry-if poetry it can be called, which is rather rhymed prose, sense, and wit, than that idealization of thought and feeling, which we usually call poetry. SAMUEL BUTLER, the author of "Hudibras," was born in the parish of Strensham, in Worcestershire, some authorities say, in the year 1600, but others, more credibly, in the year 1612. He was baptized on February the 14th of the same year. His father, a yeoman, was the owner of a house and some land, and, besides, rented a considerable farm. He sent his son to the grammar-school at Worcester, taught at the time by one Henry Bright, a prebendary of the cathedral, and a man of eminence as a scholar. He is supposed to have gone from this to Cambridge, but, as he is ascertained never to have matriculated, the probability is, that his parents were unable to support him in the career of learning to which he was urged by his own ambition and tastes. But on this, as on all other parts of Butler's life, there rests great obscurity. He approached the world, as a person steals in through the dark to tickle a child, and himself, all unknown, threw it into convulsions of laughter. We find him next seated, not on a poetic tripod, but on a clerk's stool, in the office of Mr Jeffreys, of Earl's Croomb, in Worcestershire, a flourishing justice of the peace. This situation was not the most respectable or most congenial, but it gave him opportunities of studying human nature in many of its most singular and raciest attitudes. Fielding, too, was a justice of peace, and this, doubtless, contributed to make him, as Byron calls him, "the prose Homer of human nature." There can be little doubt that Trulla and Talgol are copied from characters with whom Butler had come into professional contact. He enjoyed, too, it seems, ample leisure for study, and he diligently improved his time. Besides reading very extensively and miscellaneously, he cultivated the arts of music and painting. "It is singular," says Walpole, "that the Hogarth of poetry was also a painter." Some of his pictures were long preserved by his friends, although their merit is understood not to have been very great. He attempted, it is said, a portrait of Old Noll, and would, no doubt, do ample justice to his red nose! His love of the pencil introduced him to the acquaintance of the once celebrated painter, Samuel Cooper. After this, he obtained a recommendation to the Countess of Kent, and became, for a time, domesticated in her establishment at Wrest, Bedfordshire. Here he had the benefit of an excellent library, as well as of intercourse with that living library, Selden, who employed him sometimes as his amanuensis. From this monster of erudition, Butler probably derived much of that recondite learning with which he has stuffed "Hudibras" to superfluity. In what capacity he served the Countess we are not informed, and are equally in the dark as to why and when he left her household. He is next found under the roof of Sir Samuel Luke, at Cople, or Woodend, in Bedfordshire—a gentleman of an ancient family, a rigid Roundhead, one of Cromwell's officers, and destined to become for ever famous under the sobriquet of "Hudibras." It is curious to notice how each of these three situations contributed to qualify Butler better and better for his great work. In the office of Jeffreys, he saw those aspects of low life which he has so admirably represented in the adventures of the Bear and Fiddle. In the library and society of Wrest, he collected those multifarious stores of learning which come bursting out at every pore of his poem. And, in the halls of Woodend, he met with those specimens of Puritanic character which it was his calling and destiny to distort into the immortal oddities of the Knight and the Squire. Far better for him this irregular but progressive education, than had he remained for years at Cambridge, and left it with the honours of senior wrangler. Some of his biographers suppose that he must have been very miserable at Woodend, and that he imbibed, while there, a bitter grudge at Sir Samuel Luke personally, as well as at the party to which he belonged. These statements require, we think, some qualification. Butler, while under the Puritan's roof, might undoubtedly feel himself under restraint, but he must have felt, too, no little satirical delight in watching the peculiarities of his host, and in silently inscribing them on the tablets of his mind for after use. He knew he was in the midst of his natural game, and resembled a painter detained among the banditti of the Apennines, who makes the best of his detention in sketching the strange figures and savage scenery around him. That Butler hated the Puritans as a party is clear, but we can see no evidence of any deeprooted aversion to Sir Samuel Luke as an individual. On the contrary (in spite of Dr Johnson), he has a lurking fondness for "Hudibras," amid all the contempt and ridicule which he showers around him; beginning, perhaps, with a little spite at him, not on his own account, but as the representative of his class, he has, ere the end, fairly laughed himself into good humour with his hero. Indeed, there is very little of the spiteful or malignant in Butler's composition. His wit is dry, but seldom devilish. He can hate and he can despise; but he cannot, like Swift, loathe and cover the objects of his malignant fury with the foam of a demoniac. At last came the Restoration, and it was welcomed by thousands besides Butler with rapturous hopes, which speedily sunk into indignant disappointment. Although not yet known as a poet, he was known to many as a scholar, a loyalist, and a man of worth, and had thus some right to expect a share in the golden shower. But scarcely a drop of it descended on him. He was fain, relinquishing hopes of higher preferment, to accept of the secretaryship to Richard Earl of Carbury, Lord President of the Principality of Wales, who made him steward of Ludlow Castle-a place famous as that where the Comus of Milton was first enacted. To it the Court of the Marches had been removed. Butler by this time was fifty years of age, and in order to put a spoke in the wheel of fortune, and secure independence for life, he determined to marry a wealthy widow. Her name was Mrs Herbert. She was a gentlewoman of good family, but shortly after marriage, she lost the larger portion of her fortune, which had been laid out on bad securities. A little, however, was saved from the wreck, and on this, and on the proceeds of his stewardship, Butler lived for some time quietly and comfortably enough. He began now to indite his immortal burlesque poem. How long he was occupied in composing it we are not told-he had spent all his life in collecting its materials. The first part of it appeared in 1663, and became instantly popular. The humble student-steward of the Welch Marches awoke one morning and found himself famous. All London applauded and laughed at the poem. The Earl of Dorset, then a man of much literary influence, recommended it at court-and the merry monarch laughed louder than any one else, and often quoted its more pointed and poignant couplets. Butler's fortune seemed at length made. But he was again doomed to a disappointment—the more bitter to be borne, because preceded by such a sudden sunburst of success-and had soon occasion to quote with emphasis the text, "Put not thy trust in princes." Charles laughed, quoted, agreed that "Butler was a good cavalier and a clever fellow"-and " Odds fish, so he was," but he did nothing for him at all. Dorset, having first set his book afloat, seemed to think that his duty to it and its author was |