TO THE REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES, CANON OF SALISBURY, ETC. UNHONOUR'D lay poor Butler's nameless grave, Such were the lines insulted virtue pour'd, To king, to country-to themselves untrue: And theirs the deed immortalized in shame, Which raised a monarch to a martyr's name. Oh! friend! with me thy thoughtful sorrows join, Thy heart will answer each desponding line; Say, when thy hand o'er KEN's neglected grave At once the flowers of love and learning gave; vi Or when was heard, beneath each listening tree, J. M. BENHALL, Feb. 1835. LIFE OF SAMUEL BUTLER. BY THE REV. JOHN MITFORD. SAMUEL BUTLER, the author of Hudibras, was born in the parish of Strensham, in Worcestershire, in 1612,* and christened February the 14th.、 A. Wood says, that his father was competently wealthy; but the anonymous author of a life prefixed to his Poems describes him as in the condition of a yeoman, possessing a very small estate, and renting another; who with difficulty found means to educate his son at the grammarschool at Worcester, under Mr. Henry Bright, a man of high reputation as a scholar, and a Prebendary of the Cathedral. Butler is said to have *This date is contradicted by Charles Longueville, the son of Butler's friend, and who declared that the poet was born in 1600. Nash dates his baptism February 8, 1612, and says it is entered in the writing of Nash's father, who was churchwarden: he had four sons and three daughters; the three daughters and one son older than the poet. † Dr. Nash discovered that his father was owner of a house and a little land, worth about 10l. a year, still called Butler's tenement, of which he has given an engraving in the title page of his first volume. A. Wood affirms that he had a competent estate of nearly 300l. a year but held on lease of William Russell, lord of the manor of Strensham. gone from thence to Cambridge,* with the character of a good scholar; but the period and place of his residence seem alike unknown, and indeed it appears doubtful whether he ever received the advantages of an academical education. For some time he was clerk to Mr. Jefferys, of Earls Croomb, in Worcestershire, an eminent justice of the peace. He employed the ample leisure which his situation afforded in study; while he also cultivated the arts of painting and music. "The Hogarth of poetry," says Walpole, 66 was a painter too:" his love of the pencil introduced him to the acquaintance of the celebrated Samuel Cooper.†t Some pictures were shown by the family as his, but we presume of no great excellence, as they were subsequently employed to stop broken windows. Dr. Nash says that he heard of a portrait of Oliver Cromwell by him. After this, he was recommended to the notice of the Countess of Kent, living at Wrest, in Bedfordshire, where he had not only the advantage of a library,‡ but enjoyed the conversation of the most learned man *A. Wood had his information from Butler's brother; some of his neighbours sent him to Oxford. Mr. Longueville asserted that Butler never resided at Oxford. † Of our English poets, Flatman and George Dyer were painters. Pope also used the brush under the tuition of Jervas. I recollect no further union of the arts. "Butler was not acquainted with the Italian poets. Of Ruggiero he might have truly asserted what he has falsely told of Rinaldo."- See Neve on the English Poets, p. 79. of his age, the great Selden. Why he subsequently left so advantageous and honourable a situation does not appear, but we find him domesticated under the roof of Sir Samuel Luke, at Cople, or Wood end, a gentleman of a very ancient family in Bedfordshire, one of Cromwell's officers, and a rigid Presbyterian. It is in this place and at this time that he is said to have commenced his celebrated poem. His patron's house afforded him a gallery of living portraits, and he was fortunately permitted to see Puritanism in one of its strong holds. The keenness of his observation secured the fidelity of his descriptions, and enabled him to fill up his outline with those rich and forcible details, which a familiar acquaintance with the originals afforded. 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, * 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 Bray," in the posthumous works, p. 285, but this ballad is |