BUTLER, S AMUEL. 



BUTT1CANN, PHILIP KARL. 



10*1 



tor Ui death ; and it is clearly shown, by the testimony of those 

 who attended him in hi* last illness, that there U no truth In the 

 tatooMO t Bhop Butler was oarer married. His works are collected 

 in two volume, Svo, which hare been several times reprinted. 



Wn.KK, SAMUEL, waa born at Strenabam, in Worcestershire, 

 about 1013, and educated in the Free School at Worcester. The 

 finances of his father, who wai a imall farmrr, would not allow him to 

 be matriculated at Cambridge, to which university he deaired, and hii 

 proficiency in learning entitled him to proceed. Accordingly, he 

 engaged a* clerk to Mr. Jeflereys, an eminent juitioe of the peace, of 

 Carbcroom, in hi* native county. Here in hi* leisure hour* be 

 employed himself in studying history, poetry, music, and painting ; 

 some specimens of his skill in the last-named art existed not long 

 sine*, and it is said were not worth pieserving. We know not how he 

 afterwards obtained an introduction to Elizabeth countess of Kent, 

 but under her patronage he had access to a well-stocked library, and 

 enjoyed the conversation of the learned Selden. Ue entered after- 

 wards into the service of Sir Samuel Luke, a knight of ancient family 

 in Bedfordshire, who had been one of Cromwell's commanders, and is 

 opposed to have been the prototype of the character of Hudibras. 

 Aft- r the Itest oration he became secretary to Richard, earl of Carbury, 

 Lord President of the Principality of Waled, who, on the revival of 

 the court of the Marches, made him steward of Ludlow Castle ; soon 

 tor which he married Mrs. Herbert, a gentlewoman of good family, 

 whose fortune was lost to him by being invested in bad securities. It 

 k also said that he was secretary to the second George Villiers, Duke 

 of Buckingham, when he was chancellor of Cambridge. With that 

 nobleman, with the Earl of Dorset, and with many other wits of the 

 time, he certainly lived on terms of familiar intercourse ; yet he died, 

 according to the common report for which however there does not 

 appear to be any real foundation in great poverty in 16SO, and was 

 buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, at the expense 

 of his friend Mr. William Longueville, a bencher of the Inner Temple, 

 who became possessed of his papers. 



The tint part of Hudibras, containing three cantos, was published 

 in 1663, and soon became eminently popular, and was much quoted 

 even at court. In the next year appeared the second part. The 

 third part, which does not bring the poem to a conclusion, was not 

 published till 1678. Three small volumes of posthumous works were 

 published, as Johnson says, " I know not by whom collected or by 

 what authority ascertained." Two more, undoubtedly genuine, were 

 afterwards printed by Mr. Thyer of Manchester. Some of his 

 posthumous poems are very obscene. 



Such is the scanty record of perhaps the moat witty writer in our 

 language. "The events) of his life," says bis biographer, whom we 

 have already cited, " are variously stated, and all that can be told with 

 certainty is that he was poor " On a work so well known as Butler's 

 ' Hudibras' it is scarcely necessary to make a single remark. Voltaire 

 has well said of it that it unitca the wit of Don Quixote with that of 

 the Satyre Menippoe. lludibras, the hero, is a Presbyterian justice, 

 who, fired with the same species of madness as the Don. Quixote of 

 Cervantes, undertakes the reform of abuses, in company with his 

 Squire Ralph, an Independent clerk, with whom he is almost always 

 engaged in controversy. This union of the knight errant and the 

 Presbyterian is faulty in the outset, and in the conduct of the poem 

 there is little to satisfy the reader. The adventures are tiresome and 

 tedious, but the dialogues are carried on with a strain of wit which 

 appears to be exhsustless. The characters which were before the 

 eyes of our forefathers have passed away, but so great was Butler's 

 knowledge of human nature, that many of his dixtichs have become 



CerbiaL However easy may appear the style of burlesque which he 

 adopted, and however frequently a similar course has been 

 followed after him, it U not among the least proofs of Butler's ex- 

 traordinary excellence that he is still without a rival among his 

 imitators. The standard edition was published in 1744 in two vols. 

 8vo, with laboriously illustrative notes by Dr. Grey. In 1721 John 

 Barber, citizen and one time Lord Mayor of London, erected a cenotaph 

 in Westminster Abbey to Butler's memory, which provoked a just 

 epigram from Samuel Wesley, and a sarcasm, which appears to have 

 been little merit-d, from Pope. 



BUTLEK, SAMUEL, D.D., Bishop of Liclifield, was born at Kenil- 

 worth, Warwickshire, 30th of January, 1774. His father was Mr. 

 Willimn Butler, a respectable inhabitant of the village. He was 

 educated at Uugby School, and in 1792 was entered at St. John's 

 College, Cambridge, His university career waa very successful : 

 besides obtaining three of Sir William Browne's medals, two for the 

 Latin ode and one for the Greek ode, be was elected in 1793 to the 

 Craven University scholarship, snd, after taking his bachelor's degree, 

 be gained the first of the Chancellor's two gold medals that are 

 annually given for classical scholarship; and both in 1797 and 1798 he 

 carried off the Members' price for the beet Latin Essay by Bachelors 

 of Arts. In 1797 he had been elected a Fellow of his College, and in 

 1798 he accepted the appointment of head master of Shrewsbury 

 School In 1802 he was presented by the Karl of Clarendon to the 

 Tiearage of Kenilworth ; in 1807, by Bishop Cornwall!*, to a prebendal 

 stall in I.ichfi. M Cathedral ; and in 1822 he was made archdeacon of 

 Derby. He had taken his degree of D.D. in 1811. Under Dr. Butler 

 Shrewsbury School, the reputation of which bad (alien very low, 



gradually rose to eminence, and he continued to preside over it till he 

 was promoted, in 1886, to the see of Lichfiold and Coventry, or, as it 

 is now entitled, of Liehfleld, the archdeaconry of Coventry having 

 been annexed the same year to the diocese of Worcester. But from 

 that time his health rapidly gave way, and his death took place at 

 Kccleehall Castle, Staffordshire, the episcopal residence, on the 4th of 

 December 1889. He hod married, in 1798, Harriet, fifth daughter of 

 the Rev. Dr. Apthorp, vicar of Croydon and rector of St. Mary-le-Bow; 

 and he left a son and two daughters. 



Dr. Butler is stated to have been much beloved in private lift- ; hi < 

 public distinction was derived from his able conduct of his school and 

 his steady profession of liberal or Whig politics. Of his literary works 

 the most considerable is his edition of JJschylus, which he was selected 

 to superintend by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press 

 about the time when he removed to Shrewsbury, and the first of the 

 four 4to volumes of which appeared in 1809, the last in 1816. It is 

 also printed in 8 vols. 8vo. This edition, in which the text is that of 

 Stanley, has not much reputation. The first volume soon after its 

 appearance was made the subject of an article in the ' Edinburgh 

 Review,' No. 29 (October, 1809), which immediately drew from liutlor 

 ' A Letter to C. J. Blomfield, containing Remarks on the Edinburgh 

 Review of the Cambridge jEschyl us,' 8vo, 1810. A more elaborate 

 criticism on the second volume appeared in the same work, No. 38 (for 

 February, 1812). Dr. Butler's best known work is his 'Sketch of 

 Modern and Ancient Geography, for the use of Schools,' 8vo, which 

 originally appeared at Shrewsbury in 1813, a work of little value when 

 first published, and wholly obsolete now; and the two Atlases which 

 the author afterwards published to be used along with it may be 

 described in the same terms. Dr. Butler published in 1797 an 8vo 

 volume, entitled ' M. Musuri Carmen in Platonem, Is. Casanboni in 

 Jos. Scaligerurn Ode ; accedunt Poemata et Exercitationcs utriu'qur 

 Lingua;;' and 'A Praxis on the Latin Prepositions,' 8vo, 1823 (after- 

 wards three times reprinted). He also translated Lucien Bonaparte's 

 poem of Charlemagne,' in conjuction with the Kev. F. Hodgson ; 

 and he published sundry single sermons at divers times. Dr. Butler 

 left a valuable collection of Aldine editions, and also of Greek and 

 Latin manuscripts. 



BUTTMANN, PHILIP KARL, an eminent scholar and mythologiat, 

 was born on the 5th of December 1764, at Frankfurt-on-the-Main. In 

 the latter part of his life he dropped his second Christain name, but 

 they both appear on the title-pages of his earlier works. He waa 

 descended from the French Protestant* who took refuge in Germany 

 from the persecutions of Louis XIV. His father, Jacob Buttmann, a 

 respectable stationer, placed him, at an early age, under the care of 

 Punnan, the learned rector of the gymnasium of Ms native place. In 

 1782 he went to Qottingen to follow up his classical investigations 

 under the euperintendance of Heyne. In 1786, after a short stay at 

 Frankfurt, he visited his brother-in-law, Dr. Ehrmann of Strasbourg. 

 There he became acquainted with Schweighiiuser, who was then 

 engaged on his edition of ' Polybius,' and Buttmann made his first 

 appearance as a philologcr in some notes which he furnished to that 

 laborious work. Shortly after this he was appointed geographical 

 teacher to the young prince of Auhalt Dessau, in which situation he 

 remained for about eight months. In 1788 he went to Berlin, and in 

 the course of a year or two, became assistant librarian to the king, adding 

 to his rather inadequate salary by taking private pupils and writing 

 for the booksellers. In 1792, he published a short Greek grammar, 

 which at once established itself in all the schools of Germany. Butt- 

 mann was appointed, in 1796, secretary to the royal library, and four 

 yean afterwards he was made a professor in the Joachimthalsche 

 gymnasium, the high school of Berlin ; he held this appointment till 

 1808, when he was appointed one of the original professors in the new 

 university. He was elected a member of the royal academy of n 

 in 1806; hut so great was his reputation, that his 'Essay on Apollo 

 and Artemis' was inserted in the transactions of that society three 

 years before he entered it. Shortly after his appointment as professor 

 in the university he was selected from his colleagues as classical tutor 

 to the prince royal. After Spalding's death, in June, 1811, Buttmann 

 waa elected his successor as secretary to the historical philological 

 class of the royal academy of sciences ; but he felt this office so irksome, 

 that nothing but his regard for the interests of the academy 

 have induced him to retain it. The peculiar constitution of the society 

 however induced him to accept this appointment, and his panegyrist 

 adds that in conducting its business, he introduced many convenient 

 abridgments of formalities without departing from essentials. In 1821 

 he was appointed head librarian to the king, and in 1824 was made a 

 knight of the Prussian Red Eagle of the third class. From this year 

 till his death he wss afflicted with repeated attacks of apoplexy : he 

 died on the 21st June 1829. Buttmann was married, in 1800, to the 

 eldest daughter of Dr. Selle, the king's physician, by whom he left a 

 family ; his son Augustus republished, in 1833, his father's well-known 

 edition of ' Demosthenes' Oration against Midiaa.' Biittmaun wrote 

 his own life, up to the time of his becoming a member of the Berlin 

 academy, in the third part of Lowe's collection ('liildnisse jetzlebender 

 Berliner Gelehrter rait Selbstbiographien'). 



The best known of Buttmann's writings are : I. His three cele- 

 brated Grammars: (1), the School Grammar; (2), the intermediate 

 Greek Grammar, of which a translation by Boileau was published in 



