BUT 



154 



BUT 



Butler, ham ; but his Grace had no sooner set himself down 

 Samuel, Des jde the poet and his friend Wycherley, who intro- 

 v""""' duced him, than observing a couple of ladies pass by 

 an open door, he quitted his engagement to follow 

 another kind of business. This anecdote seems to be 

 corroborated by some verses against Buckingham, 

 written with extreme acrimony, and which have been 

 published by Mr Thyer in the genuine remains of 

 Butler. Notwithstanding this discouragement and 

 neglect, he still prosecuted his design ; and in 1678 

 published a third part of Hudibras, which still leaves 

 the poem imperfect and abrupt. He died in 1680, and 

 Mr Longueville, who had supported the poet in his in- 

 digence, and who received from him his manuscripts 

 before his death, having in vain solicited a subscrip- 

 tion for his interment in Westminster Abbey, buried 

 him at his own cost in the church-yard of Covent- 

 garden. Sixty years after his death, Barber a printer, 

 erected a monument to him in Westminster Abbey, 

 which, by a strong allusion to his poverty, * has pro- 

 bably created a common tradition that he died of ab- 

 solute want. 



It will not be necessary to inform many readers, 

 that the object of the poem of Hudibras was to ex- 

 pose the fanaticism of the Puritans, in the same man- 

 ner as Cervantes exposed the passion for knight-er- 

 rantry. Hudibras is the Don Quixote, and Ralpho 

 is the Sancho of Butler. Both satirists exposed the 

 folly of their respective objects of ridicule when they 

 had fallen into decline ; but it must be owned, that the 

 Spanish satirist is as superior in generosity to his fallen 

 foe, as he is in originality : Cervantes makes us love 

 Quixote while we laugh at him ; Butler clothes him in 

 deformity and contempt. The Spanish mock hero is 

 much more natural and probable ; he springs out of 

 circumstances easily and instantly conceivable ; the 

 Puritan mock hero arises from an odd complexion of 

 the times ; he is the creature of politics, of peculiar 

 and local manners, and superstition ; a compound of 

 pedantry, fanaticism, and knight-errantry. We can 

 imagine at once a Don Quixote, because he is a sim- 

 ple though mock knight-errant, translated as he is 

 from a foreign language ; but we cannot imagine a 

 real Hudibras, though we read of him in English. 

 The reason seems principally to be, that we have uni- 

 ted in Hudibras the incongruous characters of Puri- 

 tan and knight-errant. What was chiefly ridiculous 

 in the former of these characters was false humility, 

 in the latter false elevation. It is impossible to sati- 

 rize both under the same hero. Butler makes his 

 hero low at the outset, and it is impossible to debase 

 him by incident ; he fails, therefore, in effecting any 

 contrast of character between his knight and the 

 squire, his obstinate independent clerk ; unlike the 

 happy model of Cervantes, where our chief entertain- 

 ment arises from the contrast of the noble master and 

 the cunning servant. Independent of this infelicity, 

 the story of Hudibras is meagre and uninteresting ; 

 it wants unity ; and though we cannot pronounce 

 what the story would have been had it been prolong- 

 ed, it is easy to perceive, that out of such a design 

 no captivating fable could ever have been formed. 

 The dialogue of Cervantes is for ever amusing: that 



of Butler is fatiguing, not from insipidity, but from 

 straining the mind to attend to subtle, remote, learn- 

 ed, or metaphysical combinations. 



Yet while we may safely pronounce the poem of 

 Hudibras to be inferior to no human production in 

 point of wit, we must forget our own sensations in 

 reading it, or we must pervert the meaning of the 

 word humour, if we deny it that quality. Whatever 

 may be said of the other characters, that of the law- 

 yer, at least, is supported with exhilarating humour. 

 The principal merit of the poem is its close senten- 

 tious wit"; its profoundly wise, and true, and surpri- 

 sing, though laughable adages ; its successful tra- 

 vestie of every metaphor and simile in the store-house 

 of poetry ; its converting rhyme itself from an orna- 

 ment to an instrument of burlesque in versification ; 

 and the talent which it displays of sending at once 

 the powers of fancy and erudition in quest of ludi- 

 crous associations. Hudibras is a mine of mottos. 

 He had watched (as Dr Johnson observed) with great 

 diligence the operations of human nature, and traced 

 the effects of opinion, humour, interest, and passion. 

 From such remarks proceeded that great number of 

 sententious distichs which have passed into conversa- 

 tion, and are added as proverbial axioms to the gene- 

 ral stock of practical knowledge. (>) 



BUTLER, JOSEPH, a prelate ot the greatest dis- 

 tinction in the church of England, was a native of 

 Wantage in Berkshire. His life, like that of most 

 literary characters, affords but few events remarka- 

 ble either for their singularity or their variety. But 

 on this, as on many other occasions, we have to la- 

 ment the conduct of surviving friends, who, with a 

 view to conceal all the more human features of a great 

 man's character, deprive us of all access to his fami- 

 liar society, and exhibit him only at a distance in the 

 cold and dignified attitude of a statue. Whether 

 we consider the high elevation, from a low origin, to 

 which he attained in life, the rank, dignity, and 

 learning of his friends, or the mighty and almost un- 

 paralleled grasp of his own intellectual powers, Bi- 

 shop Butler was surely a man, whose opinions, say- 

 ings, and private habits of life, not excepting even 

 his juvenile history, could bear as minute a recital, as 

 those of any literary character of his or any other 

 time. He was born in 1692, of respectable parents, 

 of the Presbyterian denomination ; who perceiving, at 

 an early period, the predilection of their son for a 

 life of study, did not fail to encourage, to the utmost 

 of their power, so flattering a disposition. By his 

 respectable industry as a shopkeeper, his father, Mr 

 Thomas Butler, was fortunately enabled to afford 

 Joseph, who was the youngest of eight children, a 

 course of preparatory education at the grammar 

 school of Wantage, under the Rev. Philip Barton ; 

 whence, with the view of qualifying him for the mi- 

 nistry, he naturally sent his son to an academy of his 

 own persuasion. This Presbyterian seminary, which 

 had the honour of giving Butler and some other 

 great men to the world, was superintended by Mr 

 Jones, first at Gloucester and afterwards at Tewkes- 

 bury. 



Here our young student soon rendered himself 



Sutler, 

 Joseph. 



Nc cut vivo deerant omnia, deesset etiam mortuo tur^ulus. 



