BUTLER' F the great author of Hudibras there is a life prefixed to the 1 and therefore of disputable authority; and some account is incidentally given by Wood3, who confesses the uncertainty of his own narrative: more, however, than they knew cannot now be learned, and nothing remains but to compare and copy them. SAMUEL BUTLER was born in the parish of Strensham*2 in Worcestershire, according to his biographer, in 16125. This account Dr. Nash finds confirmed by the register. He was christened Feb. 146. His father's condition is variously represented. Wood mentions 3 him as competently wealthy', but Mr. Longueville, the son of Butler's principal friend, says he was an honest farmer with some small estate, who made a shift to educate his son at the grammar school of Worcester, under Mr. Henry Bright, from whose care he removed for a short time to Cambridge; but for a want of money was never made a member of any college. Wood leaves us rather doubtful whether he went to Cambridge or Oxford; but at last makes him pass six or seven years at Cambridge, without knowing in what hall or college 10: yet it can hardly be imagined that ''In the last [seventeenth] century the strange fashion of calling Butler by the name of Hudibras was very general; even so late as 1738 Dr. Birch placed the Life of the poet in the General Dictionary under the title of Hudibras.' Malone's Dryden, iii. 206. 2 First published in 1732. 3 Wood gives this account in the Life of William Prynne, on whom Butler had fathered two letters written by himself. Ath. Oxon. iii. 874. See also Aubrey's Brief Lives, i. 135. Strensham was held by a Royalist garrison at the time of the Civil War. It surrendered in 1646. Nash's Worcestershire, ii. 390. he lived so long in either university, but as belonging to one house or another, and it is still less likely that he could have so long inhabited a place of learning with so little distinction as to leave his residence uncertain. Dr. Nash has discovered that his father was owner of a house and a little land, worth about eight pounds a year, still called 'Butler's tenement '.' 4. Wood has his information from his brother, whose narrative placed him at Cambridge, in opposition to that of his neighbours which sent him to Oxford. The brother's seems the best authority, till, by confessing his inability to tell his hall or college, he gives reason to suspect that he was resolved to bestow on him an academical education; but durst not name a college for fear of detection 2. 5 He was for some time, according to the author of his Life, clerk to Mr. Jefferys of Earl's-Croomb in Worcestershire, an eminent justice of the peace 3. In his service he had not only leisure for study, but for recreation; his amusements were musick and painting, and the reward of his pencil was the friendship of the celebrated Cooper. Some pictures, said to be his, were shewn to Dr. Nash, at Earl's Croomb, but when he enquired for them some years afterwards he found them destroyed, to stop windows, and owns that they hardly deserved a better fate. He him at schoole was as much education Nash's Worcestershire, ii. 391. 2 'He went, as his brother now living affirms, to the University of Cambridge; yet others of the neighbourhood say to Oxon, but whether true I cannot tell. . . . After he had continued in Cambridge about six or seven years, but in what college or hall his brother knows not,' &c. Ath. Oxon. iii. 875. 3 Grey's Hudibras, Preface, p. 5. 4 'Butler's love to and skill in painting made a great friendship between him and Mr. Samuel Cowper (prince of limners of this age).... He [Butler] painted well, and made it (sometime) his profession.' AUBREY, Brief Lives, i. 135, 138. Evelyn, in 1662, 'had the honour to hold the candle whilst this rare limner [Cooper] was crayoning of the King's face and head to make the stamps for the new milled money now contriving.' Diary, i. 381. Cooper painted Mrs. Pepys. 'He is a most admirable workman, and good company.' PEPYS, Diary, iv. 484. His wife was sister of Pope's mother. Walpole's Anec. of Painting, 1782, iii. 115; Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 5. 5 This sentence is not in the first edition. Nash saw them in 1738. 'In 1774 I found they had served to stop up windows and save the tax; and indeed they were not fit for much else.' NASH, Worcestershire, ii. 391. The tax (1775) rose gradually from twopence on every window, the lowest rate, upon houses with not more than seven windows, to two He was afterwards admitted into the family of the Countess of 6 Kent, where he had the use of a library; and so much recommended himself to Selden that he was often employed by him in literary business. Selden, as is well known, was steward to the Countess, and is supposed to have gained much of his wealth by managing her estate 1. In what character Butler was admitted into that Lady's 7 service, how long he continued in it, and why he left it, is, like the other incidents of his life, utterly unknown 2. The vicissitudes of his condition placed him afterwards in the 8 family of Sir Samuel Luke, one of Cromwell's officers 3. Here he observed so much of the character of the sectaries that he is said to have written or begun his poem at this time; and it is likely that such a design would be formed in a place where he saw the principles and practices of the rebels, audacious and undisguised in the confidence of success. At length the King returned, and the time came in which 9 loyalty hoped for its reward. Butler, however, was only made secretary to the Earl of Carbery, president of the principality of Wales, who conferred on him the stewardship of Ludlow Castle when the Court of the Marches was revived 5. shillings, the highest rate, upon houses with twenty-five windows and upwards. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 1811, iii. 292. I According to Aubrey, 'after the Earle's death he married her.... He never owned the marriage till after her death, upon some lawe account.' Brief Lives, ii. 220-1. The editor adds that she 'bequeathed her estate to him.' Ib. p. 225. 'The story is probably false.' Dict. Nat. Biog. li. 220. The author of Butler's Life describes the Countess as 'that great encourager of learning,' and Selden as 'that living library of learning.' Grey's Hudibras, Preface, p. 6. 2' He wayted some yeares on her; she gave her gentlemen 20 li. per annum a-piece.' Brief Lives, i. 138. 3 He was member for Bedford, and a victim of Pride's Purge on Dec. 6, 1648. Carlyle's Cromwell, 1857, i. 346; ii. 387; Rushworth's Hist. Coll vii. 1355. He had been 'a Colonel in the parliament army, and Scoutmaster General in the counties of Bedford, 10 11 12 In this part of his life he married Mrs. Herbert, a gentlewoman of a good family, and lived, says Wood, upon her fortune, having studied the common law but never practised it'. A fortune she had, says his biographer, but it was lost by bad securities. In 16632 was published the first part, containing three cantos, of the poem of Hudibras, which, as Prior relates, was made known at Court by the taste and influence of the Earl of Dorset 3. When it was known it was necessarily admired; the king quoted, the courtiers studied, and the whole party of the royalists applauded it. Every eye watched for the golden shower which was to fall upon the author, who certainly was not without his part in the general expectation. In 1664 the second part appeared; the curiosity of the nation was rekindled, and the writer was again praised and elated 5. But praise was his whole reward. Clarendon, says Wood, gave him of Wales see Owen Edwards's Wales, 1902, p. 321. 'It was abolished by the Long Parliament in 1642, restored in 1660, and finally abolished in 1689,' Ib. p. 328. 'Tradition at Ludlow still points out a room in the entrance-gateway where Butler kept his pen, ink, and paper for anything he had on hand.' Masson's Milton, vi. 300. See also ib. i. 604. 1 Ath. Oxon. iii. 875. 'He married a good jointeresse, the relict of Morgan, by which meanes he lives comfortably. Aubrey's Brief Lives, i. 36. In the Life she is called 'Mrs. Herbert, but no widow, as our Oxford antiquary has reported.' Grey's Hudibras, Preface, p. 7. 2 At the end of 1662. 3 Post, DORSET, 13. 'Butler owed it to him that the Court tasted his Hudibras.' PRIOR, Eng. Poets, xxxii. an abuse of the Presbyter Knight going to the wars that I am ashamed of it; and by and by meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d. PEPYS, Diary, ii. 85. 'Feb. 6, 1662-3. And so to a bookseller's in the Strand, and there bought Hudibras again, it being certainly some ill humour to be so against that which all the world cries up to be the example of wit, for which I am resolved once more to read him, and see whether I can find it or no.' Ib. p. 105. According to an advertisement quoted in Masson's Milton, vi. 339, from The Kingdom's Intelligencer, Jan. 5, 1661-2, the book was published by that date; but there must, I think, be a mistake in this. 5 Towards the end of 1663. 'Nov. 28, 1663. To Paul's Church Yard, and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read, to see if it be as good as the first, which the world cried so mightily up, though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but twice or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty.' Pepys's Diary, ii. 250. On Dec. 10 he bought both parts, 'the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies.' Ib. p. 255. I reason to hope for 'places and employments of value and credit 1'; but no such advantages did he ever obtain. It is reported that the King once gave him three hundred guineas; but of this temporary bounty I find no proof3. Wood relates that he was secretary to Villiers, Duke of Buck- 13 ingham, when he was Chancellor of Cambridge; this is doubted by the other writer, who yet allows the Duke to have been his frequent benefactor 5. That both these accounts are false there is reason to suspect, from a story told by Packe in his account of the Life of Wycherley, and from some verses which Mr. Thyer has published in the author's remains". 'Mr. Wycherley,' says Packe, 'had always laid hold of an 14 [any] opportunity which offered of representing to the Duke of Buckingham how well Mr. Butler had deserved of the royal family by writing his inimitable Hudibras, and that it was a reproach to the Court that a person of his loyalty and wit should suffer in obscurity, and under the wants he did. The Duke always seemed to hearken to him with attention enough, and after some time undertook to recommend his pretensions to his Majesty. Mr. Wycherley, in hopes to keep him steady to his rewarded merit.' JOHNSON, Boswell's Johnson, ii. 341. Ath. Oxon. iii. 875; Aubrey's Brief Lives, i. 137. He was Chancellor from 1670 to 1674. Graduati Cant. 1823, App. p. 4. He was Zimriin Absalom and Achitophel, ll. 544-68. Pope, in Moral Essays, iii. 299, describes him dying where he had 'No wit to flatter left of all his store,' &c. See also post, DRYDEN, 93. In the Catalogue of the Record Office Museum, p. 78, the Memorandum of the Duke's approval of a petition about a Fellowship at Trinity College is signed 'Sa. Butler.' 6 5 Grey's Hudibras, Preface, p. 8. Jacob's Poet. Reg. i. 276; Packe's Misc. 1719, p. 183. 7 Johnson refers, I think, to a character not in verse but in prose, which begins:-'A Duke of Bucks is one that has studied the whole body of vice,' and ends :-'He endures pleasures with less patience than other men do their pains.' Remains, ii. 72. For Thyer see post, BUTLER, 20. |