stand his spirit, and they left him to die in poverty. The Duke of Buckingham-Dryden's Zimri-on one occasion was engaged by Wycherley to meet Butler with a view to rendering him a service at court. The meeting took place, but as ill-luck would have it, on the moment a follower of the Duke tripped past with a brace of ladies; instantly his Grace was gone, having other business to pursue than the patronage of letters. Once, and only once, in his collection of characters Butler presents not a type but an individual; it is Dryden's Zimri. He is " as inconstant as the moon"; he is "governed by some mean servant or other that relates to his pleasures"; he has "dammed up all those lights that Nature made into the noblest prospects," and has "opened other little blind loopholes backward." It was not for such spirits, whose laughter is the crackling of thorns under a pot, that Butler wrote. His "Hudibras" is not directed against the decencies of morality, but against the follies and frauds, as the satirist conceived them, of pretended piety; it is, in its own way, a plea for reason and good sense. Incapable as Butler was of comprehending the true significance of religious passion, his work remains as a document of value to the historian of the English mind, a document which tells us what aspect Puritanism presented to a man of keen observation, who viewed it wholly from outside, and who feared the madness of extremes.

What personal influences went to form Butler's mind we cannot tell. It is stated that in early life he was acquainted with Selden, and even acted as that great scholar's amanuensis. The authority of age and

As we

the authority of learning-learning wielded with judgment and penetrated by intelligence-must needs have made Selden a power with such a youth as Samuel Butler. Did materials for investigation exist we might find that Selden was for a time the master of his mind. With a broader intellect and a more generous temper than Butler's, Selden had a rationalising turn of thought, an independence of parties in state and church, a shrewdness, a felicity in witty metaphor, a zest in exposing the ignorance and folly of adversaries which must have won admiration from the young observer of men. read his "Table-Talk" we seem to see Butler listening with a smile upon his silent lips. "They [divines] talk (but blasphemously enough) that the Holy Ghost is president of their General Councils; when the truth is, the odd man is still the Holy Ghost." "We look after religion, as the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his mouth." Religion is made a juggler's paper; now 'tis a horse, now 'tis a lanthorn, now 'tis a boat, now 'tis a man. To serve ends, religion is turned into all shapes." In such sayings as these perhaps we approach one of the sources of " Hudibras not less important than the "Satire Ménipée" or "Don Quixote."

وو

X

TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

I

THE interval between the publication of the second part of the "Pilgrim's Progress" and that of Swift's "Tale of a Tub" is only twenty years. Yet in passing from the one to the other we seem to enter another country; we are sensible of an altered climate. And this is not merely because the individual genius of the one writer stands so wide apart from that of the other. The questions which occupied the minds of the younger generation were new; the way of regarding them was different; the temper in which they were dealt with was a different temper. The entire view of life, both individual and social, had undergone a considerable modification. In place of absolute dogma and unqualified conclusions, we find a sense that truth is relative; in place of passion driving men to extremes, we find a spirit of compromise, a willingness to accept provisional arrangements.

In politics the doctrine of the divine right of kings and the doctrine of the divine right of the saints to rule the earth were replaced by constitutional expedients. At the Revolution the crown, as Hallam expresses it, gave recognizances for its good behaviour, and the several

parts of the Constitution were kept in cohesion by the tie of a common interest in its preservation. The Revolution was based not on absolute ideas, but on political expediency. One party in the State might now cry for improvement; the other might plead for conservation; each might revile the other with all the bitterness of party spirit; but both were agreed in the maintenance of the constitution. The reigns of Anne and the first two Georges formed a period of comparative tranquillity in the constitutional history of England. At one time the authority of the crown and of the executive seemed to be enlarged; at another, the power of the people and their representatives; in the main a certain balance was maintained. "Happy is the nation," exclaims Mr Leslie Stephen, "which has no political philosophy, for such a philosophy is generally the offspring of a recent, or the symptom of an approaching revolution. During the quieter hours of the eighteenth century, Englishmen rather played with political theories than seriously discussed them." The political philosophy of Locke, founded partly on utilitarian ethics, partly on the theory of a social compact, is a doctrine of compromise. But it served well as a provisional resting-place-it gave the word for a much-needed halt.

The temper of moderation, reasonableness, detachment from the violence of party, appears conspicuously in the writings of Halifax, the literary merits of which, Macaulay justly said, entitle their author to a place among English classics. The book which Halifax found the most entertaining in the world was that translated by Cotton in 1685-the "Essays" of Montaigne. A

constant lover of Montaigne may be a sceptic; he can hardly be a bigot. It has been shown that Halifax's most characteristic pamphlet, "The Character of a Trimmer," was a retort upon an article of Roger L'Estrange, which appeared in "The Observator" of December 3, 1684. A trimmer, says L'Estrange, is an advocate for liberty of practice in the State and for liberty of conscience in the Church—“ a man of project every inch of him, and one that, for the ease of travellers toward the New Jerusalem, proposes the cutting of the broad way and the narrow, both into one." 1 To explain and justify the position of the trimmer in Church and State was a task which precisely suited the genius of Halifax.

He would not add to the race of scribblers were it possible to let the world alone; but when madmen in the two extremes agree to make common-sense treason, he cannot but speak. Names of reproach are invented in order that those who cannot frame an argument may have something which their dull malice can throw at the heads of those they do not like. But in reality the word "trimmer" in its right meaning "might do as much to put us into our right wits as 'Whig' and 'Tory' have done to put us out of them." In a boat one part of the company may choose to weigh it down. on this side, while another would make it lean as much to the contrary; but there may possibly be a third opinion, that the boat should go even, without endangering the passengers; they who hold this heretical opinion

1 The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, Bart., first Marquis of Halifax, by H. C. Foxcroft, II., 273.