Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/650

588 BUTLER, (1G12-1GSO), whose name appears to have been spelt Boteler in official documents to the end of his life, was born at Strensham on the Avon in Worcestershire. He was baptized on the 8th of February 1612. His father, who was of the same name and was then churchwarden, is variously represented as a substantial fanner (owning a small freehold, and leasing from Sir William Russet a considerable farm valued at 300 a year), and as &quot; a man of but slender fortune,&quot; who was barely able to educate his son at a free school. The author of Hudibras was appa rently educated at thecollege(or cathedral) school, Worcester, and the house in which he was born was pulled down (being considered incapable of repair) about 1873. Hardly any other particulars of his youth are recorded, and his later education (if he received any) is equally uncertain. He has been loosely asserted (as is the case with many other distinguished persons of his century) to have studied at both Cambridge and Oxford, but the balance of testimony seems to be against his having belonged to either univer sity. The time between the completion of his education (circa 1G30) and the Restoration, a period of fully thirty years, appears to have been spent by him in three different households, with Mr Jefferies of Earl s Croome in Worcester shire, with the countess of Kent at Wrest in Bedfordshire, and with Sir Samuel Luke at Woodend or Cople Hoo in the same county. He served Mr Jefferies in the capacity of justice s clerk, and is supposed to have thus laid the foundation of his remarkable knowledge of law and law terms. He also employed himself at Earl s Croome in general study, and particularly in painting, which he is said to have thought of adopting as a profession. It is probable, however, that art has not lost by his change of mind, for, according to one of his editors, in 1774 his pictures &quot; served to stop windows and save the tax ; indeed they were not fit for much else.&quot; At Wrest, where he is said to have been gentleman to the countess, he pursued his studies in painting, drawing, and music ; probably, also, in other directions, for Wrest contained a good library. Here he met and worked for Selden. But his third sojourn, that at Cople Hoo, was not only apparently the longest, but also much the most important in its effects on his career and works. We are nowhere informed, nor is it at all clear, in what capacity Butler served Sir Samuel Luke, or how one who was not only in temper and sympathies, but also from early associations, a decided royalist, came to reside in the house of a noted Puritan and Parliament man. In the family of this &quot; valiant Mamaluke,&quot; who, whether he was or was not the original of Hudibras, was certainly a rigid Pres byterian, &quot;a colonel in the army of the Parliament, scovrtmaster-general for Bedfordshire and governor of New- part Pagnell,&quot; Butler must have had the most abundant opportunities of studying from the life those who were to be the victims of his great future satire. But we know not how long he held his situation (whatever it was) under the knight of Cople, and we hear nothing positive of him till the Restoration, immediately after which he was appointed secretary to Lord Carbery (then President of Wales) and steward of Ludlow Castle. Contradictory documents exist respecting his tenure of the latter office, one speaking of him as &quot;late steward&quot; in January 1GG2, the other (a protection against arrest) addressed to him as steward in September 1GG7. About this time he married a Mrs Herbert, according to Aubrey a widow with a good jointure, on whose means he lived comfortably. Aubrey knew him well and could hardly be wrong on such a point, especially as his testimony as to Butler s living in comparative comfort is confirmed by another authority to be afterwards mentioned. It should, however, be observed that other accounts state that Mrs. Herbert s fortune was lost through bad securities. Late in 1662 the first part of lludibras was published. On the 26th of December Pepys bought it, and though neither then nor afterwards could he see the wit of it, he repeatedly testifies to its extraordinary popularity. This popularity is most clearly proved by the issue of a pirated edition within a month, and by the appear ance of a spurious second part within the year. This latter compliment (which it will be remembered was also paid to Butler s spiritual ancestor Cervantes) determined the poet to bring out the second part, which was licensed on November 7, 1663, and which if possible exceeded the first in popularity. From this time till 1678, the date of the publication of the third part, we hear nothing certain and hardly anything at all of Butler. He appears at some period to have visited France. He is said to have received a gift of 300 from Charles II., and to have been secretary to Buckingham when the latter was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Most of his biographers, in their eagerness to prove tlfe ill-treatment which Butler is supposed to have received, disbelieve both these stories, perhaps without sufficient reason. It must be allowed that it is scarcely a valid argument that Butler, if he had been secretary to Buckingham, would not have spoken so severely of that nobleman in his Characters (Remains, 1754), when it is remembered that he satirized Sir Samuel Luke, to whom he held nearly the same relation, with certainly equal virulence. Two years after the publication of the third part he died (September 25, 1680), and was buried by his friend Mr William Lougueville (a bencher of the Middle Temple) in the churchyard of St Paul s, Covent Garden. He was, we are told, &quot; of a leonine-coloured hair, sanguine, choleric, middle-sized, strong.&quot; Portraits exist at Oxford and elsewhere which represent him as somewhat hard-featured. Two personal anecdotes, and perhaps two only, are recorded of him. One is the well-known story which tells how Wycherly laboured hard to secure for the neglected poet the patron age of Buckingham, how an interview was at last arranged, from which the duke was, alas! called off by the passage of &quot; a brace of ladies,&quot; and how the opportunity was lost. The other bears suspicious marks of having been made up as setting for a witticism of Lord Dorset s. Dorset, it seems, was anxious to know the author of Hudibras, and prevailed on a common friend to bring him to a tavern. At the first bottle Butler was quiet and reserved, at the second full of wit and spirits, at the third dull and stupid, upon which Dorset s comment was that Butler was &quot;like a nine-pin, little at both ends, but great in the middle.&quot; Of these stories it may be said, as of most such, that they may be true and cannot be proved to be false. Of the neglect of Butler by the Court something must be said. It must be remembered that the complaints on the subject supposed to have been uttered by the poet all occur in the spurious posthumous works, that men of letters have been at all times but too prone to complain of lack of patronage (a fact which makes it probable that Dryden, Otway, Oldham, &c., in alluding to Butler, spoke as the proverb of that day went, &quot; one word for him and two for themselves&quot;), that the actual service rendered by Butler was rendered when the day was already won, and that the pathetic stories of the poet starving and dying in want are contradicted by the best authorityMr C. Longucville (son of the poet s friend) who asserted that Butler, though often disappointed, was never reduced to anything like want or beggary, and did not die in any person s debt. But the most significant story on the subject is Aubrey s, that &quot; he mjght have had preferments at first, but would not accept any but very good, and so got none.&quot; Three monuments have been at different times and places erected to the poet s memory, the first in 1721 by 