Page:Hudibras - Volume 1 (Butler, Nash, Bohn; 1859).djvu/23

Rh Whether he was ever entered at any university is uncertain. His early biographer says he went to Cambridge, but was never matriculated: Wood, on the authority of Butler's brother, says, the poet spent six or seven years there; but there is great reason to doubt the truth of this. Some expressions in his works look as if he were acquainted with the customs of Oxford, and among them coursing, which was a term peculiar to that university (see Part iii. c. ii. v. 1244); but this kind of knowledge might have been easily acquired without going to Oxford; and as the speculation is entirely unsupported by circumstantial proofs, it may be safely rejected. Upon the whole, the probability is that Butler never went to either of the Universities. His father was not rich enough to defray the expenses of a collegiate course, and could not have effected it by any other means, there being at that time no exhibitions at the Worcester School.

Some time after Butler had completed his education, he obtained, through the interest of the Russels, the situation of clerk to Thomas Jefferies, of Earl's Croombe, Esq., an active justice of the peace, and a leading man in the business of the province. This was no mean office, but one that required a knowledge of law and the British constitution, and a proper deportment to men of every rank and occupation; besides, in those times, when large mansions were generally in retired situations, every large family was a community within itself: the upper servants, or retainers, being often the younger sons of gentlemen, were treated as friends, and the whole household dined in one common hall, and had a lecturer or clerk, who, during meal-times, read to them some useful or entertaining book.

Mr Jefferies' family was of this sort, situated in a retired part of the country, surrounded by bad roads, the master of it residing constantly in Worcestershire. Here Mr Butler, having leisure to indulge his inclination for learning, probably improved himself very much, not only in the abstruser branches of it, but in the polite arts: and here he studied painting. "Our Hogarth of Poetry," says Walpole, "was a painter too;" and, according to Aubrey, his love of the pencil introduced him to the friendship of that prince of painters, Samuel Cooper. But his proficiency seems to have