Samuel Butler (1612–1680)

BUTLER, SAMUEL (1612–1680), poet, was the fifth child and the second son of Samuel Butler, a Worcestershire farmer, and a churchwarden of the parish of Strensham, where the poet was baptised on 8 Feb. 1612. The entry is in his father's handwriting. The elder Samuel Butler owned a house and a piece of land, which was still called Butler's tenement fifty years ago; the value of this was about 8l. a year (see Notes and Queries, 6th series, iv. 387, 469). According to Aubrey, however, the poet was not born in this Strensham house, but at a hamlet called Bartonbridge, half a mile out of Worcester. The father, according to Wood, leased of Sir Thomas Russell, lord of the manor of Strensham, an estate of 300l. a year. The boy was educated in Worcester free school. He has been identified, but against probability, with the Samuel Butler who went up to Christ Church, Oxford, from Westminster in 1623; another legend, somewhat better supported, says that he proceeded for a short time, about 1627, to Cambridge. It is probable that the first of several situations which he occupied was that of attendant, with a salary of 20l. a year, to Elizabeth, countess of Kent, at her residence of Wrest in Bedfordshire. The fact that he found Selden under the same roof makes it probable that this occurred in 1628. Selden seems to have interested himself in Butler's talents, and to have trained his mind. The young man spent several years at Wrest, and employed his leisure in studying painting under Samuel Cooper, or more probably with him, for Cooper was not yet illustrious. Butler is said to have painted a head of Oliver Cromwell from life; his pictures were long in existence at Earl's Coombe in Worcestershire, but were all used, in the last century, to stop up broken windows. Butler spent some years of his early life at Earl's Coombe as clerk to a justice of the name of Jeffereys. He seems to have served as clerk or attendant to a succession of country gentlemen. One of these was Sir Samuel Luke of Cople Hoo, near Bedford, a stiff presbyterian, and one of Cromwell's generals. This person sat for the character of Hudibras,

A Knight as errant as e'er was;

but some of the touches are said to be studied from another puritan employer of Butler's, Sir Henry Rosewell of Ford Abbey in Devonshire. It is supposed that Butler spent some time in France and Holland, which indeed his own writings show. He is not known to have published anything, or to have attained the smallest reputation, until after the death of Cromwell. In 1659, at the age of forty-seven, he first appeared before the public with an anonymous prose tract, in favour of the Stuarts, entitled ‘Mola Asinaria.’ Perhaps in reward for this service, he was appointed secretary to Richard, earl of Carbury, when he was made lord president of Wales in 1660. Lord Carbury made Butler steward of Ludlow Castle. Some bills in which his name occurs are published in ‘Notes and Queries’ (1st ser. v. 5). He married soon after this, his wife being differently described as a spinster of the name of Herbert and as a widow of the name of Morgan. Whatever her name was, she was supposed to be well dowered, and Butler probably had the rashness to resign his appointment at Ludlow on that account, for he certainly did not hold it more than a year. He lived comfortably on his wife's jointure for a time, till the money was lost on bad securities. The obscurity which hangs over every part of Butler's life makes it impossible to say whether he did or did not succeed in securing the patronage of George, duke of Buckingham. Wycherley told a lively story which, if true, shows that Butler was not so successful; but Butler has left a sketch of Buckingham which, though extremely satirical, seems founded on such study as a secretary alone would have the opportunity of making.

At the age of fifty Butler suddenly became famous. Fifteen years before, in the puritan houses where he had lived, he had strung his pungent observations and jingling satirical rhymes into a long heroi-comic poem. The times had changed, and this could now be produced without offence to the ruling powers. On 11 Nov. 1662 was licensed, and early in 1663 appeared, a small anonymous volume entitled ‘Hudibras: the first part written in the time of the late wars.’ This is the first genuine edition, but the manuscript appears to have been pirated, for an advertisement says that ‘a most false and imperfect copy’ of the poem is being circulated without any printer's or publisher's name. Exactly a year later a second part appeared, also heralded by a piracy. The book was introduced at court early in 1663 by the Earl of Dorset, and was instantly patronised by the king. Copies of the first editions of ‘Hudibras’ not very unfrequently have inscriptions showing that they were the gift of Charles II to their first owner. Butler has himself recorded this royal partiality for his book:—

He never ate, nor drank, nor slept,
But ‘Hudibras’ still near him kept;
Nor would he go to church or so,
But ‘Hudibras’ must with him go.

It was, however, the scandal of the age, that though the king was lavish in promises, he never did anything to relieve Butler's poverty. Lord Clarendon also greatly admired him, and had his portrait painted for his own library, but in spite of all his promises gave him no employment. The neglect of Butler is one of the commonplaces of literary morality, but the reader is apt to fancy that Butler was not easy to help. It is not plain that he had any talent, save this one of matchless satire; and in his private intercourse he was unpleasing. From childhood ‘he would make observations and reflections on everything one said or did;’ he had few friends, and was not careful to retain those few. He lived in poverty and obscurity for seventeen years after the first appearance of ‘Hudibras,’ publishing a third part of that poem in 1678 (the different forms of which are described in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 6th ser. vi. 108, 150, 276, 311, 370, 454), and two slight pieces, the ‘Geneva Ballad’ in 1674, and an ‘Ode to the Memory of Du-Val’ in 1671. In 1672 he printed an abusive prose tract against the nonconformists, called ‘Two Letters.’ Butler in his later years was much troubled with the gout, and from October 1679 to Easter 1680 he did not stir out of his room. He lived in Rose Street, Covent Garden, until he died of consumption, although he was not yet seventy, on 25 Sept. 1680. His best friend, William Longueville, a bencher of the Inner Temple, tried to have Butler buried in Westminster Abbey, but found no one to second him in this proposal. He therefore buried the poet at his own expense, on the 27th, in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Aubrey says:—‘In the north part, next the church at the east end; his feet touch the wall; his grave 2 yards distant from the pilaster of the door, by his desire, 6 foot deep.’ Wood describes Butler as ‘a boon and witty companion, especially among the company he knew well.’ Aubrey writes of Butler's appearance: ‘He is of a middle stature, strong set, high coloured, a head of sorrel hair, a severe and sound judgment, a good fellow.’ This writer, who knew him pretty well, gives us an idea that the legend of Butler's poverty was exaggerated in the reaction which began in his favour soon after his death. A tradition is preserved by Granger that Butler was in receipt of a pension of 100l. a year at the time of his death.

The success of ‘Hudibras,’ and a rumour that a large quantity of Butler's unpublished manuscript was in existence, encouraged the production of a great many spurious posthumous collections of his verses. For some reason or other, however, the papers of Butler were preserved untouched by William Longueville, who bequeathed them to his son Charles, and he in his turn to a John Clarke of Walgherton in Cheshire. This gentleman, in November 1754, consented to allow R. Thyer, the keeper of the public library in Manchester, to examine them. The result was the publication in 1759 of two very interesting volumes, entitled ‘The Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr. Samuel Butler.’ These volumes contain much that is only second in merit to ‘Hudibras’ itself, among others a brilliant satire on the Royal Society, entitled ‘The Elephant in the Moon,’ and a series of prose ‘Characters.’ The collection of manuscripts from which these were selected was sold in London to the British Museum in 1885, and is now numbered there (MSS. Addit. 32625–6). Several of the pieces are still unpublished. ‘Hudibras,’ which received the honour of being illustrated by Hogarth in 1726, was several times carefully edited during the eighteenth century (for an account of the illustrated editions see Notes and Queries, 4th series, xi. 352, and 5th series, iii. 456). The edition of Dr. Grey, which appeared first in 1744, is still considered the standard one. ‘Hudibras’ was translated into French verse with great skill by John Townley (1697–1782). In 1721 a monument to Butler was raised in Westminster Abbey, at the expense of the lord mayor, John Barber, a graceful act which Pope rewarded in two spiteful lines:

But whence this Barber? that a name so mean
Should, join'd with Butler's, on a tomb be seen.

A portrait of Butler by Lely is in the gallery at Oxford; another by Lely was painted for Clarendon (see Evelyn's Diary, Bray and Wheatley, iii. 444); Soest painted a third portrait, which was engraved for Grey's edition of ‘Hudibras.’

E. G.

BUTLER (or Boteler), SAMUEL (1612–1680), English poet, author of Hudibras, son of Samuel Butler, a small farmer, was baptized at Strensham, Worcestershire, on the 8th of February 1612. He was educated at the King’s school, Worcester, under Henry Bright, the record of whose zeal as a teacher is preserved by Fuller (Worthies, Worcestershire). After leaving school he served a Mr Jeffereys of Earl’s Croome, Worcestershire, in the capacity of justice’s clerk, and is supposed to have thus gained his 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 “served to stop windows and save the tax; indeed they were not fit for much else.” He was then recommended to Elizabeth, countess of Kent. At her home at Wrest, Bedfordshire, he had access to a good library, and there too he met Selden, who sometimes employed him as his secretary. But his third sojourn, with Sir Samuel Luke at Cople Hoo, Bedfordshire, was not only apparently the longest, but also much the most important in its effects on his career and works. We are nowhere informed in what capacity Butler served Sir Samuel Luke, or how he came to reside in the house of a noted Puritan and Parliament man. In the family of this “valiant Mamaluke,” who, whether he was or was not the original of Hudibras, was certainly a rigid Presbyterian, “a colonel in the army of the Parliament, scoutmaster-general for Bedfordshire and governor of Newport Pagnell,” Butler must have had the most abundant opportunities of studying from the life those who were to be the victims of his satire; he is supposed to have taken some hints for his caricature from Sir Henry Rosewell of Ford Abbey, Devonshire. But we know nothing positive of him until the Restoration, when he was appointed secretary to Richard Vaughan, 2nd earl of Carbery, lord president of the principality of Wales, who made him steward of Ludlow Castle, an office which he held from January 1661 to January 1662. About this time he married a rich lady, variously described as a Miss Herbert and as a widow named Morgan. His wife’s fortune was afterwards, however, lost.

Early in 1663 Hudibras: The First Part: written in the Time of the Late Wars, was published, but this, the first genuine edition, had been preceded in 1662 by an unauthorized one. On the 26th of December Pepys bought it, and though neither then nor afterwards could he see the wit of “so silly an abuse of the Presbyter knight going to the wars,” he repeatedly testifies to its extraordinary popularity. A spurious second part appeared within the year. This determined the poet to bring out the second part (licensed on the 7th of November 1663, printed 1664), 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 of Butler. On the publication of Hudibras he was sent for by Lord Chancellor Hyde (Clarendon), says Aubrey, and received many promises, none of which was fulfilled. He is said to have received a gift of £300 from Charles II., and to have been secretary to George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, when the latter was chancellor of the university of Cambridge. Most of his biographers, in their eagerness to prove the ill-treatment which Butler is supposed to have received, disbelieve both these stories, perhaps without sufficient reason. Butler’s satire on Buckingham in his Characters (Remains, 1759) shows such an intimate knowledge that it is probable the second story is true. Two years after the publication of the third part of Hudibras he died, on the 25th of September 1680, and was buried by his friend Longueville, a bencher of the Middle Temple, in the churchyard of St Paul’s, Covent Garden. He was, we are told, “of a leonine-coloured hair, sanguine, choleric, middle-sized, strong.” A portrait by Lely at Oxford and others elsewhere represent him as somewhat hard-featured.

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, that Butler’s actual service 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 authority—Charles Longueville, 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 notes on the subject are Aubrey’s,^[1] that “he might have had preferments at first, but would not accept any but very good, so at last he had none at all, and died in want”; and the memorandum of the same author, that “satirical wits disoblige whom they converse with, &c., consequently make to themselves many enemies and few friends, and this was his manner and case.”

Three monuments have been erected to the poet’s memory—the first in Westminster Abbey in 1721, by John Barber, mayor of London, who is spitefully referred to by Pope for daring to connect his name with Butler’s. In 1786 a tablet was placed in St Paul’s, Covent Garden, by residents of the parish. This was destroyed in 1845. Later, another was set up at Strensham by John Taylor of that place. Perhaps the happiest epitaph on him is one by John Dennis, which calls Butler “a whole species of poets in one.”

Hudibras itself, though probably quoted as often as ever, has dropped into the class of books which are more quoted than read. In reading it, it is of the utmost importance to comprehend clearly and to bear constantly in mind the purpose of the author in writing it. This purpose is evidently not artistic but polemic, to show in the most unmistakable characters the vileness and folly of the anti-royalist party. Anything like a regular plot—the absence of which has often been deplored or excused—would have been for this end not merely a superfluity but a mistake, as likely to divert the attention and perhaps even enlist some sympathy for the heroes. Anything like regular character-drawing would have been equally unnecessary and dangerous—for to represent anything but monsters, some alleviating strokes must have been introduced. The problem, therefore, was to produce characters just sufficiently unlike lay-figures to excite and maintain a moderate interest, and to set them in motion by dint of a few incidents not absolutely unconnected,—meanwhile to subject the principles and manners of which these characters were the incarnation to ceaseless satire and raillery. The triumphant solution of the problem is undeniable, when it has once been enunciated and understood. Upon a canvas thus prepared and outlined, Butler has embroidered a collection of flowers of wit, which only the utmost fertility or imagination could devise, and the utmost patience of industry elaborate. In the union of these two qualities he is certainly without a parallel, and their combination has produced a work which is unique. The poem is of considerable length, extending to more than ten thousand verses, yet Hazlitt hardly exaggerates when he says that “half the lines are got by heart”; indeed a diligent student of later English literature has read great part of Hudibras though he may never have opened its pages. The tableaux or situations, though few and simple in construction, are ludicrous enough. The knight and squire setting forth on their journey; the routing of the bear-baiters; the disastrous renewal of the contest; Hudibras and Ralph in the stocks; the lady’s release and conditional acceptance of the unlucky knight; the latter’s deliberations on the means of eluding his vow; the Skimmington; the visit to Sidrophel, the astrologer; the attempt to cajole the lady, with its woeful consequences; the consultation with the lawyer, and the immortal pair of letters to which this gives rise, complete the argument of the whole poem. But the story is as nothing; throughout we have little really kept before us but the sordid vices of the sectaries, their hypocrisy, their churlish ungraciousness, their greed of money and authority, their fast and loose morality, their inordinate pride. The extraordinary felicity of the means taken to place all these things in the most ridiculous light has never been questioned. The doggerel metre, never heavy or coarse, but framed as to be the very voice of mocking laughter, the astounding similes and disparates, the rhymes which seem to chuckle and to sneer of themselves, the wonderful learning with which the abuse of learning is rebuked, the subtlety with which subtle casuistry is set at nought can never be missed. Keys like those of L’Estrange are therefore of little use. It signifies nothing whether Hudibras was Sir Samuel Luke of Bedfordshire or Sir Henry Rosewell of Devonshire, still less whether Ralph’s name in the flesh was Robinson or Pendle, least of all that Orsin was perhaps Mr Gosling, or Trulla possibly Miss Spencer. Butler was probably as little indebted to mere copying for his characters as for his ideas and style. These latter are in the highest degree original. The first notion of the book, and only the first notion, Butler undoubtedly received from Don Quixote. His obligations to the Satyre Ménippée have been noticed by Voltaire, and though English writers have sometimes ignored or questioned them, are not to be doubted. The art, perhaps the most terrible of all the weapons of satire, of making characters without any great violation of probability represent themselves in the most atrocious and despicable light, was never perhaps possessed in perfection except by Pithou and his colleagues and by Butler. Against these great merits some defects must certainly be set. As a whole, the poem is no doubt tedious, if only on account of the very blaze of wit, which at length almost wearies us by its ceaseless demands on our attention. It should, however, be remembered that it was originally issued in parts, and therefore, it may be supposed, intended to be read in parts, for there can be little doubt that the second part was written before the first was published. A more real defect, but one which Butler shares with all his contemporaries, is the tendency to delineate humours instead of characters, and to draw from the outside rather than from within.

Attempts have been made to trace the manner and versification of Hudibras to earlier writers, especially in Cleveland’s satires and in the Musarum Deliciae of Sir John Mennis (Pepys’s Minnes) and Dr James Smith (1605–1667). But if it had few ancestors it had an abundant offspring. A list of twenty-seven direct imitations of Hudibras in the course of a century may be found in the Aldine edition (1893). Complete translations of considerable excellence have been made into French (London, 1757 and 1819) by John Townley (1697–1782), a member of the Irish Brigade; and into German by D. W. Soltau (Riga, 1787); specimens of both may be found in R. Bell’s edition. Voltaire tried his hand at a compressed version, but not with happy results.