hands. It is impossible to conceive that, if Butler had been secretary to the Duke, or had been under any kind of obligations to him, he would have singled him out for special reprobation, in the only direct personal satire he is known to have written. The portrait transcends in severity the wellknown lines on the same subject by Dryden and Pope.*

* The character, entitled A Duke of Bucks,' was published by Mr. Thyer, and as it bears strictly upon the biography of Butler is here given entire. 'A Duke of Bucks is one that has studied the whole body of vice. His parts are disproportionate to the whole, and like a monster he has more of some, and less of others than he should have. He has pulled down all that fabric that nature raised in him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. He has dammed up all those lights that nature made into the noblest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loopholes backwards, by turning day into night, and night into day. His appetite to his pleasures is diseased and crazy, like the pica in a woman, that longs to eat that which was never made for food, or a girl in the green sickness, that eats chalk and mortar. Perpetual surfeits of pleasure have filled his mind with bad and vicious humours (as well as his body with a nursery of diseases), which makes him affect new and extravagant ways, as being tired and sick with the old. Continual wine, women, and music put false values upon things, which by custom become habitual, and debauch his understanding so that he retains no right notion nor sense of things. And as the same dose of the same physic has no operation on those that are much used to it, so his pleasures require a larger proportion of excess and variety to render him sensible of them. He rises, eats, and goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others that go by the new style; and keeps the same hours with owls and the antipodes. He is a great observer of the Tartars' customs, and never eats till the great Cham, having dined, makes proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does not dwell in his house, but haunt it, like an evil spirit that walks all night to disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time, as men do their ways, in the dark; and as blind men are led by their dogs, so he is governed by some mean servant or other that relates to him his pleasures. He is as inconstant as the moon, which he lives under; and, although he does nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to himself, as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all things very freely, that come and go; but, like guests and strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This lays him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors. who apply to every particular humour while it lasts, and afterwards vanish. Thus with St. Paul, though in a different sense, he dies daily, and only lives in the night. He deforms nature, while he intends to adorn her, like Indians that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are perpetually drilled with a fiddlestick. He endures pleasures with less patience

There is reason to believe that Butler at one period visited France; nor is it improbable that he may have also gone into Holland; a supposition, however, which rests on no better evidence than his satirical description of the country. In 1678 he published the Third Part of Hudibras, and the next notice of him closes the struggle of his life. He died on the 25th of September, 1680, in Rose-street, Covent Garden.

There are different accounts of the immediate cause of his death; but they all agree in the fact of his poverty. Chambers says, that he starved owing to his pride;* Aubrey tells us that he was much troubled with gout, particularly the year before, not stirring out of his chamber from October till Easter, and that he died of consumption; and Oldham speaks of the fever that terminated his sufferings.

The expenses of his interment were defrayed by his friend, Mr. Longueville,† who had in vain endeavoured to obtain a

than other men do pains.'-Genuine Remains, vol ii. p. 72, Ed. 1759. Dr. Johnson, in reference to Aubrey's anecdote, alludes to some verses of Butler's upon the Duke, published by Mr. Thyer, which, he says, ' are written with a degree of acrimony such as neglect and disappointment might naturally excite, and such as it would be hard to imagine Butler capable of expressing against a man who had any claim to his gratitude.' I have not been able to discover any verses published by Mr. Thyer to which this description would apply. The only piece which can be considered to reflect upon Buckingham is the Satire on the Licentiousness of the Age, but there the satire is general, and is applicable to Buckingham only in common with Rochester, Sedley, Etherege, and the rest of the profligate wits of the time.

* Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire.

† Mr. William Longueville, a bencher of the Middle Temple, was one of the intimate friends and companions of the Lord Keeper Guildford. His character is drawn in the following passage by Roger North. 'His discourse was fluent, witty, literary, copious, and instructive; and those that did not well attend to him, or did not understand him, thought he talked too much. His excellence of conversation lay in a select society of one or two, but he had too much in him to allow more a due share in the conversation. He was a master of classic wit, and had the best Latin sentences from the orators, historians, and poets, at his tongue's end, and used to apply them significantly and with that judgment as cleared him of pedantry. His method was much after the way of epic compositions, full of digressions and episodes, but neither was the main let fall, nor time lost upon the by. His industry was indefatigable, and his integrity as the driven snow

subscription to deposit his remains in Westminster Abbey He was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, the service being read by Dr. Simon Patrick, at that time rector of the parish, and afterwards Bishop of Ely. The spot had been selected by Butler himself, in the north part, next the church at the east end. 'His feet,' says Aubrey, 'touch the wall; his grave, two yards distant from the pilaster of the door (by his desire) six foot deep. About twenty-five of his old acquaintances at his funeral; I myself being one.'

Forty years passed away before any memorial of the author of Hudibras appeared in Westminster Abbey; when, in 1721, Mr. Barber, a printer, and Lord Mayor of London, erected a monument to his memory, with the following inscription.

M. S.

Samuelis Butleri,

Qui Strenshamiæ in agro Vigorn. nat. 1612,
obiit Lond. 1680.

Vir doctus imprimis, acer, integer;
Operibus ingenii, non item præmiis fœlix:
Satyrici apud nos carminis artifex egregius;
Quo simulatæ religionis larvam detraxit,
Et perduellium scelera liberrime exagitavit ;
Scriptorum in suo genere, primus et postremus.
Ne, cui vivo deerant ferè omnia,
Deessit etiam mortuo tumulus,

Hoc tandem posito marmore, curavit
Johannis Barber, civis Londinensis, 1721.*

and as few blunders (if any) have come from his chamber as from any of his pretensions. His beginning was low, but he was the son of a cavalier father, who spent extravagantly what the tyranny of the times had left him, at last fell to his unprovided son to be maintained, not only in necessaries, but in extravagancies; and he, with incomparable piety and application, was a father to his father. A goodnatured six-clerk took a fancy to the young man, and gave him credit, by which he crept into that office, and at length made it his own, and in fit time he sold it. By which he made a foundation of estate, and what with a match, by which he hath posterity, and his practice, he hath re-edified a ruined family.'-Life of Lord Keeper Guildford.

* It was in reference to this monument and inscription, Wesley wrote the following well-known inscription:

While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive,
No generous patron would a dinner give;

I. BUTLER.

Shortly after this monument was erected, some persons proposed to place in the church of Covent Garden a similar memorial, for which the following epitaph was written by Dennis.

Near this place lies interred
The body of Mr. Samuel Butler,
Author of Hudibras.

He was a whole species of poet in one:
Admirable in a manner

In which no one else has been tolerable:
A manner which began and ended in him,
In which he knew no guide,

And has found no followers.
Nat. 1612. Ob. 1680.

In 1786, when the church was undergoing repairs, a marble monument was built in the interior, on the south side, by some of the parishioners, inscribed with these lines.

This little monument was erected in the year 1786, by some of the parishioners of Covent Garden, in memory of the celebrated Samuel Butler, who was buried in this church,* A.D. 1680.

A few plain men, to pomp and state unknown,
O'er a poor bard have raised this humble stone,
Whose wants alone his genius could surpass,
Victim of zeal! the matchless Hudibras!
What though fair freedom suffered in his page,
Reader, forgive the author for the age!
How few, alas! disdain to cringe and cant,
When 'tis the mode to play the sycophant.
But, oh! let all be taught from Butler's fate,
Who hope to make their fortunes by the great,
That wit and pride are always dangerous things,
And little faith is due to courts and kings.

While in London, where Butler died, these tributes to his genius were set up at intervals by men of opposite principles, the place of his birth remained without any memorial until within the last few years, when a white marble tablet, with florid canopy, crockets, and finial, was placed in the

See him, when starved to death, and turned to dust,

Presented with a monumental bust.

The poet's fate is here in emblem shown,

He asked for bread, and he received a stone.

*This is an error.

church.

The grave of Butler is outside the wall of the

parish church of Strensham, by John Taylor, of Strensham Court, Esq., upon whose estate the poet was born. In the design is a small figure of Hudibras, and the face of the tablet bears the following simple inscription.

This tablet was erected to the memory of Samuel Butler, to transmit to future ages that near this spot was born a mind so celebrated. In Westminster Abbey, among the poets of England, his fame is recorded. Here, in his native village, in veneration of his talents and genius, this tribute to his memory has been erected by the possessor of the place of his birth-John Taylor, Strensham.

The few personal traits reported of Butler represent him to have been a man of retired habits and singular modesty, silent in general company, but free and cheerful with his friends; amongst whom may be specially mentioned Cleveland, Hobbes, and D'Avenant. Between D'Avenant and Butler a close social intercourse seems to have existed. Sir William would sometimes,' says Aubrey, 'when he was pleasant over a glass of wine with his most intimate friends, e. g. Sam. Butler (author of Hudibras), &c., say that it seemed to him that he wrote with the very spirit of Shakspeare, and seemed contented enough to be thought his son.' Yet, notwithstanding their friendship, the weak points of Gondibert did not escape the good-humoured irony of Butler.

Aubrey has left us two descriptions of Butler's personal appearance: he is of a middle stature, strong sett, high coloured, a head of sorrel hair, a severe and sound judgment: a good fellow;' which last item corresponds accurately with Wood's account, who says 'he was a boon and witty companion, especially among the company he knew well.' Again,' he was of a leonine-coloured hair, sanguine, choleric, middle-sized, strong.' Several portraits of Butler have been preserved: two by Soest, at the Bodleian, and at Drayton Manor; a third at Lord Howe's, at Gopsal, formerly belonging to Mr. Charles Jennens, said by Granger to be also by Soest; and a fourth by Lely, at Oxford. There are others in the possession of Lord Somers, at Eastnor Castle, Mr. Rackster, of Pershore, and Mr. Welch, of Hereford. The