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blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch: he was born for whatever is arduous, and his work is not the greatest of heroic poems only because it is not the first.

BUTLE R.

THE Only accounts we have of the great author of Hudibras are all of disputable authority.

Samuel Butler was born in the parish of Strensham in Worcestershire, according to one account in 1600; according to another in 1612. The accounts are so very doubtful respecting him that it is not certain whether he went to Cambridge or Oxford.

He was for some time, if we credit the author of his life, clerk to Mr. Jefferys of Earl's Croomb in Worcestershire, an eminent justice of the peace. In his service he had not only leisure for study, but for recreation : his amusements were music and painting; and the reward of his pencil was the friendship of the celebrated Cooper.

He was afterwards admitted into the family of the Countess of Kent, where he had the use of a library; and so much recommended himself to Selden, steward to the Countess, that he was often employed by him in literary business. How long he continued in it, and why he left it, are, like the other incidents of his life, utterly unknown.

The vicissitudes of his condition placed him

afterwards in the family of Sir Samuel Luke, one of Cromwell's officers, and he is said to have' written or begun his poem at this time..

When the king returned, Butler was made Secretary to the Earl of Carbury, President of the Principality of Wales, who conferred on him the stewardship of Ludlow Castle when the court of the marches was revived.

In 1663 was published the first part, containing three cantos, of the poem of Hudibras, which, as Prior relates, was made known at court by the taste and influence of the Earl of Dorset. When it was known, it was necessarily admired by all, and by no one more than by the king.

In 1664, says Dr. Johnson, the second part appeared, and the writer was again praised. But praise was his whole reward. Places and employments of value and credit were promised him, but no such advantages did he ever obtain.

One thing is generally allowed, that however well Butler had deserved of the royal family by writing his inimitable Hudibras, he was at last suffered to languish in obscurity in the greatest distress. Notwithstanding, however, the discouragement and neglect he met with, he published in 1678 the third part, which still leaves the poem imperfect

This must be a mistake: for in the "Mercurius Publicus" for Nov. 20, 1663, is this very singular adver tisement: " Newly published, the Second Part of Hudibras, by the Author of the Former, which (if possible) has outdone the First. Sold by John Mertin and James Allestry, at the Bell, St. Paul's Church Yard. EDITOR.

and abrupt. It cannot be thought strange that he should stop here however unexpectedly, for to write is sufficiently unpleasing, and if his birth be placed right by Mr. Longueville, he had now arrived at an age when he might well think it proper to be in jest no longer.

He died in 1680, and Mr. Longueville buried him at his own cost in the church-yard of Covent Garden. About sixty years afterwards, Mr. Barber, a printer and Lord Mayor of London, bestowed on him a monument in Westminster Abbey.

After his death were published three small. volumes of his posthumous works, and two volumes more have been printed by Mr. Thier of Manchester, indubitably genuine.

"The poem of Hudibras (says Dr. Johnson) is one of those compositions of which a nation may justly boast as the images which it exhibits are domestic, the sentiments unborrowed and unexpected, and the strain of diction original and peculiar. We must not, however, suffer the pride which we assume as the countrymen of Butler to make any encroachment upon justice, nor appropriate those honours which others have a right to share. The poem of Hudibras is not wholly English; the original idea is to be found in the history of Don Quixote, a book to which a mind of the greatest power may be indebted without disgrace." "But,” adds the critic,

"If inexhaustible wit could give perpetual pleasure, no eye would ever leave half-read the work of Butler; for what poet has ever brought so many

remote images so happily together! It is scarcely possible to peruse a page without finding some association of images that was never found before. By the first paragraph the reader is amused, by the next he is delighted, and by a few more strained to astonishment; but astonishment is a toilsome pleasure he is soon weary of wondering, and longs to be diverted.

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Imagination is useless without knowledge: nature gives in vain the power of combination unless study and observation supply materials to be combined. Butler's treasures of knowledge appear proportioned to his expence : whatever topic employs his mind, he shews himself qualified to expand and illustrate it with all the accessories that books can furnish he is found not only to have travelled the beaten road, but the bye walks of literature; not only to have taken the general survey, but to have examined particulars with minute inspection.

"If the French boast the learning of Rabelais, we need not be afraid of confronting him with Butler.

"Hudibras was not a hasty effusion; to accumulate such a mass of sentiments at the call of accidental desire or of sudden necessity, is beyond the reach and power of the most active and comprehensive mind. The manners of Hudibras, however, being founded on opinions, are temporary and local, and therefore become every day less intelligible and less striking.”

"The diction of this poem, says the great

critic, "is grossly familiar, and the numbers purposely neglected, except in a few places where the thoughts by their native excellence secure themselves from violation, being such as mean language cannot express. The mode of versification has been blamed by Dryden, who regrets that the heroïc measure was not rather chosen. To the critical sentence of Dryden the highest reverence would be due were not his decisions often precipitate, and his opinions immature. When he wished to change the measure, he probably would have been willing to change more. If he intended that when the numbers were heroic the diction should still remain vulgar, he planned a very heterogeneous and unnatural composition. If he preferred a general stateliness both of sound and words, he can be only understood to wish that Butler had undertaken a different work.

DRYDEN.

NOTHING can be known of this great poet beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied. John Dryden was born August 9, 1631, at Aldwincle near Oundle; his father was Erasmus Dryden of Tichmarsh, who was the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby.

From Westminster school, where he was instructed as one of the king's scholars by Dr. Busby,

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