He was afterwards admitted into the family of the Countess of 6 Kent, where he had the use of a library; and so much recommended himself to Selden that he was often employed by him in literary business. Selden, as is well known, was steward to the Countess, and is supposed to have gained much of his wealth by managing her estate 1.

In what character Butler was admitted into that Lady's 7 service, how long he continued in it, and why he left it, is, like the other incidents of his life, utterly unknown2.

The vicissitudes of his condition placed him afterwards in the 8 family of Sir Samuel Luke, one of Cromwell's officers 3. Here he observed so much of the character of the sectaries that he is said to have written or begun his poem at this time; and it is likely that such a design would be formed in a place where he saw the principles and practices of the rebels, audacious and undisguised in the confidence of success.

At length the King returned, and the time came in which 9 loyalty hoped for its reward. Butler, however, was only made secretary to the Earl of Carbery, president of the principality of Wales, who conferred on him the stewardship of Ludlow Castle when the Court of the Marches was revived 5.

shillings, the highest rate, upon houses with twenty-five windows and upwards. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 1811, iii. 292.

According to Aubrey, 'after the Earle's death he married her.... He never owned the marriage till after her death, upon some lawe account.' Brief Lives, ii. 220-1. The editor adds that she 'bequeathed her estate to him.' Ib. p. 225. The story is probably false.' Dict. Nat. Biog. li. 220.

The author of Butler's Life describes the Countess as 'that great encourager of learning,' and Selden as 'that living library of learning.' Grey's Hudibras, Preface, p. 6.

"' He wayted some yeares on her ; she gave her gentlemen 20 li. per annum a-piece' Brief Lives, i. 138.

3 He was member for Bedford, and a victim of Pride's Purge on Dec. 6, 1648. Carlyle's Cromwell, 1857, i. 346; ii. 387; Rushworth's Hist. Coll. vii. 1355. He had been 'a Colonel in the parliament army, and Scoutmaster General in the counties of Bedford,

Surrey,' &c. Grey's Hudibras, i. 59. In the couplet (canto 1. 1. 903) that stands:

'Tis sung, there is a valiant Mamaluke

In foreign land, yclep'd' It is suggested that the chasm is to be filled up with Sir Samuel Luke, because the line before it is of ten syllables, and the general measure of the verse is of eight.' Ib. i. 147. As he died before the publication of Hudibras there seems no reason for the suppression.

4 Waller writes in his lines, To the King upon His Majesty's Happy

Return:

10

11

12

In this part of his life he married Mrs. Herbert, a gentlewoman of a good family, and lived, says Wood, upon her fortune, having studied the common law but never practised it. A fortune she had, says his biographer, but it was lost by bad securities.

In 16632 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 3. When it was known it was necessarily admired; the king quoted, the courtiers studied, and the whole party of the royalists applauded it. Every eye watched for the golden shower which was to fall upon the author, who certainly was not without his part in the general expectation.

In 1664 the second part appeared; the curiosity of the nation was rekindled, and the writer was again praised and elated 5. But praise was his whole reward. Clarendon, says Wood, gave him

of Wales see Owen Edwards's Wales, 1902, p. 321. 'It was abolished by the Long Parliament in 1642, restored in 1660, and finally abolished in 1689.' 16. p. 328.

'Tradition at Ludlow still points out a room in the entrance-gateway where Butler kept his pen, ink, and paper for anything he had on hand.' Masson's Milton, vi. 300. See also ib. i. 604.

1 Ath. Oxon. iii. 875. 'He married a good jointeresse, the relict of Morgan, by which meanes he lives comfortably. Aubrey's Brief Lives, i. 36.

In the Life she is called 'Mrs. Herbert, but no widow, as our Oxford antiquary has reported.' Grey's Hudibras, Preface, p. 7.

2 At the end of 1662.

3 Post, DORSET, 13. 'Butler owed it to him that the Court tasted his Hudibras.' PRIOR, Eng. Poets, xxxii. 127.

For the titles of the three parts see Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, i. 174, and for the earliest editions see N.&Q.7 S. iii. 446; iv. 244, 418.

'Dec. 26, 1662. We falling into discourse of a new book of drollery in use, called Hudebras [sic], I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple: cost me 2s. 6d. But when I come to read it, it is so silly

an abuse of the Presbyter Knight going to the wars that I am ashamed of it; and by and by meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d. PEPYS, Diary, ii. 85. 'Feb. 6, 1662-3. And so to a bookseller's in the Strand, and there bought Hudibras again, it being certainly some ill humour to be so against that which all the world cries up to be the example of wit, for which I am resolved once more to read him, and see whether I can find it or no.' Ib. p. 105.

According to an advertisement quoted in Masson's Milton, vi. 339, from The Kingdom's Intelligencer, Jan. 5, 1661-2, the book was published by that date; but there must, I think, be a mistake in this.

5 Towards the end of 1663. 'Nov. 28, 1663. To Paul's Church Yard, and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read, to see if it be as good as the first, which the world cried so mightily up, though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but twice or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty.' Pepys's Diary, ii. 250. On Dec. 10 he bought both parts, 'the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies.' Ib. p. 255.

reason to hope for 'places and employments of value and credit 1'; but no such advantages did he ever obtain. It is reported that the King once gave him three hundred guineas; but of this temporary bounty I find no proof3.

Wood relates that he was secretary to Villiers, Duke of Buck- 18 ingham, when he was Chancellor of Cambridge; this is doubted by the other writer, who yet allows the Duke to have been his frequent benefactor 5. That both these accounts are false there is reason to suspect, from a story told by Packe in his account of the Life of Wycherley, and from some verses which Mr. Thyer has published in the author's remains".

'Mr. Wycherley,' says Packe, 'had always laid hold of an 14 [any] opportunity which offered of representing to the Duke of Buckingham how well Mr. Butler had deserved of the royal family by writing his inimitable Hudibras, and that it was a reproach to the Court that a person of his loyalty and wit should suffer in obscurity, and under the wants he did. The Duke always seemed to hearken to him with attention enough, and after some time undertook to recommend his pretensions to his Majesty. Mr. Wycherley, in hopes to keep him steady to his

rewarded merit.' JOHNSON, Boswell's Johnson, ii. 341.

Ath. Oxon. iii. 875; Aubrey's Brief Lives, i. 137. He was Chancellor from 1670 to 1674. Graduati Cant. 1823, App. p. 4. He was Zimriin Absalom and Achitophel, 11. 544-68. Pope, in Moral Essays, iii. 299, describes him dying where he had

'No wit to flatter left of all his store,' &c.

See also post, DRYDEN, 93.

In the Catalogue of the Record Office Museum, p. 78, the Memorandum of the Duke's approval of a pe tition about a Fellowship at Trinity College is signed 'Sa. Butler.'

6

5 Grey's Hudibras, Preface, p. 8. Jacob's Poet. Reg. i. 276; Packe's Misc. 1719, p. 183.

7

Johnson refers, I think, to a character not in verse but in prose, which begins:-'A Duke of Bucks is one that has studied the whole body of vice,' and ends :-'He endures pleasures with less patience than other men do their pains.' Remains, ii. 72. For Thyer see post, BUTLER,

20.

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16

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word, obtained of his Grace to name a day, when he might introduce that modest and unfortunate poet to his new patron. At last an appointment was made, and the place of meeting was agreed to be the Roebuck. Mr. Butler and his friend attended accordingly: the Duke joined them; but, as the d-1 would have it, the door of the room where they sat was open, and his Grace, who had seated himself near it, observing a pimp of his acquaintance (the creature too was a knight) trip by with a brace of Ladies, immediately quitted his engagement, to follow another kind of business, at which he was more ready than in doing good offices to men of desert', though no one was better qualified than he, both in regard to his fortune and understanding 2, to protect them; and, from that time to the day of his death, poor Butler never found the least effect of his promise 3!'

Such is the story. The verses 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. Notwithstanding this discouragement and neglect he still prosecuted his design, and in 1678 published the third part, which still leaves the poem imperfect and abrupt. How much more he originally intended or with what events the action was to be concluded, it is vain to conjecture. Nor can it be thought strange that he should stop here, however unexpectedly. To write without reward is sufficiently unpleasing 5. He had now arrived at an age when he might think it proper to be in jest no longer, and perhaps his health might now begin to fail.

He died in 1680; and Mr. Longueville, having unsuccessfully solicited a subscription for his interment in Westminster Abbey,

'Dryden writes of the Duke:'In squand'ring wealth was his peculiar art; Nothing went unrewarded but desert.'

Absalom and Achitophel, L. 559. 'He had no sort of literature, only he was drawn into chemistry ; and for some years he thought he was very near finding the philosopher's stone.' BURNET, Hist. of my own Time, i. 107.

3 Johnson had this story in mind when he wrote The Rambler, No.

27
For the publication of the third
part see N. & 2. 6 S. vi. 150, 311.

5 'No man but a blockhead,' said Johnson, 'ever wrote except for money.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 19.

Aubrey, at the end of his Life of Butler, writes:- 'Memorandumsatyricall witts disoblige whom they converse with, &c.; and consequently make to themselves many enemies and few friends; and this was his manner and case.' Brief Lives, i. 138.

6'He haz been much troubled with the gowt, and particularly 1679 he stirred not out of his chamber from October till Easter. He dyed of a consumption, September 25, 1680.' Ib. i. 136.

buried him at his own cost in the church-yard of Covent Garden'. Dr. Simon Patrick 2 read the service.

Granger was informed by Dr. Pearce, who named for his 18 authority Mr. Lowndes of the treasury, that Butler had an yearly pension of an hundred pounds3. This is contradicted by all tradition, by the complaints of Oldham *, and by the reproaches of Dryden; and I am afraid will never be confirmed. About sixty years afterwards Mr. Barber, a printer, Mayor of 19 London, and a friend to Butler's principles, bestowed on him