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was too little to stand him in stead of everything else; and he was too slow and shiftless, and perhaps too proud, a writer to make much of such opportunities as writing for periodicals and the like then afforded. He appears, in his necessity, to have thought of making a desperate attempt at a drama, then the species of literature which brought the best returns; and part of a tragedy, entitled "Nero," was found among his papers. But his true resource was Mr. Longueville.

drama which he had written, and which | men, There is good evidence that in his Butler, and most other critics, thought to last days he was literally in want. If he be sad stuff; and finally, which was boldest had made any money by his Hudibras, it of all, a parody of Dryden's own dramatic diction, in the form of a dialogue between two cats caterwauling in heroics. In fact, with the whole literary world of the time, as with the whole social world, Butler seems to have been in his heart at feud. Writers, critics, readers-all were bad; and so far as he thought it necessary to express his opinion of them, it was always in censure. Above all (and the fact must out) the Royal Society and the Virtuosi came in for an unusual share of Butler's ridicule. One or two of them, such as Boyle and Dr. Charlton, he attacks by name; and among his posthumous poems and papers, there are three or four expressly satirizing the Society's weekly meetings and their mathematical and physical pursuits.

"These were their learned speculations,
And all their constant occupations:
To measure wind and weigh the air,
And turn a circle to a square;
To make a powder of the sun,
By which all doctors should b' undone;
To find the north-west passage out,
Although the farthest way about;
If chymists from a rose's ashes
Can raise the rose itself in glasses;
Whether the line of incidence

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Rise from the object or the sense;
To stew the Elixir' in a bath
Of hope, credulity, and faith;
To explicate, by double hints,
The grain of diamonds and flints;
And in the braying of an ass
Find out the treble and the bass;
If mares neigh alto, and a cow
A double diapason low."

Mr. Longueville," says Roger North, in his Life of Lord Guildford," was the last patron and friend that poor old Butler, the author of Hudibras, had, and, in his old age, he supported him, otherwise he might have been literally starved." What was the exact measure of Mr. Longueville's kindness is unknown -one always fancies that wealthy lairds and lawyers might do so very much with their purses in such cases. At all events, after a hard winter passed in his lodging in Rose Street, during which he was so ill that he never went out, and only Mr. Longueville's charity stood between him and absolute destitution, the poet, some time in 1680, caught a fever, or a consumption, which carried him off on the 25th of September, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. Mr. Longueville, to whom Butler had bequeathed his papers, acted as his executor. He made exertions to get up a subscription for burying his deceased friend in Westminster Abbey; but though the news of Butler's death in such melancholy circumstances seems to have caused a good deal of talk in town, and became the subject of strong comment afterwards by Dryden, OldMen are often modest and amiable in their ham, and others, the interest felt at the mopersonal demeanor who are fierce and ag- ment was not sufficient to carry Mr. Longressive in their writings; but with all allow-gueville's project. Accordingly, the poet's ance on this score, it is too evident that a remains were interred, at Mr. Longueville's man who could not let even the venerable own expense, in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Royal Society alone, must have had a crabbed Covent Garden. He seems to have wished and ill-conditioned element in him, not likely to be buried there. He was buried, says to further his interests in life. Probably Aubrey, the 27th of September, "according the consciousness of this, developed at last into the habitual sourness of a disappointed man, was the secret of Butler's solitary way of living. He was emphatically, as Dr. Johnson would have said, not a "clubbable" man. "It is both the wisest and safest way," is one of the maxims found in his commonplace book, "to keep at a convenient distance from all men; for when men converse too closely, they commonly, like those that meet in crowds, offend one another." Poor man, he seems at last to have overtasked his own maxim, and to have kept at an inconvenient distance from all

to his own appointment, in the churchyard of Covent Garden, in the north part, next the church, at the east end. His feet touch the wall. His grave two yards distant from the pilaster of the dore, by his desire six foot deepe. About twenty-five of his old acquaintance at his funeral, I myself being one." It is worth while, reader, should you ever be passing through Covent Garden, to stand by the railing of the now somewhat dingy churchyard, on the west side, a little away from where the market gardeners chaffer among their baskets and cabbage-leaves, and to identify, by Aubrey's description, the spot

where the author of Hudibras is buried. It always instanced in so remarkable a manner. was, one may say, the centre of his domain There are always men who can "stand no of exercise and observation while he was nonsense," who take their footing on what alive. It is very near Rose Street, and round they call the hard fact of things, who have it lie the Strand, Fleet Street, Gerard Street, an innate turn for undervaluing whatever is Drury Lane, and all the other classic old high, extreme, and unusual, either in thought streets in which the literary men of that or action-high metaphysics, high art, high time (the Shaksperes and Jonsons of a former poetry, high Calvinism, high anything. On age had kept more to the south and east) had the other hand, there are always men who, their haunts and dwellings, and which still, from some constitutional peculiarity,- calí in later generations, though the tendency it ideality, heart, enthusiasm, artistic sense, continued to be north and westward, served tendency to the metaphysical, or what you for the Addisons, and Johnsons, and Gold- will,-revel in the high, feel at home in it, smiths, to live and walk in. Ah, London! and prefer it. It is from the first class more thou perpetual home of a shifting multitude, particularly that satirists are born; except how, as into a vast sieve, the generations when, as sometimes happens, a man of the keep descending amid thy brick-built streets other class steps out, clothed in the very and alleys, only to trickle away and dis- thunders of his high contemplations, to appear beneath into thy catacombs and ceme- satirize the satirists themselves, and prove to teries. Awhile thou holdest us; but the them the celestial, if only by its thunder. reservoir is filling over us with the perpetual rain, and we, too, are sinking, sinking, towards the ancient dead!

Butler, says Aubrey, was "of middle stature, strong set, high-colored, with a head of sorrel hair, a severe and sound judgment; a good fellow." Again, from another source, "he was of a leonine-colored hair, sanguine, choleric, middle-sized, strong; a boon and witty companion, especially among the company he knew well." As regards his good fellowship, we have already seen, on other evidence, how far that is to be understood; one is glad, however, to know, by way of curiosity, that his complexion and hair were so nearly of Cromwell's own color. The form of his face in the portraits is heavy and sullen.

Milton himself was a satirist, when he chose, in this sense; Butler was a satirist in the other. His philosophy of human nature was that of the lowest schools; and there is no maxim that he repeats more frequently, and with a more bitter emphasis, both in verse and in prose, than that interest alone governs the world, and that those who proceed on any other supposition are fools. Thus:

"All the business of the world is but diver

best man in it."

sion, and all the happiness in it that mankind is capable of, anything that will keep it from reflecting upon the misery, vanity, and nonsense of it, and whoever can by any trick keep himself from thinking of it, is as wise and happy as the ernment is to convert the ignorance, folly, and "The chiefest art of govmadness of mankind, as much as may be to their own good; which can never be done by telling them truth and reason, or using any direct means, but by little tricks and devices (as they cure madmen) that work upon their hopes and fears, to which their ignorance naturally inclines them."-Thoughts on various subjects.

Our impression of Butler's general character as a man-on which his character as a writer may be regarded as a superstructure-has, we trust, already been conveyed. He seems to have been a man of grave, correct, and somewhat morose nature, decidedly of that order of mind which, by way of philosophic distinction, may be called the descendental; a man, the basis of whose in- These are precisely the cardinal notions of tellectual being was strong, solid, but very the sceptical or descendental philosophy; hard and very earthly sense. One might and the constitutional tenacity with which compare him with Swift, who, however, had Butler held to them explains his whole caa more savage and demoniac element in him, reer and character. How could such a man which led him farther, and brought him in be other than an antagonist of Puritanism, contact at least with the infernal side of that the very essence of which consisted in a bewhich transcends the visible. On the whole, lief in the possibility of an actual reign of one can best realize Butler's exact character God through His saints, on earth? "What by regarding him as, more peculiarly than are all histories and records of actions in forany other man of his age, the polar opposite mer times," said Cromwell, but a revelato Milton,-Milton the transcendental man tion of God, that He hath destroyed, and of his time, and the noblest literary represent- tumbled down, and trampled under foot ative and defender of that class of sentiments whatever He hath not planted?" Compare and opinions which Butler derided. This this magnificent definition of history from contrast, or polarity in the intellectual world, the Puritan point of view with Butler's is discernible in all ages, though it is not comic one, from his, and say whether it was

21

possible for the two men not to oppose each | est integrity of purpose. As all know, how

other:

"What else does history use to tell us,

But tales of subjects being rebell'ous?" But that same disbelief of Butler in all that was high or divine in human nature and history which led him thus to oppose Puritanism, and to regard it as nothing more than a temporary outbreak of madness drawing hypocrisy along with it, was also the secret root of his other dislikes and antipathies. Hence his satires on speculation as such; on the heroic forms of literature; on chivalry towards women; on abstract reasoning in politics; on theory of all kinds, and on what he called the foolish investigations of the physical philosophers. All these were to him but so many other forms of that affection of mind for the supra-sensible, that devotion to the unseen and untangible, which Butler had derided in his attacks on the Puritans. There were many ways, he thought, in which men entertained themselves with "Fool's Paradises of what should be, not what is ;" and he made it his business to ridicule them all, as equally contrary to sound sense and prudence. And yet, curiously enough, there are instances in which Butler, by the very penetrating excess of his hard sense, comes out, so to speak, at the other side, and by ruminating on descendentalism itself, contrives almost to become transcendental for a moment. There is a kind of serene sorrowful wisdom in some of his sayings, shewing that in his old age, and when severe experience had reduced his sense to the form of a quintessence, he did touch on the extreme and metaphysical, if only in abjuring it. Thus:

"The understanding of man hath a sphere of activity, beyond which, if it be forced, it becomes inactive, as it does vigorous by being confined. Unless a vine be pruned, it will bear no fruit; and he that related to the Senate, de coercendis Imperii terminis, was no unwise statesman. Opinion of knowledge has ever been one of the chiefest causes of ignorance; for most men know less than they might, by attempting to know more than they can.". Thoughts upon various subjects.

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In these, and other similar sayings, we have Butler at his highest; but a very great part of his writings, especially of his prose writings, consists of serious and severe thought and criticism, shewing no mean sagacity of observation, strength of judgment, and hon

ever, it is his wit that has made him immortal; and it is by the prodigious amount and concentration of this one quality in his writings-and that too, in the exact sense in which psychologists are wont to define wit when they distinguish it from the apparently similar but really greater quality of humor - that these writings will live in our literature. Here are a few specimens from his prose writings :

"Governments are not built as houses are, but grow as trees do. And as some trees thrive best in one soil, some in another, so do governments; but none equally in any, but all generally where they are most naturally produced; and therefore 't is probable the state of Venice would be no more the same in any other country, if introduced, than their trade of glass-making

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"One that is proud of his birth is like a turthere is nothing good of him but that which is under ground.

"His (the courtly fop's) tailor is his creator, and makes him of nothing: and though he lives by faith in him, he is perpetually committing iniquities against him."

"A proud man is a fool in fermentation." "He (a literary plagiarist) is like an Italian thief that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery."

"When he (a versifier) writes, he commonly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail."

"A Popish priest is one that takes the same course that the devil did in Paradise; he begins with the woman.'

"A traveller is a native of all countries, and His observations are like an alien at home..

...

a sieve, that lets the finer flour pass and retains He believes all only the bran of things. men's wits are at a stand that stay at home, and only those advanced, that travel; as if change of pasture did make great politicians as well as fat calves."

"He (the amateur of science) is like an elephant, that, though he cannot swim, yet of all creatures most delights to walk by the river's side."

Butler's verse is but his prose put through a process of metrical torture, trituration, and re-compression, so as to come out more compact, knotty, and glittering. He had early the advantage found out, as we have seen, that would be given him by calling to his aid the additional stimulus to odd intellectual invention afforded by metre and rhyme; and from that time, though he continued to write in prose, it was with a mental reservation in favor of doggrel, and especially octosyllabic doggrel, with plenty of double and triple rhymes in it, as the natural and proper of his highest literary efforts. Accordingly,

form

"A convert 's but a fly that turns about

it is in his doggrel that we have Butler at his best. The stuff or essential fabric of the After his head's pulled off, to find it out." writing is still the same namely, hard, In such sententious distichs, many of bare, ruthless sense, often directly polemical which, to use Johnson's words, "have passed in its tenor, and always cynical; the pecu- into conversation, and been added as proliar literary excellence whereby this sense is verbial axioms to the general stock of pracrecommended and set off is, as before, wit, tical knowledge," we have the essence of or odd associations of images supplied by the Butler's poetry. Just, however, as Butler's fancy; but the wit is richer and more exquis- judgment, by the very excess of its devotion ite from the very fact that the fancy, in pro-to the hard and the material, did now and ducing it, has worked under the additional then attain to the verge of the spiritual and restriction and stimulus of metre and rhyme. metaphysical, so his fancy, in its sheer search Let us cull a handful of specimens at ran- after the witty and the quaint, sometimes dom. reaches the limits of the poetical and beautiful. Thus :

"If he that in the field is slain

Be in the bed of honor lain,
He that is beaten may be said
To lie in honor's truckle-bed."

"Some have been beaten till they know
What wood a cudgel's of by the blow."
"For what is worth in anything

But so much money as 't will bring?" "The sun had long since in the lap

Of Thetis taken out his nap,
And, like a lobster boiled, the morn
From black to red began to turn."
"And we are best of all led to

Men's principles by what they do.”

"For the more languages a man can speak His talent has but sprung the greater leak."

"As beasts are hunted for their furs,
Men for their virtues fare the worse."

"A teacher's doctrine and his proof
Is all his province and enough;
But is no more concern'd in use
Than shoemakers to wear all shoes."

"Success, that owns and justifies all quarrels,
And vindicates deserts of hemp with laurels,
Or, but miscarrying in the bold attempt,
Turns wreaths of laurels back again to hemp."

"In the Church of Rome to go to shrift Is but to put the soul on a clean shift."

"Love is too great a happiness

For wretched mortals to possess ;
For, could it hold inviolate
Against those cruelties of fate
Which all felicities below
By rigid laws are subject to,

It would become a bliss too high
For perishing mortality,

Translate to earth the joys above;

For nothing goes to Heaven but Love." Such passages shew that the author of Hudibras had a vein in him of finer material than the merely burlesque or Hudibrastic. That vein, however, he did not cultivate; and hence, so long as Butler is remembered, it will be only, in the first place, in his defunct capacity as the contemporary opponent and satirist of the great Puritan movement in England; and, secondly, in his more permanent character as the author of a great number of sayings and maxims which, though conceived in the spirit of the cynical philosophy, and used at first to burlesque Puritanism and other high matters, are still so terse and good and sensible as to be available, in consistency with any philosophy whatever, for general human purposes. Even in the Butler may have done good, for hypocrisy former, or his defunct historical capacity, mingles with all things, and the Hudibrastic is one method of beating it out.

HOW TO BE BEAUTIFUL. As we were about to start, I saw the captain move to an elevated position above the wheel; and it was interesting to see how quickly and completely the inward thought or purpose alters the outward man. He gave a quick glance to every part of the ship. He cast his eye over the multitude coming on board the ship, among whom was the American ambassador to England, who, if the captain may be said to embody the ship, may be said with equal truth to embody in his official person a nation's right and honor. He saw the husbands and wives, the mothers and children, intrusted to his care; and his slender form, as he gave

the orders for our departure, seemed at once to grow more erect and firm; the muscles of his face swelled; his dark eye glowed with a new fire; and his whole person expanded and beautified itself by the power of inward emotion. I have often noticed this interesting phenomenon ; and have come to the conclusion, if man, or woman either, wishes to realize the full power of personal beauty, it must be by cherishing noble hopes and purposes- by having something to do and to live for, which is worthy of humanityand which, by expanding the capacities of the soul, gives expansion and symmetry to the body which contains it. Professor Upham.

From The Spectator, 20 Oct.
THE SALIC LAW IN FRANCE.

his daughter the Second Isabella. It is a mere party attachment, without any question NAPOLEON THE THIRD must be content with of male or female succession save as a techhalf a chance in the matter of the succession.nical pretext, that has created any hope that There is no doubt that an heir born to him ever existed for the Carlist faction. At this might have a great effect in subduing many moment France is proud to be the ally of impatiences and many feelings of uncertainty England; and there is not a class in the in the French people. At present the Em- country but must attest the firm state of our pire stands too conspicuously dependent upon succession, and the orderly condition of the a life tenure, and the heirship that presump-country under a female sovereign. But we tively presents itself is not such as to recon- believe that not all these precedents would cile the people to the dynastic succession. enable the Emperor Napoleon to set aside the Could a "Napoleon the Fourth" be pre- ancient usage of France and decree by anticsented to the French people even in his cradle, ipation that his child should succeed, be it many calculations that will tempt agitators boy or girl. against the present Napoleon would be extinguished. In England, we should consider it of little matter whether the child that is promised should be a boy or a girl; but in France, for the dynastic succession a girl is "un rien;" and the Emperor must at the best be content to wait five weary months before ascertaining whether a princess is added to the charge of his family, or a prince becomes prospectively the perpetuator of his line.

Our opinion only coincides with that of Frenchmen, and it is the more curious that this conclusion should almost instinctively be settled; since in France woman plays and has always played a part at once more conspicuous and more generally recognized than in this country. Notwithstanding our female succession, no Queen, regnant or consort, could imitate Catherine de Medicis in active and tyrannical administration. In high society of France, the stateswoman has as often ruled as the statesman, and Madame de Maintenon exercised an influence more positive than that of Mrs. Masham. In the middle class of France, woman is the man of business; in the humblest class she is the laboring man. It is not only that she does the hard work after the fashion of barbarous or savage countries, as among the Russians or the North American Indians, but she combines with that principal share of the business of life at least a full share of social or personal influence. It might be expected that in France, therefore, woman would be considered as having a stronger right to share the succession than in this country.

It might be thought that a powerful military leader, who has seized the throne, who has abolished one constitution and decreed another, could settle this matter of the succession autocratically, and with a stroke of his pen substitue the general law of Europe for the Salic law. Napoleon could perform many acts less consonant with sound sense than that, and yet any such stroke of policy would, we imagine, be absolutely beyond even his absolute power. He might, it is true, plead the example of other states, and show that they had not lost either in power or in stability by accepting the female succession. The Frankish lands are indeed the exception on this point. The state which is Nor is it that our neighbors regard the contesting the lead in Europe with the West- laws of succession as absolutely sacred against ern Powers, Russia, has in the days of its interference. It is within the memory of livmost rapid progress been under the sway of ing man that the law of inheritance in France female sovereigns. Austria, who has oftener has undergone the most sweeping and fundathan once held the balance of power, has mental changes. Property, which used to been under the sway of Maria Theresa. Spain go to the eldest son, subject to charges which has reverted to the national law, after the have been common in most countries, and assumption on the part of the Bourbons that even stronger elsewhere than in France, is they were to carry with them into the Penin- now divided amongst all the children; and sula the rule of succession that has prevailed France has adopted that law of gavelkind in their own family; and, seated on the uni- which we are gradually abolishing even in ted thrones of Isabella and Ferdinand, Ferdi- Kent. It is easier, then, to change the law nand the Seventh restored the succession to of succession for every family in the country

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