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IX

SAMUEL BUTLER

I

THE device of wringing pathos out of the jester's life is common. The circus clown parts with tears from his dying wife, pallid and lean in her lonely garret, and presently he appears in motley with antic and grin amid the roar of applauding spectators. He returns despairful, seats himself on the wretched bed, and the copious tears are renewed. No pathos of this kind forms part of the story of the author of "Hudibras"; but until we have perceived that he was more than a jester, until we have brought home to ourselves the fact that his jests were flashes of merriment which played over a gulf of gloom, we have not known Samuel Butler aright. His wit was a missile, hard and keen as the stones of a sling; we may name him captain of the slingers who fought under the banner of reason and

sense.

The life of Butler extended over nearly seventy years of his century—from 1612 to 1680. He saw the rise and progress of the Civil War, rejoiced at the downfall of the Commonwealth, and died in poverty some twenty years after the restoration of monarchy in England. We know too little of Butler apart from his writings to feel

towards him as we do towards authors who have become our intimates or friends; nor do his writings commend him to our affection. We may indeed doubt whether he ever cultivated the friendship of men; he was a great observer, and seems to have kept his fellows at arm's length, the better to study their aspect and bearing. He could live and move among Puritans, noting their infirmities and extravagances, while he himself remained unnoticed and unknown, He had none of the generous illusions and gallantries of the cavalier. He did not write amiable flatteries to be prefixed to the volumes of contemporary poets. He could join with others in a sneer at Edward Howard's "British Princes"; he could tell Sir John Denham that "Cooper's Hill" was bought to be passed off under a false name, and that "The Sophy" was borrowed; but he could not say a word of generous praise. He held himself in reserve, or he repelled and was repelled. And, accordingly, we know little of his private life; his celebrity was a mask behind which the man lay hidden. When Lord Dorset contrived a meeting with Butler at a tavern, he found the illustrious wit very flat and heavy, until the second bottle roused his spirit; at the third bottle Butler sank into a deep stupidity and dulness. "He is like a ninepin," said his lordship, "little at both ends, but great in the middle." It is evident that Butler was not a person of light and bright temper; he needed something to lift him above himself. He speaks of wine as given to man in order that he may cherish his frail happiness, given to teach him judgment, wit, and sense,

And, more than all these, confidence,

We are told that he was a lover of music; but he writes no songs for the lute; his verse, though skilled in its craftsmanship, is mean, and nowhere in all that he composed can we find a strain of noble melody. We are told that he was passionately fond of painting, and thought at one time of devoting his life to that art; but nowhere has he created for our imagination one picture of harmonious and coloured beauty. Living in a time of social and political strife, melancholy in temperament, keen of intellect, an observer and an anatomist of human follies, he used his intelligence as a scalpel in the processes of pathological dissection.

One of Butler's shorter pieces-that "Upon the Weakness and Misery of Man"-betrays the gloomy abyss that lay below his wit. Its mood is like that which grew upon Swift as the world became arid to his disenchanted gaze, the mood of passionate revolt against life. The poem is not a satire directed against contemporary follies; it is a general indictment of humanity. Nature brings us forth only to be found guilty, and at best to be forgiven. What are our offerings to God but begging presents to get more? What is our purest zeal but a pious intention which effects more harm than the worst deeds? What is our devout humility but a vain glory in our wretchedness? What is our birth but a sentence of condemnation, and our life but a series of reprieves?

Our pains are real things, and all
Our pleasures but fantastical;

Our noblest piles and stateliest rooms
Are but outhouses to our tombs,

The stars have conspired to imprint a fatal brand and signature of impurity on the human race. Yet the ills inflicted on mankind by nature are as nothing compared with those wrongs which men inflict on their own hated species. If for a moment the heavens forget to seek recruits for death by pestilence, brother rises in civil strife to slay his brother. Or if there be peace, what is peace but luxury and excess, which are more fatal than the earthquake ? What is wealth but disease, discontent, debt, or at most the means to purchase six feet of earth in the parish church? Yet greater than these curses is the curse of the intellect, by which man shapes out of his own bowels a rack for his sins, or hangs his soul upon subtle curiosities of speculation. The intelligence which was meant to be a sword we break against the anvil on which it was made; we torment ourselves most to know that which we can never shape into a deed; we are busy in creating for ourselves the misery of eternal doubt; we start at the spectres which we have projected upon the darkness; we spend ourselves in hypothetic dreams and visions, and are sceptics in those things which are evident. In this poem Butler does not jest, or if he jests, the flash only illumines for an instant the surrounding darkness. He writes with a passionate melancholy not far removed from despair.

In this scene of human life, so dim and troubled, where did Butler look for some security, some consolation ? He distrusted the ardours of the heart; he had no wing for imaginative soaring. The enthusiasm of religious emotion was in his eyes utterly discredited; he could not abandon himself to either a person or a cause.

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He looked for what is best in man to the understanding, limiting itself to what can really be ascertained, to judgment, to good sense. He anticipates the rationalising spirit of the eighteenth century. Human reason is in a high degree fallible; but let us not essay Icarian wings; let us rather use our tolerable crutch. Among Butler's papers were found certain Reflections upon Reason," which were posthumously published. "Reason," he writes, "is the only helm of the understanding; the imagination is but the sail, apt to receive and be carried away with every wind of vanity, unless it be steered by the former. And although, like the lodestone, it have some variations, it is the only compass man has to sail by; nor is it to be contemned because it sometimes leads him upon a rock-that is but accidental, and he is more apt to hit upon those without it." Reason, and reason alone, is the foundation of religion: "Faith can determine nothing of Reason, but Reason can of Faith;

. . the very being of Faith depends upon Reason." But how little rational is the mass of men! True; and therefore certain lures and frauds are provided by which to practise on their hopes and fears, so to restrain their blind and inordinate passions.

In the eighteenth century reason was not merely destructive; it laid a great basis for construction; it was united with a boundless faith in the progress of science and the progress of humanity; it helped to create a new conception of the material universe and to reform human society. With Butler the work of the understanding was in the main destructive, or, if not destructive, critical. He looked abroad, and saw, or thought

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