"And as the Pagans heretofore Did their own handiworks adore, That out of things as far from sense, and more, of observing them, he must have "taken notes" rarely. Nor was it strange that a man of his extraordinary natural wit, and extensive familiarity as a reader with all sorts of books-a painter, too, and therefore akin to an author already-should think of doing as others were doing around him, and putting down some of his observations in black and white. Beginning, therefore, perhaps, with some such doggrel ballad against Cromwell as that which we have quoted as the first If Butler, while yet in search of his proper known production of his pen, he went on, as literary form or mode, had penned this Pinwe suppose, inditing scraps of prose and daric passage, (it is one of his,) only fancy verse for his own private gratification, some how he would have hugged the short lines, of which, however, not now to be traced, and seen them to be the very thing, and demay have had a contraband circulation among termined to stick to them, and forswear all the Royalists during the period of Cromwell's government. farther botheration about long ones to mix with them. Whether the discovery was In prose, Butler, once he had begun, could thus sudden or gradual, he and his octosyllanever have had any peculiar difficulty. We bics did at last come together so as to underhave his own information indeed, that he was stand each other. From that moment it was by no means one of your easy scribblers, who all right between him and the English literahave no trouble in dashing off a page, but a ture. On his octosyllabics, indeed, as on his slow, serious, deliberate writer, for whom prose, he still had to bestow all pains and laevery sentence had its own pangs. His labour to make them pass muster before his bour in putting his sense and wit into adequate prose, however, must have been as nothing compared with that which he at first found in cramming it into appropriate jingle. His matchless success at last was the result not only of perpetual care spent on every line as he wrote it, even after he had thoroughly acquired the knack of versification, but also, as we think, of considerable experiment in the beginning before he hit on the exact knack or trick that suited him. We taste; and in one of his few subsequent pieces of heroics, he complains of the trouble that, owing to his fastidiousness, verse cost him over prose, and laments "the caprice" that had first induced him to write in rhyme at all, and invokes a hearty imprecation on the man "who first found out that curse, T' imprison and confine his thoughts in verse, have seen his first attempts in the doggrel These, however, are but words of course, ballad-stanza, then so much in vogue to sup- used in satirizing another poet; and no one ply the cavaliers with songs for their drinkcan, in his own heart, have better appreciated ing bouts; and certainly we have no reason than Butler the force of an older English pofrom such specimens to conclude that he et's defence of rhyme, when he said that "sure would have ever set the Thames on fire in in an eminent spirit, whom nature hath fitted that style of rhythm. The "Nobody-can- for that mystery, rhyme is no impediment deny" fellows did it much better. Then we to his conceipt, but rather gives him wings can conceive him trying heroics, such as Dry- to mount, and carries him not out of his den afterwards made his own. In these, as course, but, as it were, beyond his power, is proved by some samples, in his later poe- and a far happier flight;" and again, that "all try, he would doubtless find himself more at excellencies being sold us at the hard price ease. Pindaries, after the Cowley model, of labour, it follows, where we bestow most he would doubtless also try; and samples thereof, we buy the best success; and rhyme remain, among his later poems, of the skill being far more laborious than loose meahe likewise attained in that uncomfortable sures, must needs, meeting with care and inspecies of verse. As is proved, however, dustry, breed greater and worthier effects in by the small percentage both of Pindarics our language." Whether Butler had ever seen and heroics, now found in the general bulk of his poetry, he must have found himself sufficiently at home in neither. At last, in some lucky moment-perhaps when penning the short lines for some Pindaric-he made the grand discovery of his life, and stumbled on Octosyllabics. these words of old Samuel Daniel we know not; but the sense of them he must have realized for himself. Accordingly, while he continued all his life to divide himself between plain prose, on the one hand, and his quaint octosyllabics on the other, as the two selected vehicles of his wit and satire, each having its advantages, he evidently had most plea-1 quisitional invective, levelled at classes and sure in his octosyllabics, and reserved for modes of thinking rather than at individuals, them his strength and the most vigorous ef- yet as he required a few personal portraits forts of his fancy. There is evidence even for it, theirs had a chance of being painted. that he was in the habit of making his prose But, though Hudibras was planned and in a kind of jackal for his octosyllabics, jotting part written perhaps before the Restoration, down in prose rough fancies as they occurred it was not till two years and a half after to him, that he might afterwards work them that event that Butler had any considerable up into rhymes at his leisure. portion of it ready for the press. Probably, indeed, it was not till after the Restoration had rendered such a publication possible, by bringing into power those who could be expected to read or relish it, that Butler set to work in earnest in preparing it. He had certainly every incentive to be busy; for much as was already going in the shape of satire and ridicule of the parties cast down from power, and of general fun and scurrility in literature, by way of outbursts of humour that had been repressed during the Commonwealth, and of welcome to a witty monarch and his courtiers just come over from the Continent with French mistresses and French manners to inaugurate a new era, Butler could not but foresee that such a poem as he was preparing would cut in through it all, and win a place for itself in the midst of the duller poems and plays with which the old Royalists, Davenant, Denham, and Waller, and the new aspirants Dryden, Sedley, Roscommon, and Co., were bidding for the ear of the town. One interruption there was, however, which he may have permitted himself with satisfaction-that caused by his marriage, which took place about this time, with a Mrs. Herbert, a lady of some property. Butler, it would appear, was late in love as well as in poetry; but for this very reason there may have been less delay with For some ten years, then, before the Restoration, we are to conceive Butler carrying on a sort of preparatory authorship in private, jotting down, partly in prose and partly in his favourite octosyllabic verse, his satirical observations on all things and sundry, but especially on Puritanism and the Puritans. It was his habit afterwards, we know, to enter his stray thoughts at random in a commonplace book, sometimes in a sentence or two of prose, and sometimes in a few distichs, or even in a single distich of verse; and there is no reason to doubt that such was his habit also from the time when he first began to practice as an author. The habit, however, would be confirmed, and would acquire new consequence from the moment when he had resolved on writing a connected poem. How long he was in coming to this determination, and how or when the form and scheme of his projected poem, (that the Puritans were to be the subject of it was a matter of course,) was first distinctly preconceived, we can only guess. One thing is clear-it was Cervantes's Don Quixote that suggested the form which he actually adopted. To invent, like Cervantes, an imaginary knight and an imaginary squire; to make the one the representative of English Presbyterianism, and the other the representative of English Independency; to send them his Hudibras. forth on mock-heroic adventures, and to make It was not at Sir Samuel Luke's, however, the narration of these adventures a means of introducing all kinds of social allusion and invective, and of heaping ridicule on the two great revolutionary parties in the State, and on all connected with them-such was the that of Secretary to the Earl of Carbery, idea which occurred to Butler in some happy Lord President of the Principality of Wales. hour, when, perhaps, he was turning over It has been ascertained, that he held this sitthe leaves of his Don Quixote, in Sir Samuel uation, and also, in association with it, as Luke's farm-house at Cople Hoo. From the Earl's gift, the Stewardship of Ludlow that moment Hudibras existed as a possi- Castle, at least as early as January 1661, bility; and Butler's commonplace-book became, as Jean Paul used to phrase it, when he adopted a similar plan in his own case, only the " quarry" for Hudibras. What was already in it could easily be worked into the fabric of the poem, and whatever was afterwards jotted down in it, was meant as so much more material. Woe to Sir Samuel Luke and his cronies from that hour; for though Butler's intended poem was to consist, in a great measure, of what may be called dis nor in Bedfordshire, that the work was finally written out, but in a new situation to which Butler, possibly on account of his known loyalty, was promoted after the Restoration and that he retained the Stewardship till January 1662. In that month the Earl's accounts speak of him as having vacated the office of Steward, and having been succeeded by another person. The probability therefore is, that some time in 1662 he came to reside in London, with the purpose of seeing his Hudibras through the press. The imprimatur of the "First part" of the work, licencing its publication, is dated the 11th of November 1662; and though the date 1663 is on the title-page, copies were really out | But the clenching passage would, of course, before Christmas 1662. be that describing the knight's religion: It We have seen a copy of the original edition of this "First Part" of Hudibras. is a thin little volume, decently printed, without the author's name, and with an intimation on the title-page that the poem was "written during the late wars." It was exactly such a volume as the readers of that day would be likely to take up in virtue of its mere appearance-small enough to be held between the finger and thumb as one walked in the streets, or lounged at home in the evening, and to be read through at one sitting. And, certainly, if one did take it up, there was little chance of his laying it down again without doing it justice. Fancy the first reader opening the book, and lighting at once on such a beginning as this: "When civil dudgeon first grew high, And men fell out they knew not why; And made them fight like mad, or drunk, Was beat with fist, instead of a stick; This was certainly a promising set out, and would tempt the reader to go on. And if he did so, he was not likely to be disappointed. The description of Sir Hudibras and his qualifications, now known to every school-boy, would then come upon the reader with all the freshness of its native oddity; and he must have been a grave man indeed if his gravity did not give way when he came to such rhymes as "Besides, 'tis known he could speak Greek The famous passage about Sir Hudibras's rhetoric, occurring in the third or fourth page, would be read twice or thrice on the spot, before going further: "For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope; "For his religion, it was fit To match his learning and his wit; And prove their doctrine orthodox As if they worshipped God for spite, This passage alone would settle the fate of the book with every Courtier or Royalist that might chance to take it up. What mattered it that in going on he found very little plot or action in the book-nothing but a rough rigmarole story miserably travestied from Don Quixote, and spun out through three cantos, of how the Presbyterian knight, and his Independent squire Ralpho, sally forth, each accoutred after his fashion, in search of adventures; how they come to a place where there is to be a bear-baiting, and where a great rabble is already assembled to witness or take part in the sport, including the bear Bruin himself, Orsin, the bear's master, the wooden-legged fiddler Crowdero, the warlike butcher and dog-owner Talgol, the tinker Magnano, and his female companion Trulla, the one eyed cobbler Cerdon, the hostler and cattle-keeper Colon, and, besides these leaders, men and mastiffs innu merable from all the parishes round; how it out, and met with it at the Temple: cost it entered the knight's head that he ought to me 2s. 6d. But when I come to read it, it put down this bear-baiting as a heathenish is so silly an abuse of the Presbyter knight practice, and how he and the more reluctant going to the warrs, that I am ashamed of it; Ralpho debated the point; how at last the and by and by meeting at Mr. Townsend's knight, ending the debate, spurs on his wall- at dinner, I sold it him for 18d.,"-after eyed beast to the encounter, and how, after which, he tells us, he went to the theatre, a fierce tussle, in which both knight and and coming home rather late found his wife squire get unmercifully belaboured, they "busy among her pies." Evidently, howsucceed in routing the rabble and capturing ever, Pepys, from his allusion to "the Presthe fiddler, whom they carry off in triumph byter knight going to the warrs," had not and put in the stocks; but how, in the end, read enough of the book even to know its by the rallying of the rabble under Trulla's subject; and finding himself in the minority generalship, the fortune of the war is re- in his opinion of it, and its fame on the town versed, Crowdero is rescued, and Hudibras growing instead of abating, he thought it and Ralpho, after a plenteous thumping, are prudent to renew his acquaintance with it. themselves put in the stocks and left to dis-"To Lincolns' Inn Fields," he writes on the cuss the comparative merits of Presbytery 6th of February following, "and it being and Independency at their leisure. To all this too soon to go home to dinner, I walked up burlesque tissue of incident, coarse enough and down, and looked upon the outside of in parts to please a not very squeamish taste, the new theatre building in Covent Garden, the more 'intelligent readers of the poem which will be very fine; and so to a bookwould be comparatively indifferent; nor seller's in the Strand, and there bought Huwould it have enhanced the interest in this dibras again, it being certainly some ill-hurespect much if they had troubled them- mour to be so against that which all the selves, as foolish commentators on the poem world cries up to be an example of wit; for afterwards did, with identifying the charac- which I am resolved once more to read him ters with noted sectaries of the day, whom and see whether I can find it or no." Butler never thought of or saw. It was no argument against the book that Pepys, enough that, in the course of the narration, even on a second trial, could not relish it the Puritans of all sects were burlesqued as much; and, at all events, the town differed they had never been before, and their habits from him, for such a demand was there for of talking held up to ridicule, and that pass-copies that within a fortnight after its first ages of odd wit and learning occurred in appearance, the publisher had to warn his every page, all hitting at some laughable customers by advertisement against a pirated topic of the day, and capable of being re- edition. membered and quoted. It was probably a circumstance in favour of the full recognition of these merits in the book that the "First Part" was published by itself, so as not to overdose the reader. It is There seems no reason to doubt that, though the poem was published anonymously, Butler at once acknowledged himself as the author. The king, it is said, in his first fit of delight with the book, purposed sendThe success of the book was certainly in- ing for him; and it was natural, as Johnson stantaneous. Not a new poem of Tenny- says, that every eye should watch for the son's, not a new Christmas-story by Dickens, golden shower which was to fall upon the has now-a-days a greater run through the author of a performance so exactly to the town, than, allowing for the difference of tune of the reigning taste. Butler, however, times, the first part of Hudibras had during was no Danae, but a somewhat unsocial man the Christmas-week of 1662-3. The king of fifty, with few friends in town; and the himself had got hold of it, and was carrying golden shower did not fall through his garit about with him, and quoting it; the cour- ret. That he himself shared in the general tiers got the pasaages he quoted by heart; expectation that something would be done and in all the coffee and chocolate houses the for him, is very likely; but he does not wits discussed its merits. Mr. Pepys, who seem to have overrated the chance. As was never the last to hear of a new thing, only the author of a poem which, though a lets us know the exact day on which he first valuable service to the Royalist cause, was heard of the poem, and what he thought of in some respects merely a posthumous serit. "To the wardrobe" is the entry he vice, rendered when the danger was past and makes in his Diary on the 26th of Decem- the victory accomplished, he probably saw ber, 1662, the day after Christmas, "and that there were other claimants closer to the hither come Mr. Battersby; and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery in use called Hudibras, I would needs go find Royal Exchequer than he could expect to be. Sensibly enough, therefore, he seems to have made up his mind to bide his time, and meanwhile to labour patiently at the "Sec-sult the Rosicrucian astrologer, Sidrophel, ond Part" of his poem, so as to get it out as to the probable success of his suit; and before the enthusiasm for the first part had how this consultation, beginning in a learned subsided. Already, in fact, besides pirated discussion between Hudibras and Sidrophel editions of that "First Part," the town was on the occult sciences, ends also in a fight in full of pretended continuations and imita- which Hudibras, Sidrophel, Ralpho, and tions, in which the story was carried on, and Sidrophel's man, Whachum, all take part, the style and metre of the first part copied and in which the conjurer has the worst of as closely as possible. It was late in 1663, it. On the whole, however, as before, it or almost exactly a year after the publica- would be the wit of the poem,its quaint sense tion of the first part that the true "Second and learning, its passages of sarcastic rePart" made its appearance, and threw all flection on all manner of topics, and, above the spurious imitations into the shade. The all, its unsparing ridicule of men and things date on the title-page is 1664; but the im- on the Puritan side, rather than any merits primatur is dated November 5, 1663, and it might possess of description and narrathe pertinacious Pepys, after borrowing a copy in the end of November, in order to avoid buying it till he found out whether he liked it better than the first, ended by going to his bookseller's at St. Paul's Churchyard on the 10th of December, and giving an order for both parts together. Having had a windfall that day of about £3, he had gone to invest it in books; and Hudibras being then still, he says, "the book in greatest fashion for drollery," he had made it one. tion, that would recommend it in higher critical quarters. The Second Part is, indeed, even more readable than the First. It was high time now that the "golden shower" should descend, if it was to descend at all; and the truth seems to be, that by this time Butler was sorely in need of it. He may have had a little money of his own, saved out of the earnings of his previous employments; and his wife had brought him some fortune, upon which he had calculated at The merits of the "Second Part" of Hu- the time of their marriage, as a means of dibras were the same as those of the First, their joint support. But this last, his main and the reception was very much the same. dependence, had, his biographers inform us, Some there were who might take interest been invested in "bad securities;" so that, in the mere continued story of the adven- after a while, little or nothing was to be detures of the Knight and the Squire-how they rived from it. A post or a pension, such as, were released from the stocks by the inter- according to the lax fashion of those times, vention of a widow whom the knight has might very well have been bestowed on the been courting for her money, and who, in re- greatest anti-puritan satirist of the day leasing him, holds out hopes to him, on con- without risk of public outcry, would, in dition of his giving himself a flagellation, these circumstances, have been extremely which he swears to do; how he puts it off welcome. As it was, however, in a court till next day, and then, in riding to the ap- swarming with Buckinghams, Lady Castlepointed spot, begins to reason with Ralpho maines, and the like, any kindly intentions whether such an oath is binding on a saint; that may have been entertained in behalf how Ralpho, as his contribution to this prob- of a poor wit about town, soon died out lem in casuistry, suggests that some one and were forgotten. There is a vague stoelse should take the whipping in the knight's ry of a temporary donation of £300 to stead, and the knight, catching at the idea, Butler, out of the king's own purse, which proposes that Ralpho himself shall be the Butler instantly expended in paying his man; how Ralpho instantly backs out, and debts; and a still more vague story of a there ensues an angry altercation between subsequent annual pension of £100. Neithe two, which has almost come to blows, ther story is authenticated; at all events, the when it is interrupted by the opportune ap- latter is false; and the literal truth seems to pearance of a "Skimmington Procession," be, that from the first appearance of Hudithat is, of a village rabble punishing a scold bras till the poet's death in 1680, he never by carrying her about astride on horseback, received a single farthing from the court, or with her husband beside her, to the music anything more substantial than empty of pots and pans and cleavers; how the praise. It was Butler's strange fate to flash knight attacks this as another heathenish all at once into a notoriety which lasted show, and he and Ralpho are discomfited precisely two years; to fill the court and with rotten eggs; how, recovering from the town during that time with a continuous this disaster, the knight proposes to go to the widow and swear that he has duly performed the promised flagellation, but thinks it worth while, on the way, to go and conD-4 VOL. XXIV. shout of laughter, intermingled with inquiries who and what he was; and then for seventeen long years to plod on in industrious obscurity, still hearing his Hudibres |