The poetical works of Samuel Butler ...

Contents

VOL. I.

{•age

To the Rev. William Lisle Bowles v

Canto III 74 An Heroical Epistle of Hudibras to his Lady .... 103

The Lady's Answer to the Knight 11*

11 CONTENTS.

THE REMAINS OF BUTLER.

Preface 133

The Elephant in the Moon. In Long Verse 155

A Satire upon the Royal Society 174

Repartees between Cat and Puss at a Caterwimling . . 178 To the Honourable Edward Howard, Esq. upon his incomparable Poem of the British Princes 183

A Palinodie to the Honourable Edward Howard, Esq.

upon his incomparable Poem of the British Princes . 185 A Panegyric upon Sir John Denham's Recovery from his

Madness 189

On Critics who judge of Modem Plays precisely by the

Rules of the Ancients . 192

Prologue to the Queen of Arragon, acted before the Duke

of York, upon his Birthday 196

Epilogue to the same 197

On Philip Nye's Thanksgiving Beard 198

Satire upon the Weakness and Misery of Man , , . 203

Satire upon the Licentious Age of Charles U. ... 212

Satire upon Gaming 219

Satire: To a bad Poet 223

Satire upon our ridiculous Imitation of the French . . 227

Satire upon Drunkenness 232

Satire upon Maniage 236

Satire upon Plagiaries 240

Satire upon the Imperfection and Abuse of Human Learning. Part 1 247

Fragments of an intended Second Part of the foregoing

Satire 255

On a Hypocritical Nonconformist 267

To the Happy Memory of the most renowned Du-Val. . 281 A Ballad upon the Parliament which deliberated about

making Oliver King 289

A Ballad, in Two Parts, conjectured to be on Oliver

Cromwell. Part 1 291

Part n 294

CONTENTS. Ill

Triplets upon Avarice 328

Description of Holland ••••• 328

Epigram on a Club of Sots 330

Hudibras's Elegy • 330

Hudibras's Epitaph 335

10 THE REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES,

OAKON or BAUSBUBT, ETC iTnhonotjr'd lay poor Butler's nameless grave, One line, the hand of pitying friendship gave. 'Twas his with pure confiding heart to trust The flattering minions of a monarch's lust ; And hope that faith a private debt would own, False to the honour of a nation's throne.

Such were the lines insulted virtue pour'd, And such the wealth of wit's exhaustless hoard ; Of keenest wisdom dallying with her scorn, And playful jest of indignation born ; And honest hatred of that godless crew, To king, to country — to themselves untrue: The hands that laid the blameless mitre low, That gave great Wentworth to the headsman's

blow, And theirs the deed immortalized in shame, Which raised a monarch to a martyi*'s name.

Oh! friend! with me thy thoughtful sorrows join, Thy heart will ansver each desponding line ; Say, when thy hand o'er Ken's neglected grave A-t once the flowers of love and learning gave ;

VI

Or when was heard, beneath each listening tree, The lute sweet Ai-chimage had lent to thee : Saj, while thy day was like a summer dream, And musing leisure met thee by the stream, "NYhere thro' rich weeds the lulling waters crept, And the huge forest's massive umbrage slept, And, summon'd by thy harp's aerial spell. The shadowy tribes came trooping from their cell , (For still 'twas thine, with all a poet's art. To paint the living landscape of the heart ; And still to nature's soft enchantments true. Feel every charm, and catch each varying hue ;) Couldst thou foresee how soon the poet's strain Would wake its satire into truth again; How soon the still-revolving wheel of time Recall the past — each folly, and each crime ; Again the petty tyrant boast his flame. And raise, on fancied ills, a patriot's name ; How soon the trembling altar fade away, The hallow'd temple prove the spoiler's prey ; The throne its proud ancestral honours yield. And faction shake the senate and the field ; How folly seize, while bleeding freedom wept, That sacred ark which jealous wisdom kept ; Which, virtuous Falkland ! saw thy banners wave, Which Somers lived, and Chatham died to save ; While history points her awful page in vain, And sees all Butler scorn'd, revive again.

J. M.

Benhall, Feb. 1835.

LIFE OF SAMUEL BUTLER.

BY THE REV. JOHN MITFORD.

Samuel Butler, the author of Hudibras, wjis born in the parish of Strensham, in Worcestersliire, in 1612,* and christened February the 14th. A. Wood says, that his father was competently wealthy ;t but the anonymous author of a life prefixed to his Poems describes him as in the condition of a yeoman, possessing a very small estate, and renting another; who with difficulty found means to educate his son at the grammar-school at Worcester, under Mr. Henry Bright, a man of high reputation as a scholar, and a Prebendary of the Cathedral. Butler is said to have

* This date is contradicted by Charles Longueville, tlie Bon of Butler's friend, and who declared that the poet was bom in 1600. Nash dates his baptism February 8, 1612, and says it is entered in the writing of Nash's father, who was churchwarden : he had four sons and three daughters; the three daughters and one son older than the poet.

t Dr. Nash discovered that his father was owner of a Uouse and a little land, worth about lOL a year, still called Butler's tenement^ of which he has given an engrav- !ng in the title page of his first volume. A. Wood affirms that he had a competent estate of nearly 300Z. a year, but held on lease of WiUiam Russell, lord of the manor of Strensham.

Viii LIFE OF BUTLER.

gone from tlience to Cambridge,* with the character of a good scholar ; but the period and place of his residence seem alike unknown, and indeed it appears doubtful whether he ever received the advantages of an academical education.

For some time he was clerk to Mr. JefFerys, of Earls Croomb, in Worcestershire, an eminent justice of the peace. He employed the ample leisure which his situation afforded in study; while he also cultivated the arts of painting and music. " The Hogarth of poetry," says Walpole, " was a painter too : " his love of the pencil introduced him to the acquaintance of the celebrated Samuel Cooper.f Some pictures were shown by the family as his, but we presume of no great excellence, as they were subsequently employed to stop broken windows. Dr. Nash says that he heard of a portrait of Oliver Cromwell by him. After this, he was recommended to the notice of the Countess of Kent, living at Wrest, in Bedfordshire, where he had not only the advantage of a library, | but enjoyed the conversation of the most learned man

* A. Wood had his information from Butler's brother; some of his neighbours sent him to Oxford. Mr. Longueville asserted that Butler never resided at Oxford.

t Of our English poets, Flatman and George Dyer were pointers. Pope also used the brush under the tuition of Jervas. I recollect no further imion of the arts.

X " Butler was not acquainted with the ItaUan poets. 01 Ruggiero he might have truly asserted what he has falselj told of Rinaldo." — See Neve on the Englisli Poets, p. 79.

LIFE OF BUTLER. IX

of his age, the great Selden. Why he subsequently left so advantageous and honourable a situation does not appear, but we find him domesticated under the roof of Sir Samuel Luke, at Cople, or Wood end, a gentleman of a very ancient family in Bedfordshire, one of Cromwell's officers, and a rigid Presbyterian. It is in this place and at this time that he is said to have commenced his celebrated poem. His patron's house afforded him a gallery of living portraits, and he was fortunately permitted to see Puritanism in one of its strong holds. The keenness of his observation secured the fidelity of his descriptions, and enabled him to fill up his outline with those rich and forcible details, which a familiar acquaintance with the originals afforded;

At the restoration of the exiled monarch, when loyalty expected the reward of its fidehty and the recompense of its losses, Butler appears to have suffered the same disappointment that met other claimants; and silently and unobtrusively retreating from the conflict of avarice and importunity,* he accepted the Secretaryship to Richard,

* It is supposed that Sir Samuel Luke is ridiculed un«Ier the character of Hudibras: the reason of the conjecture ia founded on Hudib. P. 1. c. 1. ver. 904 : —

'Tis sung, there is a valiant M&maluke, In foreign land yclep'd — ;

\nd the ballad entitled " A Tale of the Cobbler and Vicar of Bray," in the posthumous works, p. 285, but this ballad is

X LIFE OF BUTLER.

Earl of Carbiuy, Lord President of the Principality of Wales, who made him Steward of Ludlow Castle, where the court of the marches was removed. About this time, he married Mrs. Herbert,* a gentlewoman of good family, but who liad lost most of her fortune, by placing it on bad securities, in those very dangerous and uncertain times. A. Wood says, that he was Secretary to George, Duke of Buckingham, when lie was Chancellor of Cambridge ; that the Duke treated him with kindness and generosity; and

not proved to be genuine. Nash says, " he was infoi-med by a bencher of Gray's Inn, who had it from an acquaintance of Butler's, that the person intended was Sir Henry Rosewell, of Torr Abbey, in Devonshire," but adds, " these would be probable reasons to deprive Bedfordshire of the hero, did not Butler, in his Memoirs of 1649, give the same description of Sir Samuel Luke, and in his Dunstable Downs expressly style Sir Samuel Luke, Sir Hudibras; " the name was borroAved from Spenser, F.Q.ll.i.l7.

He that made love unto the eldest dame Was hight Sir Hudibras, an hardy man.

It is supposed that Lilly the astrologer was represented under the person of Sidrophel; though Sir Paul Neal, who denied Butler to be the author of Hudibras, has been mentioned as the person intended. Vide Grey's Hudibras, ii. 388. 105. 1st edit. ; and Nash's Hudibras, vol. ii. p. 308. That Whachum was meant for Sir George Wharton, does not appear to rest on any proof; v. Biographia, Art. Sherborne, aote (B).

* A. Wood says, that she was a widow, and that Butler tupported himself by her jointure, deriving nothing from the pnicfice of tlie law.

LIFE OF BUTLER. XI

that, in common with almost all men of wit and learning, he enjoyed the friendship of the celebrated Earl of Dorset. The author of his Life, prefixed to his Poems, says, that the integrity of his life, the acuteness of his wit, and the easiness of his conversation, rendered him acceptable to all ; but that he avoided a multipUcity of acquaintance. The accounts both of the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham and the Secretaryship are disbelieved by Dr Johnson, on the following grounds : — "Mr. "Wycherley," says Major Packe, "liad always laid hold of an opportunity which offered of representing to the Duke of Buckingham how well JVIr. 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 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 devil would have h, the door of the room where they sat was open, «,nd his Grace, who had seated himself near it

Xll LIFE OF BUTLER.

observing a pimp of his acquaintance (the creature too was a knight) trip by with a brace of ladies, immediately quitted his engagement to foUow another kind of business, at which he was more ready than to do good offices to those of desert, though no one was better qualified than he, both in regard to his fortune and understanding, to protect them ; and from that time to the day of his death, poor Butler never found the least effect of his promise."

This story may be believed or not ; to me, I confess, it appears more like a well-dressed fiction of "Wy cherley's than the truth ; why the accidental interruption of the interview should never after have been repaired, does not appear; but there is a better testimony in some verses of Butler, which were published by Mr. Thyer : " which are written (says Johnson) with a degree of acrimony, such as neglect and disappointment might natu- I'ally excite, and such as it would be hard to imagine Butler capable of expressing against a man who had any claim to his gratitude."

In 1663, the first part of Hudibras, in three yantos, was published,* when more than fifty years

* Some verses in the first edition of Hudibras were afterwards omitted for reasons of state, as

Did not the learned Glynne and Maynard, To make good subjects traitors, strain hard. Was not the king, by proclamation, Declared a traitor thi-nugh the nation.

LIFE OF BUTLER. XlJJ

had matured the author's genius, and given large scope to his experience of mankind. It was speedily known at Court, through the influence of the Earl of Dorset.* The king praised, the courtiers, of course, admired, and the royalists greeted a production which certainly covered their now fallen enemies with all the derision and contempt which wit and genius could command. In 1664, the second part appeared ; and the author, as well as the public, watched with anxiety for the reward which he was to receive from the gratitude of the king ; like the other expectants of Charles's bounty, which was drained off into very different channels, they watched in vain. Clartndon, says Wood, gave him reason to hope for places and employments of value and credit, but he never received them ; and the story of the king's presenting him with a purse of three hundred guineas appears also to rest on no competent authority. To compensate for the neglect of the court, and of a king, who, in truth, cared for no one but himself, and who possessed neither pubhc honour nor private principle, it is difficult to say, whether Butler may have been satisfied with the approbation of the people ; or how far the love of his art, confidence in his own genius, and a natural fondness for a successful production, may have induced him to continue his poem ; certainly

* See Prior's Dedication to his Poems

XIV LIFE OF BUTLER.

in four years more he published the third part, which still leaves the work unfinished. What he ultimately intended, it is impossible to conjecture from a narrative which has no consistent plan, or progress. He may have been wearied of it, or he may not have had time to continue it ; for he died two years after its appearance, on the 25th of September, in the year 1680;* and was buried very privately by his friend Mr. Longueville, in the church-yard of St. Paul, Covent Garden, at his private expense ; for he had in vain soHcited an honourable and public funeral in Westminster Abbey. About seven or eight persons followed his remains. His gra^ve, which, according to his desire, was six feet deep, was at the west end of the church-yard on the north side ; and the burial service was read over him by the learned Dr. Patrick, then minister of the parish, and afterwards Bishop of Ely. Dr. Johnson says, that 'Mr. Lowndes of the Treasury informed Dr. Zachary Pearce,t that Butler was allowed a yearly pension of a hundred pounds ; but this, as Johnson says, is contradicted

* A. Wood says he died of a consumption, Oldham says \ie was carried off by a fever ; but as he was near four- (kcore, we may be spared any further investigation. Mr Longueville says he lived for some years in Rose Street Covent Garden, and probably died there : that notwithstand tog his disappointments he was never reduced to want or beggary, and that he did not die in any person's debt.

t See Granger's Biog. Hist, of England, vol. iv. p. 40.

LIFE OF BUTLER. XV

by all tradition, by the complaints of Oldham,* and the reproaches of Dryden. About sixty yeai's after, IVIr. Barber, whose name is familiar to all persons conversant with the literature of that time, who was printer and mayor of London, erected a monument in Westminster Abbey to the poet's memory ; the inscription will prove how warmly he approved his principles.

M. S.

Samuelis Butleri,

obiit Lond. 1680.

Johannes Barber, civis Londinensis, I721.t

* See Oldham's 'Satire against Poetry,' and Dry Jen's ' Hind and Panther,' and Otway's ' Prologue to the Tragedy of Constantine the Great.' Butler twice transcribed the following distich in his Common-place Book :

To think how Spenser died, how Cowley mourn'' d, How Butler's faith and service were return' d.

t In the adtlitions to Pope's works, published by George Steevens, i. p. 13, are some lines said to be written by Pope on this monument erected by Barber.

Bespect to Dryden Sheffield justly paid. And noble Villars Ixonour'd Gov ley's shade.

JfVl LIFi: OF BUTLER.

After his <leatli, tliree small volumes were published bearing the title of his posthumous pieces in verse and prose ; * they are, however, all spurious, except the ode on Duval and two of the prose tracts : but the volumes subsequently given to the world by Mr. Thyer, keeper of the public library at Manchester, are genuine f and valuable. " A^

But whence this Barber? that a name so mean Should, join'd with Butler's, on a tomb be seen; The pyramid would better far proclaim To future ages humbler Settle's name ; Poet and patron then had been well pair'd, The city printer and the city bard.

The lines also by Samuel Wesley are well known (vide Poemg, 4to. 1736, p. 62.)

While Butler, needy wretch, was yet aUve,

No generous patron would a dhmer give ;

See him, when starved to death and tum'd to dust,

Presented with a monumental bust.

The poet's fate is here in emblem shown.

He ask'd for bread, and he received a stone.

* See Delineation of Butler's Monument in Dart's Westminster Abbey, pi. 3, tom. 1, pp. 78, 79. With regard to the monument erected in 1786, when the church was repaired, at the expense of some of the parishioners, on the south side of the church (inside) with the inscription, see Nash's Life of Butler, xiii. See engraving of it in Nash's Life of Butler, p. xxxix. An engraving of the monument in Westminster Abbey is in the same work, p. 678.

t What genuine remains of Butler Thyer did not publish, were all in the hands either of Dr. R. Farmer or Dr. Nash, and jiad been seen by Atterbiuy. See Life by Nash, xvi. James Massey, Esq. of Rosthern, Chesliire, had Butlei*'s Common place Book. Some law cases from Coke upon Littleton, drawr

LIFE OF BUTLER. i-Vll

lo these remains of Butler," says Warburton in his Letters (cxxxi), " they are certainly his ; but they would not strike the public, if that public was honest; but the public is a malicious monster, which cares not what it affords to dead merit, so it can but depress the living. There was something singular in this same Butler ; besides an infinite deal of wit, he had great sense and penetration, both in the sciences and in the world. Yet with all this, he could never plan a work or tell a story well. The first appears from his Hudibras ; the other from his Elephant in the Moon. He evidently appears to be dissatisfied with it, by turnmg it into long verse, but that was his forte ; the fault lay in the manner of telling, not but he might have another reason for trying his hand at heroic verse — emulation. Dryden had burst out in a surprising manner ; and, in such a case, the poetic world, as we have seen by a late instance, is always full of imitations. But Butler's heroics are poor stuff; indeed only doggerel made languid by heavy expletives. This attempt in the change of his measure was the sillier, not only as he acquired the mastery in the short measure, but as that measure, somehow or other, suits best with His sort of wit. His characters are full of cold puerilities, though intermixed \\ 1th abundance of

ap in Norman-French by Butler, were bought by Dr. Nash of Butler's relation in Buckinghamshhe He had also a French lictionary compiled by him, and part of a tragedy of Nero. VOL. I. 2

XVm LIFE OF BUTLER.

wit and with a great deal of good sense. He is sometimes wonderfully fine both in sentiment and expression, as when he defines ' the Proud Man to be a Fool in fermentation ; ' and when speaking of the Antiquary, he says, ' he has a great veneration for words that are stricken in years and are grown so aged that they have outlived their employments : ' but the great fault in thes^ characters is that they are a bad and false specie!* of composition.* As for his editor he is always in the wrong when there was a possibility of his mistaking. I could not but smile at his detecting Pope's plagiarisms about the Westphalia hogs, when I reflected, that in a very little time, when the chronology is not well attended to, your fine note about the ambergris will be understood by every one as a ridicule upon it ; and, indeed, an excellent one it is : notwithstanding, I wish this fellow would give us a new edition of Hudibras, for the reason he mentions."

A. Wood ascribed to Butler two pamphlets, supposed, he says, falsely to be William Prynn's. The one entitled " Mola Asinaria," or the unreasonable and insupportable Burden pressed upon the Shoulders of this groaning Nation. London, 1659, in one sheet 4to. The other, Two Letters; one from John Audland, a quaker, to William

* See some excellent observations on this style of writing in Eetrosp. Eev. vol. iii. art. iv. ' Fuller's Cliurck ^istorv.'

LIFE OF BUTLER. XIX

Prynn; the other, Piynn's Answer; in three sheets in folio, 1672. The author of his life also adds, that he had seen a small poem, of one sheet in quarto, on Duval the highwayman, said to be written by Butler. These formed part of the posthumous pieces above mentioned; to which may be added the fragment given to Mr Aubrey by the poet himself, and printed by the writer of his life. It is said that Butler did not shine in conversation till he had taken a cheerful glass, though he was no intemperate di'inker. The following scory is told in the British Biography : — " Before he (Butler) was personally known to the Earl of Dorset, that nobleman had a great desire to spend an evening with him as a private gentleman ; and with thp^t view prevailed on Mr. Thetwood Shepherd to introduce liim into his company, at a tavern which they used, in the character only of a common friend. This being done, Mr. Butler, we are told, whilst the first bottle was drinking, appeared very flat and heavy, at tlie second bottle extremely brisk and lively, fuU of wit and learning, and a most pleasant agreeable companion, but before the third bottle was finished sunk again into such stupidity and dulness, that hardly any body could have believed him to be the author of Hudibras, ii book abounding with 60 much wit, learning, and pleasantry. Next morning Mr. Shepherd asked his lordship's opinion of Mr. Butler, who answered, "He is like a nine-

XX LIFE OF BUTLER.

pin, little at both ends, but great in the middle."* Johnson sums up the personal history of the poet by saying, " In this mist of obscurity passed the life of Butler, a man whose name can only perish with his language. The date of his birth is doubtful, the mode and place of his education are unknown, the events of his life are variously related, and all that can be told with certainty is that he was poor."

A list of the portraits of Butler, in painting and engraving, may be found in Granger's History of England ; f a portrait of him by Lely is m the Picture Gallery at Oxford ; and another, by the same hand, formerly in the possession of Mr. Longueville, became the property of Mr. Hayter of Salisbury. Another likeness of him by Zoort, tvas formerly in the collection of the celebrated IMr. Charles Jennins. Several prints of him by Vertue are also prefixed to different editions of his works.

The merit of Hudibras (it has been well observed),]: certainly lies in its style and execution,

* A. Wood says, " Butler was a boon and witty companion, especially among the company he knew well."

t See vol. iv. p. 38, &c. A mezzotint print of Lord Grey has been altered to Butler.

X See Campbell's Specuuens of Br. Poets, vol. iv. p. 205 The principal actions of the poem, says Nash, are four. 1 Hudibras's victory over Crowdero. 2. Trulla's victory over Hudibras. 3. Hudibras's victory over Sidi-ophel. 4. The """idow's antimaspuerade. The rest is made up of the adv .n-

LIFE OF BUTLER. XXl

and bj no means in the structure of the story. The action of the poem as it stands, and interrupted as it is, occupies but three days, and it is clear from the opening line, " When civil dudgeon first grew high," that it was meant to bear date with the civil wars. Yet after two days and nights are completed, the Poet skips at once, in the third part, to Oliver Cromwell's death, and then returns to retrieve his hero, and conduct him through the last canto. Before the third part of Hudibras appeared, a great space of time had elapsed, since the publication of the first. Charles the Second had been fifteen years asleep on the throne, and Butler seems to have felt that the ridicule of the sectaries was a stale subject. The final interest of the piece, therefore, dwindles into the Widow's repulse of Sir Hudibras, a topic which has been suspected to allude not so much to the Presbyterians, as to the reigning monarch's dotage upor his mistresses. "Burlesque," says Shenstone, " may perhaps be divided into such as turns chiefly on the thought and such as depends more on the expression, or we may add a third kind, consisting in thoughts ridiculously dressed, in language much above or below their dignity. The Splendid Shilling of Phillips, and the Hudibras of Butler are the most obvious instances. Butler,

tures of the Bear, of the Skimmington, Hudibras's conversa- ■ions with the Lawyer and Sidrophel, and nis long disputatious Krith Ralpho and the Widow.

XXU LIFE OF BUTLER.

however, depended much on the ludicrous effect of his double rhymes ; in other respects, to declare your sentiments, he is rather a witty writer, than a humoraus one." * The defect of Butler's poem undoubtedly consists in what has been already mentioned, — the poverty of the incidents, and the incompleteness and uTCgularity of the design. The slender strain of narrative which is just visible in the commencement,! soon dwindles away aud is lost. It is true that the poem abounds with curious and uncommon learning, with original thoughts, happy images, quaint and comic turns of expression, and new and fanciful rhymes. But the humour, instead of being diffused quietly and unostentatiously over the whole poem, in rich harmonious colouring, is collected into short epigrammatic sentences, pointed apothegms, and unexpected allusions. It has the same merits and defects as a poem of a very different kind — Young's Night Thoughts, — copious invention, new and pleasing images, and brilliant thoughts ; with a want of sufficient connexion in the subject,

* Shenstone's Works, vol. ii. p. 182, third ed.

* " Butler set out on too narrow a plan, and even that design is not kept up. He sinks into httle true particulars about the Widow, &c. The enthusiastic Knight, and the ignorant Squire, over reli^ous in two different ways, and always quarrelling together, is the chief point of view in it." — (Pope) v. Spence's Anecdotes, p. 208. It appears from some passages in Warburton's Correspondence, that Gray did not much admirf tills poem of Butler's.

LIFE OF BUTLER. XXIU

and progress in the story. There is no poem at all resembling Hudibras in character in our Iangunge ; but parts of it are not dissimilar to the style and manner of some prose writings of the time, which were published under the name of ' Characters,' and which, like Butler's poem, dazz rather than delight by successive flashes of w and a rapid play of fancy. It may be observt that the defects and merits of this work are 'practically made known by the manner in which it is read. Its want of story and incident seldom permits a contmued perusal; while the abundance of its wise * and witty sayings insures a constant recurrence to its pages. As little can be added to the character of the work which Johnson has given, and as it would be presumptuous to hope to express his thoughts in any language but his own, we shall conclude with extracting from his Life of Butler the following critical opinion of liis work.