"the celebrated Samuel Butler, who was buried in this church, "A. D. 1680. "A few plain men, to pomp and state unknown, In the year 1721, John Barber, an eminent printer, and alderman of London, erected a monument to our poet in Westminster Abbey, the infcription as follows: M. S. Samuelis Butler Qui Strenshamiæ in agro Vigorn natus 1612, Obiit Lond. 1680. Vir doctus imprimis, acer, integer, Ne cui vivo deerant fere omnia Deeffet etiam mortuo tumulus Hoc tandem pofito marmore curavit Johannes Barber civis Londinenfis 1721. On the latter part of this epitaph the ingenious Mr. Samuel Wesley wrote the following lines: While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give ; See him, when starv'd to death, and turn'd to dust, Presented with a monumental bust. The poet's fate is here in emblem shown, He afk'd for bread, and he receiv'd a stone. Soon after this monument was erected in Westminster Abbey, fome persons proposed to erect one in Covent Garden church, for which Mr. Dennis wrote the following infcrip tion : Near this place lies interr'd He was a whole fpecies of poets in one: In which no one else has been tolerable: Hudibras is Mr. Butler's capital work, and though the characters, poems, thoughts, &c. published by Mr. Thyer, in two volumes octavo, are certainly wrote by the fame mafterly hand, though they abound with lively fallies of wit, and display a copious variety of crudition, yet the nature of the fubjects, their not having received the author's laft corrections, and many other reafons which might be given, render them lefs acceptable to the present taste of the public, which no longer relifhes the antiquated mode of writing characters, cultivated when Butler was young, by men of genius, fuch as Bishop Earle and Mr. Cleveland; the volumes, however, are very useful, as they tend to illuftrate many paffages in Hudibras. The three fmall ones entitled, Pofthumous Works, in Profe and Verfe, by Mr. Samuel Butler, author of Hudibras, printed 1715, 1716, 1717, are all spurious, except the Pindaric ode on Duval the highwayman, and perhaps one or two of the profe pieces. As to the MSS. which after Mr. Butler's death came into the hands of Mr. Longueville, and from whence Mr. Thyer published his genuine Remains in the year 1759; what remain of them, ftill unpublished, are either in the hands of the ingenious Doctor Farmer, of Cambridge, or myfelf: for Mr. Butler's Common-place Book, mentioned by Mr. Thyer, I am indebted to the liberal and public fpirited James Maffey, Efq. of Rofthern, near Knotsford, Cheshire. The poet's frequent and correct use of law terms is a fufficient proof that he was well verfed in that science; but if further evidence were wanting, I can produce a MS. purchased of some of our poet's relations, at the Hay, in Brecknockshire: it appears to be a collection of legal cases and principles, regularly related from Lord Coke's Commentary on Littleton's Tenures: the language is Norman, or law French, and, in general, an abridgment of the above-mentioned celebrated work; for the authorities in the margin of the MS. correfpond exactly. with those given on the fame positions in the first institute; and the subject matter contained in each particular section of Butler's legal tract, is to be found in the same numbered fection of Coke upon Littleton: the first book of the MS. likewise ends with the 84th section, which fame number of fections alfo terminates the first institute; and the fecond book of the MS. is entitled by Butler, Le second livre del primer part del institutes de ley d'Engleterre. The titles of the respective chapters of the MS. also precisely agree with the titles of each chapter in Coke upon Littleton; it may, therefore, reasonably be prefumed to have been compiled by Butler folely from Coke upon Littleton, with no other object than to impress strongly on his mind the fense of that author; and written in Norman, to familiarize himself with * Butler is faid to have been a member of Grey's-inn, and of a club with Cleveland and other wits inclined to the royal cause. the barbarous language in which the learning of the common law of England was at that period almost uniformly expreffed. The MS. is imperfect, no title exifting, fome leaves being torn, and is continued only to the 193d section, which is about the middle of Coke's fecond book of the firft inftitute. As another inftance of the poet's great industry, I have a French dictionary, compiled and transcribed by him: thus did our ancestors, with great labour, draw truth and learning out of deep wells, whereas our modern scholars only skim the furface, and pilfer a fuperficial knowledge from encyclopædies and reviews. It doth not appear that he ever wrote for the stage, though I have, in his MS. common-place book, part of an unfinished tragedy, entitled Nero. Concerning Hudibras there is but one fentiment-it is univerfally allowed to be the first and last poem of its kind; the learning, wit, and humour, certainly stand unrivalled : various have been the attempts to define or defcribe the two laft; the greatest English writers have tried in vain, Cowley*, Barrow†, Drydent, Lock§, Addifon||, Pope¶, * In his Ode on Wit, † in his Sermon against foolish Talking and Jefting, ‡ in his Preface to an Opera called the State of Innocence, § Effay on Human Understanding, b. ii. c. 2. ̧ Spectator, No. 35 and 32. ¶ Effay concerning humour in Comedy, and Corbyn Morris's Effay on Wit, Humour, and Raillery. |