them in abhorrence ever afterwards. The design of his poem was to expose the hypocrisy and wickedness of those who began and carried on the rebellion, under a pretence of promoting religion and godliness, at the same time that they acted against the precepts of religion and morality; and to show how different the real motives of those who acted the principal parts in the civil war were from their ostensible motives. How well he executed this design, the applause of his contemporaries, and the admiration of posterity, amply prove. Hudibras was no sooner published, than it was in the hands of every one at court. Charles II. who was no mean judge of wit and humour, was delighted with it, and frequently quoted it in conversation; but, with his usual inattention to his friends, neglected to reward the author. The King's excessive fondness for the poem, and his surprising disregard and neglect of the author, is fully and movingly related by Butler himself, in his poem entitled Hudibras at Court, where he speaks of himself in the following lines: "Now you must know, Sir Hudibras This prince, whose ready wit and parts But Hudibras must still be there, That he should meet with no reward, That fitted out this Knight and Squire But this good King it seems was told A poor reward for loyalty." We are indeed informed, that Butler was once in a fair way of obtaining a royal gratuity, as the following account will show. "Mr. Wycherly had always laid hold of any opportunity which offered to represent to his Grace the Duke of Buckingham, how weil Mr. Batler 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 seemed always to hearken to him with attention enough, and after some time undertook to recommend his pretensions to his Majesty. Mr. Wycherly, in hopes to keep him steady to his word, obtained of his Grace to name a day when he might introduce the modest and unfortunate poet to his new patron: at last an appointment was made, and the place of meeting was appointed to be the Roe-buck. Mr. Butler and his friend attended accordingly, and the Duke joined them, but by an unlucky incident this interview was broke off; and it will always be remembered to the reproach of the age, that this great and inimitable poet was suffered to live and die in want and obscurity." It would, however, be unfair not to mention, that Butler at one time received from King Charles II. a gratuity of three hundred pounds; and this honourable circumstance attended the grant, that it passed through all the offices without a fee, Butler, on this occasion, showed himself a man of honesty and integrity, as well as of genius, for calling to mind that he owed to differ. ent persons more than the amount of the royal donation, he generously directed the whole sum to be paid to wards the satisfaction of his creditors. If Butler was disappointed of royal, he does not appear to have been altogether destitute of private, patronage. Soon after the restoration, he became secre tary to Richard, Earl of Carbury, Lord President of the Principality of Wales, who made him steward of Ludlow castle, when the court there was revived. About this time he married one Mrs. Herbert, a gentlewoman of a very good family, and a competent fortune, but the greater part of it unfortunately lost, by being put out on ill securities, so that it was little advantage to him. Wood, the Oxford antiquary, reports Butler to have been secretary to George, Duke of Buckingham, when he was chancellor to the university of Cambridge; but this is not confirmed by any other authority, and the probability is, that he was only an occasional partaker of the Duke's bounty. His most generous friend was Charles, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, who being an excellent poet himself, knew how to set a just value on the genius and talents of others, and often privately relieved those necessities of our poet, which his modesty would have led him to conceal. That he had other generous friends, to whom the integrity of his life, the acuteness of his wit, and the easiness of his conversation, endeared him, may readily be conceived; yet no fact comes to us more strongly established than that Butler, if he did not absolutely perish of waut, terminated his day in the utmost indigence and misery, and was indebted for a decent interment to the charity of a friend*. This melancholy Butler died in the year 1680, and was buried at the charge of his friend, Mr. Longueville, of the Temple, circumstance in the history of this great man, comes to us so well authenticated by contemporaries who must have known the truth of what they related, that not a doubt can be entertained on the subject. Oldham, in his Satire against Poetry, introduces the ghost of Spenser dissuading him from it, upon experience and example, that poverty and contempt were its inseparable attendants. After Spenser has gone over his own lamentable case, and mentioned Homer and Cowley in the same view, he thus movingly bewails the great and unhappy Butler; "On Butler who can think without just rage, The glory and the scandal of the age? Fair stood his hopes, when first he came to town, The wretch, at summing up his mispent days, in the yard belonging to the church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, at the west end of the said yard, on the north side, under the wall which parts the yard from the common highway. The Editors of the General Historical Dictionary say, "That Mr. Longueville would fain have buried Butler in Westminster Abbey; and spoke in that view to some of those wealthy persons who had admired him so much in his life-time, offering to pay his part; but none of them would contribute; upon which Mr. Longueville buried him with the greatest privacy (but at the same time very decently) tn Covent Garden Church.yard, at his own expense, himself and seven or eight persons more following the corpse to the grave." Dr. Grey adds, "that the burial service was read over him by the learned and pious Dr. Patrick, afterwards Lord Bishop of Ely, then minister of the parish." 3 Of all his gains by verse, he could not save Otway, who, if tradition speaks truly of him, perished as miserably as our poet himself, has the following lines on the same subject, in his prologue to Constantine the Great: "All you who have male issue, born Under the starving sign of Capricorn, To keep his brains clean, and not foul the land, In 1721, a handsome monument was erected to the memory of Butler, in Westminster Abbey, at the expense of Alderman Barber, a printer of great eminence, who was much distinguished by Dean Swift, Dr. Arbuthnot, Pope, and the other wits of the Tory party in Queen Ann's reign. The following inscription, which sums up the character of Butler, both justly and eloquently, was probably the composition of Dr. Arbuthnot, with some touches from the pen of Swift. |