BUTLER, Charles (1750-1832), nephew of the preceding, a miscellaneous writer, was born at London in 1750. He was educated at Douay, and in 1775 entered at Lincoln’s Inn. He had considerable practice as a conveyancer, and after the passing of the Act Geo. III. c. 32 was called to the bar in 1791. In 1832 he received the silk gown, and was made a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. He died on the 2d J une in the same year. His literary activity was enormous, and the number of his published works is very great. The most important of them are the Reminiscences, 1821-1827; Horae Biblicae, ∖ r Vfl, which has passed through several editions; Horae Juridicoe Subsecivae, 1804; Book of the Roman Catholic Church, which was directed against Southey and excited some controversy; lives of Erasmus, Grotius, and some others. He also edited his uncle’s Lives of the Saints and Fearne’s Essay on Contingent Remainders, and completed Hargrave’s edition of Coke upon Littleton.

BUTLER, James, Duke of Ormond. See Ormond.

BUTLER, Joseph, Bishop of Durham, one of the most distinguished writers on theology and ethics, and perhaps the man of greatest intellectual power in the English church during the 18th century, was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, on the 18th May 1692. His father was a respectable linendraper of that town, who had retired from business some time before the birth of Joseph, his youngest son. The family belonged to the Presbyterian community, and it was their wish that young Butler should be educated for the ministry in that church. The boy was placed under the care of the Rev. Philip Barton, master of the grammar school at Wantage, and remained there for some years. He was then sent to a dissenting academy at Gloucester, which was afterward removed to Tewkesbury. The headmaster was Mr Samuel Jones, a man of considerable abilities, several of whose pupils afterwards attained to eminence in the church. Butler’s fellow-student and most intimate friend was Seeker, who afterwards became archbishop of Canterbury.

While at this academy two important events occurred in Butler’s life. He gradually became dissatisfied with the principles of Presbyterianism, and after much deliberation resolved to join the Church of England. In this resolution his father reluctantly acquiesced. About the same time he began to study with care Clarke’s celebrated Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which had been published a few years previously. With great modesty and secrecy Butler, who was then in his twenty-second year, wrote to the author propounding certain difficulties with regard to the proofs of the unity and omnipresence of the Divine Being. Clarke answered his unknown opponent with a gravity and care that showed his high opinion of the metaphysical acuteness displayed in the objections, and published the correspondence in later editions of the Demonstration. Butler acknowledged that Clarke’s reply satisfied him oh one of the points, and he subsequently gave his adhesion to the other.

In March 1714 he was entered at Oriel College, Oxford. Little is known of his life at the university; his most attached friend was Edward Talbot, son of Dr William Talbot, afterwards Bishop of Durham. In 1718, on the recommendation of Talbot and Clarke, he was nominated preacher at the Chapel of the Rolls, and continued there till 1726. In 1721 he had been appointed by Bishop Talbot to the living of Houghton, and in 1725 his kind patron presented him to the wealthy rectory of Stanhope. In the following year he resigned his preachership at the Rolls, and published the first edition of the Sermons.

For nearly eight years he remained in perfect seclusion at Stanhope, and our information as to his general mode of life is exceedingly scanty. He was only remembered in the neighbourhood as a man much loved and respected, who used to ride a black pony very fast, and whose known benevolence was much practised upon by beggars. In 17 3 3 he was made chaplain to Lord Chancellor Talbot, and in 1736 prebendary of Rochester. In the same year he was appointed clerk of the closet to Queen Caroline, and began to take part in the brilliant metaphysical society which she loved to gather round her. He met Berkeley frequently, but in his writings does not refer to him.

In 1736 appeared the Analogy, which at once took its place as the completest answer to the general deistical reasoners of the times, and as the best defence of revealed religion.

In 1736 Queen Caroline died; on her deathbed she recommended Butler to the favour of her husband. George, however, had not his consort’s partiality for metaphysics, and seemed to think his obligation sufficiently discharged by appointing Butler in 1738 to the bishopric of Bristol, the poorest see in the kingdom. The severe but dignified letter in which Butler signified his acceptance of the preferment, must have shown him that the slight was felt and resented. Two years later the bishop was presented to the rich deanery of St Paul’s, and in 1746 was made clerk of the closet to the king. In 1747 it is said the primacy was offered to Butler, who declined to accept it, saying that “it was too late for him to try to support a falling church.” The story has not the best authority, and though the desponding tone of some of Butler’s writings may give it colour, it is not in harmony with the rest of his life; for in 1750 he accepted the see of Durham, vacant by the death of Dr Edward Chandler. His charge to the clergy of the diocese, the only charge of his known to us, is a weighty and valuable address on the importance of external forms in religion. It gave rise to a most absurd rumour that the bishop had too great a leaning towards Romanism.

Of his life at Durham few incidents are known. He was very charitable, and expended large sums in building and decorating his church and residence. His private expenses were exceedingly small. He did not long survive his promotion. Shortly after the change to Durham his constitution began to break up, and he died on the 16th June 1752, at Bath, whither he had removed for his health. He was buried in the cathedral of Bristol, and over his grave a monument was erected in 1834, with an epitaph by Southey. According to his express orders, all his MSS. were burned after his death.

Butler was never married. His personal appearance has been sketched in a few lines by Hutchinson :—“He was of a most reverend aspect; his face thin and pale; but there was a divine placidness which inspired veneration, and expressed the most benevolent mind. His white hair hung gracefully on his shoulders, and his whole figure was patriarchal.”

Underneath the meagre facts of his life, eked out by the few letters left by him or anecdotes told about him, there can be traced the outlines of a great but somewhat severe spirit. He was an earnest and deep-thinking Christian, melancholy by temperament, and grieved by what seemed to him the hopelessly irreligious condition of his age. His intellect was profound and comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of metaphysics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the practical and moral. Man’s conduct in life, not his theory of the universe, was what interested him. His style has frequently been blamed for its obscurity and difficulty. These qualities, however, belong not so much to the form as to the matter of his works. The arguments are invariably compressed, and can never be taken individually. All are parts of one organic whole. Constant attention is thus required in order to grasp the relations of each isolated piece of reasoning. Above all, however, the special obscurity of the Analogy results from the difficulty of keeping constantly in mind the exact issue involved. Butler himself resolutely restricts his argument within the narrow limits prescribed for it, but it is difficult for any ordinary reader to keep this constantly in mind.

His great work, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Course and Constitution of Nature, cannot be adequately appreciated unless taken in connection with the circumstances of the period at which it appeared. It was intended as a defence against the great tide of deistical speculation, which in the apprehension of good men seemed likely to sweep away the restraints of religion, and make way for a general reign of licence. Deism, as a fact in English thought, takes its rise mainly from Locke, though traces of it are not wanting in Herbert of Cherbury. Whether or not the Essay on the Human Understanding should be held responsible for its results is a disputed question; but there can be no doubt that from the positions there laid down the general principles of the deists were drawn. Knowledge, in the strict sense of the word, had been restricted by Locke to the perception of the relations among ideas; reason was defined as the faculty which compared and compounded such ideas; and though with regard to God, faith was still admitted, the only part of the divine nature withdrawn from the province of knowledge was the inscrutable essence, which was equally unknown in the case of all real beings. The whole course of nature, including man’s moral powers, was therefore subjected to reason; life must be regulated by reason. If, therefore, religion were to enter as a factor into the conduct of man, it must exhibit to reason the title deeds of its existence; Christianity must be reasonable. But with such a view of knowledge it was easy for the deists to make a successful attack upon at least one portion of the Christian scheme. A mystery by its very definition involved elements not capable of being represented in clear ideas; it was therefore unreasonable, and must be absolutely rejected. Christianity not Mysterious is the title of Toland’s most famous work.

The course of their argument soon carried the deists farther. They were willing to grant the fact of God’s existence; it was a dictate of reason. But they were not prepared to go beyond that, and the necessary deductions from it. The truths of natural religion thus took the form of inferences drawn from certain premises; they Were displayed in a coherent, perfectly rational system. Revealed religion, on the other hand, was confessedly imperfect, contained things not in accordance with natural reason, inculcated duties on grounds of mere authority, was not universally and completely known, and must therefore be rejected. As Tindal puts it, “No religion can come from a Being of infinite wisdom and perfection but what is absolutely perfect. A religion absolutely perfect can admit of no alteration, and can be capable of no addition or diminution. If God has given mankind such a law, he must likewise have given them sufficient means of knowing it; he would otherwise have defeated his own intent in giving it, since a law, so far as it is unintelligible, ceases to be a law.” It was against this whole tendency of thought that Butler directed his Analogy. The method and course of his argument will appear more plainly when it has been considered what were, the premises on which he proceeded, and what the object he had in view.

Butler is a typical instance of the English philosophical mind. He will admit no speculative theory of things. To him the universe is no realization of intelligence, which is to be deciphered by human thought; it is a constitution or system, made up of individual facts, through which we thread our way slowly and inductively. Complete knowledge is impossible; nay, what we call knowledge of any part of the system is inherently imperfect. “We cannot have a thorough knowledge of any part without knowing the whole.” So far as experience goes, “to us probability is the very guide of life.” Reason is certainly to be accepted; it is our natural light, and the only faculty whereby we can judge of things. But it gives no completed system of knowledge, and in matters of fact affords only probable conclusions. In this emphatic declaration, that knowledge of the course of nature is merely probable, Butler is at one with Hume, and some of his expressions are exactly paralleled in the writings of the great sceptic, who was a most diligent student of the bishop’s works. What can come nearer Hume’s celebrated maxim,—“Anything may be the cause of anything else,” than Butler’s conclusion, “so that any one thing whatever may, for aught we know to the contrary, be a necessary condition to any other 1”

It is this strong grasp of the imperfect character of our knowledge of nature and of the grounds for its limitation that makes Butler so formidable an opponent to his deistical contemporaries. He will permit no anticipations of nature, no a priori construction of experience. “The constitution of nature is as it is,” and no system of abstract principles can be allowed to take its place. He is willing with Hume to take the course of experience as the basis of his reasoning, seeing that it is common ground for himself and his antagonists. In one essential respect, however, he goes beyond Hume. The course of nature is for him an unmeaning expression, unless it be referred to some author; and he therefore makes extensive use of the teleological method. This position is assumed throughout the treatise, and as against the deists with justice, for their whole argument rested upon the presupposition of the existence of God, the perfect Ruler of the world.

The premises, then, with which Butler starts are the existence of God, the known course of nature, and the necessary limitation of our knowledge. What does he wish to prove? It is not his intention to prove God's perfect moral government over the world or the truth of religion. His work is in no sense a philosophy of religion. His purpose is entirely defensive; he wishes to answer objections that have been brought against religion, and to examine certain difficulties that have been alleged as insuperable. And this is to be effected in the first place by showing that from the obscurities and inexplicabilities we meet with in nature we may reasonably expect to find similar difficulties in the scheme of religion. If difficulties be found in the course and constitution of nature, whose author is admitted to be God, surely the existence of similar difficulties in the plan of religion can be no valid objection against its truth and divine origin. That this is at least in great part Butler’s object is plain from the slightest inspection of his work. It has seemed to many to be an unsatisfactory mode of arguing and but a poor defence of religion; and so much the author is willing to allow. But in the general course of his argument a somewhat wider issue appears. He seeks to show not only that the difficulties in the systems of natural and revealed religion have counterparts in nature, but also that the facts of nature, far from being adverse to the principles of religion, are a distinct ground for inferring their probable truth. He endeavours to show that the balance of probability is entirely in favour of the scheme of religion, that this probability is the natural conclusion from an inspection of nature, and that, as religion is a matter of practice, we are bound to adopt the course of action which is even probably the right one. If, we may imagine him saying, the precepts of religion are entirely analogous in their partial obscurity and apparent difficulty to the ordinary course of nature disclosed to us by experience, then it is credible that these precepts are true; not only can no objections be drawn against them from experience, but the balance of probability is in their favour. This mode of reasoning from what is known of nature to the probable truth of what is contained in religion is the celebrated method of analogy.

Although Butler’s work is peculiarly one of those which ought not to be exhibited in outline, for its strength lies in the organic completeness with which the details are wrought into the whole argument, yet a summary of his results will throw more light on the method than any description can.

Keeping clearly in view his premises—the existence of God and the limited nature of knowledge,—Butler begins by inquiring into the fundamental prerequisite of all natural religion—the immortality of the soul. Evidently the stress of the whole question is here. Were man not immortal, religion would be of little value. Now, Butler does not attempt to prove the truth of the doctrine; that proof comes from another quarter. The only questions he asks are—Does experience forbid us to admit immortality as a possibility! Does experience furnish any probable reason for inferring that immortality is a fact? To the first of these a negative, to the second an affirmative answer is returned. All the analogies of our life here lead us to conclude that we shall continue to live after death; and neither from experience nor from the reason of the thing can any argument against the possibility of this be drawn. Immortality, then, is not unreasonable; it is probable. If, he continues, we are to live after death, it is of importance for us to consider on what our future state may depend; for we may be either happy or miserable. Now, whatever speculation may say as to God’s purpose being necessarily universal benevolence, experience plainly shows us that our present happiness and misery depend upon our conduct, and are not distributed indiscriminately. Therefore no argument can be brought from experience against the possibility of our future happiness and misery likewise depending upon conduct. The whole analogy of nature is in favour of such a dispensation; it is therefore reasonable or probable. Further, we are not only under a government in which actions considered simply as such are rewarded and punished, but it is known from experience that virtue and vice are followed by their natural consequents—happiness and misery. And though the distribution of these rewards is not perfect, all hindrances are plainly temporary or accidental. It may therefore be concluded that the balance of probability is in favour of God’s government in general being a moral scheme, where virtue and vice are respectively rewarded and punished. It need not be objected to the justice of this arrangement that men are sorely tempted, and may very easily be brought to neglect that on which their future welfare depends, for the very same holds good in nature. Experience shows man to be in a state of trial so far as regards the present; it cannot, therefore, be unreasonable to suppose that we are in a similar state as regards the future. Finally, it can surely never be advanced as an argument against the truth of religion that there are many things in it which we do not comprehend, when experience exhibits to us such a copious stock of incomprehensibilities in the ordinary course and constitution of nature.

It cannot have escaped observation, that in the foregoing course of argument the conclusion is invariably from experience of the present order of things to the reasonableness or probability of some other system—of a future state. The inference in all cases passes beyond the field of experience; that it does so may be and has been advanced as a conclusive objection against it. The following sentences, from one of Hume’s Essays, set forth this argument in a clear and forcible manner :—“What must a philosopher think of those vain reasoners who, instead of regarding the present scene as the sole object of their contemplation, so far reverse the whole course of nature, as to render this life merely a passage to something further? . . . . Whence, do you think, can such philosophers derive their idea of the gods? From their own conceit and imagination surely. For if they derive it from the present phenomena, it would never point to anything further, but must be exactly adjusted to them. That the divinity may possibly be endowed with attributes which we have never seen exerted, may be governed by principles of action which we cannot discover to be satisfied,—all this will freely be allowed. But still this is mere possibility and hypothesis. We never can have reason to infer any attributes or any principles of action in him, but so far as we know them to have been exerted and satisfied. . . . Are there any marks of distributive justice in the world? If you answer in the affirmative, I conclude that since justice here exerts itself, it is satisfied. If you reply in the negative, I conclude that you have then no reason to ascribe justice in our sense of it to the gods. If you hold a medium between affirmation and negation, by saying that the justice of the gods at present exerts itself in part, but not in its full extent, I answer, that you have no reason to give it any particular extent, but only so far as you see it at present exert itself.” {Works, ed. 1854, iv. 161-2, cf. p. 160.) In short no argument from experience can ever carry us beyond experience itself. However well grounded this reasoning may be, it altogether misses the point at which Butler aimed, and is indeed a misconception of the nature of analogical argument. Butler never attempts to prove that a future life regulated according to the requirements of ethical law is a reality; he only desires to show that the conception of such a life is not irreconcilable with what we know of the course of nature, and that consequently it is not unreasonable to suppose that there is such a life. Hume, it will be observed, readily grants as much, though he hints at a formidable difficulty which the plan of the Analogy prevented Butler from facing, the proof of the existence of God. Butler seems willing to rest satisfied with his opponents’ admission that the being of God is proved by reason, but it would be hard to discover how, upon his own conception ôf the nature and limits of reason, such a proof could ever be given. It has been said that it is no flaw in Butler’s argument that he has left atheism as a possible mode of viewing the universe, because his work was not directed against the atheists. It is, however, in some degree a defect; for his defence of religion against the deists rests on a view of reason which would for ever preclude a demonstrative proof of God’s existence.

If, however, his premises be granted, and the narrow issue kept in view, the argument may be admitted as perfectly satisfactory. From what we know of the present order of things, it is not unreasonable to suppose that there will be a future state of rewards and punishments, distributed according to ethical law. When the argument from analogy seems to go beyond this, a peculiar difficulty starts up. Let it be granted that our happiness and misery in this life depend upon our conduct,—are, in fact, the rewards and punishments attached by God to certain modes of action, the natural conclusion from analogy would seem to be that our future happiness or the reverse will probably depend upon our actions in the future state. Butler, on the other hand, seeks to show that analogy leads us to believe that our future state will depend upon our present conduct. His argument, that the punishment of an imprudent act often follows after a long interval may be admitted, but does rot advance a single step towards the conclusion that iπq rudent acts will be punished hereafter. So, too, with the attempt to show that from the analogy of the present life we may not unreasonably infer that virtue and vice will receive their respective rewards and punishments hereafter; it may be admitted that virtuous and vicious acts are naturally looked upon as objects of reward or punishment, and treated accordingly, but we may refuse to allow the argument to go further, and to infer a perfect distribution of justice dependent upon our conduct here. Butler could strengthen his argument only by bringing forward prominently the absolute requirements of the ethical consciousness, in which case he would have approximated to Kant’s position with regard to this very problem. That he did not do so is, perhaps, due to his strong desire to use only such premises as his adversaries the deists were willing to allow.

As against the deists, however, he may be allowed to have made out his point, that the substantial doctrines of natural religion are not opposed to reason and experience, and may be looked upon as credible. The positive proof of them is to be found in revealed religion, which has disclosed to us not only these truths, but also a further scheme not discoverable by the natural light. Here, again, Butler joins issue with his opponents. Revealed religion had been declared to be nothing but a republication of the truths of natural religion (Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation), and all revelation had been objected to as impossible. To show that such objections are invalid, and that a revelation is at least not impossible, Butler makes use mainly of his doctrine of human ignorance. Revelation had been rejected because it lay altogether beyond the sphere of reason and could not therefore be grasped by human intelligence. But the same is true of nature; there are in the ordinary course of things inexplicabilities; indeed we may be said with truth to know nothing, for there is no medium between perfect and completed comprehension of the whole system of things, which we manifestly have not, and mere faith grounded on probability. Is it unreasonable to suppose that in a revealed system there should be the same superiority to our intelligence? If we cannot explain or foretell by reason what the exact course of events in nature will be, is it to be expected that we can do so with regard to the wider scheme of God’s revealed providence? Is it not probable that there will be many things not explicable by us? From our experience of the course of nature it would appear that no argument can be brought against the possibility of a revelation. Further, though it is the province of reason to test this revealed system, and though it be granted that, should it contain anything immoral, it must be rejected, yet a careful examination of the particulars will show that there is no incomprehensibility or difficulty in them which has not a counterpart in nature. The whole scheme of revealed principles is, therefore, not unreasonable, and the analogy of nature and natural religion would lead us to infer its truth. If, finally, it be asked, how a system professing to be revealed can substantiate its claim, the answer is, by means of the historical evidences, such as miracles and fulfilment of prophecy.

It would be unfair to Butler’s argument to demand from it answers to problems which had not in his time arisen, and to which, even if they had then existed, the plan of his work would not have extended. Yet it is at least important to ask how far, and in what sense, the Analogy can be regarded as a positive and valuable contribution to theology. What that work has done is to prove to the consistent deist that no objections can be drawn from reason or experience against natural or revealed religion, and, consequently, that the things objected to are not incredible and may be proved by external evidence. But the deism of the 17th century is a phase of thought that has no h'ving reality now, and the whole aspect of the religious problem has been completely changed. To a generation that has been moulded by the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, and by the historical criticism of Strauss and the later German theology, the argument of the Analogy cannot but appear to lie quite outside the field of controversy. To Butler the Christian religion, and by that he meant the orthodox Church of England system, was a moral scheme revealed by a special act of the divine providence, the truth of which was to be judged by the ordinary canons of evidence. The whole stood or fell on historical grounds. A speculative construction of religion was a thing abhorrent to him, a thing of which he seems to have thought the human mind naturally incapable. The religious consciousness does not receive from him the slightest consideration, whereas it is with its nature and functions that the scientific theology of the present time is almost entirely occupied. The Analogy, it would appear, has and can have but little influence on the present state of theology; it was not a book for all time, but was limited to the controversies and questions of the period at which it appeared.

Throughout the whole of the Analogy, it is manifest that the interest which lay closest to Butler’s heart was the ethical. His whole cast of thinking was practical. The moral nature of man, his conduct in life, is that on account of which alone an inquiry into religion is of importance. The systematic account of this moral nature is to be found in the famous Sermons preached at the Chapel of the Rolls, especially in the first three. In these sermons Butler has made substantial contributions to ethical science, and it may be said with confidence, that in their own department nothing superior in value appeared during the long interval between Aristotle and Kant. To both of these great thinkers he has certain analogies. He resembles the first in his method of investigating the end which human nature is intended to realize; he reminds of the other by the consistency with which he upholds the absolute supremacy of moral law.

In his ethics, as in his theology, Butler had constantly in view a certain class of adversaries, consisting partly of the philosophic few, partly of the fashionably-educated many, who all participated in one common mode of thinking. The key-note of this tendency had been struck by Hobbes, in whose philosophy man was regarded as a mere sensitive machine, moved solely by pleasures and pains. Human nature had come to be looked upon as essentially selfish; disinterested actions were sneered at as impossibilities by the many, and were explained away into modifications of selfishness by the scientific moralists. Cudworth and Clarke, it is true, had tried to place ethios on a nobler footing, but their speculations had been of the abstract kind, which was always distasteful to Butler. They were not practical enough, were not sufficiently “applicable to the several particular relations and circumstances of life.” He desired to base ethical law not on abstract theory, but on the actual facts of human nature.

The fundamental view of things from which he starts in his inquiry may be called the teleological. “Every work, both of nature and art, is a system; and as every particular thing both natural and artificial is for some use or purpose out of or beyond itself, one may add to what has been already brought into the idea of a system its conduciveness to this one or more ends.” Ultimately this view of nature, as the sphere of the realization of final causes, rests on a theological basis; but Butler does not introduce prominently into his

BUTLER, Samuel (1612—1680), whose name appears to have been spelt Boteler in official documents to the end of his life, was born at Strensham on the Avon in Worcestershire. He was baptized on the 8th of February 1612. His father, who was of the same name and was then churchwarden, is variously represented as a substantial farmer (owning a small freehold, and leasing from Sir William Russel a considerable farm valued at £300 a year), and as “a man of but slender fortune,” who was barely able to educate his son at a free school. The author of Hudibras was apparently educated at the college (or cathedral) school, Worcester, and the house in which he was born was pulled down (being considered incapable of repair) about 1873. Hardly any other particulars of his youth are recorded, and his later education (if he received any) is equally uncertain. He has been loosely asserted (as is the case with many other distinguished persons of his century) to have studied at both Cambridge and Oxford, but the balance of testimony seems to be against his having belonged to either university. The time between the completion of his education {circa 1630) and the Restoration, a period of fully thirty years, appears to have been spent by him in three different households, with Mr Jefferies of Earl’s Croome in Worcestershire, with the countess of Kent at Wrest in Bedfordshire, and with Sir Samuel Luke at Woodend or Copie Hoo in the same county. He served Mr Jefferies in the capacity of justice’s clerk, and is supposed to have thus laid the foundation of his remarkable knowledge of law and law terms. He also employed himself at Earl’s Croome in general study, and particularly in painting, which he is said to have thought of adopting as a profession. It is probable, however, that art has not lost by his change of mind, for, according to one of his editors, in 1774 his pictures “served to stop windows and save the tax; indeed they were not fit for much else.” At Wrest, where he is said to have been gentleman to the countess, he pursued his studies in painting, drawing, and music; probably, also, in other directions, for Wrest contained a good library. Here he met and worked for Selden. But his third sojourn, that at Copie Hoo, was not only apparently the longest, but also much the most important in its effects on his career and works.

We are nowhere informed, nor is it at all clear, in what capacity Butler served Sir Samuel Luke, or how one who was not only in temper and sympathies, but also from early associations, a decided royalist, came to reside in the house of a noted Puritan and Parliament man. In the family of this “valiant Mamaluke,” who, whether he was or was not the original of Hudibras, was certainly a rigid Presbyterian, “a colonel in the army of the Parliament, scoutmaster-general for Bedfordshire and governor of Newport Pagnell,” Butler must have had the most abundant opportunities of studying from the life those who were to be the victims of his great future satire. But we know not how long he held his situation (whatever it was) under the knight of Copie, and we hear nothing positive of him till the Restoration, immediately after which he was appointed secretary to Lord Carbery (then President of Wales) and steward of Ludlow Castle. Contradictory documents exist respecting his tenure of the latter office, one speaking of him as “late steward” in January 1662, the other (a protection against arrest) addressed to him as steward in September 1667. About this time he married a Mrs Herbert, according to Aubrey a widow with a good jointure, on whose means he lived comfortably. Aubrey knew him well and could hardly be wrong on such a point, especially as his testimony as to Butler’s living in comparative comfort is confirmed by another authority to be afterwards mentioned. It should, however, be observed that other accounts state that Mrs Herbert’s fortune was lost through bad securities. Late in 1662 the first part of Hudibras was published. On the 26th of December I’epys bought it, and though neither then nor afterwards could he see the wit of it, he repeatedly testifies to its extraordinary popularity. This popularity is most clearly proved by the issue of a pirated edition within a month, and by the appearance of a spurious second part within the year. This latter compliment (which it will be remembered was also paid to Butler’s spiritual ancestor Cervantes) determined the poet to bring out the second part, which was licensed on November 7, 1663, and which if possible exceeded the first in popularity. From this time till 1678, the date of the publication of the third part, we hear nothing certain and hardly anything at all of Butler. He appears at some period to have visited France. He is said to have received a gift of £300 from Charles IL, and to have been secretary to Buckingham when the latter was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Most of his biographers, in their eagerness to prove the ill-treatment which Butler is supposed to have received, disbelieve both these stories, perhaps without sufficient reason. It must be allowed that it is scarcely a valid argument that Butler, if he had been secretary to Buckingham, would not have spoken so severely of that nobleman in his Characters {Remains, 1754), when it is remembered that he satirized Sir Samuel Luke, to whom he held nearly the same relation, with certainly equal virulence. Two years after the publication of the third part he died (September 25, 1680), and was buried by his friend Mr William Longueville (a bencher of the Middle Temple) in the churchyard of St Paul’s, Covent Garden. He was, we are told, “of a leonine-coloured hair, sanguine, choleric, middle-sized, strong.” Portraits exist at Oxford and elsewhere which represent him as somewhat hard-featured. Two personal anecdotes, and perhap3 two only, are recorded of him. One is the well-known story which tells how Wycherly laboured hard to secure for the neglected poet the patronage of Buckingham, how an interview was at last arranged, from which the duke was, alas! called off by the passage of “a brace of ladies,” and how the opportunity was lost. The other bears suspicious marks of having been made up as setting for a witticism of Lord Dorset’s. Dorset, it seems, was anxious to know the author of Hudibras, and prevailed on a common friend to bring him to a tavern. At the first bottle Butler was quiet and reserved, at the second full of wit and spirits, at the third dull and stupid,—upon which Dorset’s comment was that Butler was “like a nine-pin, little at both ends, but great in the middle.” Of these stories it may be said, as of most such, that they may be true and cannot be proved to be false.

Of the neglect of Butler by the Court something must be said. It must be remembered that the complaints on the subject supposed to have been uttered by the poet all occur in the spurious posthumous works, that men of letters have been at all times but too prone to complain of lack of patronage (a fact which makes it probable that Dryden, Otway, Oldham, &c., in alluding to Butler, spoke as the proverb of that day went, “one word for him and two for themselves”), that the actual service rendered by Butler was rendered when the day was already won, and that the pathetic stories of the poet starving and dying in want are contradicted by the best authority—Mr C. Longueville (son of the poet’s friend)—who asserted that Butler, though often disappointed, was never reduced to anything like want or beggary, and did not die in any person’s debt. But the most significant story on the subject is Aubrey’s, that “he n‰ight have had preferments at first, but would not accept any but very good, and so got none.”

Three monuments have been at different times and places erected to the poet’s memory,—the first in 1721 by Alderman Barber in Westminster Abbey. This was the occasion of some rather misplaced wit from Pope and others. In 1786 a tablet was placed in St Paul’s, Covent Garden, by some inhabitants of that parish. This was destroyed in 1845. Some thirty or forty years ago another was set up at Strensham by a Mr Taylor of that place. Perhaps the happiest epitaph on him is one by Dennis, which (borrowing, indeed, its most striking expression from Cowley) sets forth that Butler “was a whole species of poets in one.”

Butler’s published works during his life consisted of the three parts of Hudibras (the second and third were republished together in 1674, with notes by the author); of an Ode on Duval (the famous highwayman); and of two pamphlets attributed to Prynne. In 1715 three volumes, entitled Posthumous Worts of Mr S. Butler, were published with great success. Their contents, however, are all spurious except one or two short pieces. The poet’s papers remained in the hands of his friend Mr Longueville, and were not published till 1759, when Mr Thyer, librarian at Manchester, edited two volumes of verse and prose under the title of Genuine Remains. The most remarkable of the prose writings are characters of the kind popular in the 17th century, and partaking largely of the faults usual in such pieces. To this some additional fragments were added in 1822; a fragment of a tragedy on Nero is also spoken of. In 1726 Hogarth executed some illustrations to Uudibras, which are among his earliest but not, perhaps, happiest productions. In 1744 Dr Zachary Grey published an edition of Hudibras, which has been repeatedly reprinted, and has formed (with that of Nash in 1793) the basis of all subsequent editions. It contains an enormous mass of notes, displaying little critical or literary power, but abounding in curious information. A worthy edition is still to seek; but that of the late Mr B. Bell is convenient, and supplies much information, which is generally accurate. Mr Bohn’s (of Hudibras only) is also useful. Butler’s lesser works would of themselves fairly sustain, though perhaps they would hardly create, a great reputation. Abundance of happy thought, of ingenious expression, and of vigorous verse, may be found in the Miscellaneous Thoughts, the Ode on Duval, and the Satires on the Royal Society (The Elephant in the Moon) and on Critics. But the splendour of Hudibras has somewhat paled their fire.

Hudibras itself, though probably quoted as often as ever, has perhaps dropped into the class of books which are more quoted than talked of, and more talked of than read. In reading it, it is of the utmost importance to comprehend clearly and to bear constantly in mind the purpose of the author in composing it. This purpose is evidently not artistic but polemic, to show in the most unmistakable characters the vileness and folly of the. anti royalist party. Anything like a regular plot—the absence of which has often been deplored or excused—would have been for this end not merely a superfluity but a mistake, as likely to divert the attention and perhaps even enlist some sympathy for the heroes. Anything like regular character-drawing would have been equally unnecessary and dangerous—for to represent anything but monsters, some alleviating strokes must have been introduced. The problem, therefore, was to produce characters just sufficiently unlike lay-figures to excite and maintain a moderate interest, and to set them in motion by dint of a few incidents not absolutely unconnected,—meanwhile to subject the principles and manners of which these characters were the incarnation to ceaseless satire and raillery. The triumphant solution of the problem is undeniable, when it has once been enunciated and understood. Upon a canvas thus prepared and outlined, Butler has embroidered a collection of flowers of wit, which only the utmost fertility of imagination could devise, and the utmost patience of industry elaborate. In the union of these two qualities he is certainly without a parallel, and their combination has produced a work which is unique. The poem is of considerable length, extending to more than ten thousand verses, yet Hazlitt hardly exaggerates when he says that “half the lines are got by heart;” indeed a diligent student of later English literature lias read great part of Hudibras though he may never have opened its pages. The tableaux or situations, though few and simple in construction, are ludicrous enough. The knight and squire setting forth on their journey; the routing of the bear-baiters; the disastrous renewal of the contest; Hudibras and Ralph in the stocks; the lady’s release and conditional acceptance of the unlucky knight; the latter’s deliberations on the means of. eluding his vow; the Skimmington; the visit to Sidrophel, the astrologer; the attempt to cajole the lady, with its woeful consequences; the consultation with the lawyer, and the immortal pair of letters to which this gives rise complete the argument of the whole poem. But the story is as nothing; throughout we have little really kept before us but the sordid vices of the sectaries, their hypocrisy, their churlish ungraciousness, their greed of money and authority, their fast and loose morality, their inordinate pride. The extraordinary felicity of the means taken to place all these things in the most ridiculous light has never been questioned. The doggrel metre, never heavy or coarse, but framed so as to be the very voice of mocking laughter, the astounding similes and disparates, the rhymes which seem to chuckle and to sneer of themselves, the wonderful learning with which the abuse of learning is rebuked, the subtlety with which subtle casuistry is set at nought can never be missed. Keys like those of L’Estrange are therefore of little use. It signifies nothing whether Hudibras was Sir Samuel Luke of Bedfordshire or Sir Henry Rosewell of Devonshire, still less whether Ralph’s name in the flesh w as Robinson or Pendle, least of all that Orsin was perhaps Mr Gosling, or Trulla possibly Miss Spencer. Butler was probably as little indebted to mere copying for his characters as for his ideas and style. These latter are in the highest degree original. The first notion of the book, and only the first notion, Butler undoubtedly received from Don Quixote. His obligations to the Satyre Ménippee have been noticed by Voltaire, and though English writers have sometimes ignored or questioned them, are not to be doubted by any student of the two books. The art (perhaps the most terrible of all the weapons of satire) cf making characters without any great violation of probability represent themselves in the most atrocious and despicable light was never perhaps possessed in perfection except by Pithou and his colleagues and by Butler. Against these great merits some defects must certainly be set. As a whole, the poem is no doubt tedious, if only on account of the very blaze of wit, which at length almost wearies us by its ceaseless demands on our attention. It should, however, be remembered that it was originally issued in parts, and therefore (it may be supposed) intended to be read in parts, for there can be little doubt that the second part was written before the first w as published. A more real defect, but one which Butler shares with all his contemporaries from Jonson downwards, is the tendency to delineate humours instead of characters, and to draw from the outside rather than from within. This also may be partially palliated by some remarks made above.

Attempts have been made without much success to trace the manner and versification of Hudibras, especially in Cleveland and in the Musarum Deliciae (lately reprinted) of Sir John Mennis (Pepys’s Minnes) and Dr Smith. But if it had few ancestors it had an abundant offspring. A list of seventeen direct imitations of Hudibras in the course of a century was given in the Retrospective Review, and may be found in Mitford’s Butler. Portions of it have been at different times translated into Latin with no great success. Complete translations of considérable excellence have been made into French by John Townley (London, 1757, 3 vols.), and into German by D. W. Soltau (Riga, 1787); specimens of both may be found in Bell’s edition. Voltaire tried his hand at a compressed version, but not happily, (g. sa.)

BUTLER, William Archer (1814-1848), a brilliant writer on theology and the history of philosophy, was born at Annerville, near Clonmel, probably in 1814. His father was a Protestant, his mother a Roman Catholic, and he was brought up in the Romish faith. At the age of nine he was sent to Clonmel school, where he distinguished himself not so much by rigid attention to his class work as by general brilliancy and power. Even when a boy he was strongly drawn towards the imaginative and poetical, and some of his early verses show an astonishing precocity. After leaving Clonmel school he entered Trinity College, Dublin. Two years before he had joined the Protestant church. His career at college was remarkably brilliant. The studies to which he specially devoted himself were the literary and metaphysical; and he was particularly noted for the extreme beauty of his style, both in speaking and in written exercises. In 1834 he gained the ethical moderatorship, newly instituted by Provost Lloyd, and continued in residence at college, pursuing his favourite studies. Many papers were about this time contributed by him to the Dublin University Magazine; it is to be regretted that these have not been collected. In 1837 he made up his mind to enter the church, and in the same year he was elected to the professorship of moral philosophy, specially founded for him through the exertions of Provost Lloyd. About the same time he was presented to the prebend of Clondehorka, in Donegal, and resided there when not called by his professorial duties to Dublin. In 1842 he was promoted to the rectory of Raymoghy. His lectures and his sermons were equally admired for their strength of thought and richly imaginative style. In 1845 appeared in the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal his Letters on Development, written under a great press of business, but in every way worthy of the author, and the best reply made to the famous essay of Newman which had called them forth. Butler’s life was but short. He caught cold when returning one day from public service; the cold terminated in fever, which proved fatal in a few days. He died on the 5th July 1848. His Sermons, published in two vols, by Woodward and Jeremie, have been universally recognized as among the most important recent contributions to theology. They are remarkable not only for rare brilliancy of style, but for subtilty and force of thought. The diction is at times too ornate and rhetorical, but it is not to be forgotten that the sermons were hurriedly written, were never revised, and were all the work of a young man. Their uncommon excellence deepens the regret at the early death of the author. The Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, edited in a masterly manner by W. HepworthThompson(2 vols. 1856; 2d ed.,lvol. 1875), have taken their place as the best among the few British works on the history of philosophy. The introductory lectures, and those on the early Greek thinkers, are not of the highest value, and though they evidence wide reading, do not show the complete mastery over the material that is found in Schwegler or Zeller. The lectures on Plato, however, are of great value, and furnish a most admirable and enthusiastically conceived exposition of the Platonic system. Butler was evidently attracted by the lofty spirit of Platonism, and sets forth its main features with the warmest admiration. In details he is not altogether to be trusted, but any defects in his scholarship are amply supplied in the valuable notes of his editor.

See Memoir of W. A. Butler, prefixed by Rev. J. Woodward to first series of Sermons.