XX.-BUTLER'S REMAINS, IN PROSE AND VERSE.

[From the Critical Review, 1759. "The Genuine Remains, in Prose and Verse, of Mr. Samuel Butler. Published from the Original Manuscripts, formerly in the possession of W. Longueville, Esq.;) with Notes by R. Thyer, Keeper of the public Library at Manchester." In two vols. 8vo.]

WHEN We consider Butler merely as a poet, and a party poet too, and reflect that poets, in our own time, have been known to excel in one species of composition, and yet have been useless in all other purposes of life, and ignorant in all other pursuits of learning, we bewail, but we are not greatly surprised at, the indigence in which we are told he lived and died. But when we view him by the light in which this publication places him, we are struck with somewhat next to horror at the want of discernment, at the more than barbarous ingratitude, of his cotemporaries. When we see him join the humour of Lucian to the philosophy of Plato, and unite the virtue of Socrates with the wit of Aristophanes; when he displays an equal knowledge of men and books; when he adapts reading to reasoning, and all in the cause of liberty and religion, we are apt to bewail, not only the disgrace, but the loss, of our country, that could suffer such a person to be, in a manner, dead to society.

(1) ["Mr. William Longueville was a conveyancing lawyer, and a bencher of the Inner Temple, and had raised himself from a low beginning to great eminence in that profession. He was the last patron and friend that poor old Butler, the author of Hudibras, had, and in his old age he supported him, otherwise he must have been literally starved. All that the poet could do to recompense him, was to make him his heir, that is, give him his Remains; but on loose paper, and indigested."-Life of Lord Keeper Guilford, vol. ii. p. 189, edit. 1826.]

Till the pieces before us were published, Swift could, with some appearance of justice, have disputed with Butler the palm of wit, humour, and observation of life. But we are of opinion, that the question must be now, by the discerning and impartial part of the public, decided in Butler's favour. We cannot, however, say of all the pieces of this collection, as Ovid does of the chariot of the sun," Materiam superat opus;" for here many of the materials are rich, but. the workmanship is rough; they look like pieces of the most precious metal, when they first come out of a beautiful mould; but without the finishing and heightenings, that the hand and the tools of the artist can bestow. Many of them bear manifest indications of genius labouring, but not crushed, under indigence; while some of them have received all the polish that art and judgment can bestow.

The editor has performed his duty with great pertinency, yet modesty, of observation; and this publication is far from being one of those catch penny subscription-works, which, circulating from one good-natured friend to another, at last picks the pocket of the public. We are tempted to wish, however, that Mr. Thyer's studies had led him a little more than they seem to have done, into those piddling walks of pamphlet and polemical reading, from which alone can be drawn the illustrations of many dark passages of his admirable author; nor can we think he has been always happy in his conjectures.

Through great part of the two volumes before us, we perceive that Butler was no friend to the Royal Society,(1)

(1) ["The enemies of the Royal Society were for some time very numerous and very acrimonious; for what reason it is hard to conceive, since the philosophers professed not to advance doctrines, but to produce facts; and the most zealous enemy of innovation must admit the gradual progress of experience, however he may oppose hypothetical temerity."-JOHNSON.]

and the method of philosophising in fashion in his time; and, indeed, as Mr. Thyer observes with great truth, one must own, that the members of that learned body, at their first setting out, did justly lay themselves open to the lashes of wit and satire.

The first poem in this collection is entitled "The Elephant in the Moon," and is planned upon a humourous story of a mouse getting into a telescope, with which the virtuosos were viewing the moon, and which they instantly pronounced to be an elephant in the moon. The story, which is full of Butler's humour, is told at first in short, and then in long, verse, but generally in the same terms and terminations of rhyme.

The poem which follows is entitled, "A Satire upon the Weakness and Misery of Man," and bears the stamp not only of genius but virtue; with such characteristics of the latter as are impossible to be counterfeited: as for the former, they speak for themselves. In short, this is perhaps the finest and justest satire that any language can produce ; and the whole of it has those marks of virtuous indignation, which prove that the poet speaks from the heart. This indignation is levelled equally against the court of Charles the Second as against the fanatics; and the reader is grossly mistaken if he imagines, that because Butler was the author of Hudibras, he favoured either the politics or the manners of the court, to which his writings were so serviceable in its distress. The satire in question, in enumerating the outward circumstances that create the weakness and misery of man, has the following lines :

"Yet as no barbarousness beside

Is half so barbarous as pride,

Nor any prouder insolence

Than that, which has the least pretence,

We are so wretched, to profess

A glory in our wretchedness;

To vapour sillily, and rant
Of our own misery and want.
And grown vain-glorious on a score,
We ought much rather to deplore,
Who, the first moment of our lives,
Are but condemn'd, and giv'n reprieves ;
And our greatest grace is, not to know
When we shall pay 'em back, nor how;
Begotten with a vain caprich

And live as vainly to that pitch.
66 Our pains are real things, and all
Our pleasures but fantastical;
Diseases of their own accord,

But cures come difficult and hard;
Our noblest piles, and stateliest rooms
Are but out-houses to the tombs;
Cities, though ere so great and brave,,
But mere warehouses to the grave;
Our brav'ry's (1) but a vain disguise,
To hide us from the world's dull eyes,
The remedy of a defect,

With which our nakedness is deckt;

Yet makes us swell with pride, and boast,

As if w' had gain'd by being lost."

After some other

very fine reflections of the same caste,

he concludes in the following noble and splendid strain :

(1) Finery.

"That wealth, that bounteous fortune sends
As presents to her dearest friends,

Is oft laid out upon a purchase

Of two yards long in parish churches;

And those too happy men that bought it,

Had liv'd, and happier too, without it.

For what does vast wealth bring, but cheat,

Law, luxury, disease, and debt,

Pain, pleasure, discontent, and sport,

And easy-troubled life, and short? (2)

(2) Though this satire seems fairly transcribed for the press, yet on a vacancy in the sheet opposite to this line, I find the following verses, which probably were intended to be added: but as they are not regularly inserted, I choose rather to give them by way of note:

"For men ne'er digg'd so deep into

The bowels of the earth below,
For metals that are found to dwell
Near neighbour to the pit of hell,

POETICAL CRITICISM.

"But all these plagues are nothing near
Those far more cruel and severe,
Unhappy man takes pains to find
T' inflict himself upon his mind;
And out of his own bowels spins
A rack and torture for his sins:
Torments himself, in vain, to know
That most, which he can never do ;
And the more strictly 'tis denied,
The more he is unsatisfied:

Is busy in finding scruples out,
To languish in eternal doubt;
Sees spectres in the dark, and ghosts,
And starts, as horses do at posts,
And, when his eyes assist him least,
Discerns such subtle objects best:
On hypothetic dreams and visions
Grounds everlasting disquisitions,
And raises endless controversies
On vulgar theorems and hearsays;
Grows positive and confident
In things so far beyond th' extent
Of human sense, he does not know,
Whether they be at all, or no;

And doubts as much in things, that are

As plainly evident, and clear:
Disdains all useful sense, and plain,

T'apply to th' intricate and vain ;
And cracks his brains in plodding on
That, which is never to be known;
To pose himself with subtleties,
And hold no other knowledge wise:
Although, the subtler all things are,
They're but to nothing the more near:
And the less weight they can sustain,
The more he still lays on in vain,
And hangs his soul upon as nice
And subtle curiosities,

And have a magic pow'r to sway
The greedy souls of men that way;
But with their bodies have been fain
To fill those trenches up again;
When bloody battles have been fought
For sharing that, which they took not.
For wealth is all things, that conduce
To man's destruction, or his use;

A standard both to buy and sell
All things from heaven down to hell."