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"In the midst of obscurity passed the life of Butler, a man whose name
can only perish with his language. 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."
Such are the expressive words with which Dr. Johnson winds up his meager
account of the witty author of Hudibras. A more significant finish to a
poet's biography could scarcely be given. A more striking instance of
national neglect, and the ingratitude of posterity, is nowhere to be
found.
Strensham, in Warwickshire, claims the honor of his birth. His father is
said to have been an honest farmer there, with a small estate, who made
a shift to educate his son at the grammar-school at Worcester, whence he
is supposed to have gone to the university, but whether of Oxford or
Cambridge, is matter of dispute. His brother asserted that it was
Cambridge, but could not tell at which hall or college. Dr. Nash
discovered that his father was owner of a house and a little land, worth
about eight pounds a year, which, in Johnson's time, was still called
_Butler's tenement_.
When we consider the humble position of the father, we can only wonder
that he contrived to give him an education at a classical school at all,
and may very well doubt, with the great lexicographer, whether he in
reality ever did study at Cambridge. Having, however, given his son a
learned education, his resources were exhausted, he had no patronage,
and the young man became, and might probably think himself fortunate in
doing so, a clerk to a justice of peace, Mr. Jefferys, of Earl's Croomb,
in Worcestershire. Here he appears to have passed an easy and agreeable
life. "He had," says Johnson, "not only leisure for study, but for
recreation; his amusements were music and painting; and the reward of
his pencil was the friendship of the celebrated Cooper. Some pictures,
said to be his, were shown to Dr. Nash at Earl's Croomb; but when he
inquired for them some years afterward, he found them destroyed to stop
windows, and owns that they hardly deserved a better fate."
From this gentleman's service he passed into that of the Countess of
Kent. The celebrated John Selden was then steward of the countess, and
it was probably through him, or for his purposes, that Butler was
introduced into the family. He was much noticed by Selden, and employed
by him as an amanuensis. Whether this was the actual capacity in which
he stood in the family of the countess, is, like almost every other
event of his life, however, quite unknown. One thing seems certain,
that, both at Mr. Jefferys' and here, he had been turned loose into
great libraries, the sort of pasture that he of all others liked, and
had devoured their contents to some purpose, as is manifested in his
writings. These were the real colleges at which he studied, and where
he laid up enormous masses of information.
His next remove was into the family of Sir Samuel Luke, one of
Cromwell's officers. This was the decisive circumstance of his life. Sir
Samuel was the hero of his future poem--the actual Hudibras. But he was
here in the very center of republican action, and sectarian opinion and
discussion. In Sir Samuel he had a new and rich study of character; in
those about him, a new world, abounding with all sorts of persons,
passages, and doctrines, which made him feel that he also had a world
unknown still in himself, that of satirical fun infinite. Into this
world he absorbed all the new views of things; the strange shapes that
came to and fro; the strange phraseology and sounds of conventicle hymns
that assailed his ears. The historian and poet of the new land of
Goshen, where all was light, while the neighboring Egypt of royalty was
all in darkness, was born into it; and Hudibras, and his Squire Ralph,
Sidrophel, Talgol and Trulla, the Bear and Fiddle, all sprung into
immortal existence.
The story of the utter neglect of Butler by the king and court, at the
time that not only they, but all Royalists in the kingdom, were bursting
with laughter over Hudibras, is too well known. Once it was hoped that
he was on the verge of good fortune, and Mr. Wycherley was to introduce
him to the all-powerful Duke of Buckingham. The story of this interview
is too characteristic to be passed over.
"Mr. Wycherley," says Packe, "had always laid hold of an opportunity
which offered of representing to the Duke of Buckingham how well Mr.
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 want 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 d--l would have
it, the door of the room where they sat was open, and his grace, who had
seated himself near it, observing a pimp of his acquaintance--the
creature, too, was a knight--trip by with a brace of ladies, immediately
quitted his engagement to follow another kind of business, at which he
was more ready than at doing good offices to men of desert, though no
one was better qualified than he, both in regard of 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!"
The brightest gleam of his life would seem to be between his quitting
Sir Samuel Luke's and the publication of his Hudibras; but when this
exactly took place, and how long this lasted, we are not informed. It
must, however, have taken place between the king's return, which was in
1659, and 1664, some five years or so. During this period he was made
secretary to the Earl of Carberry, president of the principality of
Wales, who made him steward of Ludlow Castle when the Court of Marches
was revived.
This was a post in which a poet might feel himself well placed. This
ancient castle of the Lacys and Mortimers stands at the west end of the
town of Ludlow, on a bold rock, overlooking the River Corve, and near
the confluence of that river and the Teme. Many striking events had
occurred here since the time that William the Conqueror bestowed it on
Roger de Montgomery, from whose descendants it passed successively into
the hands of the crown, the Warines, the Lacys, and the Mortimers. On
the borders of Wales, it was a strong-hold for the crown of England,
and after it fell again into the hands of the king, became the palace of
the President of the Marches, and often the residence of princes. Here
the young king Edward V. lived, and left it only to proceed to London
into the murderous hands of his uncle, Richard III., who, within two
months of his quitting this quiet asylum, had him and his brother
smothered in the Tower. Here Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII.,
was married to Catharine of Aragon, who, after his death, was married to
his brother, Henry VIII.; her divorce finally leading to the Reformation
in England. Here Sir Philip Sidney's father, Sir Henry Sidney, had
lived, as President of the Marches; and many a scene of splendor and
festivity had lit up the venerable towers, on the occasion of royal
visits, and other seasons of rejoicing. Above all, it was for one of
those occasions that the youthful Milton had composed his Comus; and on
a visit of Charles I., in 1631, to the Earl of Bridgwater, then
President of the Marches, it was performed before him, the work being
founded on a real incident occurring in the lord president's own family,
which is thus related by Nightingale: "When he had entered on his
official residence, he was visited by a large assembly of the
neighboring nobility and gentry. His sons, the Lord Brackley and Sir
Thomas Egerton, and his daughter, the Lady Alice, being on their
journey,
'To attend their father's state,
And new intrusted scepter,'
were benighted in Haywood Forest, in Herefordshire, and the lady for a
short time was lost. The adventure being related to their father on
their arrival at the castle, Milton, at the request of his friend, Henry
Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote the Mask. Lawes set it to
music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night; the two brothers, the young
lady, and Lawes himself, each bearing a part in the representation."
This single circumstance of being the scene of the first representation
of the Mask of Comus, one of Milton's most beautiful compositions, has
given a perpetual interest to Ludlow Castle.
The genius of Butler was of a different stamp. It wanted the sublimity,
the pathos, and tender sensibilities of that of Milton; but, on the
other hand, for perception of the ridiculous; for a diving into the
closest folds of cant and fanatical pretense; for a rough, bold, and
humorous power of sketching ordinary life, it was unrivaled. A tower is
still shown as the place where he wrote a part of his Hudibras. Whether
it be the precise fact or not, it is idle to inquire. There our author
has resided; there he is said to have written something or other, and
the very room and spot of its composition are pointed out. It is best
not to be too critical; and, on the other hand, if we believe, in
general, that where a man of genius has lived he has also written, we
shall seldom be far wrong. There is little doubt that here Butler,
possessed of more leisure and independence than at any other period of
his life, did really revise and prepare his work for press, of which the
first part was published in 1663, and the second in the year following.
Here he married Mrs. Herbert, a lady of good family, with whom he lived
in comfort, if not in affluence. Of the place where Comus was first
acted by the real personages of it, and where Butler brought forth his
Hudibras, some idea may be gratifying to the reader. It was deserted in
the first year of William and Mary, in consequence of the dissolution of
the Court of the Marches. From an inventory of the goods found in Ludlow
Castle, bearing date 1708, in the eleventh year of Queen Anne, there
appeared to be then forty rooms entire. Many of the royal apartments
were in that condition; and the couch of state and the velvet hangings
were preserved. In the chapel there were still to be seen on the panels
many coats of arms; and in the hall many of the same kind of ornaments,
together with lances, spears, firelocks, and old armor. On the
accession of George I., an order came down to unroof the buildings, and
strip them of their lead. Decay consequently ensued. Several panels
bearing the arms of the lords president were converted into wainscoting
for a public house in the town, a former owner of which enriched himself
by the sale of materials clandestinely carried away. There remains,
also, a rich embroidered carpet, hung up in the chancel of St.
Lawrence's Church, said to be part of the covering of the council-board.
The Earl of Powis, who previously held the castle in virtue of a long
lease, acquired the reversion in fee by purchase from the crown in 1811.
The whole is now a scene of venerable ruin. The castle rises from the
point of a headland, and its foundations are ingrafted into a bare gray
rock. The north front consists of square towers with high connecting
walls, which are embattled with deep interstices; and the old fosse, and
part of the rock, have been formed into walks, which in 1722 were
planted with beech, elm, and lime trees by the Countess of Powis, and
those trees, now grown to maturity, add exceedingly to the dignity and
beauty of the scene. Through a chasm on the west runs the broad and
shallow River Teme. It were too long to describe all this mass of ruins,
with its various courts, remains of barracks, and escutcheoned walls.
The first view of the interior of the castle is fine. The court is an
irregular square area, not very spacious, but the lofty embattled
structures with which it is surrounded, though in ruin, still preserve
their original outlines. The spacious hall is of sixty feet by thirty,
the height about thirty-five feet, and is ornamented with a door with a
beautiful pointed arch. The once elegant saloon, where the splendid
scene of Comus was first exhibited; where chivalry exhausted her
choicest stores, both of invention and wealth, and where hospitality and
magnificence blazed for many ages in succession, without diminution or
decay, is now totally dilapidated, and neither roof nor floor remains.
From the time of Butler's quitting this scene of his ease and happiness,
he seems to have experienced only poverty and neglect. His wife's
fortune is said to have been lost through bad securities; his
expectations from the royal person, or the royal party whom he had so
immensely served, were wholly disappointed; and in 1680 he died, where,
on the authority of the son of his truest friend and benefactor, Mr.
Longueville, he had lived some years, in Rose-street, Covent Garden. Mr.
Longueville exerted himself to raise a subscription for his interment in
Westminster Abbey, but in vain; he therefore buried him at his own cost
in the church-yard of Covent Garden. About sixty years afterward, Mr.
Bailey, a painter, Mayor of London, and a friend to Butler's principles,
bestowed on him that monument in Westminster Abbey, which is well known.
Such were the life, fortunes, and death of the author of Hudibras, whose
name, as Johnson justly observes, can only perish with his language. It
was his misfortune to look for protection to a monarch, who only
protected courtesans, and the most disgusting of libertines. Butler
should have been a pimp, and not a poet, and he would soon have found
employment enough. His neglect is but one opprobrium more added to the
memory of a monarch, whose whole life was a nuisance and a disgrace to
the country which tolerated him.