SAMUEL BUTLER

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21139, 14 April 1934, Page 15

SAMUEL BUTLER

ANOTHER BOOK OF NOTES j (•FICIAJ.LT W«!TT1)I IO» T8( TBISI.) ! [Br It. G. C. McXAB.] j | There is to-day a tendency to believe that Victorian smugness was recently exaggerated; but one Victorian was more irritated by his age than any of his successors. Samuel Butler was painfully disturbed by the arrogance of his world, its settled notions, and tyranny over independent minds. His inclinations and personal circumstances encouraged a rebellious attitude and a scrutiny of the sacred sanctions of religion, ethics, and social observances. For { religion, his mind, always hard to j convince, found miraculous evidence j insufficient, and with irony, logic, denunciation, and knowledge of ecclesiastical mysteries mischievously applied, he attacked the churchdoctrines, priests, and adherents. But the attack was soon being made on a wider front; and he included in his enemies most institutions and conventions. He examined these with all his intellectual penetration, and made the test of their reasonable existence their ability to satisfy the promptings of instinct. (When j modern philosophers look more closely at their origins, they may make it known that Butler's greatest achievement was to induce men to explore the operation and in- j fluence of instincts.) Butler was! most emotionally anti-social, most i perverse and undiscriminating in his destructivencss about .1870. No set of ideas or theories or exponents completely pleased him. The turn of the scientists came after tiiat-of the ecclesiastics. But though in the last two decades of the century he was no more pleased by social organisation and contemporary philosophy, and though in all he discerned the credulity and cowardice that he really hated most, a calmer wisdom brought, him something like hope and injected something like tolerance into writings that had been, albeit not without humour, both acrid and arid: "I have got to take the world as 1 find it, and must not make myself impossible." Incredulity that would calmly destroy comfortable convictions, insistent anxiety to find truth, and apparent obduracy in wrong-headed-ness, in matters of taste as well as in his own polemical sphere, deprived him of sympathetic associates and made him incomprehensible, even repulsive. It is fascinating to observe in his "Note-Books" Butler's mind and emotions rising to nobler heights as he gained experience and what he would not have called "God's own commonsense which is more than knowledge." Few men have been so rigidly empirical; and he discovered that impatience and fretl'ulness will not deflect the current of humanity, that to live is pleasant, and that man can be at peace with his fellows. Lesser men have been, and are, frightened by the conclusions lie accepted, and even he flinched at times; but the man's simple and sincere core cannot be hidden, nor can that fundamental goodness be ignored which perhaps preserved itself by discharging gibes and mockeries as numerous as the quills of a porcupine. In spile of I himself, he could not be a misanI thi'ope. ! I fall asleep I.run.--, his epitaph 1 in i the IVII and ccrlain h:>p" Vr.vA my • dumber shall not be broken, and that ! though 1 be nU-forKcUing, y<-t shall I not be all-forgotten, but continue that, life in Hie thoughts and deeds of those I loved, into which, while the power to strive was yet vouchsafed me, I fondly strove to enter. | Huthlcssness in Perversity I In his insistence on his disbelief ! in a future life, he protested too much. The subject of death, preoccupied him as much as it did Dr. Johnson. Similarly, to convince himself of what he thought should be inveterate disapproval, lie returned again and again, as in the case of Cambridge, to the object of his merely rational dislike. The perversity which continued to exacerbate a tender subject was part of his refusal to spare himself the utmost consequences of a conclusion; and it was also part of that desire for inversion and paradox, which is often enlightening as well as amusing and irreverent. He enjoyed writing, "Dulce et decorum est desipere in loco," "nihil bene quod non jucunde," "bating with a hatred i passing the hate of women," and considered adopting as his I "Quaerenda pecuniu primum est." ille delighted in probing traditional I proverbs and texts. If "we are his i people, and the sheep of his pasture," j we are not to be envied, as—

A sheep's raison d'etre is to be fleeced as often as possible and then to have its throat cut ... If a shepherd caressing a lamb is a fair statement of the case, a cat playing with a mouse should hardly be less so.

Butler's Humane Variety

Butler was a full man whoso knowledge was drawn from observation as much as from study. He wished to know how things worked. He was learned in the sciences, music, and painting. His most stimulating theories arose from his investiHU'ion of the processes of though!.; but as well as devoting himself to more academic subjects like politics, heredity, and the nature of language, he pleased himself by observing the 1- bits of plants and cats and chickens. His reports are always fresh. In the life the world did not see, he knew a good wine, understood cookery and the presentation of food, was over-awed by Cambridge dons, and (with a wry smile at the concession to convention) regularly attended his Old Boys' dinners. He was on good terms with his servants. To a charwoman he gave one of his pictures which she had failed to persuade a dealer to buy for fifteen shillings. In society he rarely escaped being irritated. The "ultra-aesthetic" Rossettis ' incensed him as effectually as Morlcv and Trevelyan. Darwin was "the Pecksniff of Science," and Garnett was:

A lost soul so far as reasoning was concerned. He has steeped his judgment in self-flattering unction for so many years that it has corroded, and there is nothing but self-flattering unction left.

The '-"Further Extracts," like their predecessors, illustrate his intimacy with the egregious Pauli and with Festing Jones. Pauli's occasional witty directness was congenial; and, though Jones sometimes received a rebuke as positive as those addressed to Boswell by Johnson, he said many a good thing. One was the assertion that Canon Ainger was capable of bringing out an expurgated edition of Wordsworth,

Surprises and Shocks When Testing Jones died in 1028, Mr A. T. Bartholomew became Butler's literary executor, and made the present selections, lie died last year. There are not so many gems as in the earlier selections; but very few items are trivial and fewer still unentertaining. Sometimes Butler may be detected arguing from single cases, and sometimes he hazards an ill-considered theory. But he was not writing a text-book. Part of the charm of this book is that the editor has refrained from classification, so that there are continual surprises and little shocks of amusement. There is a full account of Butler's method of compilation and a bibliography of the original note-books; the arrangement is chronological, each section being accompanied, so far as the matter exists, by Butler's comments on his revision. Butler would have considered superb the index compiled by Mr G. W. Webb. It is copious and drawn up with a careful inconsequence of key-words that will seduce the most solemn student of its information: "Halfpenny, offering, to mouse; Hall, Vincent; Hallelujah Dredger; Halls, servants', of art, literature, and science; Halsbury, Lord; Ham and Beef Shop; Hamlet, sugar; Hammers."

'Further Extracts from the NoteBooks of Samuel Butler. Chosen and Edited by A. T. Bartholomew. Jonathan Cape, 414 pp„ (7/6 net.)