LOOKING BACKWARD

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 239, 27 September 1930, Page 9

LOOKING BACKWARD

This Week’s Anniversary

Death of Samuel Butler

(Specially Written for the “Tribune”)

Perhaps the happiest epitaph on Samuel Butler was the one which described him as "a whole species of poets in one.” He died on September 25, 1680, and is best remembered as the author of the poem “Hudibras,” which has now dropped into the class of books which are known rather by their reputations than by their contents.

QAMCEL BUTLER was the son of a small farmer in Worcestershire, and was born on February 7, 1612. He was educated at the King’s School, Worcester, but very little is known oi his career until the Restoration when fie was appointed secretary to Richard Vaughan, Earl of Carbery and Lord President of the Principality of Wales, and became Steward of Ludlow Castle, an office which he held lor about a year. Early in 1663 “Hudibras” was published, and Samuel Pepys, in his famous diary, while he deprecates the nature of the poem, gives unwitting testimony to its immense popularity. He is said to have received, possibly as the result of his work, a gift of £3OO from Charles 11. The third part of “Hudibras.” which may be described as a work of political polemics, directed against the antiroyalist party, was produced before Butler’s death.

without a parallel, and their combination produced a work which is unique. The poem ia of conaiderable length, extending to more than 10,000 verses, yet Hazlitt put it that “half the lines are got by heart.” The situations, though few and simple in construction, are quite humoroua. The knight and aquire aetting forth on their journey; the routing of the bear-baiters; the disastrous renewal of the content, all are vividly depicted. Throughout, the reader'a attention is kept focussed on the sordid vices of the secretaries, their churlish ungraciousness, their creel of money and authority, their fast-ami-loose morality and their in ordinate pride. The doggerel metre, never heavy or coarse, but framed so as to be the very voice of mocking laughter, the astounding similes, the rhymes which aeem to chuckle and sneer of themselves the wonderful learning with which the abuse of learning is rebuked, and the subtlety with which subtle casuistry is set at naught, combine to place “Hudibras” in a niche of its own. AU kinds of “keys” have l>een manufactured to unlock the riddle of various allusions, but these are of very little use. The work is delightful in itself and needs no commentary.

There is no plot in Hudibras, although it is a kind of story. Anything like a regular plot would have been, in relation to the purpose for which the book was written, both a superfluity and a mistake. Anything like accurate character-drawing would have been equally unnecessaiy and dangerous. Butler’s problem was to produce characters just sufficiently unlike lay-figures to excite and maintain a moderate interest, and to set them in motion by means of a few incidents not wholly unconnected, meanwhile to subject the principles and manners, of which these characters were the incarnation, to ceaseless satire and raillery. 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 nnd the utmost patience of industry elaborate. In the union of these two qualities he is certainly

As a whole and looked at from the modern point of view, the poem may be said to be somewhat tedious, if only on account of the sustained blaze of wit which almost amounts to a wearisome glare. It has to be remembered, however, that it was originally issued in parts and therefore, presumably, should he read in parts. The work has often been imitated since, but it remains in spite of all such attempts, the best of its kind, one of the really original and pungent contributions to our literature.