BUTLER (or BOTELER), SAMUEL (1612-168o), English poet, author of Hudibras, son of Samuel Butler, a small farmer, was baptized at Strensham, Worcestershire, on Feb. 8, 1612. He was educated at the King's school, Worcester, under Henry Bright, the record of whose zeal as a teacher is preserved by Fuller (Worthies, Worcestershire). After leaving school he served a Mr. Jeffereys of Earl's Croome, Worcestershire, in the capacity of justice's clerk. Later on he was recommended to Elizabeth, countess of Kent. At her home at Wrest, Bedfordshire, he had access to a good library, and there, too, he met Selden, who some times employed him as his secretary. But his third sojourn, with Sir Samuel Luke at Cople Hoo, Bedfordshire, was not only apparently the longest, but also much the most important in its effects on his career and works. We are nowhere informed in what capacity Butler served Sir Samuel Luke, or how he 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 satire; he is supposed to have taken some hints for his caricature from Sir Henry Rose well of Ford abbey, Devonshire. But we know nothing positive of him until the Restoration, when he was appointed secretary to Richard Vaughan, 2nd earl of Carbery, lord president of the prin cipality of Wales, who made him steward of Ludlow castle, an office which he held from Jan. 1661 to Jan. 1662. About this time he married a rich lady variously described as a Miss Herbert and as a widow named Morgan. His wife's fortune was afterwards, however, lost.
Early in 1663 Hudibras: The First Part: written in the Time of the Late Wars, was published, but this, the first genuine edition, had been preceded in 1662 by an unauthorized one. On Dec. 26 Pepys bought it, and though neither then nor afterwards could he see the wit of "so silly an abuse of the Presbyter knight going to the wars," he repeatedly testifies to its extraordinary popularity. A spurious second part appeared within the year. This determined the poet to bring out the second part (licensed on Nov. 7, 1663, printed 1664), 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 of Butler. On the publication of Hudibras he was sent for by Lord Chancellor Hyde (Clarendon), says Aubrey, and received many promises, none of which was fulfilled. He is said to have received a gift of £300 from Charles II., and to have been secretary to George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, when the latter was chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Butler's satire on Buckingham in his Characters (Remains, 1759) shows such an intimate knowledge that it is probable the second story is true. Two years after the publication of the third part of Hudibras he died, on Sept. 25, 168o, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. It appears that- he died in extreme poverty. He was, we are told, "of a leonine-coloured hair, sanguine, choleric, middle-sized, strong." Hudibras itself, though probably quoted as often as ever, has dropped into the class of books which are more quoted than read. 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 has read a 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 accept ance 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 con sequences; 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 inordi nate pride. The extraordinary felicity of the means taken to place all these things in the most ridiculous light has never been ques tioned. The doggerel metre, never heavy or coarse, but framed 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 learn ing is rebuked, the subtlety with which subtle casuistry is set at nought can never be missed.
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 was 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 Menippee have been noticed by Vol taire, and though English writers have sometimes ignored or ques tioned them, are not to be doubted. The art, perhaps the most terrible of all the weapons of satire, of 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 cease less 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 was pub lished. A more real defect, but one which Butler shares with all his contemporaries, is the tendency to delineate humours instead of characters, and to draw from outside rather than within.
Attempts have been made to trace the manner and versification of Hudibras to earlier writers, especially in Cleveland's satires and in the Musarum Deliciae of Sir John Mennis (Pepys's Minnes) and Dr. James Smith (1605-67). But if it had few ancestors it had an abundant offspring. A list of 27 direct imitations of Hudi bras in the course of a century may be found in the Aldine edition (1893) . Complete translations of considerable excellence have been made into French (London, 1757 and 1819) by John Town ley (1697-1782), a member of the Irish Brigade; and into German by D. W. Soltau (Riga, 1787) ; specimens of both may be found in R. Bell's edition. Voltaire tried his hand at a compressed ver sion, but not with happy results.
works published during his life include, besides Hudibras: To the Memory of the most renowned Du Vall: A Pindaric Ode (1671) ; and a prose pamphlet against the Puritans, Two Letters, one from J. Audland . . . to W. Prynne, the other Prynne's Answer (1672). In 1715-17 three vols., entitled Posthumous Works in Prose and Verse . . . with a key to Hudibras by Sir Roger l'Estrange . . . were published with great success. Most of the con tents, however are generally rejected as spurious. The poet's papers, now in the British Museum (Addit. mss. 32, 625-626), remained in the hands of his friend William Longueville, and after his death were left untouched until 1759, when Robert Thyer, keeper of the public library at Manchester, edited two volumes of verse and prose under the title of Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr. Samuel Butler. This collection contained The Elephant in the Moon, a satire on the Royal Society; a series of sketches in prose, Characters; and some satirical poems and prose pamphlets. Another edition, Poetical Re mains, was issued by Thyer in 1827. In 1726 Hogarth executed some illustrations to Hudibras, which are among his earliest but not, perhaps, happiest productions. In 1744 Dr. Zachary Grey published an edition of Hudibras, with copious and learned annotations; and an additional volume of Critical and Historical and Explanatory Notes in 1752. Grey's has formed the basis of all subsequent editions.
Other pieces published separately and ascribed to Butler are: A Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Rusticus, or London's Confession but not repentance . . . (1643) , represented in vol. iv. of Somers's tracts; Mola Asinarum, on the unreasonable and insupport able burthen now pressed . . . upon this groaning nation . . . (1659), included in his posthumous works, which is supposed to have been written by John Prynne, though Wood ascribes it to Butler ; The Acts and monuments of our late parliament ... (1659, printed 171o), of which a continuation appeared in 1659 ; a "character" of Charles I. (1671) ; A New Ballad of King Edward and Jane Shore . . . (1671) ; A Congratulatory Poem . . . to Sir Joseph Sheldon . . . The Geneva Ballad, or the occasional conformist display'd (5674) The Secret History of the Calves head club, compleat . . . (4th ed. 1707) ; The Morning's Salutation, or a friendly Conference between a puritan preacher and a family of his flock . . . (reprinted, 1714). Two tracts of his appear in Somers's Tracts, vol. vii.; he contributed to Ovid's Epistles translated by several hands (168o) ; and works by him are included in Miscellaneous works, written by . . . George Duke of Buckingham . . . also State Poems . . . (by various hands) (1704) ; and in The Grove ... (1721) , a poetic miscellany, is a "Satyr against Marriage," not found in his works.
The life of Butler was written by an anonymous author, said by William Oldys to be Sir James Astrey, and prefixed to the edition of 1704. The writer professes to supplement and correct the notice given by Anthony a Wood in Athenae Oxonienses. Dr. Threadneedle Russel Nash, a Worcestershire antiquarian, supplied some additional facts in an edition of 1793. See the Aldine edition of the Poetical Works of Samuel Butler (1893), edited by Reginald Brimley Johnson, with complete bibliographical information. There is a good reprint of Hudibras (ed. by A. R. Waller, 19o5) in the Cambridge Classics.