BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF SAMUEL BUTLER. Poeta nascitur non fit, is a sentence of as great truth as antiquity; it being most certain, that all the acquired learning imaginable is insufficient to complete a poet, without a natural genius and propensity to so noble and sublime an art. And we may, without offence, observe, that many very learned men, who have been ambitious to be thought poets, have only rendered themselves obnoxious to that satyrical inspiration our Author wittily invokes: Which made them, though it were in spight Of nature and their stars, to write. On the one side, some who have had very little human learning, but were endued with a large share of natural wit and parts, have become the most celebrated* poets of the age they lived in. But, as these last are, “Rarae aves in terris," so, when the muses have not disdained the assistances of other arts and sciences, we are then blessed with those lasting monuments of wit and learning, which may justly claim a kind of eternity upon earth. And our author, had his modesty permitted him, might, with Horace, have said, • Shake speare, Davenant, &c. Exegi monumentum aere perennius: Or, with Ovid, Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis, The Author of this celebrated Poem was of this last composition: for although he had not the happiness of an academical education, as some affirm, it may be perceived, throughout his whole Poem, that he had read much, and was very well accomplished in the most useful parts of human learning. Rapin (in his reflections) speaking of the necessary qualities belonging to a poet, tells us, he must have a genius extraordinary; great natural gifts; a wit just, fruitful, piercing, solid, and universal; an understanding clear and distinct; an imagination neat and pleasant; an elevation of soul, that depends not only on art or study, but is purely the gift of heaven, which must be sustained by a lively sense and vivacity; judgment to consider wisely of things, and vivacity for the beautiful expression of them, &c. Now, how justly this character is due to our Author, we leave to the impartial reader, and those of nicer judgment, who had the happiness to be more intimately acquainted with him. SAMUEL BUTLER, the Author of this excellent Poem, was born in the parish of Strensham, in the county of Worcester, and baptized there the 13. of Feb. 1612. His father, who was of the same name, was an honest country farmer, who had some small estate of his own, but rented a much greater of the Lord of the Manor where he lived. However, perceiving in his son an early inclination to learning, he made a shift to have him educated in the free-school at Worcester, under Mr. Henry Bright; where, having passed the usual time, and being become an excellent school-scholar, he went for some little time to Cambridge, but was never matriculated into that University, his father's abilities not being sufficient to be at the charge of an academical education; so that our Author returned soon into his native county, and became clerk to one Mr. Jefferys, of Earl's-Croom, an eminent Justice of the Peace for that County, with whom he lived some years, in an easy and no contemptible service. Here by the indulgence of a kind master, he had sufficient leisure to apply himself to whatever learning his inclinations led him, which were chiefly history and poetry; to which, for his diversion, he joined music and painting; and I have seen some pictures, said to be of his drawing, which remained in that family; which I mention not for the excellency of them, but to satisfy the reader of his early inclinations to that noble art; for which also he was afterwards entirely beloved by Mr. Samuel Cooper, one of the most eminent painters of his time. He was after this recommended to that great encourager of learning, Elizabeth Countess of Kent, where he had not only the opportunity to consult all manner of learned books, but to converse also with that living library of learning, the great Mr. Selden, who often employed the poet as his amanuensis and transcriber. Thus ran on the years of Butler's youth and early manhood, and so far he cannot be considered as unfortunate, if we are to presume that he found his chief enjoyment, as scholars generally do, in opportunities of intellectual improvement. He is next found in the family of Sir Samuel Luke, who was of an ancient family in Bedfordshire, and an eminent commander under Oliver Cromwell, marked probably perhaps to an unusual degree by the well-known peculiari ties of his party. It is probable that he served him in the capacity of tutor. The situation could not be a very agreeable one to a man whose disposition was so much towards wit and humour, even though those qualities had not made their owner a royalist, which in such an age they could scarcely fail to do. exposed to association with persons, whose character, from antagonism to his own, he could not but loathe, it is not sur Daily |