tombs of his brother-bards in Westminster Abbey; but he was compelled to consign the bard to an obscure burial-place in Paul's, Covent Garden.* Many years after, when Alderman Barber raised an inscription to the memory of Butler in Westminster Abbey, others were desirous of placing one over the poet's humble gravestone. This probably excited some competition and the following fine one, attributed to Dennis, has perhaps never been published. If it be Dennis's, it must have been composed in one of his most lucid mo

ments.

Near this place lies interred

The body of Mr. Samuel Butler,
Author of Hudibras.

He was a whole species of Poets in one!
Admirable in a Manner

In which no one else has been tolerable;
A Manner which began and ended in Him;
In which he knew no Guide,

And has found no Followers.+

To this too brief article I add a proof that that fanaticism which is branded by our immortal Butler can survive the castigation. Folly is sometimes immortal, as nonsense is sometimes irrefutable. Ancient follies revive, and men repeat the same unintelligible jargon: just as contagion keeps up the plague in Turkey by lying hid in some obscure corner, till it breaks out afresh. Recently we have seen a notable instance where one of the school to which we are alluding declares of Shakspeare that "it would have been happy if he had never been born, for that thousands will look back with incessant anguish on the guilty delight which the plays of Shakspeare ministered to them." Such is the anathema of Shakspeare! We have another of Butler, in "An Historic Defence of Experimental Religion;" in which the author contends, that the best men have experienced the agency of the Holy Spirit in an immediate illumination from heaven. He furnishes his historic proofs by a list from Abel to Lady Huntingdon! The author of Hudibras is denounced, “One Samuel Butler, a celebrated buffoon in the abandoned reign of * He was buried outside the church in the angle at the north-west corner, where the wall originally stood which bounded the churchyard.

A monument was put up in the church in 1786 by a subscription among the parishioners. It exhibits a bust of Butler and a rhyming inscription in very bad taste.

See Quarterly Review, vol. viii. p. 111, where I found this quotation justly reprobated.

Charles the Second, wrote a mock-heroic poem, in which he undertook to burlesque the pious puritan. He ridicules all the gracious promises by comparing the divine illumination to an ignis fatuus, and dark lantern of the spirit."* Such are the writers whose ascetic spirit is still descending among us from the monkery of the deserts, adding poignancy to the very ridicule they would annihilate. The satire which we deemed obsolete, we find still applicable to contemporaries!

The FIRST part of Hudibras is the most perfect; that was the rich fruit of matured meditation, of wit, of learning, and of leisure. A mind of the most original powers had been perpetually acted on by some of the most extraordinary events and persons of political and religious history. Butler had lived amidst scenes which might have excited indignation and grief; but his strong contempt of the actors could only supply ludicrous images and caustic raillery. Yet once, when villany was at its zenith, his solemn tones were raised to reach it.t

The SECOND part was precipitated in the following year. An interval of fourteen years was allowed to elapse before the THIRD and last part was given to the world; but then everything had changed! the poet, the subject, and the patron! The old theme of the sectarists had lost its freshness, and the cavaliers, with their royal libertine, had become as obnoxious to public decency as the Tartuffes. Butler appears to have turned aside, and to have given an adverse direction to his satirical arrows. The slavery and dotage of Hudibras to the widow revealed the voluptuous epicurean, who slept on his throne, dissolved in the arms of his mistresses. "The enchanted bower," and "The amorous suit," of Hudibras reflected the new manners of this wretched court; and that Butler had become the satirist of the party whose cause he had formerly so honestly espoused, is confirmed by his Remains," where, among other nervous satires, is one, "On the licentious age of Charles the Second, contrasted with the puritanical one that preceded it." This then is the greater glory of Butler, that his high and indignant spirit equally satirised the hypocrites of Cromwell and the libertines of Charles.

66

* This work, published in 1795, is curious for the materials the writer's reading has collected.

The case of King Charles the First truly stated against John Cook, Master of Gray's Inn, in Butler's "Remains."

496

SHENSTONE'S SCHOOL-MISTRESS.

THE inimitable "School-Mistress" of Shenstone is one of the felicities of genius; but the purpose of this poem has been entirely misconceived. Johnson, acknowledging this charming effusion to be "the most pleasing of Shenstone's productions," observes, I know not what claim it has to stand among the moral works." The truth is, that it was intended for quite a different class by the author, and Dodsley, the editor of his works, must have strangely blundered in designating it "a moral poem." It may be classed with a species of poetry, till recently, rare in our language, and which we sometimes find among the Italians, in their rime piacevoli, or poesie burlesche, which do not always consist of low humour in a facetious style with jingling rhymes, to which form we attach our idea of a burlesque poem. There is a refined species of ludicrous poetry, which is comic yet tender, lusory yet elegant, and with such a blending of the serious and the facetious, that the result of such a poem may often, among its other pleasures, produce a sort of ambiguity; so that we do not always know whether the writer is laughing at his subject, or whether he is to be laughed at. Our admirable Whistlecraft met this fate!* "The School-Mistress" of Shenstone has been admired for its simplicity and tenderness, not for its exquisitely ludicrous turn!

This discovery I owe to the good fortune of possessing the edition of "The School-Mistress," which the author printed under his own directions, and to his own fancy. To this piece of LUDICROUS POETRY, as he calls it, "lest it should be mistaken," he added a LUDICROUS INDEX, purely to show fools that I am in jest." But "the fool," his subsequent editor, who, I regret to say, was Robert Dodsley, thought

* "Prospectus and specimen of an intended national work by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket, in Suffolk; harness and collar makers; intended to comprise the most interesting particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table." The real author of Mr. Whistlecraft's specimen was the Right Hon. J. Hookham Frere, who has the merit of having first introduced the Italian burlesque style into our literature. Lord Byron composed his "Beppo" confessedly after this example. "It is," he writes, "a humorous poem; in, and after, the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft;" who published this "specimen" only, which was little read.

The original edition was printed in 1757 without engravings. They occur only in that which is described in our text.

proper to suppress this amusing "ludicrous index," and the consequence is, as the poet foresaw, that his aim has been "mistaken."

The whole history of this poem, and this edition, may be traced in the printed correspondence of Shenstone. Our poet had pleased himself by ornamenting "A sixpenny pamphlet," with certain "seemly" designs of his, and for which he came to town to direct the engraver; he appears also to have intended accompanying it with "The deformed portrait of my old school-dame, Sarah Lloyd." The frontispiece to this first edition represents the "Thatched-house of his old schoolmistress, and before it is the "birch-tree," with "the sun setting and gilding the scene." He writes on this, "I have the first sheet to correct upon the table. I have laid aside the thoughts of fame a good deal in this unpromising scheme; and fix them upon the landskip which is engraving, the red letter which I propose, and the fruit-piece which you see, being the most seemly ornaments of the first sixpenny pamphlet that was ever so highly honoured. I shall incur the same reflection with Ogilby, of having nothing good but my decorations. I expect that in your neighbourhood and in Warwickshire there should be twenty of my poems sold. print it myself. I am pleased with Mynde's engravings."

I

On the publication Shenstone has opened his idea on its poetical characteristic. "I dare say it must be very incorrect; for I have added eight or ten stanzas within this fortnight. But inaccuracy is more excusable in ludicrous poetry than in any other. If it strikes any, it must be merely people of taste; for people of wit without taste, which comprehends the larger part of the critical tribe, will unavoidably despise it. I have been at some pains to recover myself from A. Philips' misfortune of mere childishness, Little charm of placid mien,' &c. I have added a ludicrous index purely to show (fools) that I am in jest; and my motto, O, quà sol habitabiles illustrat oras, maxima principum!' is calculated for the same purpose. You cannot conceive how large the number is of those that mistake burlesque for the very foolishness it exposes; which observation I made once at the Rehearsal, at Tom Thumb, at Chrononhotonthologos, all which are pieces of elegant humour. I have some mind to pursue this caution further, and advertise it 'The SchoolMistress,' &c. a very childish performance everybody knows (novorum more). But if a person seriously calls this, or

VOL. II.

K K

rather burlesque, a childish or low species of poetry, he says wrong. For the most regular and formal poetry may be called trifling, folly, and weakness, in comparison of what is written with a more manly spirit in ridicule of it."

This edition is now lying before me, with its splendid "red-letter," its "seemly designs," and, what is more precious, its "Index." Shenstone, who had greatly pleased himself with his graphical inventions, at length found that his engraver, Mynde, had sadly bungled with the poet's ideal. Vexed and disappointed, he writes, "I have been plagued to death about the ill-execution of my designs. Nothing is certain in London but expense, which I can ill bear." The truth is, that what is placed in the landskip over the thatchedhouse, and the birch-tree, is like a falling monster rather than a setting sun; but the fruit-piece at the end, the grapes, the plums, the melon, and the Catharine pears, Mr. Mynde has made sufficiently tempting. This edition contains only twenty-eight stanzas, which were afterwards enlarged to thirtyfive. Several stanzas have been omitted, and they have also passed through many corrections, and some improvements, which show that Shenstone had more judgment and felicity in severe correction than perhaps is suspected. Some of these

I will point out.*

In the second stanza, the first edition has,

In every mart that stands on Britain's isle,
In every village less reveal'd to fame,

Dwells there in cottage known about a mile,
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name.

Improved thus:

In every village mark'd with little spire,
Embower'd in trees, and hardly known to fame,
There dwells in lowly shed and mean attire,
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name.

The eighth stanza, in the first edition, runs,

The gown, which o'er her shoulders thrown she had,
Was russet stuff (who knows not russet stuff?)
Great comfort to her mind that she was clad
In texture of her own, all strong and tough;

Ne did she e'er complain, ne deem it rough, &c.

* I have usually found the School-Mistress printed without numbering the stanzas; to enter into the present view it will be necessary for the reader to do this himself with a pencil-mark.