the peculiarities of the human mind, to an ill-natured delineation of individual personalities.

Born of respectable parents, for his father was a large farmer, holding a farm of three hundred a-year under a royalist landlord, Sir William Russell, and also possessing a freehold of ten pounds a-year, Samuel Butler, according to Dr. Nash, was baptized in the parish church of Stremsham in Worcestershire, on the 8th of February, 1612, of which parish his father had been churchwarden in the previous year, and the entry in the parish register is in his father's hand-writing. He was consequently without doubt early initiated into the principles to which, as far as we know, he steadily adhered throughout his life, for his father appears to have been an active and intelligent man, busy in the affairs of the parish, and keeping its register; possessing the confidence of his landlord, who was so distinguished for his adherence to the royal cause that he was the only person exempted from the benefit of the agreement made with the parliament when Worcester was surrendered to the parliamentary forces in 1646. Samuel Butler was the fifth child, three daughters and one son were older than himself, and two sons were born subsequently; all were natives of the same parish, and the house of his father still exists, near the banks of the Avon, though now shorn of its respectability, and known only as Butler's cot. Descendants of some of the brothers and sisters are said to have been alive in the neighbourhood at a recent period, though none of the poet himself. With such a parent it is not likely that his domestic education was neglected; but at an early period he was sent to the college-school at Worcester, then conducted by Dr. Henry Bright, a teacher who did much to raise the character of his school, not only by his own learning, but by the attention he paid to his pupils, and who had thence made himself popular among the gentry of the county, who considered it a distinction to have their sons under his care. Butler, however, must have been soon deprived of this gentleman's tuition, as he died at the age of 64, in the year 1626, and is buried in Worcester cathedral, of which he was a Pre

bendary, and where there is a mural monument to his memory.

How long Butler remained at the school is not known, nor where nor how he obtained the remainder of his education. He is said to have been at Cambridge, but never matriculated, and Anthony à Wood asserts that he was there six or seven years. Dr. Nash doubts the truth of the statement, and suspects he was at Oxford from the use of a term in his Hudibras, peculiar to that university— As if the unreasonable fools

Had been a coursing in the schools.

"Coursing," he says, "is a term used in the university of Oxford, for some exercises preparatory to a master's degree. They were disputations in Lent, which were regulated by Dr. John Fell, for before his time the endeavours of one party to run down and compete another in disputations did commonly end in blows, and domestic quarrels, the refuge of the vanquished party. Wood's Athen. Oxon. vol. ii. p. 603. Hence, and from another passage or two, it has been thought that Mr. Butler had received an academical education.' It may be thought that these are very slight foundations on which to erect such a conclusion; but from the enormous amount of learning he possesses, Butler must certainly have been a diligent scholar somewhere, and possessed facilities for acquiring knowledge, that it is difficult to suppose could be enjoyed at that period except at an university.

Dr. Nash also notices a statement that he studied the law, and was a member of Gray's Inn, during which time he belonged to a club of loyalists with Cleveland and other wits. That he was not a member of Gray's Inn, we have ascertained by searching the lists in the library of that Inn; but there can be no doubt of his being well read in the law, not only from the vast number and correct use of law terms in his works, but from the fact that Dr. Nash says, "If further evidence were wanting I can produce a MS. purchased of some of our poet's relations at the IIay in Brecknockshire. It appears to be a collection of legal cases and principles, regularly related from

Lord Coke's Commentary on Littleton's Tenures: the language is Norman, or low French, and, in general, an abridgment of the above-mentioned celebrated work : for the authorities in the margin of the MS. correspond exactly with those given on the same positions in the first institute; and the subject matter contained in each particular section of Butler's legal tract is to be found in the same numbered section of Coke upon Littleton: the first book of the MS. likewise ends with the 84th section, which same number of sections also terminate the first institute; and the second book of the MS. is entitled by Butler, Le second livre de primer part de l'institutes de ley d'Engleterre.' The titles of the respective chapters of the MS. also precisely agree with the titles of each chapter of Coke upon Littleton: it may therefore reasonably be presumed to have been compiled by Butler solely from Coke upon Littleton, with no other object than to impress strongly on his mind the sense of that author, and written in Norman to familiarise himself with the barbarous language in which the learning of the common law of England was at that period almost uniformly expressed. The MS. is imperfect; no title existing, some leaves being torn, and is continued only to the 193rd section, which is about the middle of Coke's second book of the first institute." Wherever acquired, it was probably about this period that Butler made his earliest acquaintance with the law, as the first established fact is his return to his native county, and becoming clerk to Thomas Jefferies, Esq., an active magistrate, taking a prominent part in the business of the county, who resided at Earl's Croome, in whose house he resided, and with whose family he was domesticated, and on terms of great confidence and friendship.

Such a situation must have necessarily required a considerable acquaintance with the law, and have extended the knowledge he already possessed. But all his attention was not devoted to that subject; he had probably much leisure, and he cultivated the arts of music and painting, though without any considerable success, at least in the latter, for Dr. Nash says he had seen some of his portraits,

VOL. VIII.

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