ABSTRACT

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was an interesting character, though now somewhat out of fashion. Author, painter, musician and eccentric philosopher, he was the great-great-great-grandson of Samuel Butler (1612-80), author of the satirical poem Hudibras (1663), which appealed to Charles II because it lampooned Puritanism. Dr Johnson, in his ‘Life of Butler’ says of him:

If inexhaustible wit could give perpetual pleasure, no eye would ever leave half-read the work of Butler; for what poet has brought so many remote images together? It is scarcely possible to peruse a page without finding some association of images that was never found before.