Select Search
World Factbook
Roget's Int'l Thesaurus
Bartlett's Quotations
Respectfully Quoted
Fowler's King's English
Strunk's Style
Mencken's Language
Cambridge History
The King James Bible
Oxford Shakespeare
Gray's Anatomy
Farmer's Cookbook
Post's Etiquette
Brewer's Phrase & Fable
Bulfinch's Mythology
Frazer's Golden Bough
All Verse
Anthologies
Dickinson, E.
Eliot, T.S.
Frost, R.
Hopkins, G.M.
Keats, J.
Lawrence, D.H.
Masters, E.L.
Sandburg, C.
Sassoon, S.
Whitman, W.
Wordsworth, W.
Yeats, W.B.
All Nonfiction
Harvard Classics
American Essays
Einstein's Relativity
Grant, U.S.
Roosevelt, T.
Wells's History
Presidential Inaugurals
All Fiction
Shelf of Fiction
Ghost Stories
Short Stories
Shaw, G.B.
Stein, G.
Stevenson, R.L.
Wells, H.G.
Reference
>
Cambridge History
>
The Age of Dryden
>
Samuel Butler
> Penury of his Later Days
Butler in the Employ of Sir Samuel Luke and the Earl of Carbery
His Learning in Letters and Law
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
(190721).
Volume VIII. The Age of Dryden.
II.
Samuel Butler
.
§ 5. Penury of his Later Days.
It is recorded that Butler contracted a marriage with a wealthy widow, but that they lost their property by unfortunate speculations. Another story attributes this loss to the rascality of lawyers and accounts thus for the exceeding bitterness with which the poet assails them. But this is an obscure point; even the ladys name is not known for certain. If the question could be satisfactorily determined, light would possibly be thrown on the relations of Hudibras and the widow in the third part of the poem. It seems, however, tolerably certain that Butler passed the rest of his days in needy circumstances and died in abject penury. This is attested by an epigram full of bitterness on the subject of a monument erected to his memory in Westminster abbey in 1720:
While Butler, needy Wretch, was yet alive
No Generous Patron would a Dinner give.
See him when starvd to death and turnd to Dust
Presented with a monumental Bust.
The Poets Fate is here an Emblem shown;
He asked for Bread and he receivd a Stone.
8
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Butler in the Employ of Sir Samuel Luke and the Earl of Carbery
His Learning in Letters and Law
Shakespeare
·
Bible
·
Strunk
·
Anatomy
·
Nonfiction
·
Quotations
·
Reference
·
Fiction
·
Poetry
©
19932020
Bartleby.com
· [
Top 150
] ·
Subjects
·
Titles
·
Authors
·
World Lit
·
Free Essays