Complete works of samuel.., p.343
Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 343
CORRESPONDENCE, DECEMBER I6TH, 1810 — FEBRUARY
4TH, 1811.
FROM T. S. HUGHES, ESQ. (AFTERWARDS REV.).
“HAIL, THOU THAT SHALT BE DOCTOR HEREAFTER!
“December 16tht 1810.
“MY DEAR SIR,· — The thing is done, and done in grand style. We beat them off their legs and carried the Grace with a large majority. I think the Senate House was nearly as full as at an election. Hornbuckle and myself were out this morning from eight o’clock till one, flattering some, abusing others, and counteracting the Trinitarians.
“I went to King’s College and made my friend Lonsdale speechify before the combination room upon the meanness of Tavel and his crew, and the effect of his eloquence was so great that the fellows of King’s came in a body to vote for you and for the honour of Literature. Some of them had never trod the floor of the Senate House before. Those who pleaded their consciences for voting against you, we forced to stay away and keep their own rooms, whilst we mustered quite an army from the Stye, many who were going from College early in the morning staying for so laudable a purpose. Monk behaved very well. He neither voted himself, nor allowed any of his particular friends to vote against you. Every M.A. from Sidney and every M.A. from Emmanuel came in your favour. The people of Caius, I believe, were against you, except the Master. We should have had a stronger opposition from Trinity, but we manoeuvred most skilfully, and had the Grace passed on their grand commemoration, and as the dinner was on table smoking hot, and the voting here was cold, they wisely sacrificed their spleen to their pudding.”
* * * * *
FROM THE REV. P. ELMSLEY.
“ST. MARY CRAY, KENT, February 3rd, 1811.
“DEAR SIR, — I am about to send to Jeffrey a few additions to my article on the Prometheus, to be inserted in the next number by way of appendix. I should be very happy if you would allow me to mention, as from authority, that you think seriously of publishing at some future time a supplementary volume, containing a corrected text of Æschylus, together with your fioVfpai φροντίϋΐς, etc. I take fcr granted that you are neither quite indifferent to the sale of your edition, nor ignorant that the adherence to the text of Stanley has retarded the sale considerably. If you will let the public know that you mean to give them a better text in a thin volume by itself, I have no doubt that you will find the demand increase rapidly. Now it appears to me that the best way of letting the public know anything is to mention it in the Edinburgh Review, of which I am informed that thirteen thousand are now printed. You see I make no stranger of you, as the saying is. I shall wait for your answer as long as I conveniently can, before I send off my despatches to the Rhadamanthus of Literature.
“I have been informed that Blomfield is dissatisfied with my treatment of him. If the information is correct, I am sorry that I have not pleased him. I likewise understand that some persons think that I have not treated Porson with sufficient respect. You must have observed the strong disposition which his school feels to convert him into an idol. The natural consequence of this idolatry is to produce in the minds of the non-initiated a disposition to bring him nearer to the pitch of common men than they are justified in doing. I am not quite sure that I have not some leaning to this kind of critical Protestantism.
“I think that I have heard that you are lately become D.D. When you do me the favour of answering this letter, will you have the goodness to mention the state of your academical honours, that in future I may address you by your proper title?”
TO THE REV. P. ELMSLEY.
[About February 4th or 5th, 1811.]
(Original destroyed by me. — ED.)
After saying that he would adopt Elmsley’s suggestion about a supplementary volume of his AEschylus, Dr. Butler continued:—” When Blomfield was first introduced to me I felt particularly anxious to show him marked attention, being then much pleased with his unassuming manners. Afterwards, when I heard that he was (very unjustifiably, as it seemed to me) engaged in publishing the Cambridge Odes without the consent of their authors, I wrote him an extremely kind letter, begging him if possible to publish none of mine (which I told him I considered by far my worst compositions), and most earnestly requesting him to suppress one in particular. I concluded by exhorting him to turn his brilliant talents to better account. The Porsonian spirit of his reply — in which, however, he did consent to the suppression of the one Ode in question, though he printed another against my will — much disappointed me, for I had formed better hopes of him; but his disingenuousness in not then telling me he was about the Prometheus did more. I found afterwards that he was become so overbearing to all but the narrow circle of young — men who had agreed to look upon him as the successor to Porson, and so elated with his review of my Hischylus, that I considered my letter as an act of kindness to him, as well as of justice.
“The mischief of the Porsonian school can only be appreciated by a residence at Trinity. Its spirit is well described in a letter which my friend Dr. Parr wrote me not long after Porson’s death. He said Porson had left his disciples scraps of Greek and cartloads of insolence. I do not deny that Porson was a very illustrious scholar, but what I read in Bentley, in Valcknaer, in Ruhnken, in Tyrrwhitt, and what I see daily in my friend Dr. Parr, would be enough to keep me from blind idolatry, were any antidote to this necessary beyond one’s own spirit of independence.”
On June 30th, 1811, Dr. Butler preached at St. Mary’s, Cambridge, before H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester and the University of Cambridge, on the occasion of the Duke’s installation as Chancellor of the University. The sermon was printed at Shrewsbury in the same year under the title of Christian Liberty, it was directed against the gloomy views of religion taken by the Methodists, and borrowed from them by the Evangelical party then dominant in the Church. The notes are longer than the sermon, and are mainly in support of Catholic emancipation, a cause warmly espoused by Dr. Butler at a time when English churchmen generally were opposed to it.
The sermon gave great offence in many quarters, as being too broad in its theology, and too generally liberal in tone, but there is not a sentence in it which any one would now take exception to. Professor Mayor says of it At present it is difficult to conceive that such a sermon in such a place was needed, and this very difficulty makes it fall within the scope indicated on my title-page. I shall therefore quote from it at greater length than I should otherwise do.
The text is from Gal v. I: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
After describing the freedom of Christ’s ordinary converse from any acts of ascetic mortification, he continues: —
“May I be permitted to remark, that an adumbration of this conduct is to be found in the life of him whom Plato describes as the most just man he ever knew, and whom we are accustomed to consider as one of the wisest philosophers of the heathen world? Increasing his usefulness without diminishing his dignity, Socrates associated with the lost sheep of the Gentile flock, even with courtesans, libertines, and sophists, and by expedients the most gentle he endeavoured to rectify their errors, and correct their irregularities; did not our Master, for the same benevolent purpose, mingle in familiar converse with publicans and sinners? Socrates, on the most serious topics, drew his images from surrounding scenery and the objects of common life; have not the most judicious and learned expositors observed the same beauties in the discourses of Christ? Socrates condemned the mischievous subtleties of those disclaimers who displayed their ingenuity and fondness for paradox in separating the useful from the honourable; did not our Lord in the same manner combat the doctrinal refinements of those teachers who not only tore asunder what God had joined together in the religion of Moses, but set the ritual above the weightier matters of the law, and made of little or no effect some express prohibitions in the Decalogue, especially those which are pointed against perjury and adultery? Socrates, as Cicero justly remarks, brought down philosophy from the skies to the bosoms and business of men in social life; did not our Lord, in a yet nobler strain of simplicity and sublimity, inculcate the first and second great commandments? and when revealing or enforcing the will of His Father, did He not uniformly appeal to those clear and salutary apprehensions of right and wrong which the hand of God has deeply engraven upon the tablet of the human heart?”
It was the note on the foregoing passage that gave the greatest offence. It runs; —
“In the following passage from the Dialogues of Erasmus, besides some masterly touches on the character of Socrates which must affect every mind endowed with taste and feeling, the sagacious and enlightened reader will find ample materials for reflection: —
* * * *
“‘NEPHAL. Profecto admirandus animus in eo qui Christum et sacras literas non noverat. Proinde, cum ejusmodi quædam lego de talibus viris, vix mihi tempero quin dicam, Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.
“‘CH. At ipse mihi sæpenumero non tempero, quin bene ominer sanctæ animæ Maronis ac Flacci.
“‘NE. At ego quot vidi Christianos quam frigide morientes! Quidam fidunt in his rebus quibus non est fidendum; quidam ob conscientiam scelerum, et scrupulos quidam obstrepunt morituro, pene desperantes exhalant animam.
“‘CH. Nec miror eos sic mori, qui per omnem vitam tantum philosophati sunt in cærimoniis....’ — Erasmi Conviv. Rclig., p. 95 (London, 1717).”
After supposing a heathen to have been informed for the first time of the Christian Redemption, and to have been struck with its general conformity with the instincts of his own conscience, Dr. Butler continues: —
“But what would he say then, if after thus far soothing his benevolence, and thus far kindling his piety, we were also to tell him that his rational enjoyment of temporal blessings will ruin his eternal happiness? that they are scattered indeed around him with a bounteous hand, but that he must touch not, taste not, handle not; that he may see the birds exulting in their liberty, the beasts bounding over the plains, the fish sporting in the waters, the whole face of nature smiling in grateful testimony of its Creator’s love, but that he alone must grieve for his unworthiness in voluntary and mysterious gloom; that the senses, with which his Creator has framed him, are but the instruments of his ruin in the hand of the tempter, and that his desires, which are the natural and only spurs to action, are to be subdued into supine indifference and listless insensibility. Tell him, further, that when he has done and willed to do all that man is capable of doing; when, by a life of mortification and melancholy and entire abstraction from all worldly interest, he has wrought himself into habitual and invincible apathy; when he has accustomed himself to look with sullen and sour disgust upon the pleasures, and with carelessness, or, it may be, with scorn, upon the employments, and, as I should call them, the duties of social life, his labour, even in the Lord, may yet have been in vain; that as to him, Christ may in vain have shed His blood upon the cross, and that the God whose mercy is over all His works may have secretly and irrevocably doomed him, even before his birth, to everlasting perdition, from which no contemplations, however serious, upon the attributes and works of the Deity, no belief, however sincere, in His revealed word, no thanksgivings for mercies already received, no prayers for protection and succour, no remorse for sins past, no resolutions or efforts for amendment in time to come, can rescue, I had almost said the hopeless, helpless, guiltless victim; — and that nothing but certain tumultuous, irresistible, inexplicable intimations can afford him any safe and well-grounded assurance of pardon or reward.
“Who is there, gifted with the faculty of reason and the feelings of humanity, that would not shrink from such doctrine when first addressed to his understanding, and from such discipline imposed upon all his instincts, appetites, and affections? Vet for the existence, and even the prevalence of such doctrine, and for the vindication and praise of such discipline, I need appeal only to the observation of those who now hear me. No man who views the daily increase of Puritanism (which in its root and branches, in its tenets and effects, resembles the Pharisaical system of the Jews), no man who compares its late and present progress with events which the history of our own nation has recorded in dark and blood-stained characters, no man who has remarked the subtlety, restlessness, and impetuosity of spiritual pride, when united by opportunities favourable for action with the inordinate and insatiable lust of temporal power, can look without alarm and dismay to consequences which not only exercise the sagacity of the philosopher in his closet, but, in truth, force themselves upon the most common observer of human nature, as unfolded in the events of daily life.
“If the great and characteristic blessing of the Reformation was the removal of needless and burthensome ceremonies, of an usurped dominion over the minds and consciences of men, of authority bearing down right, and of dogmatism putting reason to silence and setting at defiance the clearest and most salutary suggestions of common-sense, let us beware that we are not again entangled in a yoke of bondage not less galling than that from which we have been set free. Let us look well to ourselves and our posterity, and let us be careful to preserve that liberty which our ancestors obtained for us by their wisdom, and sealed to us by their blood.
“True it is that the modern fanatics profess a very sincere theological hatred for the Church of Rome, from which they differ on various points of discipline and doctrine; but they have a discipline and doctrine of their own, in many respects as burthensome, as offensive, as dogmatical, and as anti-scriptural as that from which the Reformation has delivered us.
“I do not say that they practise ascetic mortifications in a hermitage or cloister, but they bring the gloom and austerity of a cloister into domestic life. I do not say that they believe in the miracles of St. Ignatius or St. Dominic; but they believe in daily miracles performed among themselves, in preternatural effusions of the Spirit, in hourly and especial providences, in sudden celestial influences and impulses, in Divine visitations of favour or of vengeance. Now when pretensions to the peculiar and exclusive approbation of God are thus set up by any sect, and when the common accidents of life are interpreted into deliverances for those who belong to that sect and judgements against those who differ from it, we surely have a decisive proof before us that the effects of superstition on mankind are in all ages nearly the same, and that, whether the subject of it be a Catholic or a Calvinist, a Pharisee or a Puritan, its tendency is equally fatal to the best interests, the highest duties, the noblest pursuits, the most generous feelings, and the most enlarged conceptions of the human mind.”
I asked the late Professor Kennedy, shortly before his death, to what school of theological thought I ought to say that Dr. Butler had belonged. The Professor paused a while, and then began to laugh with a good deal of heartiness, saying the while, “He did not like an Evangelical”; and that was all I could get.
From Professor Mayor’s remarks on the sermon from which I have made the foregoing extracts, I will take part of a letter from Elmsley to Blomfield, which I see Mr. Mayor quotes from the Rev. Alfred Blomfield’s Memoir of his father.
“May 18th, 1818.
“There certainly must be some connection between Greek and Popery. Besides Messrs. Blomfield and Elmsley, there are Doctors Parr, Butler, Maltby, Raine — all men conversant in the subjunctive mood, and all supporters of the Catholic claims, as they are called. I have just received a letter from Dr. Butler, in which you are mentioned in a way that is creditable to his good nature after the review of his Seven against Thebes, and Agamemnon. It is plain to me that he wishes a reconciliation with you.
“I think it would be creditable to both of you to shake hands, if your arms are long enough to reach from Shrewsbury to Aylesbury. The doctor has lately passed through a good deal of Άυσφημία, in his theological character, on account of his Commencement Sermon. A neighbour of mine, who has something of an Evangelical turn, takes in the Christian Observer, in which Dr. Butler ‘points a moral’ almost every month.”
Seven years, therefore, after its delivery, the sermon still seems to have been remembered.
CORRESPONDENCE, AUGUST 17TH, 1811 — DECEMBER 5TH, 1811.
FROM THE REV. P. ELMSLEY.
“LLANGEDWIN, OSWESTRY, August 17th, 1811.
* * * * *
“Do you happen to know the name of the author of the review of Blomfield’s Prometheus in the Quarterly Review? He is evidently a Cantabrigian, a friend to Blomfield, a fierce enemy to you, rather hostile to me than otherwise, and, above all, initiated in the higher mysteries of Porsoniasm.
“Next week I shall publish a little Œdipus Tyrannus, a copy of which I wish to send you, if you will tell me how to do so. To send it by coach will cost you more than the value of the performance.”
* * * * *
FROM THE SAME.
“November 14th, 1811.
“As to your Mandarins and green dragons, vain pomp and glory of the world, I hate you. To me an old book into which I am certain never to look is of more value than cartloads of useful or useless china.
