THE NOTE-BOOKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1657, 25 January 1913, Page 9

THE NOTE-BOOKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER.

/"When I .look at the articles on Handel, on Dr. Arnold, or, indeed, on; almost

anyone that I know anything about, I feel that such a work as the

of Nationar Biography' adds more terror to death than death of itself could inspire. 1 That is one reason why I let myself :go unreservedly in .these; notes; If the colours in which I, paint myself fail to please, at any rate I shall have had the pleasure of laying them oif myself." "The world■'will, in the' end, fellow /b'nly-those who-have despijed as well as ; ierved it.". - ,■,

iWe hope the editor.'of .the'"Dictionary of National Biography" will forgive us for ' putting tho . first- of these ,pages at the head of this article, but both this and the'passage ';'which follows are', essential to the understanding of'this singular and ... interesting.; book.. It is obvious that Samuel Butler was thinking ; of . posthumous publication when he confided his and''reflections, or his complaints 'and his grievances, to the notebooks .from which this volume is com-' -posed, and it is clear that he conceived himself to be winning posthumous merit by despising tho wotld. Inevitably in the circumstances tho colours in which

.he paints himself do occasionally fail to please. A'man who ; of set purpose des-.j pises. the world he lives in, who is con-' vinccd that the men of distinction among

his contemporaries : are by_ that sign . stamped as second-rate, who is always repeating to himself that lie doesn't want 'ftnd > wouldn't'■■'welcome.'' recognition' for. v himself, with .'the inevitable result of per-- ' Buading • the reader that he did' want it, and felt aggrieved by the lack of it, dees not strike the note of graciousness and 6we'ot reasonableness. , With all our admiration for Samuel Butler's books, wo,, cannot bring ourselves to think that they . justify this implied claim of their author tp rank with .the "Dii majores." The Teiil situation is better described when he calls himself "the 'enfant terrible' of '•'literature and science," and boasts Ilia ability'to "heavo bricks into the middle of the literary':and'..scientific bigwigs," even if he could not "induce them to give him a shilling.". This volume is strewn with' bricks arid half-bricks, somewhat indiscriminatingly thrown about. Ho has no admirations or enthusiasms, and yon will search this book almost in vain for ono sentence of whole-hearted praise of any of Iris contemporaries or their work. ''Talking it over, wo agreed that Blake was no good becauso ho learnt Italian at sixtv in order to study Dante, ' and we knew Danteivas no good because he was so fond of Virgil, and Virgil was no good because Tennyson ran him, and ns for Tennyson-well, Tennyson ' goes without saying." This would bo a passable jape, if we did not read on and find ■ It to be serious. Practically everybody ■' is "no good." Walter Pater's stylo is "like tho faoo of some old woman who ' has been to Madame Racliel and had hor- . self enamelled. The bloom is no- ' thing but powder and paint and tho odour is- cherry-blossom." "Matthew Arnold' 1 ! odour is as the faint sickliness of hawthorn" "If Fronde is the greatest, master of style, what aw tho rest nf rra?" "Men liko Nowman and R. I>. Stevenson ■ seam to have taken pains to acquire what they callecl a stylo a.s a preliminary mensur*—as something that thev' lml to form before their writings could be of anv -value. I should like to put it on record that I r,ever took the smallest pains with mv stvle." All tha

timo Butler seems to have regarded -himself as waging a perpetual warfare with an "unscrupulous and self-seeking clique" of literary. and scientific people. In a somewhat' complaoent account of his life's, work, ho prided himself especially on "tho exposure and discomfiture of Charles Darwin aiid Wallaco and their followers," The rosult of all this is tp make the reader somewhat less anxious than he might have been to repair the neglect from which Butler undoubtedly suffered in his lifetime, and rather more inclined than ho would otherwise- have been to resist the claim which Butler puts in for posthumous fame. For great as may be the merits of "Erewhon," or of tho scientific and; soholarly books which Butler loft behind him, tiley do not justify these airs.

... Yet, of course, Butler was, in his way, a highly original'and interesting mail, and tho reader will find an abundance of arresting thoughts among these notes. He had a very unusual all-round culture, for he pursued painting and music, scholarship, philosophy,, and scientific speculation. with equal zest, if not, with equal success. - Among, the obiter dicta Which Mr. Festing Jones has brought together into this volume tho reader will find tho germ of many of the fashionable inversions of more popular authors. Butler does not, as a rule, take the. same trouble to polish his paradoxes as some recent' writers in this kind, but he lovee to question the accepted moralities. Thus: # All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of everyorganism to live beyond its income.

Counsels'of Imperfection,

1 It, is all very' well for mischievous writers to maintain that we cannot serve God and Mammon. Granted that it is not easy, but nothing that is worth doing over .is easy. Easy ;or difficult, possible or impossible, not only-has the thing got to bo done, but it is exactly - in doing it that the whole duty of man consists. And when the righteous man turneth away from'his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is /neither quite lawful nor ; quite right,' he will generally be found to have gained 'in amiability what he has lost'in .holiness.

How often, do ire not see children ruined through, the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents? Truly ho'visiteth the virtues of the fathers upon 'the children unto the third and fourth feneration. The most that can be said for. virtue is that there is n, considerable balance in its favour,. and that it is a good deal, better to be for it than against it; but it lets people in very badly sometimes. .. . 'If you wish-to understand virtue you. must be; subvicious; for the really virtuous man, who. is fully under grace, will be virtuous unconsciously and will know nothing about it'. Unless a": man is out-and-out .virtuous.he is subvioious. ' ■. Morality ■ turns on whether the pleasure' precedes or follows the pain. .Thus, it is immoral to.get drunk because the headache comes after the. drinking, but .if the headache came first, and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk. Money. -.. . ■ is the last enemy • that shall- -never bo subdued. • While .there is flesh there is money—or the want of money; but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in 'reasonable order. ; To put one's trust in God is only 'iv longer way of saying that one will chance it. . '■ ■■■- " - - , ' ' Offers of. Marriage.:, Women sometimes say that they have, had no offers,.: and only, wish-.that sonie'i one had ever, proposed to-them.-'.This, is.! not the.'right way.to put it.' What they should say is that, though, like all»women, they have been proposing to men all'their lives, yet they grieve to remember that thoy have been invariably refused. In the same inverted vein is "the Divorco Novelette,"'in which an anti-roman-tic young couple "get'divorced and live happily. apart ever afterwards." We do not TknoW'.the date? of '.these'pieces, .but itis curious to find so many current. paradoxus scattered, apparently at different dates throughout tliefie i( , ; But tiajjpref; : sion if we let'it bo-supposed that these whimsicalities were the whole or evon the chief part of Butler's thought.. There are profound' passages which"; coine; to grip with, first principles, and show Id-, deeply reflective mind Tjelow a top-dressing of cynicism/ In thevsectioh on,"Dtath. we see mysticism and materialism .wrestling tojethqr -to get a theory of "continued •identity" out of the gradual transition from the octogenarian to the corpse;. It is rather cold comfort, and the wind-up seems little more than a logical puzzle-r "if there.be death at', all, it is someono else who "dies, and not. we, Localise whilo we are alive wo are dead, and,as soon as we are dead we are no longer ourselves." But there is a real emotion in many of these short pieces: "Genius, which so despises the world, is the only thing of which the .world is per-, .moiiently, enamoured,!.and .the..m'oro' itflouts the world, the more'the. world ; wor-! ships it, when'it has once .Well killgdMt in' tho flesh. Who ciin understand this &ter-; nal crossing : in love nnd; contradiction-in | terms which warps , the' woof of actions and things from the atom to the universe?. The more a man despises time, trouble,' money, persons, place, and everything on which the world insists as most essential to salvation, the more pious will this same world hold him ■to have been. What a fund of universal unconscious scepticism must underlie" the world's opinions! For we are all alike in our worship of . genius that has passed through the fire. Nor can this universal instinctive consent he explained otherwise than as the welling up of a spring whose sources lie deep intho conviction that great as this world as it masks a greater wherein its wisdom' is folly and which we know as blind men know where the sun is shining, ..certainly* but not distinctly." ..... x Equally admirable are many of the jottings about the theory'of art and music, and if some of them have,lost their savour through having become the commonplaces of modern criticism, that is not to Butler's discredit. On the whole, we get the impression of a man who would have ■been mellowed'and sweetened by a little more prosperity and recognition in his own lifetime. He "was not great enough to despise the world without suffering in his own character, and a lifelong habit of questioning established conclusions and conventions prevented him from developing his own, ideas in an even .and selfcontained form. Combativeness is an. aid to truth, but not that perpetual pugnacity which keeps a man continuously engaged in flooring other people to the interruption of -lis own studies.—* estniiiistcr Gazette." ' •.