"EREWHON" BUTLER.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 January 1920, Page 10

"EREWHON" BUTLER.

HOW HE WAS DUPED. Samuel Butler—called "Erewhon" Butler to distinguish him from liis grandfather the Bishop, and from the author of "Hudibras" —has had the posthumous "luck or cunning" to get a frank intimate friend for his biographer (says the London Times). This Life by Mr. Henry Festing Jones has been long in preparation, and is not only the most important book of the moment, but is praised as "one of the best biographies in the hniritage, a document of human nature, because it shows us a particular man in all his circumstances of time end place, aid a document which, as we read it, we know we can trust." The result of such treatment is that Butler is revealed as a much more amiable person than the reader of his books would conclude.

A single chapter of his life will suffice for demonstration. As a young man, hiving forsworn the Church for which he was destined, Butler went to Canterbury, New Zealand, where he made a small fortune in sheep-farming. In Now Zea'and he met Charles Paine Pauli, who appears to have been a monster larger than life-size. But Pauli was handsome, fa.seinating, a man of the world; and Butler, being none of these things, made a hero of him. He fnit sure that Pauli, who was both ill and poor, would die if he remained New Zealand. So he brought him Home, lending him £IOO for the, voyage and piomising to allow him £2OO a year for three in order than he might situdy 'for the Bar. For over thirty years ho continued to support him, ill as he could afford it. Then Pauli died, and. Butler learnt that he had earned an income of from £SOO to £OOO. had been receiving money from other friends, and had left £9OO0 —none of it to Butler 1,