Wrong, But Romantic

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 466, 28 May 1948, Page 8

Wrong, But Romantic

] HAD not been happy Among the Immortals (2ZB, Sunday -s till last week, when I sat down to listen to the programme on Samuel Butler. (I had hoped it would be our Samuel Butler, but it turned out to be the 17th Century author of Hudibras.) In previous programmes (Sir Walter Scott, Robert. Burns) I had been too familiar with the generally accepted lives of the gentlemen in question to appreciate the over-simplified and under-verified ac‘count of their doings which the shortness of the programme partially accounts for but cannot wholly excuse. About the author of Hudibras I had few preconceived ideas, so I was quite content to sit at the feet of the scriptwriter and learn that Sam as a young man in the service of Colonel Luke was enamoured of a comely serving wench called Dorcas, and that only because she’ rejected him did he hie him to London to seek his fortune, that he ultimately married a warm-hearted but impecunious young woman called Bessie whose London accent surprisingly resembled that of Tommy Handley’s Tattie, and that the Merrie Monarch actually addressed (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Sweet Nell as Sweet Nell. I subsequently sought further information in a stanGard work of reference, and found that the two accounts of Butler’s life were somewhat divergent. (According to the Cambridge History,, Charles II gave Butler £300 for Hudibras. According to the scriptwriter, merely a kind word.) I am now inclined to regard Among the Immortals with ,a jaundiced eye, and have decided that this is one of the cases where no bread is preferable to a half-baked loaf.