Searcher of souls, you who in heaven abide,To whom the secrets of all hearts are open,Though I do lie to all the world beside,From me to these no falsehood shall be spoken.Cleanse me not, Lord, I say, from secret sinBut from those faults which he who runs can see,’Tis these that torture me, O Lord, beginWith these and let the hidden vices be;If you must cleanse these too, at any rateDeal with the seen sins first, ’tis only reason,They being so gross, to let the others waitThe leisure of some more convenient season;And cleanse not all even then, leave me a few,I would not be—not quite—so pure as you.
(A)
Who paints a picture, writes a play or bookWhich others read while he’s asleep in bedO’ the other side of the world—when they o’erlookHis page the sleeper might as well be dead;What knows he of his distant unfelt life?What knows he of the thoughts his thoughts are raising,The life his life is giving, or the strifeConcerning him—some cavilling, some praising?Yet which is most alive, he who’s asleepOr his quick spirit in some other place,Or score of other places, that doth keepAttention fixed and sleep from others chase?Which is the “he”—the “he” that sleeps, or “he”That his own “he” can neither feel nor see?
(B)
What is’t to live, if not to pull the stringsOf thought that pull those grosser strings wherebyWe pull our limbs to pull material thingsInto such shape as in our thoughts doth lie?Who pulls the strings that pull an agent’s hand,The action’s counted his, so, we being gone,The deeds that others do by our command,Albeit we know them not, are still our own.He lives who does and he who does still lives,Whether he wots of his own deeds or no.Who knows the beating of his heart, that drivesBlood to each part, or how his limbs did grow?If life be naught but knowing, then each breathWe draw unheeded must be reckon’d death.
(C)
“Men’s work we have,” quoth one, “but we want them—Them, palpable to touch and clear to view.”Is it so nothing, then, to have the gemBut we must weep to have the setting too?Body is a chest wherein the tools abideWith which the craftsman works as best he canAnd, as the chest the tools within doth hide,So doth the body crib and hide the man.Nay, though great Shakespeare stood in flesh before us,Should heaven on importunity release him,Is it so certain that he might not bore us,So sure but we ourselves might fail to please him?Who prays to have the moon full soon would pray,Once it were his, to have it taken away.
(A)
Μελλοντα ταυτα
Not on sad Stygian shore, nor in clear sheenOf far Elysian plain, shall we meet thoseAmong the dead whose pupils we have been,Nor those great shades whom we have held as foes;No meadow of asphodel our feet shall tread,Nor shall we look each other in the faceTo love or hate each other being dead,Hoping some praise, or fearing some disgrace.We shall not argue saying “’Twas thus” or “Thus,”Our argument’s whole drift we shall forget;Who’s right, who’s wrong, ’twill be all one to us;We shall not even know that we have met.Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again,Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.
(B)
HANDEL
There doth great Handel live, imperious still,Invisible and impalpable as air,But forcing flesh and blood to work his willEffectually as though his flesh were there;He who gave eyes to ears and showed in soundAll thoughts and things in earth or heaven above.From fire and hailstones running along the groundTo Galatea grieving for her love;He who could show to all unseeing eyesGlad shepherds watching o’er their flocks by night,Or Iphis angel-wafted to the skies,Or Jordan standing as an heap upright—He’ll meet both Jones and me and clap or hiss usVicariously for having writNarcissus.
(C)
HANDEL
Father of my poor music—if such smallOffspring as mine, so born out of due time,So scorn’d, can be called fatherful at all,Or dare to thy high sonship’s rank to climb—Best lov’d of all the dead whom I love best,Though I love many another dearly too,You in my heart take rank above the rest;King of those kings that most control me, you,You were about my path, about my bedIn boyhood always and, where’er I be,Whate’er I think or do, you, in my head,Ground-bass to all my thoughts, are still with me;Methinks the very worms will find some strainOf yours still lingering in my wasted brain.
[16]“The doctrine preached by Weismann was that to start with the body and inquire how its characters got into the germ was to view the sequence from the wrong end; the proper starting point was the germ, and the real question was not ‘How do the characters of the organism get into the germ-cellwhich itproduces?’ but ‘How are the characters of an organism represented in the germwhich produces it?’ Or, as Samuel Butler has it, the proper statement of the relation between successive generations is not to say that a hen produces another hen through the medium of an egg, but to say that a hen is merely an egg’s way of producing another egg.”Breeding and the Mendelian Discovery, by A. D. Darbishire. Cassell & Co., 1911, p. 187–8.
“It has, I believe, been often remarked that a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.”Life and Habit, Trübner & Co., 1878, chapter viii, p. 134.
And compare the idea underlying “The World of the Unborn” inErewhon.
[26]The two chapters entitled “The Rights of Animals” and “The Rights of Vegetables” appeared first in the new and revised edition ofErewhon1901 and form part of the additions referred to in the preface to that book.
[30]On the AlpsIt is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,Which some did die to look on: and all this—It wounds thine honour that I speak it now—Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheekSo much as lank’d not.—Ant. & Cleop., I. iv. 66–71.
[31]Walks in the Regions of Science and Faith, by Harvey Goodwin, D.D., Lord Bishop of Carlisle. John Murray, 1883.
[32a]This quotation occurs on the title page ofCharles Dickens and Rochesterby Robert Langton. Chapman & Hall, 1880. Reprinted with additions from the Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, Vol. VI, 1880. But the italics are Butler’s.
[32b]This is Butler’s note as he left it. He made it just about the time he hit upon the theory that theOdysseywas written by a woman. If it had caught his eye after that theory had become established in his mind, he would have edited it so as to avoid speaking of Homer as the author of the poem.
[41]Life and Habitis dated 1878, but it actually appeared on Butler’s birthday, 4th December, 1877.
[92]The five notes here amalgamated together into “Croesus and his Kitchen-Maid” were to have been part of an article for theUniversal Review, but, before Butler wrote it, the review died. I suppose, but I do not now remember, that the article would have been about Mind and Matter or Organs and Tools, and, possibly, all the concluding notes of this group, beginning with “Our Cells,” would have been introduced as illustrations.
[106]Cf. the note “Reproduction,” p. 16 ante.
[107]Evolution Old & New, p. 77.
[128]Twelve Voluntaries and Fugues for the Organ or Harpsichord with Rules for Tuning. By the celebrated Mr. Handel. Butler had a copy of this book and gave it to the British Museum (Press Mark, e. 1089). We showed the rules to Rockstro, who said they were very interesting and probably authentic; they would tune the instrument in one of the mean tone temperaments.
[131]Mr. Kemp lived in Barnard’s Inn on my staircase. He was in the box-office at Drury Lane Theatre. See a further note about him on p. 133 post.
[136]If I remember right, the original Jubilee sixpence had to be altered because it was so like a half-sovereign that, on being gilded, it passed as one.
[147]Raffaelle’s picture “The Virgin and child attended by S. John the Baptist and S. Nicholas of Bari” (commonly known as the “Madonna degli Ansidei”), No. 1171, Room VI in the National Gallery, London, was purchased in 1885. Butler made this note in the same year; he revised the note in 1897 but, owing to changes in the gallery and in the attributions, I have found it necessary to modernise his descriptions of the other pictures with gold thread work so as to make them agree with the descriptions now (1912) on the pictures themselves.
[151]Cf. the passage inAlps and Sanctuaries, chapter XIII, beginning “The question whether it is better to abide quiet and take advantages of opportunities that come or to go further afield in search of them is one of the oldest which living beings have had to deal with. . . . The schism still lasts and has resulted in two great sects—animals and plants.”
[153]Prince was my cat when I lived in Barnard’s Inn. He used to stray into Mr. Kemp’s rooms on my landing (see p. 131 ante). Mrs. Kemp’s sister brought her child to see them, and the child, playing with Prince one day, made a discovery and exclaimed:
“Oh! it’s got pins in its toes.”
Butler put this intoThe Way of all Flesh.
[162]Philippians i. 15–18:—
Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will:The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds:But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel.What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.
Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will:
The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds:
But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel.
What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.
[176]Narcissus, “Should Riches mate with Love.”
[235]Butler gave this as a subject to Mr. E. P. Larken who made it into a short story entitled “The Priest’s Bargain,” which appeared in thePall Mall Magazine, May, 1897.
[203]All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.
Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?
Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time? (Eccles. vii. 15, 16, 17).
[204]Cf. “Imaginary Worlds,” p. 233 post.
[225]“So, again, it is said that when Andromeda and Perseus had travelled but a little way from the rock where Andromeda had so long been chained, she began upbraiding him with the loss of her dragon who, on the whole, she said, had been very good to her. The only things we really hate are unfamiliar things.”Life & Habit, Chapter viii, p. 138/9.
[251]This note is one of those that appeared in theNew Quarterly Review. The Hon. Mrs. Richard Grosvenor did not see it there, but a few years later I lent her my copy. She wrote to me 31 December, 1911.
“The notes are delightful. By the way I can add to one. When Mr. Butler came to tell me he was going to stay with Dr. Creighton, he told me that Alfred had decided he might go on finding the little flake of tobacco in the letter. Then he asked me if I would lend him a prayer-book as he thought the bishop’s man ought to find one in his portmanteau when he unpacked, the visit being from a Saturday to Monday. I fetched one and he said:“‘Is it cut?’”
“The notes are delightful. By the way I can add to one. When Mr. Butler came to tell me he was going to stay with Dr. Creighton, he told me that Alfred had decided he might go on finding the little flake of tobacco in the letter. Then he asked me if I would lend him a prayer-book as he thought the bishop’s man ought to find one in his portmanteau when he unpacked, the visit being from a Saturday to Monday. I fetched one and he said:
“‘Is it cut?’”
[261]“Ramblings in Cheapside” inEssays on Life,Art and Science.
[263]Edmund Gurney, author ofThe Power of Sound, and Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research.
[279]Cf. Wamba’s explanation of the Saxon swine being converted into Norman pork on their death.Ivanhoe, Chap. I.
[282]See “A Medieval Girl School” inEssays on Life,Art & Science.
[333]“Above all things, let no unwary reader do me the injustice of believing inme. In that I write at all I am among the damned. If he must believe in anything, let him believe in the music of Handel, the painting of Giovanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians” (Life and Habit, close of chapter II).
[343]“No one can hate drunkenness more than I do, but I am confident the human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given to imagination—imagination being little else than another name for illusion” (Alps and Sanctuaries, chapter III).
[364]There are letters from these people inThe Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler.
[369]Butler made this note in 1899 before the publication ofShakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered, which was published in the same year.The Odyssey Rendered info English Proseappeared in 1900 andErewhon Revisited, the last book published in his lifetime, in 1901. He made no analysis of the sales of these three books, nor of the sales ofA First Year in Canterbury Settlementpublished in 1863, nor of his pamphletThe Evidence for the Resurrection, published in 1865.The Way of all FleshandEssays on Life,Art,and Sciencewere not published till after his death. I do not know what he means byA Book of Essays, unless it may be that he incurred an outlay of £3 11s. 9d. in connection with a projected republication of his articles in theUniversal Reviewor of some of his Italian articles about theOdyssey.
[376]Butler had two separate grounds of complaint against Charles Darwin, one scientific, the other personal. With regard to the personal quarrel some facts came to light after Butler’s death and the subject is dealt with in a pamphlet entitled Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler: A Step towards Reconciliation, by Henry Festing Jones (A. C. Fifield, 1911).