BUTLER, CHARLES, a native of Wycomb, in the county of Bucks, and a master of arts in Magdalen College, Oxford, who published a book entitled "The Principles of Music in singing and setting; with the twofold use thereof, ecclesiastical and civil." 4to, London, 1636. The author of this book was a person of singular learning and ingenuity, which he manifested in sundry other works enumerated by Wood in the Athenæ Oxonienses. Among these is an English Grammar, published in 1633, in which he proposes a scheme of regular orthography, and makes use of characters, some borrowed from the Saxon, and others of his own invention, which it is impossible to represent by means of ordinary types; and of this imagined improvement he appears to have been so fond, that all his tracts are printed in the same manner as his grammar; the consequence of which has been an almost general disgust at every thing he has written. His treatise on the Principles of Music is, however, a very learned, curious, and entertaining book; and, by the help of the advertisement from the printer to the reader, prefixed to it, explaining the powers of the several characters made use of by him, may be read to great advantage, and may also be considered as a judicious supplement to Morley's introduction.