the author of Hudibras, was the son of a respectable Worcestershire farmer, and was born at Strensham in that county, February 13, 1612. He passed some time at Cambridge, but was never matriculated in that university. Returning to his native county, he lived some years as clerk to a justice of peace, and also applied himself to history, poetry, and painting. Being recommended to Elizabeth, Countess of Kent, he enjoyed in her house not only the use of all kinds of books, but the conversation of the illustrious Selden, who often employed Butler to write letters and translate for him. He lived also some time with Sir Samuel Luke, a gentleman of an ancient family in Bedfordshire, and a famous commander under Oliver Cromwell; and he is supposed at this time to have written, or at least to have planned, his celebrated Hudibras, and under that character to have ridiculed the knight. The poem itself furnishes this key in the first canto, where Hudibras says—

"Tis sung, there is a valiant Mameluke In foreign land yeelp'd ——— To whom we oft have been compar'd For person, parts, address, and beard."

After the Restoration, Butler was appointed secretary to the Earl of Carbury, lord-president of Wales, who appointed him steward of Ludlow Castle when the court was revived there. No one proved a more generous friend to him than the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, to whom it was owing that the court relished his Hudibras. He had promises of a good place from the Earl of Clarendon, but they were never accomplished; though the king was so much pleased with the poem as often to quote it pleasantly in conversation. It is indeed said that Charles ordered him the sum of L3000; but the sum being expressed in figures, somebody through whose hands the order passed reduced it, by cutting off a cypher, to L300, and though it passed the offices without fees, it proved not sufficient to pay what he then owed; so that Butler benefited but little by the king's bounty. During the latter years of his life he was reduced to almost absolute want, and his fate might have been that of the ill-starred Otway, had not the kind interference of Mr Longueville, a bencher of the Inner Temple, prevented such a catastrophe. This gentleman likewise erected a monument in memory of Butler, after his death, which took place in 1680. Granger observes, that Butler "stands without a rival in burlesque poetry. His Hudibras," he adds, "is in its kind almost as great an effort of genius as the Paradise Lost itself. It abounds with uncommon learning, new rhymes, and original thoughts. Its images are truly and naturally ridiculous. There are many strokes of temporary satire, and some characters and allusions which cannot be discovered at this distance of time."