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guage, disuse of customs, &c.) and point out some "of the passages in the Greek and Roman authors "to which the poet alludes, in order to render "Hudibras more intelligible to persons of the "commentator's level, men of middling capacity, " and limited information. To such, if his remarks "shall be found useful and acceptable, he will be content, though they should appear trifling in "the estimation of the more learned."

Dr. Nash added plates* from designs by Hogarth

* Dr. Nash thus mentions them: "The engravings in this "edition are chiefly taken from Hogarth's designs, an artist "whose genius, in some respects, was congenial to that of our "poet, though here he cannot plead the merit of originality, so "much as in some other of his works, having borrowed a great ❝ deal from the small prints in the duodecimo edition of 1710.* "Some plates are added from original designs, and some from

drawings by La Guerre, now in my possession, and one print representing Oliver Cromwell's guard-room, from an excel"lent picture by Dobson, very obligingly communicated by my "worthy friend, Robert Bromley, Esq. of Abberley-lodge, in "Worcestershire; the picture being seven feet long, and four 'high, it is difficult to give the likenesses upon so reduced a "scale, but the artists have done themselves credit by preserving "the characters of each figure, and the features of each face

more exactly than could be expected: the picture belonged to “Mr. Walsh the poet, and has always been called Oliver Crom. "well's guard-room: the figures are certainly portraits; but I "leave it to the critics in that line to find out the originals.

* " Hogarth was born in 1698, and the edition of Hudibras, with his cuts, published 1726."

and La Guerre to his edition, but it may be thought without encreasing its intrinsic value. The Pencil has never successfully illustrated Hudibras; perhaps the wit, the humour, and the satire of Butler have naturally, from their general application, not sufficient of a local habitation and a name to be embodied by the painter's art. The present edition only offers the portrait of the poet, his tenement, autograph, and monument in St. Paul's, Covent Garden.

To some few of the notes explanatory of phrases and words, the printer has ventured to make trifling additions, which he has placed within brackets that they may not be supposed to be Dr. Nash's, though had the excellent dictionary of the truly venerable Archdeacon Todd, and the Glossary of the late Archdeacon Nares, from which they are principally taken, been in existence in 1793 there can be little doubt but Dr. Nash would have availed himself of them.

W. N.

"When I first undertook this work, it was designed that the "whole should be comprised in two volumes: the first comprehending the poem, the second the notes, but the thickness "of the paper, and size of the type, obliged the binder to divide "each volume into two tomes; this has undesignedly encreased "the number of tomes, and the price of the work." [In this edition the notes are placed under the text.]

AUTOGRAPH OF SAMUEL BUTLER.

To thinke how Spencer dyed how fowly mournd
How Butler's faith & Serbies were Returnd.

ON

SAMUEL BUTLER, Esq.

AUTHOR OF HUDIBRAS.

THE life of a retired scholar can furnish but little matter to the biographer: such was the character of Mr. Samuel Butler, author of Hudibras. His father, whose name likewise was Samuel, had an estate of his own of about ten pounds yearly, which still goes by the name of Butler's tenement, a Vignette of which may be seen in the title-page of the first volume: he held, likewise, an estate of three hundred pounds a year under sir William Russell, lord of the manor of Strensham, in Worcestershire. He was not an ignorant farmer, but wrote a very clerk-like hand, kept the register, and managed all the business of the parish under the direction of his landlord, near whose house he lived, and from whom, very probably, he and his family received instruction and assistance. From

'This information came from Mr. Gresley, rector of Strensham, from the year 1706 to the year 1773, when he died, aged 100: so that he was born seven years before the poet died.