Essays on Life, Art and Science | Page 8

this I should be sorry to do. I have only as yet written about a third, or
from that--counting works written but not published--to a half, of the
books which I have set myself to write. It would not so much matter if
old age was not staring me in the face. Dr. Parr said it was "a beastly
shame for an old man not to have laid down a good cellar of port in his
youth"; I, like the greater number, I suppose, of those who write books
at all, write in order that I may have something to read in my old age
when I can write no longer. I know what I shall like better than any one
can tell me, and write accordingly; if my career is nipped in the bud, as
seems only too likely, I really do not know where else I can turn for
present agreeable occupation, nor yet how to make suitable provision
for my later years. Other writers can, of course, make excellent
provision for their own old ages, but they cannot do so for mine, any

more than I should succeed if I were to try to cater for theirs. It is one
of those cases in which no man can make agreement for his brother.
I have no heart for continuing this article, and if I had, I have nothing of
interest to say. No one's literary career can have been smoother or more
unchequered than mine. I have published all my books at my own
expense, and paid for them in due course. What can be conceivably
more unromantic? For some years I had a little literary grievance
against the authorities of the British Museum because they would insist
on saying in their catalogue that I had published three sermons on
Infidelity in the year 1820. I thought I had not, and got them out to see.
They were rather funny, but they were not mine. Now, however, this
grievance has been removed. I had another little quarrel with them
because they would describe me as "of St. John's College, Cambridge,"
an establishment for which I have the most profound veneration, but
with which I have not had the honour to be connected for some quarter
of a century. At last they said they would change this description if I
would only tell them what I was, for, though they had done their best to
find out, they had themselves failed. I replied with modest pride that I
was a Bachelor of Arts. I keep all my other letters inside my name, not
outside. They mused and said it was unfortunate that I was not a Master
of Arts. Could I not get myself made a Master? I said I understood that
a Mastership was an article the University could not do under about
five pounds, and that I was not disposed to go sixpence higher than
three ten. They again said it was a pity, for it would be very
inconvenient to them if I did not keep to something between a bishop
and a poet. I might be anything I liked in reason, provided I showed
proper respect for the alphabet; but they had got me between "Samuel
Butler, bishop," and "Samuel Butler, poet." It would be very
troublesome to shift me, and bachelor came before bishop. This was
reasonable, so I replied that, under those circumstances, if they pleased,
I thought I would like to be a philosophical writer. They embraced the
solution, and, no matter what I write now, I must remain a
philosophical writer as long as I live, for the alphabet will hardly be
altered in my time, and I must be something between "Bis" and "Poe."
If I could get a volume of my excellent namesake's "Hudibras" out of
the list of my works, I should be robbed of my last shred of literary
grievance, so I say nothing about this, but keep it secret, lest some

worse thing should happen to me. Besides, I have a great respect for my
namesake, and always say that if "Erewhon" had been a racehorse it
would have been got by "Hudibras" out of "Analogy." Some one said
this to me many years ago, and I felt so much flattered that I have been
repeating the remark as my own ever since.
But how small are these grievances as compared with those endured
without a murmur by hundreds of writers far more deserving than
myself. When I see the scores and hundreds of workers in the
reading-room who have done so much more than I have, but whose
work is absolutely fruitless to themselves, and when I think of the
prompt recognition obtained by my own work, I ask myself what I have
done to be