Re: Samuel Butler died (18-6-1902)

On 2024-06-19 03:07:52 +0000, Ross Clark said:

That means it's the _Erewhon_ Butler. The one born 1835, author of the satirical utopian (satopian? utirical?) novel _Erewhon_, some of which was based on his five years in New Zealand (1859-64), much of it managing a sheep station called "Mesopotamia" in the South Island high country.
"Butler went there, like many early British settlers of materially privileged origins, to maximise distance between himself and his family."
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Butler_(novelist)
 Frequently confused (by me) with the _Hudibras_ Butler (no relation),

Also with his grandfather of the same name, on whom Charles Darwin was not keen.

 (1613-1680), author of the "vigorous mock-heroic satirical poem" _Hudibras_, which remained popular for centuries after its publication. Long enough for me to be exposed to a little bit of it at an early age:

 In Mathematicks, he was greater

Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by Geometrick scale,
Could take the size of Pots of Ale;
Revolve by Signs and Tangents streight,
If Bread or Butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o'th'day
The Clock doth strike, by Algebra.
 It's a satire on the puritans of the Interregnum. It "delighted the royalists but was less an attack on the puritans than a criticism of antiquated thinking and contemporary morals, and a parody of old-fashioned literary form."
 Might be time to read the whole thing.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Butler_(poet)
 Back to Erewhon Butler: Crystal concentrates on some aphorisms about language. This is the shortest:
 "Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use."

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly in England until 1987.