it, yet it cannot be successfully translated, on account of every line’s having some allusion to English affairs, which no foreigner can be supposed to understand, or enter into.  The Oxford antiquary ascribes to our author two pamphlets, supposed falsely, he says, to be William Prynne’s; the one entitled Mola Asinaria, or the Unreasonable and Insupportable Burthen pressed upon the Shoulders of this Groaning Nation, London 1659, in one sheet 4to. the other, Two Letters:  One from John Audland, a Quaker, to William Prynne; the other, Prynne’s Answer, in three sheets fol. 1672.  The life writer mentions a small poem in one sheet in 4to. on Du Val, a notorious highwayman, said to be written by Butler.  These pieces, with a great many others, are published together, under the title of his Posthumous Works.  The life writer abovementioned has preserved a fragment of Mr. Butler’s, given by one whom he calls the ingenious Mr. Aubrey, who assured him he had it from the poet himself; it is indeed admirable, and the satire sufficiently pungent against the priests.

  No jesuit e’er took in hand
  To plant a church in barren land;
  Nor ever thought it worth the while
  A Swede or Russ to reconcile. 
  For where there is no store of wealth,
  Souls are not worth the charge of health. 
  Spain in America had two designs: 
  To sell their gospel for their mines: 
  For had the Mexicans been poor,
  No Spaniard twice had landed on their shore. 
  ’Twas gold the Catholic religion planted,
  Which, had they wanted gold, they still had wanted.

Mr. Dryden[3] and Mr. Addison[4] have joined in giving testimony against our author, as to the choice of his verse, which they condemn as boyish and being apt to degenerate into the doggrel; but while they censure his verse, they applaud his matter, and Dryden observes, that had he chose any other verse, he would even then have excelled; as we say of a court favourite, that whatever his office be, he still makes it uppermost, and most beneficial to him.

We cannot close the life of this great man, without a reflection on the degeneracy of those times, which suffered him to languish in obscurity; and though he had done more against the Puritan interest, by exposing it to ridicule, than thousands who were rioting at court with no pretensions to favour, yet he was never taken notice of, nor had any calamity redressed, which leaves a stain on those who then ruled, that never can be obliterated.  A minister of state seldom fails to reward a court tool, and a man of pleasure pays his instruments for their infamy, and what character must that ministration bear, who allow wit, loyalty and virtue to pass neglected, and, as Cowley pathetically expresses it,

  ’In that year when manna rained on all, why
      should the muses fleece be only dry.’

The following epigram is not unworthy [of] a place here.