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Cornugaya Directory 01
Page 01
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.
In so far as this is a process of growth, accompanied by the
assumption of a definite form, it might be compared with the growth of
a crystal of salt in brine: but, on closer examination, it turns out
to be something very different. For the crystal of salt grows by
taking to itself the salt contained in the brine, which is added to
its exterior; whereas the plant grows by addition to its interior: and
there is not a trace of the characteristic compounds of the plant's
body, albumin, gluten, starch, or cellulose, or fat, in the soil, or
in the water, or in the air.
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