Mr. Festing Jones has written a large book about his friend, and
written it very well.[A] It is candid, and it is sincere; the work
of a lover at once of Butler and of truth; it neither extenuates the
faults nor magnifies the virtues of its subject so far as the author
could perceive them; and it makes it possible to understand why Butler
was so underrated in his lifetime, though not at once why he was so
overrated after his death. That remains a problem which cannot be
resolved by saying that his friends trumpeted him into it, or that
posthumous readers enjoyed seeing him belabour his betters, which his
contemporaries had not. It is true that _The Way of All Flesh_ did not
appear until he was dead, and also true that _The Way of All Flesh_
is a witty and malicious novel, whose malice and wit Mr. Shaw had
prepared London to admire. Perhaps it is true, once more, that we are
more scornful of the old orthodoxy than our fathers were, and less
careful whose feelings are hurt. But I must confess that I should not
have expected any age to be so complacent about caricaturing one's
father and mother as our own was. However, for those who admire that
sort of thing--and there must be many--I doubt if they will find
it better done anywhere, with more gusto or more point. Dickens is
believed to have put his father into _David Copperfield_, not, I
think, his mother. But one can love Mr. Micawber, and Dickens would
not have so drawn him without love. We are led to Butler's favourite
distinction between _gnosis_ and _agape_. There's no doubt about the
_gnosis_ that went to the making of Theobald and Christina. But where
was _agape_?

[Footnote A: _Samuel Butler, Author of "Erewhon"_ (1835-1902): _a
Memoir_. By Henry Festing Jones. Two Vols. Macmillan, 1919.]

Butler was in many respects a fortunate man, and should have been
a happy one. He had a good education, good health, a sufficiency of
means. Even when his embarrassments were at their heaviest he could
always afford to do as he pleased. He could draw a little, play a
little, write more than a little; he loved travel, and covered all
Southern Europe in his time; he had good friends, a good mistress, a
faithful servant; he had a strong sense of humour, feared nobody, had
a hundred interests. Why, then, did he think himself a failure? Why
was the sense of it to cloud much of his writing, and much of Mr.
Jones's biography?

He had his drawbacks--who has not? He did not get on with