Samuel Butler was the son of a farmer, over in the pretty Worcestershire region of England; but there was in him little sense of charming ruralities; they never put their treasures into his verse. For sometime he was in the household of one of Cromwell’s generals,[79] who lived in a stately country-hall a little way out of Bedford; again, he filled some dependency at that stately Ludlow Castle on the borders of Wales--forever associated with the music of Milton’s “Comus.” It was after the Restoration that he budded out in his anti-Puritan lampoon; but though he pandered to the ruling prejudices of the time, he was not successful in his search for place and emoluments; he quarrelled with those who laughed loudest at his buffoonery and died neglected. His name is to be remembered as that of one of the noticeable men of this epoch, who wrote a poem bristling all through with coarse wit, and whose memory is kept alive more by the stinging couplets which have passed from his pen into common speech than by any high literary merit or true poetic savor. His chief work in verse must be regarded as a happy, witty extravaganza, which caused so riotous a mirth as to be mistaken for valid fame. The poem is a curio of letters--a specimen of literary bric-à-brac--an old, ingeniously enamelled snuff-box, with dirty pictures within the lid. _Samuel Pepys._ I had occasion just now to speak of the _Pepys Diary_, and promised later and further talk about its author, whom we now put in focus, and shall pour what light we can upon him.[80] He was a man of fair personal appearance and great self-approval, the son of a well-to-do London tailor, and fairly educated; but the most piquant memorial of his life at Cambridge University is the “admonition”--which is of record--of his having been on one occasion “scandalously over-served with drink.” In his after life in London he escaped the admonitions; but not wholly the “over-service” in ways of eating and drinking. Pepys was a not far-off kinsman of Lord Sandwich (whom he strongly resembled), and it was through that dignitary’s influence that he ultimately came into a very good position in connection with the Admiralty, where he was most intrepid in his examination of tar and cordage, and brought such close scrutiny to his duties as to make him an admirable official in the Naval Department under Charles II. For this service, however, he would never have been heard of, any more than another straightforward, plodding clerk; nor would he have been heard of for his book about naval matters, which you will hardly find in any library in the country. But he did write a _Diary_, which you will find everywhere.