HIS POVERTY AND DEATH.--Butler lived in great poverty, being neglected by a monarch and a court for whose amusement he had done so much. They laughed at the jester, and let him starve. Indeed, he seems to have had few friends; and this is accounted for quaintly by Aubrey, who says: "Satirical wits disoblige whom they converse with, and consequently make to themselves many enemies, and few friends; and this was his manner and case." The best known of his works, after Hudibras, is the _Elephant in the Moon_, a satire on the Royal Society. It is significant of the popularity of Hudibras, that numerous imitations of it have been written from his day to ours. Butler died on the 25th of September, 1680. Sixty years after, the hand of private friendship erected a monument to him in Westminster Abbey. The friend was John Barber, Lord Mayor of London, whose object is thus stated: "That he who was destitute of all things when alive, might not want a monument when he was dead." Upon the occasion of erecting this, Samuel Wesley wrote: While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give; See him, when starved to death and turned to dust, Presented with a monumental bust. The poet's fate is here in emblem shown, He asked for bread, and he received a stone. To his own age he was the prince of jesters; to English literature he has given its best illustration of the burlesque in rhetoric. To the reader of the present day he presents rare historical pictures of his day, of far greater value than his wit or his burlesque. IZAAK WALTON. If men are to be measured by their permanent popularity, Walton deserves an enthusiastic mention in literary annals, not for the greatness of his achievements, but for his having touched a chord in the human heart which still vibrates without hint of cessation wherever English is spoken. Izaak Walton was born at Stafford, on the 9th of August, 1593. In his earlier life he was a linen-draper, but he had made enough for his frugal wants by his shop to enable him to retire from business in 1643, and then he quietly assumed a position as _pontifex piscatorum_. His fishing-rod was a sceptre which he swayed unrivalled for forty years. He gathered about him in his house and on the borders of fishing streams an admiring and congenial circle, principally of the clergy, who felt it a privilege to honor the retired linen-draper. There must have been a peculiar charm, a personal magnetism about him, which has also imbued his works. His first wife was Rachel Floud, a descendant of the ill-fated Cranmer; and his second was Anne Ken, the half-sister of the saintly Bishop Ken. Whatever may have been his deficiencies of early education, he was so constant and varied a reader that he made amends for these.