He acided his system, as the Italians say, with hatred and envy of his fellow man who had achieved fame or who was upon the road to it. It is difficult to rid one's mind of the thought that the motive that prompted him to literary work was that he might show how contemptibly inadequate the masters were or had been, all of them save Handel and G. Bellini. Samuel Butler took himself with great solemnity. He believed what he wanted to believe and he believed he knew about many things far better than experts and empiricists. When they did not agree with him he took great umbrage and wrote disagreeable letters to them or made disparaging references to them in his notes. "He never could form an opinion on a subject until he had established his volatile thoughts and caged them in a note. This enabled him to make up his mind." Thus he made up his mind, aided by Miss Savage, that "The Odyssey" was written by a female, or, to use his felicitous expression, "any woman save Mrs. Barrett Browning." Samuel Butler's most deforming characteristic was lack of reverence. He was endowed with an orderly mind. It was his passion and pastime to train and develop it. He never let anything stand in the way of accomplishing that purpose. His greatest literary gift was his capacity for presenting evidence. His chief weakness was his incapacity to gather evidence. He assumed certain things and then proceeded to prove to the reader that they were facts. This is a procedure that has never had favor in the courts or in the laboratories. Neither has it been accepted as a legitimate procedure in what might be called constructive literature, critical or creative. The only place where it has ever been received with favor is the pulpit, and Samuel Butler was the true son of the cloth which he did so much to deride and from which he believed he had divested himself. We should never have known what a pathetic figure he was if Mr. Jones had not seen fit in his affection and his obsession to reveal him to us. We can forgive Mr. Jones for this, however, because of his belief that Samuel Butler is immortal. Would that we could also forgive him for publishing a portrait of Mr. Butler standing before the hearth in the sitting-room of his home--in his shirt-sleeves! We could not have been more shocked had we found that he wore garters around his arms to regulate the length of his shirt-sleeves. England indeed is changed. This life of Butler gives the lie to Britishers' reputation for stolidity and formality. CHAPTER X SAINTS AND SINNERS