The Humour of Homer and Other EssaysButler, Samuel
History
The Humour of Homer and Other Essays
Butler, Samuel
Essays; Greek wit and humor -- History and criticism; Homer -- Humor
Butler wrote to Charles Darwin to explain what he meant by the "Book
of the Machines": "I am sincerely sorry that some of the critics
should have thought I was laughing at your theory, a thing which I
never meant to do and should be shocked at having done." Soon after
this Butler was invited to Down and paid two visits to Mr. Darwin
there; he thus became acquainted with all the family and for some
years was on intimate terms with Mr. (now Sir) Francis Darwin.
It is easy to see by the light of subsequent events that we should
probably have had something not unlike Erewhon sooner or later, even
without the Russian lady and Sir F. N. Broome, to whose promptings,
owing to a certain diffidence which never left him, he was perhaps
inclined to attribute too much importance. But he would not have
agreed with this view at the time; he looked upon himself as a
painter and upon Erewhon as an interruption. It had come, like one
of those creatures from the Land of the Unborn, pestering him and
refusing to leave him at peace until he consented to give it bodily
shape. It was only a little one, and he saw no likelihood of its
having any successors. So he satisfied its demands and then,
supposing that he had written himself out, looked forward to a
future in which nothing should interfere with the painting.
Nevertheless, when another of the unborn came teasing him he yielded
to its importunities and allowed himself to become the author of The
Fair Haven, which is his pamphlet on the Resurrection, enlarged and
preceded by a realistic memoir of the pseudonymous author, John
Pickard Owen. In the library of St. John's College, Cambridge, are
two copies of the pamphlet with pages cut out; he used these pages
in forming the MS. of The Fair Haven. To have published this book
as by the author of Erewhon would have been to give away the irony
and satire. And he had another reason for not disclosing his name;
he remembered that as soon as curiosity about the authorship of
Erewhon was satisfied, the weekly sales fell from fifty down to only
two or three. But, as he always talked openly of whatever was in
his mind, he soon let out the secret of the authorship of The Fair
Haven, and it became advisable to put his name to a second edition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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