In an effort to educate myself, I am reading The Oxford Book of Essays, chosen and edited by John Gross. [copies for sale here] There’s 142 of the blighters, so it will take me all year. To make this “stick” I am going to blog each essay.
This essay is online
Who was the author:
Samuel Butler was born in Strensham, Worcestershire, and was the son of a farmer and churchwarden, also named Samuel. His date of birth is unknown, but there is documentary evidence for the date of his baptism of 14 February.[1] The date of Butler’s baptism is given as 8 February by Treadway Russell Nash in his 1793 edition of Hudibras. Nash had already mentioned Butler in his Collections for a History of Worcestershire (1781), and perhaps because the latter date seemed to be a revised account, it has been repeated by many writers and editors. However, The parish register of Strensham records under the year 1612: “Item was christened Samuell Butler the sonne of Samuell Butler the xiiijth of February anno ut supra”. Lady Day, 25 March, was New Year’s Day in England at the time, so the year of his baptism was 1613 according to the change of the start of the year with the Calendar Act of 1750 (see Old Style and New Style dates).[1] Nash also claims in his 1793 edition of Hudibras that Butler’s father entered his son’s baptism into the register, an error that was also repeated in later publications; however, the entry was clearly written by a different hand.[1]
Samuel Butler (poet) – Wikipedia
What happened the year they were born (and the C02 ppm): 1608
The Big Events they were alive for: Charles 1st, Civil War, Restoration. Biggies.
What happened in the year they died (and the C02 ppm): 1680
My awareness of/appreciation of this author (if any): almost zero
What’s the essay?
The essay is called “A Degenerate Noble”.” It’s 2 pages long. For me, the key take-aways were that failsons have been a thing for a long long time.
Best line(s) – oh, so many, lots of sick burns!
“He has no more title to the worth and virtue of his ancestors than the worms that were engendered in their dead bodies, and yet he believes he has enough to exempt himself and his posterity from all things of that nature for ever.”
“and he succeeds them as candles do the office of the sun. “
“The confidence of nobility has rendered him ignoble, as the opinion of wealth makes some men poor, and as those that are born to estates neglect industry and have no business but to spend”
He is like a word that by ill-custom and mistake has utterly lost the sense of that from which it was derived, and now signifies quite contrary;
Stuff worth thinking about.
Boris Johnson
“Same blood, not same heart” (The Wire)
Stuff to look up
like the fellow that sold his ass but would not part with the shadow of it
Apicius, that sold his house, and kept only the balcony to see and be seen in
Hudibras (/ˈhjuːdɪbræs/)[1] is a vigorous satirical poem, written in a mock-heroic style by Samuel Butler (1613–1680), and published in three parts in 1663, 1664 and 1678. The action is set in the last years of the Interregnum, around 1658–60, immediately before the restoration of Charles II as king in May 1660.
Did Butler have a specific person in mind?
Connects to (watch this space – if there are later essays that resonate with this one, I’ll come back and add a link to the post for that essay).
marchudson.net 
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