Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/652

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BUT—BUT

list of seventeen direct imitations of Iludibras in the course of a century was given in the Retrospective Review, and may be found in Mitford s Butler. Portions of it have been at different times translated into Latin with no great success. Complete translations of considerable excellence have been made into French by John Townley (London, 1757, 3 vols.), and into German by D. W. Soltau (Biga, 1787) ; specimens of both may be found in Bell s edition. Voltaire tried his

hand at a compressed version, but not happily.

(g. sa.)

BUTLER, William Archer (1814-1848), a brilliant writer on theology and the history of philosophy, was bom at Aimerville, near Clonmel, probably in 1814. His father was a Protestant, his mother a Roman Catholic, and he was brought up in the Bomish faith. At the age of nine he was sent to Clonmel school, where he distinguished himself not so much by rigid attention to his class work as by general brilliancy and power. Even when a boy he was strongly drawn towards the imaginative and poetical, and some of his early verses show an astonishing precocity. After leaving Clonmel school he entered Trinity College, Dublin. Two years before he had joined the Protestant church. His career at college was remarkably brilliant. The studies to which he specially devoted himself were the literary and metaphysical ; and he was particularly noted for the extreme beauty of his style, both in speaking and in written exercises. In 1834 he gained the ethical moderatorship, newly instituted by Provost Lloyd, and continued in residence at college, pursuing his favourite studies. Many papers were about this time contributed by him to the Dublin University Magazine ; it is to be regretted that these have not been collected. In 1837 he made up his mind to enter the church, and in the same year he was elected to the professorship of moral philosophy, specially founded for him through the exertions of Provost Lloyd. About the same time he was presented to the prebend of Clondehorka, in Donegal, and resided there when not called by his professorial duties to Dublin. In 1842 he was promoted to the rectory of Baymoghy. His lectures and his sermons were equally admired for their strength of thought and richly imaginative style. In 1845 appeared in the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal his Letters on Development, written under a great press of business, but in every way worthy of the author, and the best reply made to the famous essay of Newman which had called them forth. Butler s life was but short. He caught cold when returning one day from public service ; the cold termi nated in fever, which proved fatal in a few days. He died on the 5th July 1848. His /Sermons, published in two vols. by Woodward and Jeremie, have been universally recog nized as among the most important recent contributions to theology. They are remarkable not only for rare brilliancy of style, but for subtilty and force of thought. The diction is at times too ornate and rhetorical, but it is not to be forgotten that the sermons were hurriedly written, were never revised, and were all the work of a young man. Their uncommon excellence deepens the regret at the early death of the author. The Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, edited in a masterly manner by W. Hepworth Thompson (2 vols. 185G; 2ded.,lvol. 1875), have taken their place as the best among the few British works on the history of philosophy. The introductory lectures, and those on the early Greek thinkers, are not of the highest value, and though they evidence wide reading, do not show the complete mastery over the material that is found in Schwegler or Zeller. The lectures on Plato, however, are of great value, and furnish a most admirable and en thusiastically conceived exposition of the Platonic sys tem. Butler was evidently attracted by the lofty spirit of Platonism, and sets forth its main features with the warmest admiration. In details he is not altogether to be trusted, but any defects in his scholarship are amply sup plied in the valuable notes of his editor.


See Memoir of W. A. Butler, prefixed by llcv. J. Woodward to first series of Sermons.

BUTO, an Egyptian goddess, called in the language Vat or Uatin, the eponymous goddess of the town Buto in Northern Egypt, supposed to be modern Kum el Aman and Kum el gir, on the western banks of the Damietta branch of the Nile. The goddess herself personified Lower Egypt. and as such wore the teser or red crown, whether in her human form, or typified as a vulture, or urseus, in which respect she resembled Nat or Neith. She presided over fire, and resided in it or the solar eye, and was identified with the goddesses Bast and Sexet or Merienptah, of which she may have been another type. Buto was also considered to represent the Greek Latona, and the urseus Mahur, and this again connected her with Lower Egypt or the Delta. She was considered to be the regent and mistress of the lands Pe and Tep, districts of her nome, of the land of Hanebu or the Greeks, and of Taneter, the divine land or Arabia, also of Anhu the capital of Xrut, another of the nomes of Lower Egypt. The ideas of the Greeks that she personified darkness, and that the inygale or shrew- mouse was sacred to her, are incorrect ; for, as already stated, Uat presided over the element of fire, and the shrew-mouse appears from the inscriptions on the base of figures of this little animal to have been dedicated to Horns, like the Apollo Smintheus of the Greeks. The name was also given to the capital of a nome ruled over by the deities Har or Horns and Uat or Buto. The Greeks supposed that Buto was the capital of Chemmites or Phthenotes close to the Boutike Lake, the present Burullos, near the old Sebennytic branch of the Nile. It contained several temples, and in that of Buto oracles were delivered, and the temple was 10 oryyiai or fathoms high. The most remarkable object, however, in it was the monolith shrine 40 cubits or about 60 feet square, with a roof of stone, 4 cubits or about 6 feet thick, and 5000 tons weight. It was brought from Elephantina. It appears from an inscrip tion found at Cairo that, during the Persian occupation of Egypt, Khabash, then the ruler of Egypt, had given the nomos Phthenotes to the state of Buto, but that this arrangement was not recognized by Xerxes. Subse quently the older arrangement was restored by Ptolemy Lagus about 313 B.C.


Herodotus, ii. 155; lieinisch, Dcnkmahr in Miramir, s. 201 ; Wilkinson, Mann. andCust., iii. 330, 331, iv. 271-3, v.40 ; Brugscli, Geographic, i. s. 58 ; Jablonski, Panth. dSgypt, iii. S4"-116 ; Zeit- scliriftfilr ccgyptische Sprachc, 1871, p. 1 and foil.

BUTRINTO, a fortified town of European Turkey on the coast of Albania, in the sandjak of Delvino, directly opposite the island of Corfu, and situated at the mouth of a stream which connects the Lake of Vatzindro with the bay. It has a small harbour, and is the seat of a Greek bishop. In the neighbourhood are the ruins of the ancient Biitlirotum, consisting of a Boman wall, about a mile in circumference, and some remains of both later and Hellenic work. Buthrotum was a Boman colony in the time of Strabo, but makes little figure in ancient history. The modern city belonged to the Venetians till 1797, when it was seized by the French, who in 1799 had to yield to the Russians and Turks. Population, 1500.

BUTTER, is the fatty portion of the milk of mammalian

animals. The milk of all mammals contains such fatty constituents, and butter from the milk of goats, sheep, and other animals lias been and may be used ; but that yielded by cow s milk is the most savoury, and it alone really con stitutes the butter of commerce. The milk of the various breeds of cattle varies widely in the proportion of fatty

matter it contains; its richness in this respect being