A NECDOTES
��TOO much intelligence is often as pernicious to Biography as too little ; the mind remains perplexed by contradiction of probabilities, and finds difficulty in separating report from truth. If Johnson then lamented that so little had ever been said about Butler *, I might with more reason be led to complain that so much has been said about himself; for numberless informers but distract or cloud information, as glasses which multiply will for the most part be found also to obscure. Of a life too, which for the last twenty years was passed in the very front of literature, every leader of a literary company, whether officer or subaltern, naturally becomes either author or critic, so that little less than the recollection that it was once the request of the deceased 2 , and twice the desire of those whose will I ever delighted to comply with, should have engaged me to add my little book to the number of those already written on the subject. I used to urge another reason for forbearance, and say, that all the readers would, on this singular occasion, be the writers of his life : like the first representation of the Masque of Comus, which, by changing their characters from spectators to per formers, was acted by the lords and ladies it was written to entertain 3 . This objection is however now at an end, as I have
1 ' ' In the midst of obscurity passed can be told with certainty is that he
the life of Butler, a man whose name was poor.' Johnson's Works, vii.
can only perish with his language. 148.
The mode and place of his education 2 See/^j-/, p. 166.
are unknown, the events of his life 3 The Earl of Bridgewater's sons
are variously related ; and all that and daughter. As she was ' about
L 2, found
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