BUTLER, Charles, a native of Wycomb, in the county of Bucks, and a master of arts in Magdalen College, Oxford, who published a book entitled “The Principles of Music in singing and setting; with the twofold use thereof, ecclesiastical and civil.” 4to, London, 1636. The author of this book was a person of singular learning and ingenuity, which he manifested in sundry other works enumerated by Wood in the Aihenae Oxonienses. Among these is an English Grammar, published in 1633, in which he proposes a scheme of regular orthography, and makes use of characters, some borrowed from the Saxon, and others of his own invention, which it is impossible to represent by means of ordinary types; and of this imagined improvement he appears to have been so fond, that all his tracts are printed in the same manner as his grammar; the consequence of which has been an almost general disgust at every thing he has written. His treatise on the Principles of Music is, however, a very learned, curious, and entertaining book; and, by the help of the advertisement from the printer to the reader, prefixed to it, explaining the powers of the several characters made use of by him, may be read to great advantage, and may also be considered as a judicious supplement to Morley’s introduction.

Butler, Samuel, a celebrated poet, was the son of a respectable Worcestershire farmer, and was born in 1612. He passed some time at Cambridge, but was never matriculated in that university. Returning to his native country, he lived some years as clerk to a justice of peace, and found sufficient time to apply himself to history., poetry, and painting. Being recommended to Elizabeth, countess of Kent, he enjoyed in her house not only the use of all kinds of books, but the conversation of the illustrious Selden, who often employed Butler to write letters, and translate for him. He lived also some time with Sir Samuel Luke, a gentleman of an ancient family in Bedfordshire, and a famous commander under Oliver Cromwell; and he is supposed at this time to have written, or at least to have planned, his celebrated Hudibras, and under that character to have ridiculed the knight. The poem itself furnishes this key in the first canto, where Hudibras says
'Tis sung, there is a valiant Mameluke
In foreign land yclep’d — —
To whom we oft have been compar’d
For person, parts, address, and beard.

After the Restoration, Mr Butler was appointed secretary to the Earl of Carbury, lord president of Wales, who appointed him steward of Ludlow Castle when the court was revived there. No one proved a more generous friend to him than the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, to whom it was owing that the court relished his Hudibras, He had promises of a good place from the Earl of Clarendon, but they were never accomplished; though the king was so much pleased with the poem as often to quote it pleasantly in conversation. It is indeed said that Charles ordered him the sum of L.3000; but the sum being expressed in figures, somebody through whose hands the order passed reduced it, by cutting off a cypher, to L.300, and though it passed the offices without fees, it proved not sufficient to pay what he then owed; so that Butler was not a shilling the better for the king’s bounty. He died in 1680; and, though he met with many disappointments, he was never reduced to any thing like want, nor did he die in debt. Mr Granger observes, that Butler “stands without a rival in burlesque poetry. His Hudibras” he adds, “is in its kind almost as great an effort of genius as the Paradise Lost itself. It abounds with uncommon learning, new rhymes, and original thoughts. Its images are truly and naturally ridiculous. There are many strokes of temporary satire, and some characters and allusions which cannot be discovered at this distance of time.”

Butler, Joseph, Bishop of Durham, a prelate distinguished by his piety and learning, as well as by the depth and originality of his metaphysical and ethical views, was the youngest son of Mr Thomas Butler, a respectable shopkeeper at Wantage, in Berkshire, where he was born in the year 1692. His father, who was a Presbyterian, observing that he had a strong inclination to learning, sent him from a grammar-school where he had been placed, to an academy in Gloucestershire, in order to qualify him for a dissenting minister; and while there he wrote some remarks on Dr Clarke’s first sermon at Boyle’s lecture. Afterwards, resolving to conform to the established church, he studied at Oriel College, where he contracted an intimate friendship with Mr Edward Talbot, son of the Bishop of Durham, and brother to the lord chancellor, who laid the foundation of his subsequent advancement. Soon after his admission into the university he took orders, and in 1718 he was appointed preacher at the Rolls Chapel. He held this situation for about eight years, when he published a volume of sermons delivered in that chapel, which elevated him to great reputation as a profound and original thinker. The Bishop of Durham bestowed upon him the rectory of Haughton, and afterwards that of Stanhope, where he resided a considerable time, entirely devoted to the duties of his pastoral functions. Through the recommendation of his friend and fellow-student Secker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, he was in 1733 nominated chaplain to the Lord Chancellor Talbot; and a prebend in the church of Rochester followed this appointment. He now took the degree of LL.D., and in 1736 was appointed clerk of the closet to the queen, whom he attended every day by her majesty’s special command, from seven till nine in the evening. In the same year he published his celebrated work The Analogy of Religion, Natural arid Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, which is allowed to be the most original and profound work in any language on the philosophy of religion, and has accordingly placed the author in the first rank of deep and comprehensive thinkers. In 1738 Dr Butler was promoted to the bishopric of Bristol, on the recommendation of Queen Caroline, who had a philosophical taste, and highly esteemed this distinguished philosopher. Two years afterwards he was made Dean of St Paul’s, when he resigned the living of Stanhope. In the year 1746 he was appointed clerk of the closet to the king, and in 1750 he obtained his highest preferment, the bishopric of Durham. This rich benefice he, however, enjoyed but a short time; for he died at Bath on the 16th of June 1752. His corpse was interred in the cathedral at Bristol, where there is a monument, with an inscription, erected to his memory. Dr Butler died a bachelor. His profound and comprehensive mind appears sufficiently in his Sermons at the Rolls Chapel, and in his celebrated work on the Analogy of Religion. An account of his character as a philosopher has been drawn with great ability and discrimination by Sir James Mackintosh, in his Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, prefixed to this work. See vol. i. p. 343.

Butler, the name anciently given to an officer in the court of France, being the same as the grand echanson or great cupbearer of later times.

Butler, in the common acceptation of the word, is an officer in the houses of princes and great men, whose principal business is to look after the wine, plate, and other similar articles.