"Samuel Butler,
poet." It would be very troublesome to shift me, and bachelor came
before bishop. This was reasonable, so I replied that, under those
circumstances, if they pleased, I thought I would like to be a
philosophical writer. They embraced the solution, and, no matter what I
write now, I must remain a philosophical writer as long as I live, for
the alphabet will hardly be altered in my time, and I must be something
between "Bis" and "Poe." If I could get a volume of my excellent
namesake's "Hudibras" out of the list of my works, I should be robbed of
my last shred of literary grievance, so I say nothing about this, but
keep it secret, lest some worse thing should happen to me. Besides, I
have a great respect for my namesake, and always say that if "Erewhon"
had been a racehorse it would have been got by "Hudibras" out of
"Analogy." Some one said this to me many years ago, and I felt so much
flattered that I have been repeating the remark as my own ever since.

But how small are these grievances as compared with those endured without
a murmur by hundreds of writers far more deserving than myself. When I
see the scores and hundreds of workers in the reading-room who have done
so much more than I have, but whose work is absolutely fruitless to
themselves, and when I think of the prompt recognition obtained by my own
work, I ask myself what I have done to be thus rewarded. On the other
hand, the feeling that I have succeeded far beyond my deserts hitherto,
makes it all the harder for me to acquiesce without complaint in the
extinction of a career which I honestly believe to be a promising one;
and once more I repeat that, unless the Museum authorities give me back
my Frost, or put a locked clasp on Arvine, my career must be
extinguished. Give me back Frost, and, if life and health are spared, I
will write another dozen of volumes yet before I hang up my fiddle--if so
serious a confusion of metaphors may be pardoned. I know from long
experience how kind and considerate both the late and present
superintendents of the reading-room were and are, but I doubt how far
either of them would be disposed to help me on this occasion; continue,
however, to rob me of my Frost, and, whatever else I may do, I will write
no more books.

_Note by Dr. Garnett_, _British Museum_.--The frost has broken up. Mr.
Butler is restored to literature. Mr. Mudie may make himself easy.
England will still boast a humourist; and the