e monumental piety of Mr Festing Jones
has been similarly turned to derision--after all, Butler was not a
great man--we feel that something analogous has happened. This laborious
building is a great deal too large for him to dwell in. He had made
himself a cosy habitation in the _Note-Books_, with the fire in the
right place and fairly impervious to the direct draughts of criticism.
In a two-volume memoir[11] he shivers perceptibly, and at moments he
looks faintly ridiculous more than faintly pathetic.

[Footnote 11: _Samuel Butler, author of 'Erewhon'_ (1835-1902): _a
Memoir_. By Henry Festing Jones. 2 vols. (Macmillan.)]

And if it be said that a biography should make no difference to our
estimate of the man who lives and has his being in his published works,
we reply that it shifts the emphasis. An amusingly wrong-headed book
about Homer is a peccadillo; ten years of life lavished upon it is
something a good deal more serious. And even _The Way of all Flesh_,
which as an experimental novel is a very considerable achievement,
becomes something different when we have to regard it as a laborious and
infinitely careful record of experienced fact. Further still, even the
edge of the perfected inconsequence of certain of the 'Notes' is
somewhat dulled when we see the trick of it being exercised. The origin
of the amusing remark on Blake, who 'was no good because he learnt
Italian at over 60 in order to read Dante, and we know Dante was no good
because he was so fond of Virgil, and Virgil was no good because
Tennyson ran him--well, Tennyson goes without saying,' is to be found in
'No, I don't like Lamb. You see, Canon Ainger writes about him, and
Canon Ainger goes to tea with my aunts.' Repeated, it becomes merely a
clever way of being stupid, as we should be if we were tempted to say
we couldn't bear Handel, because Butler was mad on him, and Butler was
no good because he was run by Mr Jones, and, well, Mr Jones goes without
saying.

Nevertheless, though Butler lives with much discomfort and some danger
in Mr Jones's tabernacle, he does continue to live. What his head loses
by the inquisition of a biography his heart gains, though we wonder
whether Butler himself would have smiled upon the exchange. Butler loses
almost the last vestige of a title to be considered a creative artist
when the incredible fact is revealed that the letters of Theobald and
Christina in _The Way of all Flesh_ are merely reproduced from tho