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From: Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Samuel Butler died (18-6-1902)
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2024 10:15:31 +0200
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On 2024-06-19 03:07:52 +0000, Ross Clark said:

> That means it's the _Erewhon_ Butler. The one born 1835, author of the 
> satirical utopian (satopian? utirical?) novel _Erewhon_, some of which 
> was based on his five years in New Zealand (1859-64), much of it 
> managing a sheep station called "Mesopotamia" in the South Island high 
> country.
> "Butler went there, like many early British settlers of materially 
> privileged origins, to maximise distance between himself and his 
> family."
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Butler_(novelist)
> 
> Frequently confused (by me) with the _Hudibras_ Butler (no relation),

Also with his grandfather of the same name, on whom Charles Darwin was 
not keen.

>  (1613-1680), author of the "vigorous mock-heroic satirical poem" 
> _Hudibras_, which remained popular for centuries after its publication. 
> Long enough for me to be exposed to a little bit of it at an early age:
>> 
>> In Mathematicks, he was greater
> Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
> For he, by Geometrick scale,
> Could take the size of Pots of Ale;
> Revolve by Signs and Tangents streight,
> If Bread or Butter wanted weight;
> And wisely tell what hour o'th'day
> The Clock doth strike, by Algebra.
> 
> It's a satire on the puritans of the Interregnum. It "delighted the 
> royalists but was less an attack on the puritans than a criticism of 
> antiquated thinking and contemporary morals, and a parody of 
> old-fashioned literary form."
> 
> Might be time to read the whole thing.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Butler_(poet)
> 
> Back to Erewhon Butler: Crystal concentrates on some aphorisms about 
> language. This is the shortest:
> 
> "Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use."


-- 
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly 
in England until 1987.