All that piety can do for them is beside the mark. Their
wilful spirit is fled before the last stone of the mausoleum can be got
in place, and as it flies it jogs the elbow of the cup-bearer and his
libation is spilt idly upon the ground. Although it would be too much
and too ungrateful to say that the 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.
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