In the same MS. he says, "Wit is very chargeable, and not to be maintained in its necessary expenses at an ordinary rate: it is the worst trade in the world to live upon, and a commodity that no man thinks he has need of, for those who have least believe they have most."
——— Ingenuity and wit
Do only make the owners fit
For nothing, but to be undone
Much easier than if th' had none.
But a recent biographer controverts this, and takes a more probable view of it: he says, "The assumption of Butler's poverty appears utterly unfounded. Though not wealthy, he seems, as far as we can judge, to have always lived in comfort, and we know from the statement of Mr Longueville that he died out of debt. Butler was not one of those
Who hoped to make their fortune by the great;
and though no doubt he might have felt he had not been rewarded according to his deserts by his party, he was not entirely neglected. He had received a large share of popular applause, and was probably prouder of that, and of the power of castigating the follies and vices of mankind, even when displayed by those of his own party, than of being a more highly pensioned dependant of a Court that his writings show he despised. He was no 'needy wretch' in want of bread or a dinner; his earliest biographer gives no hint of his distress; he enjoyed friends of his own selection, and the injunction designates him as 'esquire,' a title not altogether so indiscriminately applied as at the present time. The only foundation for the assertion of his poverty consists in his having copied twice, in his common-place book, a distich from the prologue to the tragedy of Constantine the Great, said to have been written by Otway, though it was not acted till 1684, four years after Butler's death. It is supposed he might have seen the MS., or perhaps only heard the thought, as his copies vary from each other and from the lines as they ultimately appeared. It was, however, long the fashion to complain of
