Thucydides, for I must go to Shilleto at nine o'clock to-morrow.

TRANSLATION FROM AN UNPUBLISHED WORK OF HERODOTUS

This piece and the ten that follow it date from Butler's undergraduate days. They were preserved by the late Canon Joseph McCormick, who was Butler's contemporary at Cambridge and knew him well.

In a letter to THE TIMES, published 27 June, 1902, shortly after Butler's death, Canon McCormick gave some interesting details of Butler's Cambridge days. "I have in my possession," he wrote, "some of the skits with which he amused himself and some of his personal friends. Perhaps the skit professed to be a translation from Thucydides, inimitable in its way, applied to Johnians in their successes or defeats on the river, or it was the 'Prospectus of the Great Split Society,' attacking those who wished to form narrow or domineering parties in the College, or it was a very striking poem on Napoleon in St. Helena, or it was a play dealing with a visit to the Paris Exhibition, which he sent to PUNCH, and which, strange to say, the editor never inserted, or it was an examination paper set to a gyp of a most amusing and clever character." One at least of the pieces mentioned by Canon McCormick has unfortunately disappeared. Those that have survived are here published for what they are worth. There is no necessity to apologise for their faults and deficiencies, which do not, I think, obscure their value as documents illustrating the development of that gift of irony which Butler was afterwards to wield with such brilliant mastery. 'Napoleon at St. Helena' and 'The Shield of Achilles' have already appeared in THE EAGLE, December, 1902; the "Translation from Herodotus," "The Shield of Achilles," "The Two Deans II," and "On the Italian Priesthood," in THE NOTE-BOOKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER; the "Prospectus of the Great Split Society" and "A Skit on Examinations" in THE EAGLE, June, 1913.

And the Johnians practise their tub in the following manner: They select eight of the most serviceable freshmen and put these into a boat, and to each one of them they give an oar; and having told them to look at the backs of the men before them they make them bend forward as far as they can and at the same moment, and having put the end of the oar into the water pull it back again in to them about the bottom of the ribs; and if any of them does not do this or looks about him away from the back of the man before him they curse him in the most terrible manner, but if he does what he is bidden they immediately cry out:

"Well pulled, number so-and-so."

For they do not call them by their names but by certain numbers, each man of them having a number allotted to him in accordance with his place in the boat, and the first man they call stroke, but the last man bow; and when they have done this for about fifty miles they come home again, and the rate they travel at is about twenty- five miles an hour; and let no one think that this is too great a rate, for I could say many other wonderful things in addition concerning the rowing of the Johnians, but if a man wishes to know these things he must go and examine them himself. But when they have done they contrive some such a device as this, for they make them run many miles along the side of the river in order that they may accustom them to great fatigue, and many of them being distressed in this way fall down and die, but those who survive become very strong, and receive gifts of cups from the others; and after the revolution of a year they have great races with their boats against those of the surrounding islanders, but the Johnians, both owing to the carefulness of the training and a natural disposition for rowing, are always victorious. In this way then the Johnians, I say, practise their tub.

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES, WITH VARIATIONS

And in it he placed the Fitzwilliam and King's College Chapel and the lofty towered church of the Great Saint Mary, which looketh toward the Senate House, and King's Parade and Trumpington Road and the Pitt Press and the divine opening of the Market Square and the beautiful flowing fountain which formerly Hobson laboured to make with skilful art; him did his father beget in the many-public-housed Trumpington from a slavey mother, and taught him blameless works; and he, on the other hand, sprang up like a young shoot, and many beautifully matched horses did he nourish in his stable, which used to convey his rich possessions to London and the various cities of the world; but oftentimes did he let them out to others and whensoever anyone was desirous of hiring one of the long-tailed horses, he took them in order so that the labour was equal to all, wherefore do men now speak of the choice of the renowned Hobson. And in it he placed the close of the divine Parker, and many beautiful undergraduates were delighting their tender minds upon it playing cricket with one another; and a match was being played and two umpires were quarrelling with one another; the one saying that the batsman who was playing was out, and the other declaring with all his might that he was not; and while they two were contending, reviling one another with abusive language, a ball came and hit one of them on the nose, and the blood flowed out in a stream, and darkness was covering his eyes, but the rest were crying out on all sides:

"Shy it up."

And he could not; him then was his companion addressing with scornful words:

"Arnold, why dost thou strive with me since I am much wiser? Did I not see his leg before the wicket and rightly declare him to be out? Thee then has Zeus now punished according to thy deserts, and I will seek some other umpire of the game equally-participated-in-by-both- sides."

And in it he placed the Cam, and many boats equally rowed on both sides were going up and down on the bosom of the deep-rolling river, and the coxswains were cheering on the men, for they were going to enter the contest of the scratchean fours; and three men were rowing together in a boat, strong and stout and determined in their hearts that they would either first break a blood-vessel or earn for themselves the electroplated-Birmingham-manufactured magnificence of a pewter to stand on their hall tables in memorial of their strength, and from time to time drink from it the exhilarating streams of beer whensoever their dear heart should compel them; but the fourth was weak and unequally matched with the others, and the coxswain was encouraging him and called him by name and spake cheering words:

"Smith, when thou hast begun the contest, be not flurried nor strive too hard against thy fate; look at the back of the man before thee and row with as much strength as the Fates spun out for thee on the day when thou fellest between the knees of thy mother, neither lose thine oar, but hold it tight with thy hands."