"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.
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