Samuel Butler, the Author of this excellent Poem, was born in
the Parish of Strensham, in the county of Worcester, and
baptized there the 13th of Feb. 1612. His father, who was of the
same name, was an honest country farmer, who had some small
estate of his own, but rented a much greater of the Lord of the
Manor where he lived. However, perceiving in this son an early
inclination to learning, he made a shift to have him educated in
the free-school at Worcester, under Mr. Henry Bright; where
having passed the usual time, and being become an excellent
school-scholar, he went for some little time to Cambridge, but
was never matriculated into that University, his father's abilities
not being sufficient to be at the charge of an academical
education; so that our Author returned soon into his native
county, and became clerk to one Mr. Jefferys, of Earl's-Croom,
an eminent Justice of the Peace for that County, with whom he
lived some years, in an easy and no contemptible service. Here
by the indulgence of a kind master, he had sufficient leisure to
apply himself to whatever learning his inclinations led him,
which were chiefly history and poetry; to which, for his
diversion, he joined music and painting; and I have seen some
pictures, said to be of his drawing, which remained in that
family; which I mention not for the excellency of them, but to
satisfy the reader of his early inclinations to that noble art; for
which also he was afterwards entirely beloved by Mr. Samuel
Cooper, one of the most eminent painters of his time.

He was after this recommended to that great encourager of
learning, Elizabeth Countess of Kent, where he had not only the
opportunity to consult all manner of learned books, but to
converse also with that living library of learning, the great Mr