abound with small faults of taste, but I rejoice in having written
both of them."

Very likely Butler was right as to the social side of the question,
but I am convinced that The Fair Haven did him grave harm in the
literary world. Reviewers fought shy of him for the rest of his
life. They had been taken in once, and they took very good care that
they should not be taken in again. The word went forth that Butler
was not to be taken seriously, whatever he wrote, and the results of
the decree were apparent in the conspiracy of silence that greeted
not only his books on evolution, but his Homeric works, his writings
on art, and his edition of Shakespeare's sonnets. Now that he has
passed beyond controversies and mystifications, and now that his
other works are appreciated at their true value, it is not too much
to hope that tardy justice will be accorded also to The Fair Haven.
It is true that the subject is no longer the burning question that it
was forty years ago. In the early seventies theological polemics
were fashionable. Books like Seeley's Ecce Homo and Matthew Arnold's
Literature and Dogma were eagerly devoured by readers of all classes.
Nowadays we take but a languid interest in the problems that
disturbed our grandfathers, and most of us have settled down into
what Disraeli described as the religion of all sensible men, which no
sensible man ever talks about. There is, however, in The Fair Haven
a good deal more than theological controversy, and our Laodicean age
will appreciate Butler's humour and irony if it cares little for his
polemics. The Fair Haven scandalised a good many people when it
first appeared, but I am not afraid of its scandalising anybody now.
I should be sorry, nevertheless, if it gave any reader a false
impression of Butler's Christianity, and I think I cannot do better
than conclude with a passage from one of his essays which represents