Of the remaining essays two were originally delivered as lectures; the others appeared first in The Universal Review in 1888, 1889 and 1890.  I should perhaps explain why two other essays which also appeared in The Universal Review are not included in this collection.  The first of these, entitled “L’Affaire Holbein-Rippel,” relates to a drawing of Holbein’s “Danse des Paysans” in the Basle Museum, which is usually described as a copy, but which Butler believed to be the work of Holbein himself.  This essay requires to be illustrated in so elaborate a manner that it was impossible to include it in a book of this size.  The second essay, which is a sketch of the career of the sculptor Tabachetti, was published as the first section of an article, entitled “A Sculptor and a Shrine,” of which the second part is here given under the title “The Sanctuary of Montrigone.”  The section devoted to the sculptor contains all that Butler then knew about Tabachetti, but since it was written various documents have come to light, principally through the investigations of Cavaliere Francesco Negri, of Casale Monferrato, which negative some of Butler’s conclusions.  Had Butler lived, I do not doubt that he would have revised his essay in the light of Cavaliere Negri’s discoveries, the value of which he fully recognized.  As it stands the essay requires so much revision that I have decided to omit it altogether and to postpone giving English readers a full account of Tabachetti’s career until a second edition of Butler’s “Ex Voto,” in which Tabachetti’s work is discussed in detail, is required.  Meanwhile I have given a brief summary of the main facts of Tabachetti’s life in a note (p. 195) to the essay on “Art in the Valley of Saas.”  Anyone who desires further details concerning the sculptor and his work will find them in Cavaliere Negri’s pamphlet “Il Santuario di Crea” (Alessandria, 1902).

The three essays grouped together under the title The Deadlock in Darwinism may be regarded as a postscript to Butler’s four books on evolution, viz.  Life and Habit, Evolution Old and New, Unconscious Memory, and Luck or Cunning?  When these essays were first published in book form in 1904, I ventured to give a brief summary of Butler’s position with regard to the main problem of evolution.  I need now only refer readers to Mr. Festing Jones’s biographical sketch and, for fuller details, to the masterly introduction contributed by Professor Marcus Hartog to the new edition of Unconscious Memory (A.  C. Fifield, 1910), and recently reprinted in his Problems of Life and Reproduction (John Murray, 1913), in which Butler’s work in the field of biology and his share in the various controversies connected with the study of evolution are discussed with the authority of a specialist.

R. A. Streatfeild.  July, 1913.

Sketch of the Life of Samuel Butler
Author of Erewhon
(1835-1902)
by Henry Festing Jones