"Erewhon Revisited" is much better constructed. The old craftsman
has profited by his years of labor in the British Museum. He has a
story to tell, and tells it, weighting it with satire judiciously,
as a fisherman weights his set line. If his tale becomes unreal it
is only when he knows the author is ready to hear the author in
person. If the Erewhon of his first visit does not fit his new
conception he ruthlessly changes it. One misses the satiric _tours de
force_ of the first "Erewhon." There is nothing so brilliant as the
chapters on disease and machines which for fifty years since life has
been illustrating. But "Erewhon Revisited" is a finished book; it has
artistic unity.
And why does Butler revisit Erewhon? Not because he was trained as
a priest and must have an excuse to rediscuss theology, although
the story of the book suggests this explanation. Higgs, the
mysterious stranger of "Erewhon," who escaped by a balloon, has
become a subject for myth. In Erewhon he is declared the child of
the sun. Miracles gather about the supreme miracle of his air-born
departure. His "Sayings," a mixture of Biblical quotation and
homely philosophy, strained through Erewhonian intellects, become
a new ethics and a new theology.
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