Books: Butler Scalped

THE EARNEST ATHEIST—Malcolm Muggeridge—Putnam ($2.75).

Of late years Samuel Butler has been known mainly as the author of The Way of All Flesh, one of the best of modern English novels. But that fame is posthumous : the book was not published until 1903, the year after Butler died. In his lifetime he was not widely known, even less esteemed. Last week a compatriot who seemed to believe that Butler's own generation had him just about to rights, yanked Butler unceremoniously out of the Hall of Fame, gave him a dreadful tanning. It would...