(July 1843) _The Life of Joseph Addison. BY LUCY AIKIN. 2 vols. 8vo.
London: 1843._
|SOME reviewers are of opinion that a lady who dares to publish a book
renounces by that act the franchises appertaining to her sex, and can
claim no exemption from the utmost rigour of critical procedure. From
that opinion we dissent. We admit, indeed, that in a country which
boasts of many female writers, eminently qualified by their talents
and acquirements to influence the public mind, it would be of most
pernicious consequence that inaccurate history or unsound philosophy
should be suffered to pass uncensured, merely because the offender
chanced to be a lady. But we conceive that, on such occasions, a
critic would do well to imitate the courteous Knight who found himself
compelled by duty to keep the lists against Bradamante. He, we are
told, defended successfully the cause of which he was the champion; but,
before the fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a less deadly sword, of
which he carefully blunted the point and edge. [Orlando Furioso, xiv.
68.]
Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities which Miss Aikin may
rightfully plead. Several of her works, and especially the very pleasing
Memoirs of the Reign of James the First have fully entitled her to the
privileges enjoyed by good writers. One of those privileges we hold to
be this, that such writers, when, either from the unlucky choice of
a subject, or from the indolence too often produced by success, they
happen to fail, shall not be subjected to the severe discipline which it
is sometimes necessary to inflict upon dunces and impostors, but shall
merely be reminded by a gentle touch, like that which the Laputan
flapper roused his dreaming lord, that it is high time to wake.
Our readers will probably infer from what we have said that Miss Aikin’s
book has disappointed us. The truth is, that she is not well acquainted
with her subject. No person who is not familiar with the political and
literary history of England during the reigns of William the Third,
of Anne, and of George the First, can possibly write a good life of
Addison.
Now, we mean no reproach to Miss Aikin, and many will think that we pay
her a compliment, when we say that her studies have taken a different
direction. She is better acquainted with Shakspeare and Raleigh, than
with Congreve and Prior; and is far more at home among the ruffs
and peaked beards of Theobalds than among the Steenkirks and flowing
periwigs which surrounded Queen Anne’s tea-table at Hampton. She seems
to have written about the Elizabethan age, because she had read much
about it; she seems, on the other hand, to have read a little about
the age of Addison, because she had determined to write about it. The
consequence is that she has had to describe men and things without
having either a correct or a vivid idea of them, and that she has often
fallen into errors of a very serious kind. The reputation which Miss
Aikin has justly earned stands so high, and the charm of Addison’s
letters is so great, that a second edition of this work may probably be
required. If so, we hope that every paragraph will be revised, and that
every date and fact about which there can be the smallest doubt will be
carefully verified.
To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection
as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping
a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, however, that
this feeling will not betray us into that abject idolatry which we have
often had occasion to reprehend in others, and which seldom fails to
make both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of genius and
virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot be equally developed; nor
can we expect from him perfect self-knowledge. We need not, therefore,
hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some compositions which do
not rise above mediocrity, some heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell’s,
some criticism as superficial as Dr. Blair’s, and a tragedy not very
much better than Dr. Johnson’s. It is praise enough to say of a writer
that, in a high department of literature, in which many eminent writers
have distinguished themselves, he has had no equal; and this may with
strict justice be said of Addison.
As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration which he received from
those who, bewitched by his fascinating society, and indebted for all
the comforts of life to his generous and delicate friendship, worshipped
him nightly, in his favourite temple at Button’s. But, after full
inquiry and impartial reflection, we have long been convinced that he
deserved as much love and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of our
infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in
his character; but the more carefully it is examined, the more will
it appear, to use the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the noble
parts, free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of
ingratitude, of envy. Men may easily be named, in whom some particular
good disposition has been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just
harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the
humane virtues, the habitual observance of every law, not only of moral
rectitude, but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all
men who have been tried by equally strong temptations, and about whose
conduct we possess equally full information.
His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, though eclipsed by
his more celebrated son, made some figure in the world, and occupies
with credit, two folio pages in the Biographia Britannica. Lancelot
was sent up, as a poor scholar, from Westmoreland to Queen’s College,
Oxford, in the time of the Commonwealth, made some progress in learning,
became, like most of his fellow-students, a violent Royalist, lampooned
the heads of the University, and was forced to ask pardon on his bended
knees. When he had left college, he earned a humble subsistence by
reading the liturgy of the fallen Church to the families of those sturdy
squires whose manor-houses were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. After
the Restoration, his loyalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain to
the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was sold to France, he lost his
employment. But Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as part of
the marriage portion of the Infanta Catherine; and to Tangier Lancelot
Addison was sent. A more miserable situation can hardly be conceived.
It was difficult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were more
tormented by the heats or by the rains, by the soldiers within the wall
or by the Moors without it. One advantage the chaplain had. He enjoyed
an excellent opportunity of studying the history and manners of Jews
and Mahometans and of this opportunity he appears to have made excellent
use. On his return to England, after some years of banishment, he
published an interesting volume on the Polity and Religion of Barbary,
and another on the Hebrew Customs and the State of Rabbinical Learning.
He rose to eminence in his profession, and became one of the royal
chaplains, a Doctor of Divinity, Archdeacon of Salisbury, and Dean of
Lichfield. It is said that he would have been made a bishop after the
Revolution, if he had not given offence to the Government by strenuously
opposing, in the Convocation of 1689, the liberal policy of William and
Tillotson.
In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison’s return from Tangier, his son
Joseph was born. Of Joseph’s childhood we know little. He learned his
rudiments at school in his father’s neighbourhood, and was then sent to
the Charter House. The anecdotes which are popularly related about his
boyish tricks do not harmonise very well with what we know of his riper
years. There remains a tradition that he was the ringleader in a barring
out, and another tradition that he ran away from school and hid himself
in a wood, where he fed on berries and slept in a hollow tree, till
after a long search he was discovered and brought home. If these
stories be true, it would be curious to know by what moral discipline
so mutinous and enterprising a lad was transformed into the gentlest and
most modest of men.
We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph’s pranks may have been, he
pursued his studies vigorously and successfully. At fifteen he was not
only fit for the university, but carried thither a classical taste and
a stock of learning which would have done honour to a Master of Arts. He
was entered at Queen’s College, Oxford; but he had not been many months
there, when some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the hands of
Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalen College. The young scholar’s diction and
versification were already such as veteran professors might envy.
Dr. Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such promise; nor was
an opportunity long wanting. The Revolution had just taken place; and
nowhere had it been hailed with more delight than at Magdalen College.
That great and opulent corporation had been treated by James, and by his
Chancellor, with an insolence and injustice which, even in such a Prince
and in such a Minister, may justly excite amazement, and which had done
more than even the prosecution of the Bishops to alienate the Church of
England from the throne. A president, duly elected, had been violently
expelled from his dwelling: a Papist had been set over the society by
a royal mandate: the Fellows who, in conformity with their oaths, had
refused to submit to this usurper, had been driven forth from their
quiet cloisters and gardens, to die of want or to live on charity. But
the day of redress and retribution speedily came. The intruders were
ejected: the venerable House was again inhabited by its old inmates:
learning flourished under the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough; and
with learning was united a mild and liberal spirit too often wanting in
the princely colleges of Oxford. In consequence of the troubles through
which the society had passed, there had been no valid election of new
members during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was twice the
ordinary number of vacancies; and thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy
to procure for his young friend admittance to the advantages of a
foundation then generally esteemed the wealthiest in Europe.
At Magdalen Addison resided during ten years. He was, at first, one of
those scholars who were called Demies, but was subsequently elected a
Fellow. His college is still proud of his name: his portrait still hangs
in the hall; and strangers are still told that his favourite walk was
under the elms which fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell.
It is said, and is highly probable, that he was distinguished among his
fellow-students by the delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his
manners, and by the assiduity with which he often prolonged his studies
far into the night. It is certain that his reputation for ability and
learning stood high. Many years later, the ancient doctors of Magdalen
continued to talk in their common room of his boyish compositions, and
expressed their sorrow that no copy of exercises so remarkable had been
preserved.
It is proper, however, to remark that Miss Aikin has committed the
error, very pardonable in a lady, of overrating Addison’s classical
attainments. In one department of learning, indeed, his proficiency was
such as it is hardly possible to overrate. His knowledge of the Latin
poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was
singularly exact and profound. He understood them thoroughly, entered
into their spirit, and had the finest and most discriminating perception
of all their peculiarities of style and melody; nay, he copied their
manner with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think, all their British
imitators who had preceded him, Buchanan and Milton alone excepted. This
is high praise; and beyond this we cannot with justice go. It is clear
that Addison’s serious attention during his residence at the university,
was almost entirely concentrated on Latin poetry, and that, if he did
not wholly neglect other provinces of ancient literature, he vouchsafed
to them only a cursory glance. He does not appear to have attained more
than an ordinary acquaintance with the political and moral writers of
Rome; nor was his own Latin prose by any means equal to his Latin Verse.
His knowledge of Greek, though doubtless such as was, in his time,
thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently less than that which many
lads now carry away every year from Eton and Rugby. A minute examination
of his works, if we had time to make such an examination, would fully
bear out these remarks. We will briefly advert to a few of the facts on
which our judgment is grounded.
Great praise is due to the Notes which Addison appended to his version
of the second and third books of the Metamorphoses. Yet those notes,
while they show him to have been, in his own domain, an accomplished
scholar, show also how confined that domain was. They are rich in
apposite references to Virgil, Statius, and Claudian; but they contain
not a single illustration drawn from the Greek poets. Now, if, in the
whole compass of Latin literature, there be a passage which stands in
need of illustration drawn from the Greek poets, it is the story of
Pentheus in the third book of the Metamorphoses. Ovid was indebted for
that story to Euripides and Theocritus, both of whom he has sometimes
followed minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to Theocritus does
Addison make the faintest allusion; and we, therefore, believe that
we do not wrong him by supposing that he had little or no knowledge of
their works.
His travels in Italy, again, abound with classical quotations happily
introduced; but scarcely one of those quotations is in prose. He draws
more illustrations from Ausonius and Manilius than from Cicero. Even his
notions of the political and military affairs of the Romans seem to be
derived from poets and poetasters. Spots made memorable by events which
have changed the destinies of the world, and which have been worthily
recorded by great historians, bring to his mind only scraps of some
ancient versifier. In the gorge of the Apennines he naturally remembers
the hardships which Hannibal’s army endured, and proceeds to cite, not
the authentic narrative of Polybius, not the picturesque narrative of
Livy, but the languid hexameters of Silius Italicus. On the banks of
the Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch’s lively description, or of the
stern conciseness of the Commentaries, or of those letters to Atticus
which so forcibly express the alternations of hope and fear in a
sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only authority for the events of
the civil war is Lucan.
All the best ancient works of art at Rome and Florence are Greek.
Addison saw them, however, without recalling one single verse of Pindar,
of Callimachus, or of the Attic dramatists; but they brought to his
recollection innumerable passages of Horace, Juvenal, Statius, and Ovid.
The same may be said of the Treatise on Medals. In that pleasing work we
find about three hundred passages extracted with great judgment from
the Roman poets; but we do not recollect a single passage taken from
any Roman orator or historian; and we are confident that not a line
is quoted from any Greek writer. No person, who had derived all his
information on the subject of medals from Addison, would suspect that
the Greek coins were in historical interest equal, and in beauty of
execution far superior to those of Rome.
If it were necessary to find any further proof that Addison’s classical
knowledge was confined within narrow limits, that proof would be
furnished by his Essay on the Evidences of Christianity. The Roman poets
throw little or no light on the literary and historical questions which
he is under the necessity of examining in that Essay. He is, therefore,
left completely in the dark; and it is melancholy to see how helplessly
he gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns, as grounds for
his religious belief, stories as absurd as that of the Cock-Lane ghost,
and forgeries as rank as Ireland’s Vortigern, puts faith in the lie
about the Thundering Legion, is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate
to admit Jesus among the gods, and pronounces the letter of Abgarus King
of Edessa to be a record of great authority. Nor were these errors the
effects of superstition; for to superstition Addison was by no
means prone. The truth is that he was writing about what he did not
understand.
Miss Aikin has discovered a letter, from which it appears that, while
Addison resided at Oxford, he was one of several writers whom the
booksellers engaged to make an English version of Herodotus; and she
infers that he must have been a good Greek scholar. We can allow
very little weight to this argument, when we consider that his
fellow-labourers were to have been Boyle and Blackmore. Boyle is
remembered chiefly as the nominal author of the worst book on Greek
history and philology that ever was printed; and this book, bad as it
is, Boyle was unable to produce without help. Of Blackmore’s attainments
in the ancient tongues, it may be sufficient to say that, in his prose,
he has confounded an aphorism with an apophthegm, and that when, in
his verse, he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to regale his
readers with four false quantities to a page.
It is probable that the classical acquirements of Addison were of
as much service to him as if they had been more extensive. The world
generally gives its admiration, not to the man who does what nobody else
even attempts to do, but to the man who does best what multitudes do
well. Bentley was so immeasurably superior to all the other scholars
of his time that few among them could discover his superiority. But the
accomplishment in which Addison excelled his contemporaries was then, as
it is now, highly valued and assiduously cultivated at all English seats
of learning. Everybody who had been at a public school had written Latin
verses; many had written such verses with tolerable success, and were
quite able to appreciate, though by no means able to rival, the skill
with which Addison imitated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer and the
Bowling Green were applauded by hundreds, to whom the Dissertation on
the Epistles of Phalaris was as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics on
an obelisk.
Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are common to all
Addison’s Latin poems. Our favourite piece is the Battle of the Cranes
and Pigmies; for in that piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and
humour which many years later enlivened thousands of breakfast tables.
Swift boasted that he was never known to steal a hint; and he certainly
owed as little to his predecessors as any modern writer. Yet we cannot
help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, one of the
happiest touches in his “Voyage to Lilliput” from Addison’s verses. Let
our readers judge.
“The Emperor,” says Gulliver, “is Tatler by about the breadth of my nail
than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the
beholders.”
About thirty years before Gulliver’s Travels appeared, Addison wrote
these lines:=
```“Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus infert
```Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus,
```Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes
```Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam.”=
The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and justly admired both at
Oxford and Cambridge, before his name had ever been heard by the
wits who thronged the coffee-houses round Drury Lane Theatre. In his
twenty-second year, he ventured to appear before the public as a writer
of English verse. He addressed some complimentary lines to Dryden, who,
after many triumphs and many reverses, had at length reached a secure
and lonely eminence among the literary men of that age. Dryden appears
to have been much gratified by the young scholar’s praise; and an
interchange of civilities and good offices followed. Addison was
probably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and was certainly presented
by Congreve to Charles Montague, who was then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and leader of the Whig party in the House of Commons.
At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote himself to poetry. He
published a translation of part of the fourth Georgic, Lines on King
William, and other performances of equal value, that is to say, of
no value at all. But in those days, the public was in the habit of
receiving with applause pieces which would now have little chance of
obtaining the Newdigate prize or the Seatonian prize. And the reason is
obvious. The heroic couplet was then the favourite measure. The art of
arranging words in that measure, so that the lines may flow smoothly,
that the accents may fall correctly, that the rhymes may strike the ear
strongly, and that there may be a pause at the end of every distich, is
an art as mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing a horse,
and may be learned by any human being who has sense enough to learn
anything. But, like other mechanical arts, it was gradually improved by
means of many experiments and many failures. It was reserved for Pope to
discover the trick, to make himself complete master of it, and to teach
it to everybody else. From the time when his Pastorals appeared, heroic
versification became matter of rule and compass; and, before long, all
artists were on a level. Hundreds of dunces who never blundered on one
happy thought or expression were able to write reams of couplets which,
as far as euphony was concerned, could not be distinguished from those
of Pope himself, and which very clever writers of the reign of Charles
the Second, Rochester, for example, or Marvel, or Oldham, would have
contemplated with admiring despair.
Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very small man. But Hoole coming
after Pope, had learned how to manufacture decasyllable verses, and
poured them forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all as well
turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have
passed through Mr. Brunel’s mill in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben’s
heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand,
with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation Of a celebrated
passage in the Aeneid:=
```“This child our parent earth, stirr’d up with spite
```Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write,
```She was last sister of that giant race
```That sought to scale Jove’s court, right swift of pace,
```And swifter far of wing, a monster vast
```And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed
```On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes
```Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise
```In the report, as many tongues she wears.”=
Compare with these jagged misshapen distichs the neat fabric which
Hoole’s machine produces in unlimited abundance. We take the first lines
on which we open in his version of Tasso. They are neither better nor
worse than the rest=
```O thou, whoe’er thou art, whose steps are led,
```By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread,
```No greater wonders east or west can boast
```Than yon small island on the pleasing coast.
```If e’er thy sight would blissful scenes explore,
```The current pass, and seek the further shore.”=
Ever since the time of Pope there had been a glut of lines of this sort;
and we are now as little disposed to admire a man for being able to
write them, as for being able to write his name. But in the days of
William the Third such versification was rare; and a rhymer who had any
skill in it passed for a great poet, just as in the dark ages a person
who could write his name passed for a great clerk. Accordingly, Duke,
Stepney, Granville, Walsh, and others whose only title to fame was that
they said in tolerable metre what might have been as well said in
prose, or what was not worth saying at all, were honoured with marks of
distinction which ought to be reserved for genius. With these Addison
must have ranked, if he had not earned true and lasting glory by
performances which very little resembled his juvenile poems.
Dryden was now busied with Virgil, and obtained from Addison a critical
preface to the Georgics. In return for this service, and for other
services of the same kind, the veteran poet, in the postscript to the
translation of the Aeniad complimented his young friend with great
liberality, and indeed with more liberality than sincerity. He affected
to be afraid that his own performance would not sustain a comparison
with the version of the fourth Georgic, by “the most ingenious Mr.
Addison of Oxford.” “After his bees,” added Dryden, “my latter swarm is
scarcely worth the hiving.”
The time had now arrived when it was necessary for Addison to choose
a calling. Everything seemed to point his course towards the clerical
profession. His habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His college
had large ecclesiastical preferment in its gift, and boasts that it has
given at least one bishop to almost every see in England. Dr. Lancelot
Addison held an honourable place in the Church, and had set his heart
on seeing his son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expressions in the
young man’s rhymes, that his intention was to take orders. But Charles
Montague interfered. Montague had first brought himself into notice by
verses well-timed and not contemptibly written, but never, we think,
rising above mediocrity. Fortunately for himself and for his country,
he early quitted poetry, in which he could never have attained a rank as
high as that of Dorset or Rochester, and turned his mind to official
and parliamentary business. It is written that the ingenious person
who undertook to instruct Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, in the art of
flying, ascended an eminence, waved his wings, sprang into the air, and
instantly dropped into the lake. But it is added that the wings, which
were unable to support him through the sky, bore him up effectually as
soon as he was in the water. This is no bad type of the fate of Charles
Montague and of men like him. When he attempted to soar into the regions
of poetical invention, he altogether failed; but, as soon as he had
descended from that ethereal elevation into a lower and grosser
element, his talents instantly raised him above the mass. He became a
distinguished financier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still
retained his fondness for the pursuits of his early days; but he
showed that fondness not by wearying the public with his own feeble
performances, but by discovering and encouraging literary excellence in
others. A crowd of wits and poets, who would easily have vanquished him
as a competitor, revered him as a judge and a patron. In his plans for
the encouragement of learning, he was cordially supported by the ablest
and most virtuous of his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. Though
both these great statesmen had a sincere love of letters, it was not
solely from a love of letters that they were desirous to enlist
youths of high intellectual qualifications in the public service. The
Revolution had altered the whole system of government. Before that event
the press had been controlled by censors, and the Parliament had sat
only two months in eight years. Now the press was free, and had begun
to exercise unprecedented influence on the public mind. Parliament met
annually and sat long. The chief power in the State had passed to the
House of Commons. At such a conjuncture, it was natural that literary
and oratorical talents should rise in value. There was danger that a
government which neglected such talents might be subverted by them. It
was, therefore, a profound and enlightened policy which led Montague and
Somers to attach such talents to the Whig party, by the strongest ties
both of interest and of gratitude.
It is remarkable that in a neighbouring country, we have recently seen
similar effects follow from similar causes. The revolution of July 1830
established representative government in France. The men of letters
instantly rose to the highest importance in the State. At the present
moment most of the persons whom we see at the head both of the
Administration and of the Opposition have been professors, historians,
journalists, poets. The influence of the literary class in England,
during the generation which followed the Revolution, was great, but by
no means so great as it has lately been in France. For in England,
the aristocracy of intellect had to contend with a powerful and
deeply-rooted aristocracy of a very different kind. France had no
Somersets and Shrewsburys to keep down her Addisons and Priors.
It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just completed his
twenty-seventh year, that the course of his life was finally determined.
Both the great chiefs of the Ministry were kindly disposed towards him.
In political opinions he already was what he continued to be through
life, a firm, though a moderate Whig. He had addressed the most polished
and vigorous of his early English lines to Somers, and had dedicated to
Montague a Latin poem, truly Virgilian, both in style and rhythm, on
the peace of Ryswick. The wish of the young poet’s great friends was,
it should seem, to employ him in the service of the Crown abroad. But
an intimate knowledge of the French language was a qualification
indispensable to a diplomatist; and this qualification Addison had not
acquired. It was, therefore, thought desirable that he should pass some
time on the Continent in preparing himself for official employment. His
own means were not such as would enable him to travel: but a pension of
three hundred pounds a year was procured for him by the interest of the
Lord Chancellor. It seems to have been apprehended that some difficulty
might be started by the rulers of Magdalen College. But the Chancellor
of the Exchequer wrote in the strongest terms to Hough. The State--such
was the purport of Montague’s letter--could not, at that time spare to
the Church such a man as Addison. Too many high civil posts were
already occupied by adventurers, who, destitute of every liberal art
and sentiment, at once pillaged and disgraced the country which they
pretended to serve. It had become necessary to recruit for the public
service from a very different class, from that class of which Addison
was the representative. The close of the Minister’s letter was
remarkable. “I am called,” he said, “an enemy of the Church. But I will
never do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it.”
This interference was successful; and, in the summer of 1699, Addison,
made a rich man by his pension, and still retaining his fellowship,
quitted his beloved Oxford, and set out on his travels. He crossed from
Dover to Calais, proceeded to Paris, and was received there with great
kindness and politeness by a kinsman of his friend Montague, Charles
Earl of Manchester, who had just been appointed Ambassador to the Court
of France. The Countess, a Whig and a toast, was probably as gracious
as her lord; for Addison long retained an agreeable recollection of the
impression which she at this time made on him, and in some lively lines
written on the glasses of the Kit-Cat Club, described the envy which her
cheeks, glowing with the genuine bloom of England, had excited among the
painted beauties of Versailles.
Lewis the Fourteenth was at this time expiating the vices of his youth
by a devotion which had no root in reason, and bore no fruit of charity.
The servile literature of France had changed its character to suit the
changed character of the prince. No book appeared that had not an air of
sanctity. Racine, who was just dead, had passed the close of his life
in writing sacred dramas; and Dacier was seeking for the Athanasian
mysteries in Plato. Addison described this state of things in a short
but lively and graceful letter to Montague. Another letter, written
about the same time to the Lord Chancellor, conveyed the strongest
assurances of gratitude and attachment. “The only return I can make to
your Lordship,” said Addison, “will be to apply myself entirely to my
business.” With this view he quitted Paris and repaired to Blois, a
place where it was supposed that the French language was spoken in its
highest purity, and where not a single Englishman could be found. Here
he passed some months pleasantly and profitably. Of his way of life at
Blois, one of his associates, an Abbe named Philippeaux, gave an account
to Joseph Spence. If this account is to be trusted, Addison studied
much, mused much, talked little, had fits of absence, and either had
no love affairs, or was too discreet to confide them to the Abbe. A man
who, even when surrounded by fellow-countrymen and fellow-students, had
always been remarkably shy and silent, was not likely to be loquacious
in a foreign tongue, and among foreign companions. But it is clear
from Addison’s letters, some of which were long after published in the
Guardian, that, while he appeared to be absorbed in his own meditations,
he was really observing French society with that keen and sly, yet not
ill-natured side glance, which was peculiarly his own.
From Blois he returned to Paris; and, having now mastered the French
language, found great pleasure in the society of French philosophers and
poets. He gave an account, in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two highly
interesting conversations, one with Malbranche, the other with Boileau.
Malbranche expressed great partiality for the English, and extolled the
genius of Newton, but shook his head when Hobbes was mentioned, and was
indeed so unjust as to call the author of the Leviathan a poor, silly
creature. Addison’s modesty restrained him from fully relating, in
his letter, the circumstances of his introduction to Boileau. Boileau,
having survived the friends and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and
melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom went either to Court or to the
Academy, and was almost inaccessible to strangers. Of the English and
of English literature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the name of
Dryden. Some of our countrymen, in the warmth of their patriotism, have
asserted that this ignorance must have been affected. We own that we see
no ground for such a supposition. English literature was to the French
of the age of Lewis the Fourteenth what German literature was to our own
grandfathers. Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished men who, sixty
or seventy years ago, used to dine in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua,
or at Streatham with Mrs. Thrale, had the slightest notion that Wieland
was one of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, beyond all dispute,
the first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as little about the
Paradise Lost, and about Absalom and Achitophel; but he had read
Addison’s Latin poems, and admired them greatly. They had given him, he
said, quite a new notion of the state of learning and taste among
the English. Johnson will have it that these praises were insincere.
“Nothing,” says he, “is better known of Boileau than that he had an
injudicious and peevish contempt of modern Latin; and therefore his
profession of regard was probably the effect of his civility rather than
approbation.” Now, nothing is better known of Boileau than that he
was singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember that either
friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on any composition
which he did not approve. On literary questions his caustic, disdainful,
and self-confident spirit rebelled against that authority to which
everything else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Lewis
the Fourteenth firmly and even rudely, that his Majesty knew nothing
about poetry, and admired verses which were detestable. What was there
in Addison’s position that could induce the satirist, whose stern
and fastidious temper had been the dread of two generations, to turn
sycophant for the first and last time? Nor was Boileau’s contempt of
modern Latin either injudicious or peevish. He thought, indeed, that no
poem of the first order would ever be written in a dead language. And
did he think amiss? Has not the experience of centuries confirmed his
opinion? Boileau also thought it probable that, in the best modern
Latin, a writer of the Augustan age would have detected ludicrous
improprieties. And who can think otherwise? What modern scholar can
honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity in the style of
Livy? Yet is it not certain that, in the style of Livy, Pollio, whose
taste had been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the inelegant
idiom of the Po? Has any modern scholar understood Latin better than
Frederic the Great understood French? Yet is it not notorious that
Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing
but French, during more than half a century, after unlearning his mother
tongue in order to learn French, after living familiarly during many
years with French associates, could not, to the last, compose in French,
without imminent risk of committing some mistake which would have moved
a smile in the literary circles of Paris? Do we believe that Erasmus and
Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr. Robertson and Sir Walter Scott
wrote English? And are there not in the Dissertation on India, the last
of Dr. Robertson’s works, in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which
a London apprentice would laugh? But does it follow, because we think
thus, that we can find nothing to admire in the noble alcaics of Gray,
or in the playful elegiacs of Vincent Bourne? Surely not. Nor was
Boileau so ignorant or tasteless as to be incapable of appreciating
good modern Latin. In the very letter to which Johnson alludes, Boileau
says--“Ne croyez pas pourtant que je veuille par la blamer les vers
Latins que vous m’avez envoyes d’un de vos illustres academiciens. Je
les ai trouves fort beaux, et dignes de Vida et de Sannazar, mais non
pas d’Horace et de Virgile.” Several poems, in modern Latin, have been
praised by Boileau quite as liberally as it was his habit to praise
anything. He says, for example, of the Pere Fraguier’s epigrams, that
Catullus seems to have come to life again. But the best proof that
Boileau did not feel the undiscerning contempt for modern Latin verses
which has been imputed to him, is, that he wrote and published Latin
verses in several metres. Indeed it happens, curiously enough, that the
most severe censure ever pronounced by him on modern Latin is conveyed
in Latin hexameters. We allude to the fragment which begins=
```“Quid numeris iterum me balbutire Latinis,
```Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro,
```Musa, jubes?”=
For these reasons we feel assured that the praise which Boileau bestowed
on the Machinae Gesticulantes and the Gerano Pygmaomachia, was sincere.
He certainly opened himself to Addison with a freedom which was a sure
indication of esteem. Literature was the chief subject of conversation.
The old man talked on his favourite theme much and well, indeed, as his
young hearer thought, incomparably well. Boileau had undoubtedly some
of the qualities of a great critic. He wanted imagination; but he had
strong sense. His literary code was formed on narrow principles; but in
applying it, he showed great judgment and penetration. In mere style,
abstracted from the ideas of which style is the garb, his taste was
excellent. He was well acquainted with the great Greek writers; and,
though unable fully to appreciate their creative genius, admired the
majestic simplicity of their manner, and had learned from them to
despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy we think, to discover, in the
Spectator, and the Guardian: traces of the influence, in part salutary
and in part pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had on the mind of
Addison.
While Addison was at Paris, an event took place which made that capital
a disagreeable residence for an Englishman and a Whig. Charles, second
of the name, King of Spain, died; and bequeathed his dominions to
Philip, Duke of Anjou, a younger son of the Dauphin. The King of France,
in direct violation of his engagements both with Great Britain and with
the States-General, accepted the bequest on behalf of his grandson. The
House of Bourbon was at the summit of human grandeur. England had
been outwitted, and found herself in a situation at once degrading and
perilous. The people of France, not presaging the calamities by which
they were destined to expiate the perfidy of their sovereign, went mad
with pride and delight. Every man looked as if a great estate had just
been left him. “The French conversation,” said Addison, “begins to grow
insupportable; that which was before the vainest nation in the world is
now worse than ever.” Sick of the arrogant exultation of the Parisians,
and probably foreseeing that the peace between France and England could
not be of long duration, he set off for Italy.
In December 1701 [It is strange that Addison should, in the first line
of his travels, have misdated his departure from Marseilles by a whole
year, and still more strange that this slip of the pen, which throws the
whole narrative into inextricable confusion, should have been repeated
in a succession of editions, and never detected by Tickell or by Hurd.]
he embarked at Marseilles. As he glided along the Ligurian coast, he was
delighted by the sight of myrtles and olive trees, which retained their
verdure under the winter solstice. Soon, however, he encountered one of
the black storms of the Mediterranean. The captain of the ship gave up
all for lost, and confessed himself to a capuchin who happened to be on
board. The English heretic, in the meantime, fortified himself against
the terrors of death with devotions of a very different kind. How strong
an impression this perilous voyage made on him, appears from the ode,
“How are thy servants blest, O Lord!” which was long after published
in the Spectator. After some days of discomfort and danger, Addison was
glad to land at Savona, and to make his way, over mountains where no
road had yet been hewn out by art, to the city of Genoa.
At Genoa, still ruled by her own Doge, and by the nobles whose names
were inscribed on her Book of Gold, Addison made a short stay. He
admired the narrow streets overhung by long lines of towering palaces,
the walls rich with frescoes, the gorgeous temple of the Annunciation,
and the tapestries whereon were recorded the long glories of the House
of Doria. Thence he hastened to Milan, where he contemplated the Gothic
magnificence of the cathedral with more wonder than pleasure. He passed
Lake Benacus while a gale was blowing, and saw the waves raging as they
raged when Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, then the gayest spot in
Europe, the traveller spent the Carnival, the gayest season of the year,
in the midst of masques, dances, and serenades. Here he was at once
diverted and provoked, by the absurd dramatic pieces which then
disgraced the Italian stage. To one of those pieces, however, he was
indebted for a valuable hint. He was present when a ridiculous play
on the death of Cato was performed. Cato, it seems, was in love with a
daughter of Scipio. The lady had given her heart to Caesar. The rejected
lover determined to destroy himself. He appeared seated in his library,
a dagger in his hand, a Plutarch and a Tasso before him; and, in this
position, he pronounced a soliloquy before he struck the blow. We are
surprised that so remarkable a circumstance as this should have escaped
the notice of all Addison’s biographers. There cannot, we conceive,
be the smallest doubt that this scene, in spite of its absurdities and
anachronisms, struck the traveller’s imagination, and suggested to him
the thought of bringing Cato on the English stage. It is well known that
about this time he began his tragedy, and that he finished the first
four acts before he returned to England.
On his way from Venice to Rome, he was drawn some miles out of the
beaten road, by a wish to see the smallest independent state in Europe.
On a rock where the snow still lay, though the Italian spring was now
far advanced, was perched the little fortress of San Marino. The roads
which led to the secluded town were so bad that few travellers had ever
visited it, and none had ever published an account of it. Addison
could not suppress a good-natured smile at the simple manners and
institutions of this singular community. But he observed, with the
exultation of a Whig, that the rude mountain tract which formed the
territory of the republic swarmed with an honest, healthy, and contented
peasantry, while the rich plain which surrounded the metropolis of civil
and spiritual tyranny was scarcely less desolate than the uncleared
wilds of America.
At Rome Addison remained on his first visit only long enough to catch
a glimpse of St. Peter’s and of the Pantheon. His haste is the more
extraordinary because the Holy Week was close at hand. He has given
no hint which can enable us to pronounce why he chose to fly from a
spectacle which every year allures from distant regions persons of far
less taste and sensibility than his. Possibly, travelling, as he did, at
the charge of a government distinguished by its enmity to the Church of
Rome, he may have thought that it would be imprudent in him to assist at
the most magnificent rite of that Church. Many eyes would be upon him;
and he might find it difficult to behave in such a manner as to give
offence neither to his patrons in England, nor to those among whom he
resided. Whatever his motives may have been, he turned his back on the
most august and affecting ceremony which is known among men, and posted
along the Appian Way to Naples.
Naples was then destitute of what are now, perhaps, its chief
attractions. The lovely bay and the awful mountain were indeed there.
But a farmhouse stood on the theatre of Herculaneum, and rows of vines
grew over the streets of Pompeii. The temples of Paestum had not indeed
been hidden from the eye of man by any great convulsion of nature;
but, strange to say, their existence was a secret even to artists and
antiquaries. Though situated within a few hours’ journey of a great
capital, where Salvator had not long before painted, and where Vico was
then lecturing, those noble remains were as little known to Europe as
the ruined cities overgrown by the forests of Yucatan. What was to be
seen at Naples, Addison saw. He climbed Vesuvius, explored the tunnel of
Posilipo, and wandered among the vines and almond trees of Capreae. But
neither the wonders of nature, nor those of art, could so occupy his
attention as to prevent him from noticing, though cursorily, the abuses
of the Government and the misery of the people. The great kingdom which
had just descended to Philip the Fifth, was in a state of paralytic
dotage. Even Castile and Aragon were sunk in wretchedness. Yet, compared
with the Italian dependencies of the Spanish crown, Castile and Aragon
might be called prosperous. It is clear that all the observations which
Addison made in Italy tended to confirm him in the political opinions
which he had adopted at home. To the last, he always spoke of foreign
travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his Freeholder, the Tory
fox-hunter asks what travelling is good for, except to teach a man to
jabber French, and to talk against passive obedience.
From Naples, Addison returned to Rome by sea, along the coast which his
favourite Virgil had celebrated. The felucca passed the headland where
the oar and trumpet were placed by the Trojan adventurers on the tomb
of Misenus, and anchored at night under the shelter of the fabled
promontory of Circe. The voyage ended in the Tiber, still overhung with
dark verdure, and still turbid with yellow sand, as when it met the eyes
of Aeneas. From the ruined port of Ostia, the stranger hurried to Rome;
and at Rome he remained during those hot and sickly months when, even in
the Augustan age, all who could make their escape fled from mad dogs and
from streets black with funerals, to gather the first figs of the season
in the country. It is probable that, when he, long after, poured forth
in verse his gratitude to the Providence which had enabled him to
breathe unhurt in tainted air, he was thinking of the August and
September which he passed at Rome.
It was not till the latter end of October that he tore himself away from
the masterpieces of ancient and modern art which are collected in the
city so long the mistress of the world. He then journeyed northward,
passed through Sienna, and for a moment forgot his prejudices in favour
of classic architecture as he looked on the magnificent cathedral. At
Florence he spent some days with the Duke of Shrewsbury, who, cloyed
with the pleasures of ambition, and impatient of its pains, fearing
both parties, and loving neither, had determined to hide in an Italian
retreat talents and accomplishments which, if they had been united with
fixed principles and civil courage, might have made him the foremost man
of his age. These days we are told, passed pleasantly; and we can easily
believe it. For Addison was a delightful companion when he was at his
ease; and the Duke, though he seldom forgot that he was a Talbot, had
the invaluable art of putting at case all who came near him.
Addison gave some time to Florence, and especially to the sculptures
in the Museum, which he preferred even to those of the Vatican. He then
pursued his journey through a country in which the ravages of the last
war were still discernible, and in which all men were looking forward
with dread to a still fiercer conflict. Eugene had already descended
from the Rhaetian Alps, to dispute with Catinat the rich plain of
Lombardy. The faithless ruler of Savoy was still reckoned among the
allies of Lewis. England had not yet actually declared war against
France: but Manchester had left Paris; and the negotiations which
produced the Grand Alliance against the House of Bourbon were in
progress. Under such circumstances, it was desirable for an English
traveller to reach neutral ground without delay. Addison resolved to
cross Mont Cenis. It was December; and the road was very different from
that which now reminds the stranger of the power and genius of Napoleon.
The winter, however, was mild; and the passage was, for those times,
easy. To this journey Addison alluded when, in the ode which we have
already quoted, he said that for him the Divine goodness had warmed the
hoary Alpine hills.
It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he composed his “Epistle”
to his friend Montague, now Lord Halifax. That Epistle, once widely
renowned, is now known only to curious readers, and will hardly be
considered by those to whom it is known as in any perceptible degree
heightening Addison’s fame. It is, however, decidedly superior to any
English composition which he had previously published. Nay, we think
it quite as good as any poem in heroic metre which appeared during the
interval between the death of Dryden and the publication of the Essay on
Criticism. It contains passages as good as the second-rate passages of
Pope, and would have added to the reputation of Parnell or Prior.
But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of the Epistle, it
undoubtedly does honour to the principles and spirit of the author.
Halifax had now nothing to give. He had fallen from power, had been held
up to obloquy, had been impeached by the House of Commons, and, though
his Peers had dismissed the impeachment, had, as it seemed, little
chance of ever again filling high office. The Epistle, written, at such
a time, is one among many proofs that there was no mixture of cowardice
or meanness in the suavity and moderation which distinguished Addison
from all the other public men of those stormy times.
At Geneva, the traveller learned that a partial change of Ministry
had taken place in England, and that the Earl of Manchester had become
Secretary of State. Manchester exerted himself to serve his young
friend. It was thought advisable that an English agent should be near
the person of Eugene in Italy; and Addison, whose diplomatic education
was now finished, was the man selected. He was preparing to enter on his
honourable functions, when all his prospects were for a time darkened by
the death of William the Third.
Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, political, and
religious, to the Whig party. That aversion appeared in the first
measure of her reign. Manchester was deprived of the seals, after he had
held them only a few weeks. Neither Somers nor Halifax was sworn of the
Privy Council. Addison shared the fate of his three patrons. His hopes
of employment in the public service were at an end; his pension was
stopped; and it was necessary for him to support himself by his own
exertions. He became tutor to a young English traveller, and appears to
have rambled with his pupil over great part of Switzerland and Germany.
At this time he wrote his pleasing Treatise on Medals. It was not
published till after his death; but several distinguished scholars saw
the manuscript, and gave just praise to the grace of the style, and to
the learning and ingenuity evinced by the quotations.
From Germany Addison repaired to Holland, where he learned the
melancholy news of his father’s death. After passing some months in
the United Provinces, he returned about the close of the year 1703 to
England. He was there cordially received by his friends, and introduced
by them into the Kit Cat Club, a society in which were collected all the
various talents and accomplishments which then gave lustre to the Whig
party.
Addison was, during some months after his return from the Continent,
hard pressed by pecuniary difficulties. But it was soon in the power of
his noble patrons to serve him effectually. A political change, silent
and gradual, but of the highest importance, was in daily progress. The
accession of Anne had been hailed by the Tories with transports of joy
and hope; and for a time it seemed that the Whigs had fallen, never to
rise again. The throne was surrounded by men supposed to be attached to
the prerogative and to the Church; and among these none stood so high
in the favour of the Sovereign as the Lord Treasurer Godolphin and the
Captain-General Marlborough.
The country gentlemen and country clergymen had fully expected that the
policy of these Ministers would be directly opposed to that which had
been almost constantly followed by William; that the landed interest
would be favoured at the expense of trade; that no addition would be
made to the funded debt; that the privileges conceded to Dissenters by
the late King would be curtailed, if not withdrawn; that the war with
France, if there must be such a war, would, on our part, be almost
entirely naval; and that the Government would avoid close connections
with foreign powers, and, above all, with Holland.
But the country gentlemen and country clergymen were fated to be
deceived, not for the last time. The prejudices and passions which
raged without control in vicarages, in cathedral closes, and in the
manor-houses of fox-hunting squires, were not shared by the chiefs
of the Ministry. Those statesmen saw that it was both for the public
interest, and for their own interest, to adopt a Whig policy, at least
as respected the alliances of the country and the conduct of the war.
But, if the foreign policy of the Whigs were adopted, it was impossible
to abstain from adopting also their financial policy. The natural
consequences followed. The rigid Tories were alienated from the
Government. The votes of the Whigs became necessary to it. The votes
of the Whigs could be secured only by further concessions; and further
concessions the Queen was induced to make.
At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of parties bore a close
analogy to the state of parties in 1826. In 1826, as in 1704, there was
a Tory Ministry divided into two hostile sections. The position of Mr.
Canning and his friends in 1826 corresponded to that which Marlborough
and Godolphin occupied in 1704. Nottingham and Jersey were, in 1704,
what Lord Eldon and Lord Westmoreland were in 1826. The Whigs of 1704
were in a situation resembling that in which the Whigs of 1826 stood. In
1704, Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, Cowper, were not in office. There was
no avowed coalition between them and the moderate Tories. It is probable
that no direct communication tending to such a coalition had yet taken
place; yet all men saw that such a coalition was inevitable, nay, that
it was already half formed. Such, or nearly such, was the state of
things when tidings arrived of the great battle fought at Blenheim on
the 13th August, 1704. By the Whigs the news was hailed with transports
of joy and pride. No fault, no cause of quarrel, could be remembered
by them against the Commander whose genius had, in one day, changed the
face of Europe, saved the Imperial throne, humbled the House of Bourbon,
and secured the Act of Settlement against foreign hostility. The
feeling of the Tories was very different. They could not indeed, without
imprudence, openly express regret at an event so glorious to their
country; but their congratulations were so cold and sullen as to give
deep disgust to the victorious general and his friends.
Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time he could spare from
business he was in the habit of spending at Newmarket or at the
card-table. But he was not absolutely indifferent to poetry; and he
was too intelligent an observer not to perceive that literature was a
formidable engine of political warfare, and that the great Whig leaders
had strengthened their party, and raised their character, by extending
a liberal and judicious patronage to good writers. He was mortified, and
not without reason, by the exceeding badness of the poems which appeared
in honour of the battle of Blenheim. One of these poems has been rescued
from oblivion by the exquisite absurdity of three lines:=
```“Think of two thousand gentlemen at least,
```And each man mounted on his capering beast
```Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals.”=
Where to procure better verses the Treasurer did not know. He understood
how to negotiate a loan, or remit a subsidy: he was also well versed in
the history of running horses and fighting cocks; but his acquaintance
among the poets was very small. He consulted Halifax; but Halifax
affected to decline the office of adviser. He had, he said, done
his best, when he had power, to encourage men whose abilities and
acquirements might do honour to their country. Those times were over.
Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered to pine in obscurity;
and the public money was squandered on the undeserving. “I do know,” he
added, “a gentleman who would celebrate the battle in a manner worthy of
the subject; but I will not name him.” Godolphin, who was expert at the
soft answer which turneth away wrath, and who was under the necessity of
paying court to the Whigs, gently replied that there was too much ground
for Halifax’s complaints, but that what was amiss should in time be
rectified, and that in the meantime the services of a man such as
Halifax had described should be liberally rewarded. Halifax then
mentioned Addison, but, mindful of the dignity as well as of the
pecuniary interest of his friend, insisted that the Minister should
apply in the most courteous manner to Addison himself; and this
Godolphin promised to do.
Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of stairs, over a small
shop in the Haymarket. In this humble lodging he was surprised, on the
morning which followed the conversation between Godolphin and Halifax,
by a visit from no less a person than the Right Honourable Henry Boyle,
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards Lord Carleton. This
highborn Minister had been sent by the Lord Treasurer as ambassador
to the needy poet. Addison readily undertook the proposed task, a task
which, to so good a Whig, was probably a pleasure. When the poem was
little more than half finished, he showed it to Godolphin, who was
delighted with it, and particularly with the famous similitude of the
Angel. Addison was instantly appointed to a Commissionership worth about
two hundred pounds a year, and was assured that this appointment was
only an earnest of greater favours.
The Campaign came forth, and was as much admired by the public as by the
Minister. It pleases us less on the whole than the “Epistle to Halifax.”
Yet it undoubtedly ranks high among the poems which appeared during the
interval between the death of Dryden and the dawn of Pope’s genius.
The chief merit of the Campaign, we think, is that which was noticed by
Johnson, the manly and rational rejection of fiction. The first great
poet whose works have come down to us sang of war long before war became
a science or a trade. If, in his time, there was enmity between two
little Greek towns, each poured forth its crowd of citizens, ignorant
of discipline, and armed with implements of labour rudely turned into
weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a few chiefs, whose wealth
had enabled them to procure good armour, horses, and chariots, and whose
leisure had enabled them to practise military exercises. One such chief,
if he were a man of great strength, agility, and courage, would probably
be more formidable than twenty common men; and the force and dexterity
with which he flung his spear might have no inconsiderable share in
deciding the event of the day. Such were probably the battles with which
Homer was familiar. But Homer related the actions of men of a former
generation, of men who sprang from the Gods, and communed with the Gods
face to face, of men, one of whom could with ease hurl rocks which
two sturdy hinds of a later period would be unable even to lift. He
therefore naturally represented their martial exploits as resembling in
kind, but far surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and most
expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, clad in celestial armour,
drawn by celestial coursers, grasping the spear which none but himself
could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking
Scamander with dead, was only a magnificent exaggeration of the real
hero, who, strong, fearless, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded
by a shield and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, and whirled along by
horses of Thessalian breed, struck down with his own right arm foe after
foe. In all rude societies similar notions are found. There are at this
day countries where the Lifeguardsman Shaw would be considered as a
much greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. Buonaparte loved
to describe the astonishment with which the Mamelukes looked at his
diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his fellows by
his bodily strength, and by the skill with which he managed his horse
and his sabre, could not believe that a man who was scarcely five feet
high, and rode like a butcher, could be the greatest soldier in Europe.
Homer’s descriptions of war had therefore as much truth as poetry
requires. But truth was altogether wanting to the performances of those
who, writing about battles which had scarcely anything in common with
the battles of his times, servilely imitated his manner. The folly of
Silius Italicus, in particular, is positively nauseous. He undertook to
record in verse the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals
of the first order; and his narrative is made up of the hideous wounds
which these generals inflicted with their own hands. Asdrubal flings a
spear which grazes the shoulder of the consul Nero; but Nero sends his
spear into Asdrubal’s side. Fabius slays Thuris and Butes and Maris
and Arses, and the long-haired Adherbes, and the gigantic Thylis,
and Sapharus and Monaesus, and the trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal runs
Perusinus through the groin with a stake, and breaks the backbone of
Telesinus with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was copied in
modern times, and continued to prevail down to the age of Addison.
Several versifiers had described William turning thousands to flight
by his single prowess, and dyeing the Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so
estimable a writer as John Philips, the author of the Splendid Shilling,
represented Marlborough as having won the battle of Blenheim merely by
strength of muscle and skill in fence. The following lines may serve as
an example:=
`````“Churchill viewing where
```The violence of Tallard most prevailed,
```Came to oppose his slaughtering arm.
```With speed precipitate he rode, urging his way
```O’er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds
```Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood,
```Attends his furious course. Around his head
```The glowing balls play innocent, while he
```With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows
```Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood
```He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground
```With headless ranks. What can they do? Or how
```Withstand his wide-destroying sword?”=
Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed from this ridiculous
fashion. He reserved his praise for the qualities which made Marlborough
truly great, energy, sagacity, military science. But, above all,
the poet extolled the firmness of that mind which, in the midst of
confusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined and disposed everything with
the serene wisdom of a higher intelligence.
Here it was that he introduced the famous comparison of Marlborough to
an angel guiding the whirlwind. We will not dispute the general
justice of Johnson’s remarks on this passage. But we must point out
one circumstance which appears to have escaped all the critics. The
extraordinary effect which this simile produced when it first appeared,
and which to the following generation seemed inexplicable, is doubtless
to be chiefly attributed to a line which most readers now regard as a
feeble parenthesis:--
“Such as, of late, o’er pale Britannia pass’d.”
Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. The great tempest of
November 1703, the only tempest which in our latitude has equalled the
rage of a tropical hurricane, had left a dreadful recollection in the
minds of all men. No other tempest was ever in this country the occasion
of a parliamentary address or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been
cast away. Large mansions had been blown down. One Prelate had been
buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had presented
the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of families were still in
mourning. The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the ruins of houses,
still attested, in all the southern counties, the fury of the blast.
The popularity which the simile of the angel enjoyed among Addison’s
contemporaries, has always seemed to us to be a remarkable instance of
the advantage which, in rhetoric and poetry, the particular has over the
general.
Soon after the Campaign, was published Addison’s Narrative of his
Travels in Italy. The first effect produced by this Narrative was
disappointment. The crowd of readers who expected politics and scandal,
speculations on the projects of Victor Amadeus, and anecdotes about
the jollities of convents and the amours of cardinals and nuns, were
confounded by finding that the writer’s mind was much more occupied by
the war between the Trojans and Rutulians than by the war between France
and Austria; and that he seemed to have heard no scandal of later date
than the gallantries of the Empress Faustina. In time, however, the
judgment of the many was overruled by that of the few; and, before the
book was reprinted, it was so eagerly sought that it sold for five times
the original price. It is still read with pleasure: the style is pure
and flowing; the classical quotations and allusions are numerous and
happy; and we are now and then charmed by that singularly humane and
delicate humour in which Addison excelled all men. Yet this agreeable
work, even when considered merely as the history of a literary tour, may
justly be censured on account of its faults of omission. We have already
said that, though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, it contains
scarcely any references to the Latin orators and historians. We must
add, that it contains little, or rather no information, respecting the
history and literature of modern Italy. To the best of our remembrance,
Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni,
Lorenzo de’Medici, or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us, that at Ferrara
he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at Venice he heard the gondoliers
sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far less than
for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apollinaris. The gentle flow of the
Ticin brings a line of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous stream of
Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. But he has not a
word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce; he crosses the wood
of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman, and wanders up and
down Rimini without one thought of Francesca. At Paris, he had eagerly
sought an introduction to Boileau; but he seems not to have been at
all aware that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom
Boileau could not sustain a comparison, of the greatest lyric poet of
modern times, Vincenzio Filicaja. This is the more remarkable, because
Filicaja was the favourite poet of the accomplished Somers, under whose
protection Addison travelled, and to whom the account of the Travels is
dedicated. The truth is, that Addison knew little, and cared less, about
the literature of modern Italy. His favourite models were Latin, his
favourite critics were French. Half the Tuscan poetry that he had read
seemed to him monstrous, and the other half tawdry.
His Travels were followed by the lively opera of Rosamond. This
piece was ill set to music, and therefore failed on the stage, but it
completely succeeded in print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. The
smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which
they bound, is, to our ears at least, very pleasing. We are inclined to
think that if Addison had left heroic couplets to Pope, and blank verse
to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and spirited songs,
his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher than it now does.
Some years after his death, Rosamond was set to new music by Doctor
Arne; and was performed with complete success. Several passages long
retained their popularity, and were daily sung, during the latter part
of George the Second’s reign, at all the harpsichords in England.
While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects, and the prospects of
his party, were constantly becoming brighter and brighter. In the spring
of 1705, the Ministers were freed from the restraint imposed by a
House of Commons in which Tories of the most perverse class had the
ascendency. The elections were favourable to the Whigs. The coalition
which had been tacitly and gradually formed was now openly avowed. The
Great Seal was given to Cowper. Somers and Halifax were sworn of the
Council. Halifax was sent in the following year to carry the decorations
of the Order of the Garter to the Electoral Prince of Hanover, and was
accompanied on this honourable mission by Addison, who had just been
made Under-Secretary of State. The Secretary of State under whom
Addison first served was Sir Charles Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was soon
dismissed, to make room for the most vehement of Whigs, Charles, Earl of
Sunderland. In every department of the State, indeed, the High Churchmen
were compelled to give place to their opponents. At the close of 1707,
the Tories who still remained in office strove to rally, with Harley
at their head. But the attempt, though favoured by the Queen, who had
always been a Tory at heart, and who had now quarrelled with the
Duchess of Marlborough, was unsuccessful. The time was not yet. The
Captain-General was at the height of popularity and glory. The Low
Church party had a majority in Parliament. The country squires and
rectors, though occasionally uttering a savage growl, were for the
most part in a state of torpor, which lasted till they were roused into
activity, and indeed into madness, by the prosecution of Sacheverell.
Harley and his adherents were compelled to retire. The victory of the
Whigs was complete. At the general election of 1708, their strength in
the House of Commons became irresistible; and, before the end of
that year, Somers was made Lord President of the Council, and Wharton
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Commons which was elected
in 1708. But the House of Commons was not the field for him. The
bashfulness of his nature made his wit and eloquence useless in debate.
He once rose, but could not overcome his diffidence, and ever after
remained silent. Nobody can think it strange that a great writer should
fail as a speaker. But many, probably, will think it strange that
Addison’s failure as a speaker should have had no unfavourable effect on
his success as a politician. In our time, a man of high rank and
great fortune might, though speaking very little and very ill, hold
a considerable post. But it would now be inconceivable that a mere
adventurer, a man who, when out of office, must live by his pen, should
in a few years become successively Under-Secretary of State, Chief
Secretary for Ireland, and Secretary of State, without some oratorical
talent. Addison, without high birth, and with little property, rose to
a post which Dukes the heads of the great Houses of Talbot, Russell, and
Bentinck, have thought it an honour to fill. Without opening his lips in
debate, he rose to a post, the highest that Chatham or Fox ever reached.
And this he did before he had been nine years in Parliament. We must
look for the explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar
circumstances in which that generation was placed. During the interval
which elapsed between the time when the Censorship of the Press ceased,
and the time when parliamentary proceedings began to be freely reported,
literary talents were, to a public man, of much more importance,
and oratorical talents of much less importance, than in our time. At
present, the best way of giving rapid and wide publicity to a fact or
an argument is to introduce that fact or argument into a speech made in
Parliament. If a political tract were to appear superior to the Conduct
of the Allies, or to the best numbers of the Freeholder, the circulation
of such a tract would be languid indeed when compared with the
circulation of every remarkable word uttered in the deliberations of
the legislature. A speech made in the House of Commons at four in the
morning is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech made on
the Monday is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and
Aberdeenshire. The orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, has to
a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of
Anne. The best speech could then produce no effect except on those who
heard it. It was only by means of the press that the opinion of the
public without doors could be influenced: and the opinion of the public
without doors could not but be of the highest importance in a country
governed by parliaments, and indeed at that time governed by triennial
parliaments. The pen was therefore a more formidable political engine
than the tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox contended only in Parliament. But
Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and Fox of an earlier period, had
not done half of what was necessary, when they sat down amidst the
acclamations of the House of Commons. They had still to plead their
cause before the country, and this they could do only by means of the
press. Their works are now forgotten. But it is certain that there
were in Grub Street few more assiduous scribblers of Thoughts, Letters,
Answers, Remarks, than these two great chiefs of parties. Pulteney,
when leader of the Opposition, and possessed of thirty thousand a year,
edited the Craftsman. Walpole, though not a man of literary habits, was
the author of at least ten pamphlets, and retouched and corrected many
more. These facts sufficiently show of how great importance literary
assistance then was to the contending parties. St. John was, certainly,
in Anne’s reign, the best Tory speaker; Cowper was probably the best
Whig speaker. But it may well be doubted whether St. John did so much
for the Tories as Swift, and whether Cowper did so much for the Whigs as
Addison. When these things are duly considered, it will not be thought
strange that Addison should have climbed higher in the State than any
other Englishman has ever, by means merely of literary talents, been
able to climb. Swift would, in all probability, have climbed as high,
if he had not been encumbered by his cassock and his pudding sleeves.
As far as the homage of the great went, Swift had as much of it as if he
had been Lord Treasurer.
To the influence which Addison derived from his literary talents was
added all the influence which arises from character. The world, always
ready to think the worst of needy political adventurers, was forced
to make one exception. Restlessness, violence, audacity, laxity of
principle, are the vices ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But
faction itself could not deny that Addison had, through all changes of
fortune, been strictly faithful to his early opinions, and to his early
friends; that his integrity was without stain; that his whole deportment
indicated a fine sense of the becoming; that, in the utmost heat of
controversy, his zeal was tempered by a regard for truth, humanity, and
social decorum; that no outrage could ever provoke him to retaliation
unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman; and that his only faults were a
too sensitive delicacy, and a modesty which amounted to bashfulness.
He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of his time; and much
of his popularity he owed, we believe, to that very timidity which his
friends lamented. That timidity often prevented him from exhibiting his
talents to the best advantage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It averted
that envy which would otherwise have been excited by fame so splendid
and by so rapid an elevation. No man is so great a favourite with the
Public as he who is at once an object of admiration, of respect and
of pity; and such were the feelings which Addison inspired. Those who
enjoyed the privilege of hearing his familiar conversation, declared
with one voice that it was superior even to his writings. The brilliant
Mary Montague said, that she had known all the wits, and that Addison
was the best company in the world. The malignant Pope was forced to own,
that there was a charm in Addison’s talk, which could be found nowhere
else. Swift, when burning with animosity against the Whigs, could not
but confess to Stella that, after all, he had never known any
associate so agreeable as Addison. Steele, an excellent judge of lively
conversation, said that the conversation of Addison was at once the
most polite, and the most mirthful, that could be imagined; that it was
Terence and Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite something which
was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an excellent
judge of serious conversation, said, that when Addison was at his ease,
he went on in a noble strain of thought and language, so as to chain the
attention of every hearer. Nor were Addison’s great colloquial powers
more admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart which appeared in
his conversation. At the same time, it would be too much to say that he
was wholly devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable from
a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one habit which both Swift and
Stella applauded, and which we hardly know how to blame. If his first
attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill received, he changed
his tone, “assented with civil leer,” and lured the flattered coxcomb
deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such was his practice, we should,
we think, have guessed from his works. The Tatler’s criticisms on Mr.
Softly’s sonnet and the Spectator’s dialogue with the politician who is
so zealous for the honour of Lady Q--p--t--s, are excellent specimens of
this innocent mischief.
Such were Addison’s talents for conversation. But his rare gifts were
not exhibited to crowds or to strangers. As soon as he entered a large
company, as soon as he saw an unknown face, his lips were sealed and his
manners became constrained. None who met him only in great assemblies
would have been able to believe that he was the same man who had often
kept a few friends listening and laughing round a table, from the time
when the play ended, till the clock of St. Paul’s in Covent Garden
struck four. Yet, even at such a table, he was not seen to the best
advantage. To enjoy his conversation in the highest perfection, it was
necessary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his own phrase,
think aloud. “There is no such thing,” he used to say, “as real
conversation, but between two persons.”
This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungraceful nor unamiable,
led Addison into the two most serious faults which can with justice be
imputed to him. He found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine
intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into convivial excess.
Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the
most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of
ill-breeding, that it was almost essential to the character of a fine
gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground; and almost
all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing.
Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne’s reign, we should no
more think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, than that he
wore a long wig and a sword.
To the excessive modesty of Addison’s nature, we must ascribe another
fault which generally arises from a very different cause. He became
a little too fond of seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of
admirers, to whom he was as a King or rather as a God. All these men
were far inferior to him in ability, and some of them had very serious
faults. Nor did those faults escape his observation; for, if ever there
was an eye which saw through and through men, it was the eye of
Addison. But, with the keenest observation, and the finest sense of the
ridiculous, he had a large charity. The feeling with which he looked on
most of his humble companions was one of benevolence, slightly tinctured
with contempt. He was at perfect case in their company; he was grateful
for their devoted attachment; and he loaded them with benefits. Their
veneration for him appears to have exceeded that with which Johnson was
regarded by Boswell, or Warburton by Hurd. It was not in the power of
adulation to turn such a head, or deprave such a heart, as Addison’s.
But it must in candour be admitted that he contracted some of the faults
which can scarcely be avoided by any person who is so unfortunate as to
be the oracle of a small literary coterie.
One member of this little society was Eustace Budgell, a young Templar
of some literature, and a distant relation of Addison. There was at this
time no stain on the character of Budgell, and it is not improbable that
his career would have been prosperous and honourable, if the life of his
cousin had been prolonged. But when the master was laid in the grave,
the disciple broke loose from all restraint, descended rapidly from one
degree of vice and misery to another, ruined his fortune by follies,
attempted to repair it by crimes, and at length closed a wicked and
unhappy life by self-murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched man,
gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, retained his affection and
veneration for Addison, and recorded those feelings in the last lines
which he traced before he hid himself from infamy under London Bridge.
Another of Addison’s favourite companions was Ambrose Phillips, a good
Whig and a middling poet, who had the honour of bringing into fashion
a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby
Pamby. But the most remarkable members of the little senate, as Pope
long afterwards called it, were Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell.
Steele had known Addison from childhood. They had been together at the
Charterhouse and at Oxford; but circumstances had then, for a time,
separated them widely. Steele had left college without taking a degree,
had been disinherited by a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had
served in the army, had tried to find the philosopher’s stone, and had
written a religious treatise and several comedies. He was one of those
people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. His temper
was sweet, his affections warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong,
and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting; in
inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, he
was a man of piety and honour; in practice, he was much of the rake and
a little of the swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that it was
not easy to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists
felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into
a spunging-house or drank himself into a fever. Addison regarded Steele
with kindness not unmingled with scorn, tried, with little success, to
keep him out of scrapes, introduced him to the great, procured a good
place for him, corrected his plays, and, though by no means rich, lent
him large sums of money. One of these loans appears, from a letter dated
in August 1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary
transactions probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said that, on
one occasion, Steele’s negligence, or dishonesty, provoked Addison to
repay himself by the help of a bailiff. We cannot join with Miss Aikin
in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it from Savage, who heard it from
Steele. Few private transactions which took place a hundred and twenty
years ago, are proved by stronger evidence than this. But we can by no
means agree with those who condemn Addison’s severity. The most amiable
of mankind may well be moved to indignation, when what he has earned
hardly, and lent with great inconvenience to himself, for the purpose of
relieving a friend in distress, is squandered with insane profusion.
We will illustrate our meaning by an example, which is not the less
striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in Fielding’s
Amelia, is represented as the most benevolent of human beings; yet he
takes in execution, not only the goods, but the person of his friend
Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong measure because he has been
informed that Booth, while pleading poverty as an excuse for not paying
just debts has been buying fine jewellery, and setting up a coach. No
person who is well acquainted with Steele’s life and correspondence can
doubt that he behaved quite as ill to Addison as Booth was accused of
behaving to Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little doubt, was
something like this:--A letter comes to Addison, imploring help in
pathetic terms, and promising reformation and speedy repayment. Poor
Dick declares that he has not an inch of candle, or a bushel of coals,
or credit with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved.
He determines to deny himself some medals which are wanting to his
series of the twelve Caesars; to put off buying the new edition of
Bayle’s Dictionary; and to wear his old sword and buckles another year.
In this way he manages to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The
next day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and ladies
assembled. The fiddles are playing. The table is groaning under
Champagne, Burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange that a
man whose kindness is thus abused, should send sheriff’s officers to
reclaim what is due to him?
Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who had introduced himself
to public notice by writing a most ingenious and graceful little poem
in praise of the opera of Rosamond. He deserved, and at length attained,
the first place in Addison’s friendship. For a time Steele and Tickell
were on good terms. But they loved Addison too much to love each other,
and at length became as bitter enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil.