At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and

appointed Addison Chief Secretary. Addison was consequently under

the necessity of quitting London for Dublin. Besides the chief

secretaryship, which was then worth about two thousand pounds a year, he

obtained a patent appointing him keeper of the Irish Records for life,

with a salary of three or four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his

cousin in the capacity of private secretary.

Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but Whiggism. The

Lord-Lieutenant was not only licentious and corrupt, but was

distinguished from other libertines and jobbers by a callous impudence

which presented the strongest contrast to the Secretary’s gentleness and

delicacy. Many parts of the Irish administration at this time appear to

have deserved serious blame. But against Addison there was not a murmur.

He long afterwards asserted, what all the evidence which we have

ever seen tends to prove, that his diligence and integrity gained the

friendship of all the most considerable persons in Ireland.

The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland has, we think, wholly

escaped the notice of all his biographers. He was elected member for

the borough of Cavan in the summer of 1709; and in the journals of

two sessions his name frequently occurs. Some of the entries appear to

indicate that he so far overcame his timidity as to make speeches. Nor

is this by any means improbable; for the Irish House of Commons was a

far less formidable audience than the English House; and many tongues

which were tied by fear in the greater assembly became fluent in the

smaller. Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of losing the fame

gained by his single speech, sat mute at Westminster during forty years,

spoke with great effect at Dublin when he was Secretary to Lord Halifax.

While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred to which he owes his

high and permanent rank among British writers. As yet his fame rested

on performances which, though highly respectable, were not built for

duration, and which would, if he had produced nothing else, have now

been almost forgotten, on some excellent Latin verses, on some English

verses which occasionally rose above mediocrity, and on a book of

travels, agreeably written, but not indicating any extraordinary

powers of mind. These works showed him to be a man of taste, sense,

and learning. The time had come when he was to prove himself a man of

genius, and to enrich our literature with compositions which will live

as long as the English language.

In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary project, of which he

was far indeed from foreseeing the consequences. Periodical papers

had during many years been published in London. Most of these were

political; but in some of them questions of morality, taste, and love

casuistry had been discussed. The literary merit of these works was

small indeed; and even their names are now known only to the curious.

Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by Sunderland, at the request, it

is said, of Addison, and thus had access to foreign intelligence earlier

and more authentic than was in those times within the reach of an

ordinary news-writer. This circumstance seems to have suggested to him

the scheme of publishing a periodical paper on a new plan. It was to

appear on the days on which the post left London for the country, which

were, in that generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It was

to contain the foreign news, accounts of theatrical representations, and

the literary gossip of Will’s and of the Grecian. It was also to contain

remarks on the fashionable topics of the day, compliments to beauties,

pasquinades on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular preachers. The

aim of Steele does not appear to have been at first higher than this.

He was not ill qualified to conduct the work which he had planned. His

public intelligence he drew from the best sources. He knew the town,

and had paid dear for his knowledge. He had read much more than the

dissipated men of that time were in the habit of reading. He was a rake

among scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style was easy and not

incorrect; and, though his wit and humour were of no high order, his

gay animal spirits imparted to his compositions an air of vivacity

which ordinary readers could hardly distinguish from comic genius. His

writings have been well compared to those light wines which, though

deficient in body and flavour, are yet a pleasant small drink, if not

kept too long, or carried too far.

Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imaginary person, almost

as well known in that age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in

ours. Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet

against Partridge, the maker of almanacks. Partridge had been fool

enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff had rejoined in a second

pamphlet still more diverting than the first. All the wits had combined

to keep up the joke, and the town was long in convulsions of laughter.

Steele determined to employ the name which this controversy had made

popular; and, in 1709, it was announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire,

Astrologer, was about to publish a paper called the Tatler.

Addison had not been consulted about this scheme: but as soon as he

heard of it, he determined to give his assistance. The effect of that

assistance cannot be better described than in Steele’s own words. “I

fared,” he said, “like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful

neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once

called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.” “The

paper,” he says elsewhere, “was advanced indeed. It was raised to a

greater thing than I intended it.”

It is probable that Addison, when he sent across St. George’s channel

his first contributions to the Tatler, had no notion of the extent and

variety of his own powers. He was the possessor of a vast mine, rich

with a hundred ores. But he had been acquainted only with the least

precious part of his treasures, and had hitherto contented himself

with producing sometimes copper and sometimes lead, intermingled with a

little silver. All at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on an

inexhaustible vein of the finest gold.

The mere choice and arrangement of his words would have sufficed to make

his essays classical. For never, not even by Dryden, not even by Temple,

had the English language been written with such sweetness, grace, and

facility. But this was the smallest part of Addison’s praise. Had he

clothed his thoughts in the half French style of Horace Walpole, or in

the half Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half German jargon of the

present day, his genius would have triumphed over all faults of manner.

As a moral satirist he stands unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and

Spectators were equalled in their own kind, we should be inclined to

guess that it must have been by the lost comedies of Menander.

In wit properly so called, Addison was not inferior to Cowley or Butler.

No single ode of Cowley contains so many happy analogies as are crowded

into the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller; and we would undertake to collect

from the Spectators as great a number of ingenious illustrations as

can be found in Hudibras. The still higher faculty of invention Addison

possessed in still larger measure. The numerous fictions, generally

original, often wild and grotesque, but always singularly graceful and

happy, which are found in his essays, fully entitle him to the rank of a

great poet, a rank to which his metrical compositions give him no

claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of all the shades of human

character, he stands in the first class. And what he observed he had

the art of communicating in two widely different ways. He could describe

virtues, vices, habits, whims, as well as Clarendon. But he could do

something better. He could call human beings into existence, and make

them exhibit themselves. If we wish to find anything more vivid

than Addison’s best portraits, we must go either to Shakspeare or to

Cervantes.

But what shall we say of Addison’s humour, of his sense of the

ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense in others, and of

drawing mirth from incidents which occur every day, and from little

peculiarities of temper and manner, such as may be found in every man?

We feel the charm: we give ourselves up to it; but we strive in vain to

analyse it.

Perhaps the best way of describing Addison’s peculiar pleasantry is to

compare it with the pleasantry of some other great satirists. The three

most eminent masters of the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth

century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the

three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be questioned. But

each of them, within his own domain, was supreme.

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is without disguise

or restraint. He gambols; he grins; he shakes his sides; he points the

finger; he turns up the nose; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of

Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never joins

in it. He appears in his works such as he appeared in society. All the

company are convulsed with merriment, while the Dean, the author of all

the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness of aspect,

and gives utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with

the air of a man reading the commination service.

The manner of Addison is as remote from that of Swift as from that of

Voltaire. He neither laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish

wit, throws a double portion of severity into his countenance while

laughing inwardly; but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look of

demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost

imperceptible elevation of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the

lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. It

is that of a gentleman, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous is

constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding.

We own that the humour of Addison is, in our opinion, of a more

delicious flavour than the humour of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus

much, at least, is certain, that both Swift and Voltaire have been

successfully mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to mimic

Addison. The letter of the Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over,

and imposed, during a long time, on the Academicians of Paris. There

are passages in Arbuthnot’s satirical works which we, at least, cannot

distinguish from Swift’s best writing. But of the many eminent men

who have made Addison their model, though several have copied his mere

diction with happy effect, none has been able to catch the tone of his

pleasantry. In the World, in the Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the

Lounger, there are numerous Papers written in obvious imitation of his

Tatlers and Spectators. Most of those papers have some merit; many are

very lively and amusing; but there is not a single one which could be

passed off as Addison’s on a critic of the smallest perspicacity.

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift, from Voltaire,

from almost all the other great masters of ridicule, is the grace,

the nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even in his merriment.

Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into misanthropy,

characterises the works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, indeed,

not inhuman; but he venerated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of

art nor in the purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First

Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see anything but

subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more

monkey-like was his grimacing and chattering. The mirth of Swift is the

mirth of Mephistopheles; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If,

as, Soame Jenyns oddly imagined, a portion of the happiness of Seraphim

and just men made perfect be derived from an exquisite perception of

the ludicrous, their mirth must surely be none other than the mirth

of Addison; a mirth consistent with tender compassion for all that is

frail, and with profound reverence for all that is sublime. Nothing

great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doctrine of natural or

revealed religion, has ever been associated by Addison with any

degrading idea. His humanity is without a parallel in literary history.

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without

abusing it. No kind of power is more formidable than the power of making

men ridiculous; and that power Addison possessed in boundless measure.

How grossly that power was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is well

known. But of Addison it may be confidently affirmed that he has

blackened no man’s character, nay, that it would be difficult if not

impossible, to find in all the volumes which he has left us a single

taunt which can be called ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had detractors,

whose malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as

that which men, not superior to him in genius, wreaked on Bettesworth

and on Franc de Pompignan. He was a politician; he was the best writer

of his party; he lived in times of fierce excitement, in times when

persons of high character and station stooped to scurrility such as is

now practised only by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and no

example could induce him to return railing for railing.

On the service which his Essays rendered to morality it is difficult to

speak too highly. It is true that, when the Tatler appeared, that age of

outrageous profaneness and licentiousness which followed the Restoration

had passed away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres into something

which, compared with the excesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be

called decency. Yet there still lingered in the public mind a pernicious

notion that there was some connection between genius and profligacy,

between the domestic virtues and the sullen formality of the Puritans.

That error it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He taught the

nation that the faith and the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be

found in company with wit more sparkling than the wit of Congreve, and

with humour richer than the humour of Vanbrugh. So effectually indeed,

did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed

against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency

has always been considered among us as the mark of a fool. And this

revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever effected by any

satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, without writing one

personal lampoon.

In the earlier contributions of Addison to the Tatler his peculiar

powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from the first, his superiority

to all his coadjutors was evident. Some of his later Tatlers are fully

equal to anything that he ever wrote. Among the portraits we most

admire “Tom Folio,” “Ned Softly,” and the “Political Upholsterer.” “The

Proceedings of the Court of Honour,” the “Thermometer of Zeal,”

the story of the “Frozen Words,” the “Memoirs of the Shilling,” are

excellent specimens of that ingenious and lively species of fiction in

which Addison excelled all men. There is one still better paper of the

same class. But though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three years ago,

was probably thought as edifying as one of Smalridge’s sermons, we dare

not indicate it to the squeamish readers of the nineteenth century.

During the session of Parliament which commenced in November 1709, and

which the impeachment of Sacheverell has made memorable, Addison appears

to have resided in London, The Tatler was now more popular than any

periodical paper had ever been; and his connection with it was generally

known. It was not known, however, that almost everything good in the

Tatler was his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty numbers which we

owe to him were not merely the best, but so decidedly the best that any

five of them are more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in which

he had no share.

He required, at this time, all the solace which he could derive from

literary success. The Queen had always disliked the Whigs. She had

during some years disliked the Marlborough family. But, reigning by a

disputed title, she could not venture directly to oppose herself to a

majority of both Houses of Parliament; and, engaged as she was in a war

on the event of which her own Crown was staked, she could not venture

to disgrace a great and successful general. But at length, in the year

1710, the causes which had restrained her from showing her aversion

to the Low Church party ceased to operate. The trial of Sacheverell

produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely less violent than the

outbreaks which we can ourselves remember in 1820 and 1831. The country

gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rabble of the towns, were all, for

once, on the same side. It was clear that, if a general election took

place before the excitement abated, the Tories would have a majority.

The services of Marlborough had been so splendid that they were no

longer necessary. The Queen’s throne was secure from all attack on the

part of Lewis. Indeed, it seemed much more likely that the English and

German armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and Marli than that

a Marshal of France would bring back the Pretender to St. James’s.

The Queen, acting by the advice of Harley, determined to dismiss her

servants. In June the change commenced. Sunderland was the first who

fell. The Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs tried, during a few

weeks, to persuade themselves that her Majesty had acted only from

personal dislike to the Secretary, and that she meditated no further

alteration. But, early in August, Godolphin was surprised by a letter

from Anne, which directed him to break his white staff. Even after this

event, the irresolution or dissimulation of Harley kept up the hopes

of the Whigs during another month; and then the ruin became rapid and

violent. The Parliament was dissolved. The Ministers were turned out.

The Tories were called to office. The tide of popularity ran violently

in favour of the High Church party. That party, feeble in the late House

of Commons, was now irresistible. The power which the Tories had thus

suddenly acquired, they used with blind and stupid ferocity. The howl

which the whole pack set up for prey and for blood appalled even him who

had roused and unchained them. When, at this distance of time, we calmly

review the conduct of the discarded Ministers, we cannot but feel a

movement of indignation at the injustice with which they were treated.

No body of men had ever administered the Government with more energy,

ability, and moderation; and their success had been proportioned to

their wisdom. They had saved Holland and Germany. They had humbled

France. They had, as it seemed, all but torn Spain from the House of

Bourbon. They had made England the first power in Europe. At home

they had united England and Scotland. They had respected the rights of

conscience and the liberty of the subject. They retired, leaving their

country at the height of prosperity and glory. And yet they were pursued

to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy as was never raised against

the Government which threw away thirteen colonies, or against the

Government which sent a gallant army to perish in the ditches of

Walcheren.

None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck than Addison. He

had just sustained some heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which

we are imperfectly informed, when the Secretaryship was taken from him.

He had reason to believe that he should also be deprived of the

small Irish office which he held by patent. He had just resigned his

Fellowship. It seems probable that he had already ventured to raise

his eyes to a great lady, and that, while his political friends were

in power, and while his own fortunes were rising, he had been, in the

phrase of the romances which were then fashionable, permitted to

hope. But Mr. Addison the ingenious writer, and Mr. Addison the Chief

Secretary, were, in her ladyship’s opinion, two very different persons.

All these calamities united, however, could not disturb the serene

cheerfulness of a mind conscious of innocence, and rich in its own

wealth. He told his friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought

to admire his philosophy, that he had lost at once his fortune, his

place, his Fellowship, and his mistress, that he must think of turning

tutor again, and yet that his spirits were as good as ever.

He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which his friends had

incurred, he had no share. Such was the esteem with which he was

regarded that, while the most violent measures were taken for the

purpose of forcing Tory members on Whig corporations, he was returned to

Parliament without even a contest. Swift, who was now in London, and who

had already determined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these

remarkable words. “The Tories carry it among the new members six to one.

Mr. Addison’s election has passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if

he had a mind to be king he would hardly be refused.”

The goodwill with which the Tories regarded Addison is the more

honourable to him, because it had not been purchased by any concession

on his part. During the general election he published a political

journal, entitled the Whig Examiner. Of that journal it may be

sufficient to say that Johnson, in spite of his strong political

prejudices, pronounced it to be superior in wit to any of Swift’s

writings on the other side. When it ceased to appear, Swift, in a letter

to Stella, expressed his exultation at the death of so formidable an

antagonist. “He might well rejoice,” says Johnson, “at the death of that

which he could not have killed.” “On no occasion,” he adds, “was

the genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and on none did the

superiority of his powers more evidently appear.”

The only use which Addison appears to have made of the favour with which

he was regarded by the Tories was to save some of his friends from the

general ruin of the Whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation

which made it his duty to take a decided part in politics. But the case

of Steele and of Ambrose Phillips was different. For Phillips, Addison

even condescended to solicit, with what success we have not ascertained.

Steele held two places. He was Gazetteer, and he was also a Commissioner

of Stamps. The Gazette was taken from him. But he was suffered to retain

his place in the Stamp Office, on an implied understanding that he

should not be active against the new Government; and he was, during

more than two years, induced by Addison to observe this armistice with

tolerable fidelity.

Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent on politics, and the article

of news which had once formed about one-third of his paper, altogether

disappeared. The Tatler had completely changed its character. It was

now nothing but a series of essays on books, morals, and manners. Steele

therefore resolved to bring it to a close, and to commence a new work on

an improved plan. It was announced that this new work would be published

daily. The undertaking was generally regarded as bold, or rather rash;

but the event amply justified, the confidence with which Steele relied

on the fertility of Addison’s genius. On the second of January 1711,

appeared the last Tatler. At the beginning of March following appeared

the first of an incomparable series of papers containing observations on

life and literature by an imaginary Spectator.

The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by Addison; and it is

not easy to doubt that the portrait was meant to be in some features a

likeness of the painter. The Spectator is a gentleman who, after passing

a studious youth at the university, has travelled on classic ground, and

has bestowed much attention on curious points of antiquity. He has,

on his return, fixed his residence in London, and has observed all

the forms of life which are to be found in that great city, has daily

listened to the wits of Will’s, has smoked with the philosophers of

the Grecian, and has mingled with the parsons at Child’s, and with the

politicians at the St. James’s. In the morning, he often listens to the

hum of the Exchange; in the evening, his face is constantly to be seen

in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre. But an insurmountable bashfulness

prevents him from opening his mouth, except in a small circle of

intimate friends.

These friends were first sketched by Steele. Four of the club,

the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, and the merchant, were

uninteresting figures, fit only for a background. But the other two, an

old country baronet and an old town rake, though not delineated with

a very delicate pencil, had some good strokes. Addison took the rude

outlines into his own hands, retouched them, coloured them, and is in

truth the creator of the Sir Roger de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb

with whom we are all familiar.

The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be both original and

eminently happy. Every valuable essay in the series may be read with

pleasure separately; yet the five or six hundred essays form a whole,

and a whole which has the interest of a novel. It must be remembered,

too, that at that time no novel, giving a lively and powerful picture

of the common life and manners of England, had appeared. Richardson was

working as a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds’ nests. Smollett

was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, which connects together

the Spectator’s Essays, gave to our ancestors their first taste of an

exquisite and untried pleasure. That narrative was indeed constructed

with no art or labour. The events were such events as occur every day.

Sir Roger comes up to town to see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet always

called Prince Eugene, goes with the Spectator on the water to Spring

Gardens, walks among the tombs in the Abbey, and is frightened by the

Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far as to go to the theatre

when the Distressed Mother is acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the

summer to Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old butler,

and the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will Wimble, rides to the

assizes, and hears a point of law discussed by Tom Touchy. At last a

letter from the honest butler brings to the club the news that Sir Roger

is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The club breaks

up; and the Spectator resigns his functions. Such events can hardly be

said to form a plot; yet they are related with such truth, such grace,

such wit, such humour, such pathos, such knowledge of the human heart,

such knowledge of the ways of the world, that they charm us on the

hundredth perusal. We have not the least doubt that if Addison had

written a novel on an extensive plan, it would have been superior to any

that we possess. As it is, he is entitled to be considered, not only

as the greatest of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the

greatest English novelists.

We say this of Addison alone; for Addison is the Spectator. About

three-sevenths of the work are his; and it is no exaggeration to say,

that his worst essay is as good as the best essay of his coadjutors.

His best essays approach near to absolute perfection; nor is their

excellence more wonderful than their variety. His invention never seems

to flag; nor is he ever under the necessity of repeating himself, or

of wearing out a subject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us

after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that there was

only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first

sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of

nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as lively

and ingenious as Lucian’s Auction of Lives; on the Tuesday an Eastern

apologue, as richly coloured as the Tales of Scherezade; on the

Wednesday, a character described with the skill of La Bruyere; on the

Thursday, a scene from common life, equal to the best chapters in the

Vicar of Wakefield; on the Friday, some sly Horatian pleasantry on

fashionable follies, on hoops, patches, or puppet shows; and on the

Saturday a religious meditation, which will bear a comparison with the

finest passages in Massillon.

It is dangerous to select where there is so much that deserves the

highest praise. We will venture, however, to say, that any person who

wishes to form a just notion of the extent and variety of Addison’s

powers, will do well to read at one sitting the following papers, the

two “Visits to the Abbey,” the “Visit to the Exchange,” the “Journal of

the Retired Citizen,” the “Vision of Mirza,” the “Transmigrations of Pug

the Monkey,” and the “Death of Sir Roger de Coverley.” [Nos. 26, 329,

69, 317, 159, 343, 517. These papers are all in the first seven volumes.

The eighth must be considered as a separate work.]

The least valuable of Addison’s contributions to the Spectator are, in

the judgment of our age, his critical papers. Yet his critical papers

are always luminous, and often ingenious. The very worst of them must be

regarded as creditable to him, when the character of the school in which

he had been trained is fairly considered. The best of them were much too

good for his readers. In truth, he was not so far behind our generation

as he was before his own. No essays in the Spectator were more censured

and derided than those in which he raised his voice against the contempt

with which our fine old ballads were regarded, and showed the scoffers

that the same gold which, burnished and polished, gives lustre to the

Aeneid and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the rude dross of Chevy

Chace.

It is not strange that the success of the Spectator should have been

such as no similar work has ever obtained. The number of copies daily

distributed was at first three thousand. It subsequently increased, and

had risen to near four thousand when the stamp tax was imposed. The

tax was fatal to a crowd of journals. The Spectator, however, stood its

ground, doubled its price, and, though its circulation fell off, still

yielded a large revenue both to the State and to the authors. For

particular papers, the demand was immense; of some, it is said, twenty

thousand copies were required. But this was not all. To have the

Spectator served up every morning with the bohea and rolls was a luxury

for the few. The majority were content to wait till essays enough had

appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies of each volume were

immediately taken off, and new editions were called for. It must be

remembered, that the population of England was then hardly a third

of what it now is. The number of Englishmen who were in the habit of

reading, was probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shopkeeper or a

farmer who found any pleasure in literature, was a rarity. Nay, there

was doubtless more than one knight of the shire whose country seat did

not contain ten books, receipt books and books on farriery included.

In these circumstances, the sale of the Spectator must be considered as

indicating a popularity quite as great as that of the most successful

works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in our own time.

At the close of 1712 the Spectator ceased to appear. It was probably

felt that the short-faced gentleman and his club had been long enough

before the town; and that it was time to withdraw them, and to replace

them by a new set of characters. In a few weeks the first number of the

Guardian was published. But the Guardian was unfortunate both in its

birth and in its death. It began in dulness, and disappeared in a

tempest of faction. The original plan was bad. Addison contributed

nothing till sixty-six numbers had appeared; and it was then impossible

to make the Guardian what the Spectator had been. Nestor Ironside and

the Miss Lizards were people to whom even he could impart no interest.

He could only furnish some excellent little essays, both serious and

comic; and this he did.

Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guardian, during the first two

months of its existence is a question which has puzzled the editors and

biographers, but which seems to us to admit of a very easy solution. He

was then engaged in bringing his Cato on the stage.

The first four acts of this drama had been lying in his desk since his

return from Italy. His modest and sensitive nature shrank from the risk

of a public and shameful failure; and, though all who saw the manuscript

were loud in praise, some thought it possible that an audience might

become impatient even of very good rhetoric, and advised Addison to

print the play without hazarding a representation. At length, after many

fits of apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of his political

friends, who hoped that the public would discover some analogy between

the followers of Caesar and the Tories, between Sempronius and the

apostate Whigs, between Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties

of Rome, and the band of patriots who still stood firm around Halifax

and Wharton.

Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury Lane Theatre, without

stipulating for any advantage to himself. They, therefore, thought

themselves bound to spare no cost in scenery and dresses. The

decorations, it is true, would not have pleased the skilful eye of Mr.

Macready. Juba’s waistcoat blazed with gold lace; Marcia’s hoop was

worthy of a Duchess on the birthday; and Cato wore a wig worth fifty

guineas. The prologue was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly a

dignified and spirited composition. The part of the hero was excellently

played by Booth. Steele undertook to pack a house. The boxes were in

a blaze with the stars of the Peers in Opposition. The pit was crowded

with attentive and friendly listeners from the Inns of Court and the

literary coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor of the Bank

of England, was at the head of a powerful body of auxiliaries from

the city, warm men and true Whigs, but better known at Jonathan’s and

Garraway’s than in the haunts of wits and critics.

These precautions were quite superfluous. The Tories, as a body,

regarded Addison with no unkind feelings. Nor was it for their interest,

professing, as they did, profound reverence for law and prescription,

and abhorrence both of popular insurrections and of standing armies, to

appropriate to themselves reflections thrown on the great military chief

and demagogue, who, with the support of the legions and of the

common people, subverted all the ancient institutions of his country.

Accordingly, every shout that was raised by the members of the Kit Cat

was echoed by the High Churchmen of the October; and the curtain at

length fell amidst thunders of unanimous applause.

The delight and admiration of the town were described by the Guardian

in terms which we might attribute to partiality, were it not that the

Examiner, the organ of the Ministry, held similar language. The Tories,

indeed, found much to sneer at in the conduct of their opponents.

Steele had on this, as on other occasions, shown more zeal than taste or

judgment. The honest citizens who marched under the orders of Sir Gibby,

as he was facetiously called, probably knew better when to buy and when

to sell stock than when to clap and when to hiss at a play, and incurred

some ridicule by making the hypocritical Sempronius their favourite, and

by giving to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed on

the temperate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, too, who had the incredible

effrontery to applaud the lines about flying from prosperous vice and

from the power of impious men to a private station, did not escape the

sarcasms of those who justly thought that he could fly from nothing

more vicious or impious than himself. The epilogue, which was written

by Garth, a zealous Whig, was severely and not unreasonably censured

as ignoble and out of place. But Addison was described, even by the

bitterest Tory writers, as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose

friendship many persons of both parties were happy, and whose name ought

not to be mixed up with factious squabbles.

Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig party was disturbed, the

most severe and happy was Bolingbroke’s. Between two acts, he sent for

Booth to his box, and presented him, before the whole theatre, with

a purse of fifty guineas for defending the cause of liberty so well

against the perpetual Dictator. This was a pungent allusion to the

attempt which Marlborough had made, not long before his fall, to obtain

a patent, creating him Captain-General for life.

It was April; and in April, a hundred and thirty years ago, the London

season was thought to be far advanced. During a whole month, however,

Cato was performed to overflowing houses, and brought into the treasury

of the theatre twice the gains of an ordinary spring. In the summer the

Drury Lane Company went down to the Act at Oxford, and there, before

an audience which retained an affectionate remembrance of Addison’s

accomplishments and virtues, his tragedy was acted during several days.

The gownsmen began to besiege the theatre in the forenoon, and by one in

the afternoon all the seats were filled.

About the merits of the piece which had so extraordinary an effect,

the public, we suppose, has made up its mind. To compare it with the

masterpieces of the Attic stage, with the great English dramas of the

time of Elizabeth, or even with the productions of Schiller’s manhood,

would be absurd indeed. Yet it contains excellent dialogue and

declamation, and among plays fashioned on the French model, must be

allowed to rank high; not indeed with Athalie, or Saul; but, we think

not below Cinna, and certainly above any other English tragedy of the

same school, above many of the plays of Corneille, above many of the

plays of Voltaire and Alfieri, and above some plays of Racine. Be this

as it may, we have little doubt that Cato did as much as the Tatlers,

Spectators, and Freeholders united, to raise Addison’s fame among his

contemporaries.

The modesty and good nature of the successful dramatist had tamed

even the malignity of faction. But literary envy, it should seem, is

a fiercer passion than party spirit. It was by a zealous Whig that the

fiercest attack on the Whig tragedy was made. John Dennis published

Remarks on Cato, which were written with some acuteness and with

much coarseness and asperity. Addison neither defended himself nor

retaliated. On many points he had an excellent defence; and, nothing

would have been easier than to retaliate; for Dennis had written bad

odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies: he had, moreover, a larger share than

most men of those infirmities and eccentricities which excite laughter;

and Addison’s power of turning either an absurd book or an absurd man

into ridicule was unrivalled. Addison, however, serenely conscious

of his superiority, looked with pity on his assailant, whose temper,

naturally irritable and gloomy, had been soured by want, by controversy,

and by literary failures.

But among the young candidates for Addison’s favour there was one

distinguished by talents from the rest, and distinguished, we fear, not

less by malignity and insincerity. Pope was only twenty-five. But his

powers had expanded to their full maturity; and his best poem, the Rape

of the Lock, had recently been published. Of his genius, Addison had

always expressed high admiration. But Addison had early discerned, what

might indeed have been discerned by an eye less penetrating than his,

that the diminutive, crooked, sickly boy was eager to revenge himself

on society for the unkindness of nature. In the Spectator, the Essay on

Criticism had been praised with cordial warmth; but a gentle hint had

been added, that the writer of so excellent a poem would have done well

to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, though evidently more galled

by the censure than gratified by the praise, returned thanks for the

admonition, and promised to profit by it. The two writers continued to

exchange civilities, counsel, and small good offices. Addison publicly

extolled Pope’s miscellaneous pieces; and Pope furnished Addison with a

prologue. This did not last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had injured

without provocation. The appearance of the Remarks on Cato gave the

irritable poet an opportunity of venting his malice under the show of

friendship; and such an opportunity could not but be welcome to a nature

which was implacable in enmity, and which always preferred the tortuous

to the straight path. He published, accordingly, the Narrative of the

Frenzy of John Dennis. But Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great

master of invective and sarcasm: he could dissect a character in terse

and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis: but of dramatic talent

he was altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon on Dennis, such

as that on Atticus, or that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been

crushed. But Pope writing dialogue resembled--to borrow Horace’s imagery

and his own--a wolf, which, instead of biting, should take to kicking,

or a monkey which should try to sting. The Narrative is utterly

contemptible. Of argument there is not even the show; and the jests

are such as, if they were introduced into a farce, would call forth the

hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about the drama; and the

nurse thinks that he is calling for a dram. “There is,” he cries, “no

peripetia in the tragedy, no change of fortune, no change at all.”

“Pray, good sir, be not angry,” says the old woman; “I’ll fetch change.”

This is not exactly the pleasantry of Addison.

There can be no doubt that Addison saw through this officious zeal, and

felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet

could do him no good, and, if he were thought to have any hand in it,

must do him harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridicule, he

had never even in self-defence, used those powers inhumanly or

uncourteously; and he was not disposed to let others make his fame and

his interests a pretext under which they might commit outrages from

which he had himself constantly abstained. He accordingly declared that

he had no concern in the Narrative, that he disapproved of it, and that

if he answered the Remarks, he could answer them like a gentleman; and

he took care to communicate this to Dennis. Pope was bitterly mortified;

and to this transaction we are inclined to ascribe the hatred with which

he ever after regarded Addison.

In September 1713 the Guardian ceased to appear. Steele had gone mad

about politics. A general election had just taken place: he had been

chosen member for Stockbridge; and he fully expected to play a first

part in Parliament. The immense success of the Tatler and Spectator had

turned his head. He had been the editor of both those papers and was

not aware how entirely they owed their influence and popularity to the

genius of his friend. His spirits, always violent, were now excited

by vanity, ambition, and faction, to such a pitch that he every day

committed some offence against good sense and good taste. All the

discreet and moderate members of his own party regretted and condemned

his folly. “I am in a thousand troubles,” Addison wrote, “about poor

Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public may not be ruinous to

himself. But he has sent me word that he is determined to go on, and

that any advice I may give him in this particular will have no weight

with him.”

Steele set up a political paper called the Englishman, which, as it was

not supported by contributions from Addison, completely failed. By this

work, by some other writings of the same kind, and by the airs which

he gave himself at the first meeting of the new Parliament, he made the

Tories so angry that they determined to expel him. The Whigs stood by

him gallantly, but were unable to save him. The vote of expulsion was

regarded by all dispassionate men as a tyrannical exercise of the power

of the majority. But Steele’s violence and folly, though they by

no means justified the steps which his enemies took, had completely

disgusted his friends; nor did he ever regain the place which he had

held in the public estimation.

Addison about this time conceived the design of adding an eighth

volume to the Spectator In June 1714 the first number of the new series

appeared, and during about six months three papers were published

weekly. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the

Englishman and the eighth volume of the Spectator, between Steele

without Addison and Addison without Steele. The Englishman is forgotten;

the eighth volume of the Spectator contains, the finest essays, both

serious and playful, in the language.

Before this volume was completed, the death of Anne produced an entire

change in the administration of public affairs. The blow fell suddenly.

It found the Tory party distracted by internal feuds, and unprepared for

any great effort. Harley had just been disgraced. Bolingbroke, it was

supposed, would be the chief Minister. But the Queen was on her deathbed

before the white staff had been given, and her last public act was to

deliver it with a feeble hand to the Duke of Shrewsbury. The emergency

produced a coalition between all sections of public men who were

attached to the Protestant succession. George the First was proclaimed

without opposition. A Council, in which the leading Whigs had seats,

took the direction of affairs till the new King should arrive. The first

act of the Lords justices was to appoint Addison their secretary.

There is an idle tradition that he was directed to prepare a letter

to the King, that he could not satisfy himself as to the style of this

composition, and that the Lords Justices called in a clerk, who at once

did what was wanted. It is not strange that a story so flattering to

mediocrity should be popular; and we are sorry to deprive dunces of

their consolation. But the truth must be told. It was well observed by

Sir James Mackintosh, whose knowledge of these times was unequalled,

that Addison never, in any official document, affected wit or eloquence,

and that his despatches are, without exception, remarkable for

unpretending simplicity. Everybody who knows with what ease Addison’s

finest essays were produced must be convinced that, if well-turned

phrases had been wanted, he would have had no difficulty in finding

them. We are, however, inclined to believe, that the story is not

absolutely without a foundation. It may well be that Addison did not

know, till he had consulted experienced clerks who remembered the times

when William the Third was absent on the Continent, in what form a

letter from the Council of Regency to the King ought to be drawn. We

think it very likely that the ablest statesmen of our time, Lord John

Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, for example, would, in

similar circumstances, be found quite as ignorant. Every office has

some little mysteries which the dullest man may learn with a little

attention, and which the greatest man cannot possibly know by intuition.

One paper must be signed by the chief of the department; another by his

deputy: to a third the royal sign-manual is necessary. One communication

is to be registered, and another is not. One sentence must be in black

ink, and another in red ink. If the ablest Secretary for Ireland were

moved to the India Board, if the ablest President of the India Board

were moved to the War Office, he would require instruction on points

like these; and we do not doubt that Addison required such instruction

when he became, for the first time, Secretary to the Lords Justices.

George the First took possession of his kingdom without opposition. A

new Ministry was formed, and a new Parliament favourable to the Whigs

chosen. Sunderland was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and Addison

again went to Dublin as Chief Secretary.

At Dublin Swift resided; and there was much speculation about the way

in which the Dean and the Secretary would behave towards each other. The

relations which existed between these remarkable men form an interesting

and pleasing portion of literary history. They had early attached

themselves to the same political party and to the same patrons. While

Anne’s Whig Ministry was in power, the visits of Swift to London and the

official residence of Addison in Ireland had given them opportunities of

knowing each other. They were the two shrewdest observers of their

age. But their observations on each other had led them to favourable

conclusions. Swift did full justice to the rare powers of conversation

which were latent under the bashful deportment of Addison. Addison, on

the other hand, discerned much good-nature under the severe look and

manner of Swift; and, indeed, the Swift of 1708 and the Swift of 1738

were two very different men.

But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. The Whig statesmen

loaded Addison with solid benefits. They praised Swift, asked him to

dinner, and did nothing more for him. His profession laid them under a

difficulty. In the State they could not promote him; and they had reason

to fear that, by bestowing preferment in the Church on the author of the

Tale of a Tub, they might give scandal to the public, which had no

high opinion of their orthodoxy. He did not make fair allowance for

the difficulties which prevented Halifax and Somers from serving him,

thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honour and consistency to

revenge, joined the Tories, and became their most formidable champion.

He soon found, however, that his old friends were less to blame than

he had supposed. The dislike with which the Queen and the heads of the

Church regarded him was insurmountable; and it was with the greatest

difficulty that he obtained an ecclesiastical dignity of no great value,

on condition of fixing his residence in a country which he detested.

Difference of political opinion had produced, not indeed a quarrel, but

a coolness between Swift and Addison. They at length ceased altogether

to see each other. Yet there was between them a tacit compact like that

between the hereditary guests in the Iliad:=

```“‘Egkhea d’ allelon aleometha kai di’ dmilon.

```Polloi men gar emoi Troes kleitoi t’ epikouroi

```Kteinein on ke theos ge pori kai possi kikheio

```Polloi d’ au soi Akhaioi enairmen, on ke duneai.”=

It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and insulted nobody,

should not have calumniated or insulted Swift. But it is remarkable that

Swift, to whom neither genius nor virtue was sacred, and who generally

seemed to find, like most other renegades, a peculiar pleasure in

attacking old friends, should have shown so much respect and tenderness

to Addison.

Fortune had now changed. The accession of the House of Hanover had

secured in England the liberties of the people, and in Ireland the

dominion of the Protestant caste. To that caste Swift was more odious

than any other man. He was hooted and even pelted in the streets of

Dublin; and could not venture to ride along the strand for his health

without the attendance of armed servants. Many whom he had formerly

served now libelled and insulted him. At this time Addison arrived. He

had been advised not to show the smallest civility to the Dean of St.

Patrick’s. He had answered, with admirable spirit, that it might be

necessary for men whose fidelity to their party was suspected, to hold

no intercourse with political opponents; but that one who had been a

steady Whig in the worst times might venture, when the good cause

was triumphant, to shake hands with an old friend who was one of the

vanquished Tories. His kindness was soothing to the proud and cruelly

wounded spirit of Swift; and the two great satirists resumed their

habits of friendly intercourse.

Those associates of Addison whose political opinions agreed with

his shared his good fortune. He took Tickell with him to Ireland. He

procured for Budgell a lucrative place in the same kingdom. Ambrose

Phillips was provided for in England, Steele had injured himself so much

by his eccentricity and perverseness, that he obtained but a very small

part of what he thought his due. He was, however, knighted; he had a

place in the household; and he subsequently received other marks of

favour from the Court.

Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 1715 he quitted his

secretaryship for a seat at the Board of Trade. In the same year his

comedy of the Drummer was brought on the stage. The name of the author

was not announced; the piece was coldly received; and some critics had

expressed a doubt whether it were really Addison’s. To us the evidence,

both external and internal, seems decisive. It is not in Addison’s best

manner; but it contains numerous passages which no other writer known

to us could have produced. It was again performed after Addison’s death,

and, being known to be his, was loudly applauded.

Towards the close of the year 1715, while the Rebellion was still raging

in Scotland, Addison published the first number of a paper called the

Freeholder. Among his political works the Freeholder is entitled to the

first place. Even in the Spectator there are few serious papers nobler

than the character of his friend Lord Somers, and certainly no satirical

papers superior to those in which the Tory fox-hunter is introduced.

This character is the original of Squire Western, and is drawn with all

Fielding’s force, and with a delicacy of which Fielding was altogether

destitute. As none of Addison’s works exhibit stronger marks of his

genius than the Freeholder, so none does more honour to his moral

character. It is difficult to extol too highly the candour and humanity

of a political writer whom even the excitement of civil war cannot

hurry into unseemly violence. Oxford, it is well known, was then the

stronghold of Toryism. The High Street had been repeatedly lined with

bayonets in order to keep down the disaffected gownsmen; and traitors

pursued by the messengers of the Government had been concealed in the

garrets of several colleges. Yet the admonition which, even under

such circumstances, Addison addressed to the University, is singularly

gentle, respectful, and even affectionate. Indeed, he could not find

it in his heart to deal harshly even with imaginary persons. His

fox-hunter, though ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart a good

fellow, and is at last reclaimed by the clemency of the King. Steele was

dissatisfied with his friend’s moderation, and, though he acknowledged

that the Freeholder was excellently written, complained that the

Ministry played on a lute when it was necessary to blow the trumpet. He

accordingly determined to execute a flourish after his own fashion,

and tried to rouse the public spirit of the nation by means of a

paper called the Town Talk, which is now as utterly forgotten as his

Englishman, as his Crisis, as his Letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridge,

as his Reader, in short, as everything that he wrote without the help of

Addison.

In the same year in which the Drummer was acted, and in which the first

numbers of the Freeholder appeared, the estrangement of Pope and Addison

became complete. Addison had from the first seen that Pope was false and

malevolent. Pope had discovered that Addison was jealous. The discovery

was made in a strange manner. Pope had written the Rape of the Lock, in

two cantos, without supernatural machinery. These two cantos had been

loudly applauded, and by none more loudly than by Addison. Then Pope

thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes, Ariel, Momentilla, Crispissa, and

Umbriel, and resolved to interweave the Rosicrucian mythology with the

original fabric. He asked Addison’s advice. Addison said that the poem

as it stood was a delicious little thing, and entreated Pope not to run

the risk of marring what was so excellent in trying to mend it. Pope

afterwards declared that this insidious counsel first opened his eyes to

the baseness of him who gave it.

Now there can be no doubt that Pope’s plan was most ingenious, and that

he afterwards executed it with great skill and success. But does it

necessarily follow that Addison’s advice was bad. And if Addison’s

advice was bad, does it necessarily follow that it was given from bad

motives? If a friend were to ask us whether we would advise him to risk

his all in a lottery of which the chances were ten to one against him,

we should do our best to dissuade him from running such a risk. Even if

he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we should

not admit that we had counselled him ill; and we should certainly think

it the height of injustice in him to accuse us of having been actuated

by malice. We think Addison’s advice good advice. It rested on a sound

principle, the result of long and wide experience. The general rule

undoubtedly is that, when a successful work of imagination has been

produced, it should not be recast. We cannot at this moment call to mind

a single instance in which this rule has been transgressed with happy

effect, except the instance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso recast his

Jerusalem. Akenside recast his Pleasures of the Imagination, and his

Epistle to Curio. Pope himself, emboldened no doubt by the success with

which he had expanded and remodelled the Rape of the Lock, made the same

experiment on the Dunciad. All these attempts failed. Who was to foresee

that Pope would, once in his life, be able to do what he could not

himself do twice, and what nobody else has ever done?

Addison’s advice was good. But had it been bad, why should we pronounce

it dishonest? Scott tells us that one of his best friends predicted the

failure of Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising

a subject as Faust. Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from writing the

History of Charles the Fifth Nay, Pope himself was one of those who

prophesied that Cato would never succeed on the stage, and advised

Addison to print it without risking a representation. But Scott, Goethe,

Robertson, Addison, had the good sense and generosity to give their

advisers credit for the best intentions. Pope’s heart was not of the

same kind with theirs.

In 1715, while he was engaged in translating the Iliad, he met Addison

at a coffee-house. Phillips and Budgell were there; but their sovereign

got rid of them, and asked Pope to dine with him alone. After dinner

Addison said that he lay under a difficulty which he wished to explain.

“Tickell,” he said, “translated some time ago the first book of

the Iliad. I have promised to look it over and correct it. I cannot

therefore ask to see yours; for that would be double-dealing.” Pope made

a civil reply, and begged that his second book might have the advantage

of Addison’s revision. Addison readily agreed, looked over the second

book, and sent it back with warm commendations.

Tickell’s version of the first book appeared soon after this

conversation. In the preface all rivalry was earnestly disclaimed.

Tickell declared that he should not go on with the Iliad. That

enterprise he should leave to powers which he admitted to be superior

to his own. His only view, he said, in publishing this specimen was to

bespeak the favour of the public to a translation of the Odyssey, in

which he had made some progress.

Addison, and Addison’s devoted followers, pronounced both the versions

good, but maintained that Tickell’s had more of the original. The town

gave a decided preference to Pope’s. We do not think it worth while to

settle such a question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said

to have translated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word translation be

used in the sense which it bears in the Midsummer Night’s Dream. When

Bottom makes his appearance with an ass’s head instead of his own, Peter

Quince exclaims, “Bless thee! Bottom, bless thee! thou art translated.”

In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either Pope or Tickell may

very properly exclaim, “Bless thee! Homer; thou art translated indeed.”

Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in thinking that no man in

Addison’s situation could have acted more fairly and kindly, both

towards Pope and towards Tickell, than he appears to have done. But an

odious suspicion had sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he

soon firmly believed, that there was a deep conspiracy against his fame

and his fortunes. The work on which he had staked his reputation was

to be depreciated. The subscription, on which rested his hopes of a

competence, was to be defeated. With this view Addison had made a

rival translation: Tickell had consented to father it; and the wits of

Button’s had united to puff it.

Is there any external evidence to support this grave accusation? The

answer is short. There is absolutely none.

Was there any internal evidence which proved Addison to be the author

of this version? Was it a work which Tickell was incapable of producing?

Surely not. Tickell was a Fellow of a College at Oxford, and must be

supposed to have been able to construe the Iliad; and he was a better

versifier than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pretended to have

discovered any turns of expression peculiar to Addison. Had such turns

of expression been discovered, they would be sufficiently accounted for

by supposing Addison to have corrected his friend’s lines, as he owned

that he had done.

Is there anything in the character of the accused persons which makes

the accusation probable? We answer confidently--nothing. Tickell was

long after this time described by Pope himself as a very fair and worthy

man. Addison had been, during many years, before the public. Literary

rivals, political opponents, had kept their eyes on him. But neither

envy nor faction, in their utmost rage, had ever imputed to him a single

deviation from the laws of honour and of social morality. Had he been

indeed a man meanly jealous of fame, and capable of stooping to base and

wicked arts for the purpose of injuring his competitors, would his vices

have remained latent so long? He was a writer of tragedy: had he ever

injured Rowe? He was a writer of comedy: had he not done ample justice

to Congreve, and given valuable help to Steele? He was a pamphleteer:

have not his good nature and generosity been acknowledged by Swift, his

rival in fame and his adversary in politics?

That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly

improbable. That Addison should have been guilty of a villany seems

to us highly improbable. But that these two men should have conspired

together to commit a villany seems to us improbable in a tenfold degree.

All that is known to us of their intercourse tends to prove, that it was

not the intercourse of two accomplices in crime. These are some of

the lines in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow over the coffin of

Addison:=

```Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind,

```A task well suited to thy gentle mind?

```Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend,

```To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend,

```When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms,

```When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms,

```In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart,

```And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart;

```Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before,

```Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more.”=

In what words, we should like to know, did this guardian genius invite

his pupil to join in a plan such as the Editor of the Satirist would

hardly dare to propose to the Editor of the Age?

We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which he knew to be

false. We have not the smallest doubt that he believed it to be true;

and the evidence on which he believed it he found in his own bad heart.

His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as

that of which he suspected Addison and Tickell. He was all stiletto and

mask. To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the consequences of

injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of his life.

He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos; he was taxed with it; and

he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron Hill; he was

taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a still fouler

lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montague; he was taxed with it; and he lied

with more than usual effrontery and vehemence. He puffed himself and

abused his enemies under feigned names. He robbed himself of his own

letters, and then raised the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds

of malignity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds

which he seems to have committed from love of fraud alone. He had a

habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came near him.

Whatever his object might be, the indirect road to it was that which

he preferred. For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and

veneration as it was in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope

was scarcely dead when it was discovered that, from no motive except the

mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an act of gross perfidy to

Bolingbroke.

Nothing was more natural than that such a man as this should attribute

to others that which he felt within himself. A plain, probable, coherent

explanation is frankly given to him. He is certain that it is all a

romance. A line of conduct scrupulously fair, and even friendly, is

pursued towards him. He is convinced that it is merely a cover for a

vile intrigue by which he is to be disgraced and ruined. It is vain to

ask him for proofs. He has none, and wants none, except those which he

carries in his own bosom.

Whether Pope’s malignity at length provoked Addison to retaliate for the

first and last time, cannot now be known with certainty. We have only

Pope’s story, which runs thus. A pamphlet appeared containing some

reflections which stung Pope to the quick. What those reflections were,

and whether they were reflections of which he had a right to complain,

we have now no means of deciding. The Earl of Warwick, a foolish and

vicious lad, who regarded Addison with the feelings with which such lads

generally regard their best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, that

this pamphlet had been written by Addison’s direction. When we consider

what a tendency stories have to grow, in passing even from one honest

man to another honest man, and when we consider that to the name of

honest man neither Pope nor the Earl of Warwick had a claim, we are not

disposed to attach much importance to this anecdote.

It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He had already sketched

the character of Atticus in prose. In his anger he turned this prose

into the brilliant and energetic lines which everybody knows by heart,

or ought to know by heart, and sent them to Addison. One charge which

Pope has enforced with great skill is probably not without foundation.

Addison was, we are inclined to believe, too fond of presiding over a

circle of humble friends. Of the other imputations which these famous

lines are intended to convey, scarcely one has ever been proved to be

just, and some are certainly false. That Addison was not in the habit

of “damning with faint praise” appears from innumerable passages in his

writings, and from none more than from those in which he mentions Pope,

And it is not merely unjust, but ridiculous, to describe a man who made

the fortune of almost every one of his intimate friends, as “so obliging

that he ne’er obliged.”

That Addison felt the sting of Pope’s satire keenly, we cannot doubt.

That he was conscious of one of the weaknesses with which he was

reproached, is highly probable. But his heart, we firmly believe,

acquitted him of the gravest part of the accusation. He acted like

himself. As a satirist he was, at his own weapons, more than Pope’s

match; and he would have been at no loss for topics. A distorted and

diseased body, tenanted by a yet more distorted and diseased mind; spite

and envy thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent and noble as those

which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface; a feeble sickly

licentiousness; an odious love of filthy and noisome images; these

were things which a genius less powerful than that to which we owe the

Spectator could easily have held up to the mirth and hatred of mankind.

Addison, had, moreover, at his command, other means of vengeance which

a bad man would not have scrupled to use. He was powerful in the State.

Pope was a Catholic; and, in those times, a Minister would have found

it easy to harass the most innocent Catholic by innumerable petty

vexations. Pope, near twenty years later, said that “through the lenity

of the Government alone he could live with comfort.” “Consider,” he

exclaimed, “the injury that a man of high rank and credit may do to a

private person, under penal laws and many other disadvantages.” It is

pleasing to reflect that the only revenge which Addison took was to

insert in the Freeholder a warm encomium on the translation of the

Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learning to put down their names

as subscribers. There could be no doubt, he said, from the specimens

already published, that the masterly hand of Pope would do as much for

Homer as Dryden had done for Virgil. From that time to the end of

his life, he always treated Pope, by Pope’s own acknowledgment, with

justice. Friendship was, of course, at an end.

One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play the ignominious

part of talebearer on this occasion, may have been his dislike of the

marriage which was about to take place between his mother and Addison.

The Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honourable family of the

Middletons of Chirk, a family which, in any country but ours, would be

called noble, resided at Holland House. Addison had, during some years,

occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn.

Chelsea is now a district of London, and Holland House may be called a

town residence. But, in the days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids

and sportsmen wandered between green hedges and over fields bright with

daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames. Addison and

Lady Warwick were country neighbours, and became intimate friends.

The great wit and scholar tried to allure the young Lord from the

fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, breaking windows, and

rolling women in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of letters,

and the practice of virtue. These well-meant exertions did little good,

however, either to the disciple or to the master. Lord Warwick grew up

a rake; and Addison fell in love. The mature beauty of the Countess has

been celebrated by poets in language which, after a very large allowance

has been made for flattery, would lead us to believe that she was a fine

woman; and her rank doubtless heightened her attractions. The courtship

was long. The hopes of the lover appear to have risen and fallen with

the fortunes of his party. His attachment was at length a matter of

such notoriety that, when he visited Ireland for the last time, Rowe

addressed some consolatory verses to the Chloe of Holland House. It

strikes us as a little strange that, in these verses, Addison should be

called Lycidas, a name of singularly evil omen for a swain just about to

cross St. George’s Channel.

At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was indeed able to treat with her

on equal terms. He had reason to expect preferment even higher than that

which he had attained. He had inherited the fortune of a brother who

died Governor of Madras. He had purchased an estate in Warwickshire, and

had been welcomed to his domain in very tolerable verse by one of the

neighbouring squires, the poetical fox-hunter, William Somerville. In

August 1716, the newspapers announced that Joseph Addison, Esquire,

famous for many excellent works both in verse and prose, had espoused

the Countess Dowager of Warwick.

He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a house which can boast of

a greater number of inmates distinguished in political and literary

history than any other private dwelling in England. His portrait still

hangs there. The features are pleasing; the complexion is remarkably

fair; but, in the expression, we trace rather the gentleness of his

disposition than the force and keenness of his intellect.

Not long after his marriage he reached the height of civil greatness.

The Whig Government had, during some time, been torn by internal

dissensions. Lord Townshend led one section of the Cabinet, Lord

Sunderland the other. At length, in the spring of 1717, Sunderland

triumphed. Townshend retired from office, and was accompanied by Walpole

and Cowper. Sunderland proceeded to reconstruct the Ministry; and

Addison was appointed Secretary of State. It is certain that the Seals

were pressed upon him, and were at first declined by him. Men equally

versed in official business might easily have been found; and his

colleagues knew that they could not expect assistance from him in

debate. He owed his elevation to his popularity, to his stainless

probity, and to his literary fame.

But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet when his health began

to fail. From one serious attack he recovered in the autumn; and his

recovery was celebrated in Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by

Vincent Bourne, who was then at Trinity College, Cambridge. A relapse

soon took place; and, in the following spring, Addison was prevented by

a severe asthma from discharging the duties of his post. He resigned it,

and was succeeded by his friend Craggs, a young man whose natural parts,

though little improved by cultivation, were quick and showy, whose

graceful person and winning manners had made him generally acceptable

in society, and who, if he had lived, would probably have been the most

formidable of all the rivals of Walpole.

As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The Ministers, therefore, were able to

bestow on Addison a retiring pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year.

In what form this pension was given we are not told by the biographers,

and have not time to inquire, But it is certain that Addison did not

vacate his seat in the House of Commons.

Rest of mind and body seem to have re-established his health; and he

thanked God, with cheerful piety, for having set him free both from his

office and from his asthma. Many years seemed to be before him, and he

meditated many works, a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a translation

of the Psalms, a treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Of this last

performance, a part, which we could well spare, has come down to us.

But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradually prevailed against

all the resources of medicine. It is melancholy to think that the last

months of such a life should have been overclouded both by domestic and

by political vexations. A tradition which began early, which has

been generally received, and to which we have nothing to oppose, has

represented his wife as an arrogant and imperious woman. It is said

that, till his health failed him, he was glad to escape from the

Countess Dowager and her magnificent dining-room, blazing with the

gilded devices of the House of Rich, to some tavern where he could enjoy

a laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a bottle of claret, with

the friends of his happier days. All those friends, however, were not

left to him. Sir Richard Steele had been gradually estranged by various

causes. He considered himself as one who, in evil times, had braved

martyrdom for his political principles, and demanded, when the Whig

party was triumphant, a large compensation for what he had suffered

when it was militant. The Whig leaders took a very different view of

his claims. They thought that he had, by his own petulance and folly,

brought them as well as himself into trouble, and though they did not

absolutely neglect him, doled out favours to him with a sparing hand. It

was natural that he should be angry with them, and especially angry with

Addison. But what above all seems to have disturbed Sir Richard, was

the elevation of Tickell, who, at thirty, was made by Addison

Under-Secretary of State; while the editor of the Tatler and Spectator,

and the author of the Crisis, and member for Stockbridge who had been

persecuted for firm adherence to the House of Hanover, was, at near

fifty, forced, after many solicitations and complaints, to content

himself with a share in the patent of Drury Lane Theatre. Steele

himself says, in his celebrated letter to Congreve, that Addison, by

his preference of Tickell, “incurred the warmest resentment of other

gentlemen”; and everything seems to indicate that, of those resentful

gentlemen, Steele was himself one.

While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he considered as Addison’s

unkindness, a new cause of quarrel arose. The Whig party, already

divided against itself, was rent by a new schism. The celebrated Bill

for limiting the number of Peers had been brought in. The proud Duke of

Somerset, first in rank of all the nobles whose religion permitted them

to sit in Parliament, was the ostensible author of the measure. But it

was supported, and in truth devised, by the Prime Minister.

We are satisfied that the bill was most pernicious; and we fear that the

motives which induced Sunderland to frame it were not honourable to him.

But we cannot deny that it was supported by many of the best and wisest

men of that age. Nor was this strange. The royal prerogative had, within

the memory of the generation then in the vigour of life, been so grossly

abused, that it was still regarded with a jealousy which, when the

peculiar situation of the House of Brunswick is considered, may perhaps

be called immoderate. The particular prerogative of creating peers had,

in the opinion of the Whigs, been grossly abused by Queen Anne’s last

Ministry; and even the Tories admitted that her Majesty, in swamping, as

it has since been called, the Upper House, had done what only an extreme

case could justify. The theory of the English constitution, according to

many high authorities, was that three independent powers, the sovereign,

the nobility, and the commons, ought constantly to act as checks on each

other. If this theory were sound, it seemed to follow that to put one

of these powers under the absolute control of the other two, was absurd.

But if the number of peers were unlimited, it could not well be denied

that the Upper House was under the absolute control of the Crown and the

Commons, and was indebted only to their moderation for any power which

it might be suffered to retain.

Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison with the Ministers.

Steele, in a paper called the Plebeian, vehemently attacked the bill.

Sunderland called for help on Addison, and Addison obeyed the call. In

a paper called the Old Whig, he answered, and indeed refuted,

Steele’s arguments. It seems to us that the premises of both the

controversialists were unsound, that on those premises Addison reasoned

well and Steele ill, and that consequently Addison brought out a false

conclusion while Steele blundered upon the truth. In style, in wit, and

in politeness, Addison maintained his superiority; though the Old Whig

is by no means one of his happiest performances.

At first, both the anonymous opponents observed the laws of propriety.

But at length Steele so far forgot himself as to throw an odious

imputation on the morals of the chiefs of the administration. Addison

replied with severity, but, in our opinion, with less severity than was

due to so grave an offence against morality and decorum; nor did he,

in his just anger, forget for a moment the laws of good taste and good

breeding. One calumny which has been often repeated, and never yet

contradicted, it is our duty to expose. It is asserted in the Biogaphia

Britannica, that Addison designated Steele as “little Dicky.” This

assertion was repeated by Johnson who had never seen the Old Whig; and

was therefore excusable. It has also been repeated by Miss Aikin, who

has seen the Old Whig, and for whom therefore there is less excuse. Now,

it is true that the words “little Dicky” occur in the Old Whig, and that

Steele’s name was Richard. It is equally true that the words “little

Isaac” occur in the Duenna, and that Newton’s name was Isaac. But we

confidently affirm that Addison’s “little Dicky” had no more to do with

Steele, than Sheridan’s “little Isaac” with Newton. If we apply the

words “little Dicky” to Steele, we deprive a very lively and ingenious

passage, not only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. Little Dicky

was the nickname of Henry Norris, an actor of remarkably small stature,

but of great humour, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popular

part, in Dryden’s Spanish Friar. [We will transcribe the whole

paragraph. How it can ever have been misunderstood is unintelligible to

us.

“But our author’s chief concern is for the poor House of Commons, whom

he represents as naked and defenceless, when the Crown, by losing this

prerogative, would be less able to protect them against the power of a

House of Lords. Who forbears laughing when the Spanish Friar represents

little Dicky under the person of Gomez, insulting the Colonel that was

able to fright him out of his wits with a single frown? This Gomez, says

he, flew upon him like a dragon, got him down, the Devil being strong

in him, and gave him bastinado on bastinado, and buffet on buffet,

which the poor Colonel, being prostrate, suffered with a most Christian

patience. The improbability of the fact never fails to raise mirth

in the audience; and one may venture to answer for a British House of

Commons, if we may guess, from its conduct hitherto, that it will scarce

be either so tame or so weak as our author supposes.”]

The merited reproof which Steele had received, though softened by some

kind and courteous expressions, galled him bitterly. He replied with

little force and great acrimony; but no rejoinder appeared. Addison

was fast hastening to his grave; and had, we may well suppose, little

disposition to prosecute a quarrel with an old friend. His complaint

had terminated in dropsy. He bore up long and manfully. But at length

he abandoned all hope, dismissed his physicians, and calmly prepared

himself to die.

His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, and dedicated them a very

few days before his death to Craggs, in a letter written with the sweet

and graceful eloquence of a Saturday’s Spectator. In this, his last

composition, he alluded to his approaching end in words so manly, so

cheerful, and so tender, that it is difficult to read them without

tears. At the same time he earnestly recommended the interests of

Tickell to the care of Craggs.

Within a few hours of the time at which this dedication was written,

Addison sent to beg Gay, who was then living by his wits about town, to

come to Holland House. Gay went, and was received with great kindness.

To his amazement his forgiveness was implored by the dying man. Poor

Gay, the most good-natured and simple of mankind, could not imagine what

he had to forgive. There was, however, some wrong, the remembrance of

which weighed on Addison’s mind, and which he declared himself anxious

to repair. He was in a state of extreme exhaustion; and the parting was

doubtless a friendly one on both sides. Gay supposed that some plan to

serve him had been in agitation at Court, and had been frustrated by

Addison’s influence. Nor is this improbable. Gay had paid assiduous

court to the royal family. But in the Queen’s days he had been the

eulogist of Bolingbroke, and was still connected with many Tories. It is

not strange that Addison, while heated by conflict, should have thought

himself justified in obstructing the preferment of one whom he might

regard as a political enemy. Neither is it strange that, when reviewing

his whole life, and earnestly scrutinising all his motives, he should

think that he had acted an unkind and ungenerous part, in using his

power against a distressed man of letters, who was as harmless and as

helpless as a child.

One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. It appears that Addison,

on his death-bed, called himself to a strict account, and was not

at ease till he had asked pardon for an injury which it was not even

suspected that he had committed, for an injury which would have caused

disquiet only to a very tender conscience. Is it not then reasonable to

infer that, if he had really been guilty of forming a base conspiracy

against the fame and fortunes of a rival, he would have expressed

some remorse for so serious a crime? But it is unnecessary to multiply

arguments and evidence for the defence, when there is neither argument

nor evidence for the accusation.

The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. His interview with

his step-son is universally known. “See,” he said, “how a Christian

can die.” The piety of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful

character. The feeling which predominates in all his devotional

writings, is gratitude. God was to him the all-wise and all-powerful

friend who had watched over his cradle with more than maternal

tenderness; who had listened to his cries before they could form

themselves in prayer; who had preserved his youth from the snares of

vice; who had made his cup run over with worldly blessings; who had

doubled the value of those blessings, by bestowing a thankful heart to

enjoy them, and dear friends to partake them; who had rebuked the waves

of the Ligurian gulf, had purified the autumnal air of the Campagna,

and had restrained the avalanches of Mont Cenis. Of the Psalms, his

favourite was that which represents the Ruler of all things under

the endearing image of a shepherd, whose crook guides the flock safe,

through gloomy and desolate glens, to meadows well watered and rich with

herbage. On that goodness to which he ascribed all the happiness of his

life, he relied in the hour of death with the love which casteth out

fear. He died on the seventeenth of June 1710. He had just entered on

his forty-eighth year.

His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was borne thence

to the Abbey at dead of night. The choir sang a funeral hymn. Bishop

Atterbury, one of those Tories who had loved and honoured the most

accomplished of the Whigs, met the corpse, and led the procession by

torchlight, round the shrine of Saint Edward and the graves of the

Plantagenets, to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. On the north side

of that Chapel, in the vault of the House of Albemarle, the coffin of

Addison lies next to the coffin of Montague. Yet a few months; and the

same mourners passed again along the same aisle. The same sad anthem was

again chanted. The same vault was again opened; and the coffin of Craggs

was placed close to the coffin of Addison.

Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addison; but one alone is

now remembered. Tickell bewailed his friend in an elegy which would

do honour to the greatest name in our literature, and which unites

the energy and magnificence of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of

Cowper. This fine poem was prefixed to a superb edition of Addison’s

works, which was published, in 1721, by subscription. The names of

the subscribers proved how widely his fame had been spread. That his

countrymen should be eager to possess his writings, even in a costly

form, is not wonderful. But it is wonderful that, though English

literature was then little studied on the Continent, Spanish Grandees,

Italian Prelates, Marshals of France, should be found in the list. Among

the most remarkable names are those of the Queen of Sweden, of Prince

Eugene, of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the Dukes of Parma, Modena, and

Guastalla, of the Doge of Genoa, of the Regent Orleans, and of Cardinal

Dubois. We ought to add that this edition, though eminently beautiful,

is in some important points defective; nor, indeed, do we yet possess a

complete collection of Addison’s writings.

It is strange that neither his opulent and noble widow, nor any of his

powerful and attached friends, should have thought of placing even a

simple tablet, inscribed with his name, on the walls of the Abbey. It

was not till three generations had laughed and wept over his pages that

the omission was supplied by the public veneration. At length, in our

own time, his image, skilfully graven, appeared in Poet’s Corner. It

represents him, as we can conceive him, clad in his dressing-gown, and

freed from his wig, stepping from his parlour at Chelsea into his trim

little garden, with the account of the “Everlasting Club,” or the “Loves

of Hilpa and Shalum,” just finished for the next day’s Spectator, in

his hand. Such a mark of national respect was due to the unsullied

statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master of pure English

eloquence, to the consummate painter of life and manners. It was due,

above all, to the great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule

without abusing it, who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great

social reform, and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long

and disastrous separation, during which wit had been led astray by

profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism.