ADDISON ON HIS TRAVELS.
Travelling in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries involved an amount
of thought and precaution which would have seemed inconvenient to the
tourist accustomed to abandon himself to the authority of guide-books,
couriers, and railway companies. By ardent spirits like Roderick Random it
was regarded as the sphere of enterprise and fortune, and not without
reason, in days when adventures were to be met with on almost every road
in the country, and in the streets and inns of the towns. The graver
portion of society, on the other hand, considered it as part of the
regular course of education through which every young man of position
ought to pass before entering into active life. French was the universally
recognised language of diplomacy. French manners and conversation were
considered to be the best school for politeness, while Italy was held in
the highest respect by the northern nations as the source of revived art
and letters. Some of the most distinguished Englishmen of the time looked,
it is true, with little favour on this fashionable training. "Lord
Cowper," says Spence, on the information of Dr. Conybeare, "on his
death-bed ordered that his son should never travel (it is by the absolute
desire of the Queen that he does). He ordered this from a good deal of
observation on its effects; he had found that there was little to be
hoped, and much to be feared, from travelling. Atwell, who is the young
lord's tutor abroad, gives but a very discouraging account of it, too, in
his letters, and seems to think that people are sent out too young, and
are too hasty to find any great good from it."
On some of the stronger and more enthusiastic minds the chief effect of
the grand tour was to produce a violent hatred of all foreign manners.
Dennis, the critic, for instance, who, after leaving Cambridge, spent some
time on the Continent, returned with a confirmed dislike to the French,
and ostentatiously displayed in his writings how much he held "dragoons
and wooden shoes in scorn;" and it is amusing to find Addison at a later
date making his Tory fox-hunter declare this anti-Gallican temper to be
the main fruits of foreign travel.
But, in general, what was intended to be a school for manners and
political instruction proved rather a source of unsettlement and
dissipation; and the vigorous and glowing lines in which Pope makes the
tutor describe to Dullness the doings of the "young Æneas" abroad, may be
taken as a faithful picture of the travelled pupil of the period:
"Intrepid then o'er seas and land he flew;
Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too.
There all thy gifts and graces we display,
Thou, only thou, directing all our way!
To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs,
Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons;
Or Tyber, now no longer Roman, rolls,
Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls:
To happy convents bosomed deep in vines,
Where slumber abbots purple as their wines:
To isles of fragrance, lily-silvered vales,
Diffusing languor in the panting gales:
To lands of singing or of dancing slaves,
Love-whispering woods, and lute-resounding waves.
But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps,
And Cupids ride the lion of the deeps;
Where, eased of fleets, the Adriatic main
Wafts the smooth eunuch and enamoured swain.
Led by my hand, he sauntered Europe round,
And gathered every vice on Christian ground;
Saw every court, heard every king declare
His royal sense of operas or the fair;
The stews and palace equally explored,
Intrigued with glory, and with spirit whored;
Tried all _hors-d'oeuvres_, all liqueurs defined,
Judicious drank, and greatly daring dined;
Dropped the dull lumber of the Latin store,
Spoiled his own language, and acquired no more;
All classic learning lost on classic ground;
And last turned air, the echo of a sound."
It is needless to say that Addison's experiences of travel were of a very
different kind. He left England in his twenty-eighth year, with a mind
well equipped from a study of the best authors, and with the intention of
qualifying himself for political employment at home, after familiarising
himself with the languages and manners of foreign countries. His sojourn
abroad extended over four years, and his experience was more than usually
varied and comprehensive. Crossing from Dover to Calais, some time in the
summer of 1699, he spent nearly eighteen months in France making himself
master of the language. In December, 1700, he embarked at Marseilles for a
tour in Italy, and visited in succession the following places: Monaco,
Genoa, Pavia, Milan, Brescia, Verona, Padua, Venice, Ferrara, Ravenna,
Rimini, S. Marino, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia, Ancona, Loreto, Rome (where,
as it was his intention to return, he only visited St. Peter's and the
Pantheon), Naples, Capri, whence he came back to Rome by sea, the various
towns in the neighbourhood of Rome, Siena, Leghorn, Pisa, Lucca, Florence,
Bologna, Modena, Parma, and Turin. Thus, in the course of this journey,
which lasted exactly a twelvemonth, he twice crossed the Apennines, and
made acquaintance with all the more important cities in the northern part
of the Peninsula. In December, 1701, he passed over Mont Cenis to Geneva,
proceeding then by Fribourg, Berne, Soleure, Zurich, St. Gall, Linden,
Insbruck, Hall, to Vienna, where he arrived in the autumn of 1702. After
making a brief stay in the Austrian capital he turned his face homewards,
and having visited the Protestant cities of Germany, and made a rather
longer stay in Hamburg than in any other, he reached Holland in the spring
of 1703, and remained in that country till his return to England, some
time in the autumn of the same year.
During his journey he made notes for his _Remarks on Italy_, which he
published immediately on his return home, and he amused himself, while
crossing Mont Cenis, with composing his _Letter to Lord Halifax_, which
contains, perhaps, the best verses he ever wrote. Though the ground over
which he passed was well trodden, and though he possessed none of the
special knowledge which gives value to the observations of travellers like
Arthur Young, yet his remarks on the people and places he saw are the
product of an original mind, and his illustrations of his route from the
Latin poets are remarkably happy and graceful. It is interesting, also, to
observe how many of the thoughts and suggestions which occurred to him on
the road are afterwards worked up into papers for the _Spectator_.
When Addison landed in France, in 1699, the power of Louis XIV., so long
the determined enemy of the English Revolution of 1688, had passed its
climax. The Peace of Ryswick, by which the hopes of the Jacobites were
finally demolished, was two years old. The king, disappointed in his
dreams of boundless military glory, had fallen into a fit of devotion, and
Addison, arriving from England with a very imperfect knowledge of the
language, was astonished to find the whole of French literature saturated
with the royal taste. "As for the state of learning," says he, in a letter
to Montague, dated August, 1699, "there is no book comes out at present
that has not something in it of an air of devotion. Dacier has bin forced
to prove his Plato a very good Christian before he ventures upon his
translation, and has so far comply'd with y{e} tast of the age that his
whole book is overrun with texts of Scripture, and y{e} notion of
præ-existence, supposed to be stolen from two verses of y{e} prophets.
Nay, y{e} humour is grown so universal that it is got among y{e} poets,
who are every day publishing Lives of Saints and Legends in Rhime."
Finding, perhaps, that the conversation at the capital was not very
congenial to his taste, he seems to have hurried on to Blois, a town then
noted for the purity with which its inhabitants spoke the French language,
and where he had determined to make his temporary abode. His only record
of his first impressions of Paris is a casual criticism of "y{e} King's
Statue that is lately set up in the Place Vendome." He visited, however,
both Versailles and Fontainebleau, and the preference which he gives to
the latter (in a letter to Congreve) is interesting, as anticipating that
taste for natural as opposed to artificial beauty which he afterwards
expressed in the _Spectator_.
"I don't believe, as good a poet as you are, that you can make finer
Lanskips than those about the King's houses, or with all yo{r}
descriptions build a more magnificent palace than Versailles. I am,
however, so singular as to prefer Fontainebleau to the rest. It is
situated among rocks and woods that give you a fine variety of Savage
prospects. The King has Humoured the Genius of the place, and only
made of so much art as is necessary to Help and regulate Nature,
without reforming her too much. The Cascades seem to break through the
Clefts and Cracks of Rocks that are covered over with Moss, and look
as if they were piled upon one another by Accident. There is an
artificial wildness in the Meadows, Walks, and Canals, and y{e}
Garden, instead of a Wall, is Fenced on the Lower End by a Natural
Mound of Rock-work that strikes the eye very agreeably. For my part, I
think there is something more charming in these rude heaps of Stone
than in so many Statues, and wou'd as soon see a River winding through
Woods and Meadows as when it is tossed up in such a variety of figures
at Versailles."[10]
Here and there, too, his correspondence exhibits traces of that delicate
vein of ridicule in which he is without a rival, as in the following
inimitable description of Le Brun's paintings at Versailles:
"The painter has represented his most Xtian Majesty under y{e} figure
of Jupiter throwing thunderbolts all about the ceiling, and striking
terror into y{e} Danube and Rhine, that lie astonished and blasted a
little above the Cornice."
Of his life at Blois a very slight sketch has been preserved by the Abbe
Philippeaux, one of the many gossipping informants from whom Spence
collected his anecdotes:
"Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as
between two and three in summer, and lie abed till between eleven and
twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative while here, and
often thoughtful; sometimes so lost in thought that I have come into
his room and have stayed five minutes there before he has known
anything of it. He had his masters generally at supper with him, kept
very little company beside, and had no amour whilst here that I know
of, and I think I should have known it if he had had any."
The following characteristic letter to a gentleman of Blois, with whom he
seems to have had an altercation, is interesting as showing the mixture of
coolness and dignity, the "blood and judgment well commingled" which
Hamlet praised in Horatio, and which are conspicuous in all Addison's
actions as well as in his writings:
"Sir,--I am always as slow in making an Enemy as a Friend, and am
therefore very ready to come to an Accommodation with you; but as for
any satisfaction, I don't think it is due on either side when y{e}
Affront is mutual. You know very well that according to y{e} opinion
of y{e} world a man would as soon be called a Knave as a Fool, and I
believe most people w{d} be rather thought to want Legs than Brains.
But I suppose whatever we said in y{e} heat of discourse is not y{e}
real opinion we have of each other, since otherwise you would have
scorned to subscribe yourself as I do at present, S{r}, y{r} very,
etc.
A. Mons{r} L'Espagnol,
Blois, 10{br} 1699."
The length of Addison's sojourn at Blois seems to have been partly caused
by the difficulty he experienced, owing to the defectiveness of his
memory, in mastering the language. Finding himself at last able to
converse easily, he returned to Paris some time in the autumn of 1700, in
order to see a little of polite society there before starting on his
travels in Italy. He found the best company in the capital among the men
of letters, and he makes especial mention of Malebranche, whom he
describes as solicitous about the adequate rendering of his works into
English; and of Boileau, who, having now survived almost all his literary
friends, seems, in his conversation with Addison, to have been even more
than usually splenetic in his judgments on his contemporaries. The old
poet and critic was, however, propitiated with the present of the _Musæ
Anglicanæ_; and, according to Tickell, said "that he did not question
there were excellent compositions in the native language of a country that
possessed the Roman genius in so eminent a degree."
In general, Addison's remarks on the French character are not
complimentary. He found the vanity of the people so elated by the
elevation of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of Spain that they were
insupportable, and he felt no reluctance to quit France for Italy. His
observations on the national manners, as seen at Blois, are
characteristic:
"Truly, by what I have yet seen, they are the Happiest nation in the
world. 'Tis not in the pow'r of Want or Slavery to make 'em miserable.
There is nothing to be met with in the Country but Mirth and Poverty.
Ev'ry one sings, laughs, and starves. Their Conversation is generally
Agreeable; for if they have any Wit or Sense they are sure to show it.
They never mend upon a Second meeting, but use all the freedom and
familiarity at first Sight that a long Intimacy or Abundance of wine
can scarce draw from an Englishman. Their Women are perfect Mistresses
in this Art of showing themselves to the best Advantage. They are
always gay and sprightly, and set off y{e} worst faces in Europe with
y{e} best airs. Ev'ry one knows how to give herself as charming a look
and posture as S{r} Godfrey Kneller c{d} draw her in."[11]
He embarked from Marseilles for Genoa in December, 1700, having as his
companion Edward Wortley Montague, whom Pope satirises under the various
names of Shylock, Worldly, and Avidien. It is unnecessary to follow him
step by step in his travels, but the reader of his _Letter to Lord
Halifax_ may still enjoy the delight and enthusiasm to which he gives
utterance on finding himself among the scenes described in his favourite
authors:
"Poetic fields encompass me around,
And still I seem to tread on classic ground;
For here the Muse so oft her harp has strung,
That not a mountain rears its head unsung;
Renowned in verse each shady thicket grows,
And every stream in heavenly numbers flows."[12]
The phrase "classic ground," which has become proverbial, is first used in
these verses, and, as will have been observed, Pope repeats it with
evident reference to the above passage in his satire on the travels of the
"young Æneas." Addison seems to have carried the Latin poets with him, and
his quotations from them are abundant and apposite. When he is driven into
the harbour at Monaco, he remembers Lucan's description of its safety and
shelter; as he passes under Monte Circeo, he feels that Virgil's
description of Æneas's voyage by the same spot can never be sufficiently
admired; he recalls, as he crosses the Apennines, the fine lines of
Claudian recording the march of Honorius from Ravenna to Rome; and he
delights to think that at the falls of the Velino he can still see the
"angry goddess" of the _Æneid_ (Alecto) "thus sinking, as it were, in a
tempest, and plunging herself into Hell" amidst such a scene of horror and
confusion.
His enthusiastic appreciation of the classics, which caused him in judging
any work of art to look, in the first place, for regularity of design and
simplicity of effect, shows it self characteristically in his remarks on
the Lombard and German styles of architecture in Italy. Of Milan Cathedral
he speaks without much admiration, but he was impressed with the wonders
of the Certosa near Pavia. "I saw," says he, "between Pavia and Milan the
convent of the Carthusians, which is very spacious and beautiful. Their
church is very fine and curiously adorned, _but_ of a Gothic structure."
His most interesting criticism, however, is that on the Duomo at Siena:
"When a man sees the prodigious pains and expense that our forefathers
have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to
himself what miracles of architecture they would have left us had they
only been instructed in the right way; for, when the devotion of those
ages was much warmer than that of the present, and the riches of the
people much more at the disposal of the priests, there was so much
money consumed on these Gothic cathedrals as would have finished a
greater variety of noble buildings than have been raised either before
or since that time. One would wonder to see the vast labour that has
been laid out on this single cathedral. The very spouts are loaden
with ornaments, the windows are formed like so many scenes of
perspective, with a multitude of little pillars retiring behind one
another, the great columns are finely engraven with fruits and
foliage, that run twisting about them from the very top to the bottom;
the whole body of the church is chequered with different lays of black
and white marble, the pavement curiously cut out in designs and
Scripture stories, and the front covered with such a variety of
figures, and overrun with so many mazes and little labyrinths of
sculpture, that nothing in the world can make a prettier show to those
who prefer false beauties and _affected ornaments_ to a noble and
majestic simplicity."[13]
Addison had not reached that large liberality in criticism afterwards
attained by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, while insisting that in all art
there was but _one_ true style, nevertheless allowed very high merit to
what he called the _characteristic_ styles. Sir Joshua would never have
fallen into the error of imputing affectation to such simple and honest
workmen as the early architects of Northern Italy. The effects of
Addison's classical training are also very visible in his descriptions of
natural scenery. There is in these nothing of that craving melancholy
produced by a sense of the infinity of nature which came into vogue after
the French Revolution; no projection of the feelings of the spectator into
the external scene on which he gazes; nor, on the other hand, is there any
attempt to rival the art of the painter by presenting a landscape in words
instead of in colours. He looks on nature with the same clear sight as the
Greek and Roman writers, and in describing a scene he selects those
particulars in it which he thinks best adapted to arouse pleasurable
images in the mind of the reader. Take, for instance, the following
excellent description of his passage over the Apennines:
"The fatigue of our crossing the Apennines, and of our whole journey
from Loretto to Rome, was very agreeably relieved by the variety of
scenes we passed through. For, not to mention the rude prospect of
rocks rising one above another, of the deep gutters worn in the sides
of them by torrents of rain and snow-water, or the long channels of
sand winding about their bottoms that are sometimes filled with so
many rivers, we saw in six days' travelling the several seasons of the
year in their beauty and perfection. We were sometimes shivering on
the top of a bleak mountain, and a little while afterwards basking in
a warm valley, covered with violets and almond-trees in blossom, the
bees already swarming over them, though but in the month of February.
Sometimes our road led us through groves of olives, or by gardens of
oranges, or into several hollow apartments among the rocks and
mountains, that look like so many natural greenhouses, as being always
shaded with a great variety of trees and shrubs that never lose their
verdure."[14]
Though his thoughts during his travels were largely occupied with objects
chiefly interesting to his taste and imagination, and though he busied
himself with such compositions as the _Epistle from Italy_, the _Dialogue
on Medals_, and the first four acts of _Cato_, he did not forget that his
experience was intended to qualify him for taking part in the affairs of
State. And when he reached Geneva, in December, 1701, the door to a
political career seemed to be on the point of opening. He there learned,
as Tickell informs us, that he had been selected to attend the army under
Prince Eugene as secretary from the King. He accordingly waited in the
city for official confirmation of this intelligence; but his hopes were
doomed to disappointment. William III. died in March, 1702; Halifax, on
whom Addison's prospects chiefly depended, was struck off the Privy
Council by Queen Anne; and the travelling pension ceased with the life of
the sovereign who had granted it. Henceforth he had to trust to his own
resources; and though the loss of his pension does not seem to have
compelled him at once to turn homewards, as he continued on his route to
Vienna, yet an incident that occurred towards the close of his travels
shows that he was prepared to eke out his income by undertaking work that
would have been naturally irksome to him.
At Rotterdam, on his return towards England, he met with Jacob Tonson, the
bookseller, for whom, as has been said, he had already done some work as a
translator. Tonson was one of the founders of the Kit-Kat Club, and in
that capacity was brought into frequent and intimate connection with the
Whig magnates of the day. Among these was the Duke of Somerset, who,
through his wife, then high in Queen Anne's favour, exercised considerable
influence on the course of affairs. The Duke required a tutor for his
son, Lord Hertford, and Tonson recommended Addison. On the Duke's approval
of the recommendation, the bookseller seems to have communicated with
Addison, who expressed himself, in general terms, as willing to undertake
the charge of Lord Hertford, but desired to know more particulars about
his engagement. These were furnished by the Duke in a letter to Tonson,
and they are certainly a very curious illustration of the manners of the
period. "I ought," says his Grace, "to enter into that affair more freely
and more plainly, and tell you what I propose, and what I hope he will
comply with--viz., I desire he may be more on the account of a companion
in my son's travels than as a governor, and that as such I shall account
him: my meaning is, that neither lodging, travelling, nor diet shall cost
him sixpence, and over and above that my son shall present him at the
year's end with a hundred guineas, as long as he is pleased to continue in
that service to my son, by his personal attendance and advice, in what he
finds necessary during his time of travelling."
To this not very tempting proposal Addison replied: "I have lately
received one or two advantageous offers of y{e} same nature, but as I
should be very ambitious of executing any of your Grace's commands, so I
can't think of taking y{e} like employ from any other hands. As for y{e}
recompense that is proposed to me, I must take the liberty to assure your
Grace that I should not see my account in it, but in y{e} hope that I have
to recommend myself to your Grace's favour and approbation." This reply
proved highly offensive to the Duke, who seems to have considered his own
offer a magnificent one. "Your letter of the 16th," he writes to Tonson,
on June 22, 1703, "with one from Mr. Addison, came safe to me. You say he
will give me an account of his readiness of complying with my proposal. I
will set down his own words, which are thus: 'As for the recompense that
is proposed to me, I must confess I can by no means see my account in it,'
etc. All the other parts of his letter are compliments to me, which he
thought he was bound in good breeding to write, and as such I have taken
them, and no otherwise; and now I leave you to judge how ready he is to
comply with my proposal. Therefore, I have wrote by this first post to
prevent his coming to England on my account, and have told him plainly
that I must look for another, which I cannot be long a-finding."
Addison's principal biographer, Miss Aikin, expresses great contempt for
the niggardliness of the Duke, and says that, "Addison must often have
congratulated himself in the sequel on that exertion of proper spirit by
which he had escaped from wasting, in an attendance little better than
servile, three precious years, which he found means of employing so much
more to his own honour and satisfaction, and to the advantage of the
public." Mean as the Duke's offer was, it is nevertheless plain that
Addison really intended to accept it, and, this being so, he can scarcely
be congratulated on having on this occasion displayed his usual tact and
felicity. Two courses appear to have been open to him. He might either
have simply declined the offer "as not finding his account in it," or he
might have accepted it in view of the future advantages which he hoped to
derive from the Duke's "favour and approbation;" in which case he should
have said nothing about finding the "recompense" proposed insufficient. By
the course that he took he contrived to miss an appointment which he seems
to have made up his mind to accept, and he offended an influential
statesman whose favour he was anxious to secure.
To his pecuniary embarrassments was soon added domestic loss. At Amsterdam
he received news of his father's death, and it may be supposed that the
private business in which he must have been involved in consequence of
this event brought him to England, where he arrived some time in the
autumn of 1703.