Men thus constituted can become impassioned in public concerns, for they

are their own concerns; in France they are only the business of the king

and of Mme. de Pompadour.[556] In England, political parties are as

ardent as sects: High Church and Low Church, capitalists and landed

proprietors, court nobility and county families, they have their dogmas,

their theories, their manners, and their hatreds, like Presbyterians,

Anglicans, and Quakers. The country squire rails, over his wine, at the

House of Hanover, drinks to the king over the water; the Whig in London,

on the thirtieth of January, drinks to the man in the mask,[557] and

then to the man who will do the same thing without a mask. They

imprisoned, exiled, beheaded each other, and Parliament resounded daily

with the fury of their animadversions. Political, like religious life,

wells up and overflows, and its outbursts only mark the force of the

flame which nourishes it. The passion of parties, in state affairs as in

matters of belief, is a proof of zeal; constant quiet is only general

indifference; and if people fight at elections, it is because they take

an interest in them. Here "a tiler had the newspaper brought to him on

the roof that he might read it." A stranger who reads the papers "would

think the country on the eve of a revolution." When Government takes a

step, the public feels itself involved in it; its honor and its property

are being disposed of by the minister; let the minister beware if he

disposes of them ill. With the French, M. de Conflans, who lost his

fleet through cowardice, is punished by an epigram; here, Admiral Byng,

who was too prudent to risk his, was shot. Every man in his due

position, and according to his power, takes part in public business: the

mob broke the heads of those who would not drink Dr. Sacheverell's

health; gentlemen came in mounted troops to meet him. Some public

favorite or enemy is always exciting open demonstrations. One day it is

Pitt whom the people cheer, and on whom the municipal corporations

bestow many gold boxes; another day it is Grenville, whom people go to

hiss when coming out of the house; then again Lord Bute, whom the queen

loves, who is hissed, and who is burned under the effigy of a boat, a

pun on his name, whilst the Princess of Wales was burned under the

effigy of a petticoat; or the Duke of Bedford, whose town house is

attacked by a mob, and who is only saved by a garrison of horse and

foot; Wilkes, whose papers the Government seize, and to whom the jury

assign one thousand pounds damages. Every morning appear newspapers and

pamphlets to discuss affairs, criticise characters, denounce by name

lords, orators, ministers, the king himself. He who wants to speak

speaks. In this wrangle of writings and associations opinion swells,

mounts like a wave, and falling upon Parliament and Court, drowns

intrigue and carries away all differences. After all, in spite of the

rotten boroughs, it is public opinion which rules. What though the king

be obstinate, the men in power band together? Public opinion growls, and

everything bends or breaks. The Pitts rose as high as they did only

because public opinion raised them, and the independence of the

individual ended in the sovereignty of the people.

In such a state, "all passions being free, hatred, envy, jealousy, the

fervor for wealth and distinction, would be displayed in all their

fulness."[558] We can imagine with what force and energy eloquence must

have been implanted and flourished. For the first time since the fall of

the ancient tribune, it found a soil in which it could take root and

live, and a harvest of orators sprang up, equal, in the diversity of

their talents, the energy of their convictions, and the magnificence of

their style, to that which once covered the Greek _agora_ and the Roman

_forum._ For a long time it seemed that liberty of speech, experience in

affairs, the importance of the interests involved, and the greatness of

the rewards offered, should have forced its growth; but eloquence came

to nothing, encrusted in theological pedantry, or limited in local aims;

and the privacy of the parliamentary sittings deprived it of half its

force by removing from it the light of day. Now at last there was light;

publicity, at first incomplete, then entire, gives Parliament the nation

for an audience. Speech becomes elevated and enlarged at the same time

that the public is polished and more numerous. Classical art, become

perfect, furnishes method and development. Modern culture introduces

into technical reasoning freedom of discourse and a breadth of general

ideas. In place of arguing, men conversed; they were attorneys, they

became orators. With Addison, Steele, and Swift, taste and genius invade

politics. Voltaire cannot say whether the meditated harangues once

delivered in Athens and Rome excelled the unpremeditated speeches of

Windham, Carteret, and their rivals. In short, discourse succeeds in

overcoming the dryness of special questions and the coldness of

compassed action, which had so long restricted it; it boldly and

irregularly extends its force and luxuriance; and in contrast with the

fine abbés of the drawing-room, who in France compose their academical

compliments, we see appear the manly eloquence of Junius, Chatham, Fox,

Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan.

I need not relate their lives nor unfold their characters; I should have

to enter upon political details. Three of them, Lord Chatham, Fox, and

Pitt, were ministers,[559] and their eloquence is part of their power

and their acts. That eloquence is the concern of those men who may

record their political history; I can simply take note of its tone and

accent.

Section VIII.--Parliamentary Orators

An extraordinary afflatus, a sort of quivering of intense determination,

runs through all these speeches. Men speak, and they speak as if they

fought. No caution, politeness, restraint. They are unfettered, they

abandon themselves, they hurl themselves onward; and if they restrain

themselves, it is only that they may strike more pitilessly and more

forcibly. When the elder Pitt first filled the House with his vibrating

voice, he already possessed his indomitable audacity. In vain Walpole

tried to "muzzle him," then to crush him; his sarcasm was sent back to

him with a prodigality of outrages, and the all-powerful minister bent,

smitten with the truth of the biting insult which the young man

inflicted on him. A lofty haughtiness, only surpassed by that of his

son, an arrogance which reduced his colleagues to the rank of

subalterns, a Roman patriotism which demanded for England a universal

tyranny, an ambition lavish of money and men, gave the nation its

rapacity and its fire, and only saw rest in far vistas of dazzling glory

and limitless power, an imagination which brought into Parliament the

vehemence and declamation of the stage, the brilliancy of fitful

inspiration, the boldness of poetic imagery. Such are the sources of his

eloquence:

"'_But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world; now

none so poor to do her reverence!_

"_My lords, you cannot conquer America._

"We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can,

not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violent

oppressive Acts: they must be repealed--you will repeal them; I pledge

myself for it, that you will in the end repeal them; I stake my

reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot, if they are

not finally repealed.

"You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more

extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or

borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince, that

sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince; your

efforts are for ever vain and impotent--doubly so from this mercenary

aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the

minds of your enemies. To overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine

and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of

hireling cruelty! If I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a

foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my

arms--never--never--never!

"But, my Lords, who is the man, that in addition to these disgraces and

mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms

the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? To call into civilised

alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods; to delegate to the

merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors

of barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these enormities cry

aloud for redress and punishment; unless thoroughly done away, it will

be a stain on the national character--it is a violation of the

constitution--I believe it is against law."[560]

There is a touch of Milton and Shakespeare in this tragic pomp, in this

impassioned solemnity, in the sombre and violent brilliancy of this

overstrung and overloaded style. In such superb and blood-like purple

are English passions clad, under the folds of such a banner they fall

into battle array; the more powerfully that amongst them there is one

altogether holy, the sentiment of right, which rallies, occupies, and

ennobles them:

"I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead

to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves,

would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest."[561]

"Let the sacredness of this property remain inviolate; let it be taxable

only by their own consent given in their provincial assemblies; else it

will cease to be property.

"This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America,

who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence,

and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen. ... The

spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which

formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship money in England; the

same spirit which called all England on its legs, and by the Bill of

Rights vindicated the English constitution; the same spirit which

established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties;

that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent.

"As an Englishman by birth and principle, I recognise to the Americans

their supreme unalienable right in their property, a right which they

are justified in the defence of to the last extremity."[562]

If Pitt sees his own right, he sees that of others too; it was with this

idea that he moved and managed England. For it, he appealed to

Englishmen against themselves; and in spite of themselves they

recognized their dearest instinct in this maxim, that every human will

is inviolable in its limited and legal province, and that it must put

forth its whole strength against the slightest usurpation.

Unrestrained passions and the most manly sentiment of right; such is the

abstract of all this eloquence. Instead of an orator, a public man, let

us take a writer, a private individual; let us look at the letters of

Junius, which, amidst national irritation and anxiety, fell one by one

like drops of fire on the fevered limbs of the body politic. If he makes

his phrases concise, and selects his epithets, it was not from a love of

style, but in order the better to stamp his insult. Oratorical artifices

in his hand become instruments of torture, and when he files his periods

it was to drive the knife deeper and surer; with what audacity of

denunciation, with what sternness of animosity, with what corrosive and

burning irony, applied to the most secret corners of private life, with

what inexorable persistence of calculated and meditated persecution, the

quotations alone will show. He writes to the Duke of Bedford:

"My lord, you are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect

or esteem from the public, that if, in the following lines, a compliment

or expression of applause should escape me, I fear you would consider it

as a mockery of your established character, and perhaps an insult to

your understanding."[563]

He writes to the Duke of Grafton:

"There is something in both your character and conduct which

distinguishes you not only from all other ministers, but from all other

men. It is not that you do wrong by design, but that you should never do

right by mistake. It is not that your indolence and your activity have

been equally misapplied, but that the first uniform principle, or, if I

may call it, the genius of your life, should have carried you through

every possible change and contradiction of conduct, without the

momentary imputation or colour of a virtue; and that the wildest spirit

of inconsistency should never once have betrayed you into a wise or

honourable action."[564]

Junius goes on, fiercer and fiercer; even when he sees the minister

fallen and dishonored, he is still savage.

It is vain that he confesses aloud that in the state in which he is, the

Duke might "disarm a private enemy of his resentment." He grows worse:

"You have every claim to compassion that can arise from misery and

distress. The condition you are reduced to would disarm a private enemy

of his resentment, and leave no consolation to the most vindictive

spirit, but that such an object, as you are, would disgrace the dignity

of revenge.... For my own part, I do not pretend to understand those

prudent forms of decorum, those gentle rules of discretion, which some

men endeavour to unite with the conduct of the greatest and most

hazardous affairs.... I should scorn to provide for a future retreat, or

to keep terms with a man who preserves no measures with the public.

Neither the abject submission of deserting his post in the hour of

danger, nor even the sacred shield of cowardice, should protect him. I

would pursue him through life, and try the last exertion of my abilities

to preserve the perishable infamy of his name, and make it

immortal."[565]

Except Swift, is there a human being who has more intentionally

concentrated and intensified in his heart the venom of hatred? Yet this

is not vile, for it thinks itself to be in the service of justice.

Amidst these excesses, this is the persuasion which enhances them; these

men tear one another; but they do not crouch; whoever their enemy be,

they take their stand in front of him. Thus Junius addresses the king:

"Sir: It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of

every reproach and distress which has attended your government, that you

should never have been acquainted with the language of truth until you

heard it in the complaints of your people. It is not, however, too late

to correct the error of your education. We are still inclined to make an

indulgent allowance for the pernicious lessons you received in your

youth, and to form the most sanguine hopes from the natural benevolence

of your disposition. We are far from thinking you capable of a direct,

deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of your subjects on

which all their civil and political liberties depend. Had it been

possible for us to entertain a suspicion so dishonourable to your

character, we should long since have adopted a style of remonstrance

very distant from the humility of complaint.... The people of England

are loyal to the House of Hanover, not from a vain preference of one

family to another, but from a conviction that the establishment of that

family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious

liberties. This, Sir, is a principle of allegiance equally solid and

rational; fit for Englishmen to adopt, and well worthy of your Majesty's

encouragement. We cannot long be deluded by nominal distinctions. The

name of Stuart, of itself, is only contemptible:--armed with the

sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The prince who

imitates their conduct, should be warned by their example; and while he

plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should

remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by

another."[566]

Let us look for less bitter souls, and try to encounter a sweeter

accent. There is one man, Charles James Fox, happy from his cradle, who

learned everything without study, whom his father trained in prodigality

and recklessness, whom, from the age of twenty-one, the public voice

proclaimed as the first in eloquence and the leader of a great party,

liberal, humane, sociable, not frustrating these generous expectations,

whose very enemies pardoned his faults, whom his friends adored, whom

labor never wearied, whom rivals never embittered, whom power did not

spoil; a lover of converse, of literature, of pleasure, who has left the

impress of his rich genius in the persuasive abundance, in the fine

character, the clearness and continuous ease of his speeches. Behold him

rising to speak; think of the discretion he must use; he is a Statesman,

a premier, speaking in Parliament of the friends of the king, lords of

the bedchamber, the noblest families of the kingdom, with their allies

and connections around him; he knows that every one of his words will

pierce like a fiery arrow into the heart and honor of five hundred men

who sit to hear him. No matter, he has been betrayed; he will punish the

traitors, and here is the pillory in which he sets "the janizaries of

the bedchamber," who by the Prince's order have deserted him in the

thick of the fight:

"The whole compass of language affords no terms sufficiently strong and

pointed to mark the contempt which I feel for their conduct. It is an

impudent avowal of political profligacy, as if that species of treachery

were less infamous than any other. It is not only a degradation of a

station which ought to be occupied only by the highest and most

exemplary honour, but forfeits their claim to the characters of

gentlemen, and reduces them to a level with the meanest and the basest

of the species; it insults the noble, the ancient, and the

characteristic independence of the English peerage, and is calculated to

traduce and vilify the British legislature in the eyes of all Europe,

and to the latest posterity. By what magic nobility can thus charm vice

into virtue, I know not nor wish to know; but in any other thing than

politics, and among any other men than lords of the bedchamber, such an

instance of the grossest perfidy would, as it well deserves, be branded

with infamy and execration."[567]

Then turning to the Commons:

"A Parliament thus fettered and controlled, without spirit and without

freedom, instead of limiting, extends, substantiates, and establishes

beyond all precedent, latitude, or condition, the prerogatives of the

crown. But though the British House of Commons were so shamefully

lost to its own weight in the constitution, were so unmindful of

its former struggles and triumphs in the great cause of liberty and

mankind, were so indifferent and treacherous to those primary objects and

concerns for which it was originally instituted, I trust the characteristic

spirit of this country is still equal to the trial; I trust Englishmen will

be as jealous of secret influence as superior to open violence; I trust

they are not more ready to defend their interests against foreign

depredation and insult, than to encounter and defeat this midnight

conspiracy against the constitution."[568]

If such are the outbursts of a nature above all gentle and amiable, we

can judge what the others must have been. A sort of impassioned

exaggeration reigns in the debates to which the trial of Warren Hastings

and the French Revolution gave rise, in the acrimonious rhetoric and

forced declamation of Sheridan, in the pitiless sarcasm and sententious

pomp of the younger Pitt. These orators love the coarse vulgarity of

gaudy colors; they hunt out accumulations of big words, contrasts

symmetrically protracted, vast and resounding periods. They do not fear

to repel; they crave effect. Force is their characteristic, and the

characteristic of the greatest amongst them, the first mind of the age,

Edmund Burke, of whom Dr. Johnson said: "Take up whatever topic you

please, he (Burke) is ready to meet you."

Burke did not enter Parliament, like Pitt and Fox, in the dawn of his

youth, but at thirty-five, having had time to train himself thoroughly

in all matters, learned in law, history, philosophy, literature, master

of such a universal erudition that he has been compared to Bacon. But

what distinguished him from all other men was a wide, comprehensive

intellect, which, exercised by philosophical studies and writings,[569]

seized the general aspects of things, and, beyond text, constitutions,

and figures, perceived the invisible tendency of events and the inner

spirit, covering with his contempt those pretended statesmen, a vulgar

herd of common journeymen, denying the existence of everything not

coarse or material, and who, far from being capable of guiding the grand

movements of an empire, are not worthy to turn the wheel of a machine.

Beyond all those gifts, he possessed one of those fertile and precise

imaginations which believe that finished knowledge is an inner view,

which never quit a subject without, having clothed it in its colors and

forms, and which, passing beyond statistics and the rubbish of dry

documents, recompose and reconstruct before the reader's eyes a distant

country and a foreign nation, with its monuments, dresses, landscapes,

and all the shifting detail of its aspects and manners. To all these

powers of mind, which constitute a man of system, he added all those

energies of heart which constitute an enthusiast. Poor, unknown, having

spent his youth in compiling for the publishers, he rose, by dint of

work and personal merit, with a pure reputation and an unscathed

conscience, ere the trials of his obscure life or the seductions of his

brilliant life had fettered his independence or tarnished the flower of

his loyalty. He brought to politics a horror of crime, a vivacity and

sincerity of conscience, a humanity, a sensibility, which seem only

suitable to a young man. He based human society on maxims of morality,

insisted upon a high and pure tone of feeling in the conduct of public

business, and seemed to have undertaken to raise and authorize the

generosity of the human heart. He fought nobly for noble causes; against

the crimes of power in England, the crimes of the people in France, the

crimes of monopolists in India. He defended, with immense research and

unimpeached disinterestedness, the Hindoos tyrannized over by English

greed:

"Every man of rank and landed fortune being long since extinguished, the

remaining miserable last cultivator who grows to the soil after having

his back scored by the farmer, has it again flayed by the whip of the

assignee, and is thus by a ravenous because a short-lived succession of

claimants lashed from oppressor to oppressor, whilst a single drop of

blood is left as the means of extorting a single grain of corn."[570]

He made himself everywhere the champion of principle and the persecutor

of vice; and men saw him bring to the attack all the forces of his

wonderful knowledge, his lofty reason, his splendid style, with the

unwearying and untempered ardor of a moralist and a knight.

Let us read him only several pages at a time: only thus he is great;

otherwise all that is exaggerated, commonplace, and strange, will arrest

and shock us; but if we give ourselves up to him, we will be carried

away and captivated. The enormous mass of his documents rolls

impetuously in a current of eloquence. Sometimes a spoken or written

discourse needs a whole volume to unfold the train of his multiplied

proofs and courageous anger. It is either the _exposé_ of an

administration, or the whole history of British India, or the complete

theory of revolutions, and the political conditions, which comes down

like a vast, overflowing stream, to dash with its ceaseless effort and

accumulated mass against some crime that men would overlook, or some

injustice which they would sanction. Doubtless there is foam on its

eddies, mud in its bed: thousands of strange creatures sport wildly on

its surface. Burke does not select, he lavishes; he casts forth by

myriads his teeming fancies, his emphasized and harsh words,

declamations and apostrophes, jests and execrations, the whole grotesque

or horrible assemblage of the distant regions and populous cities which

his unwearied learning or fancy has traversed. He says, speaking of the

usurious loans, at forty-eight per cent, and at compound interest, by

which Englishmen had devastated India, that

"That debt forms the foul putrid mucus, in which are engendered the

whole brood of creeping ascarides, all the endless involutions, the

eternal knot, added to a knot of those inexpugnable tape-worms which

devour the nutriment, and eat up the bowels of India."[571]

Nothing strikes him as excessive in speech, neither the description of

tortures, nor the atrocity of his images, nor the deafening racket of

his antitheses, nor the prolonged trumpet-blast of his curses, nor the

vast oddity of his jests. To the Duke of Bedford, who had reproached him

with his pension, he answers:

"The grants to the house of Russell were so enormous, as not only to

outrage œconomy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford

is the leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about

his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal

bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst 'he lies floating many a rood,' he is

still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the

very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his

origin, and covers me all over with the spray--everything of him and

about him is from the throne."[572]

Burke has no taste, nor have his compeers. The fine Greek or French

deduction has never found a place among the Germanic nations; with them

all is heavy or ill-refined. It is of no use for Burke to study Cicero,

and to confine his dashing force in the orderly channels of Latin

rhetoric; he continues half a barbarian, battening in exaggeration and

violence; but his fire is so sustained, his conviction so strong, his

emotion so warm and abundant, that we give way to him, forget our

repugnance, see in his irregularities and his outbursts only the

outpourings of a great heart and a deep mind, too open and too full; and

we wonder with a sort of strange veneration at this extraordinary

outflow, impetuous as a torrent, broad as a sea, in which the

inexhaustible variety of colors and forms undulates beneath the sun of a

splendid imagination, which lends to this muddy surge all the brilliancy

of its rays.

Section IX.--Doctrines of the French Revolution Contrasted

with the Conservative Tendencies of the English People

If you wish for a comprehensive view of all these personages, study Sir

Joshua Reynolds,[573] and then look at the fine French portraits of this

time, the cheerful ministers, gallant and charming archbishops, Marshal

de Saxe, who in the Strasburg monument goes down to his tomb with the

grace and ease of a courtier on the staircase at Versailles. In England,

under skies drowned in pallid mists, amid soft, vaporous clouds, appear

expressive or contemplative heads: the rude energy of the character has

not awed the artist; the coarse bloated animal; the strange and ominous

bird of prey; the growling jaws of the fierce bulldog--he has put them

all in: levelling politeness has not in his pictures effaced individual

asperities under uniform pleasantness. Beauty is there, but only in the

cold decision of look, in the deep seriousness and sad nobility of the

pale countenance, in the conscientious gravity and the indomitable

resolution of the restrained gesture. In place of Lely's courtesans, we

see by their side chaste ladies, sometimes severe and active; good

mothers surrounded by their little children, who kiss them and embrace

one another: morality is here, and with it the sentiment of home and

family, propriety of dress, a pensive air, the correct deportment of

Miss Burney's heroines. They are men who have done the world some

service: Bakewell transforms and reforms their cattle; Arthur Young

their agriculture; Howard their prisons; Arkwright and Watt their

industry; Adam Smith their political economy; Bentham their penal law;

Locke, Hutcheson, Ferguson, Bishop Butler, Reid, Stewart, Price, their

psychology and their morality. They have purified their private manners,

they now purify their public manners. They have settled their

government, they have established themselves in their religion. Johnson

is able to say with truth, that no nation in the world better tills its

soil and its mind. There is none so rich, so free, so well nourished,

where public and private efforts are directed with such assiduity,

energy, and ability towards the improvement of public and private

affairs. One point alone is wanting: lofty speculation. It is just this

point which, when all others are wanting, constitutes at this moment the

glory of France; and English caricatures show, with a good appreciation

of burlesque, face to face and in strange contrast, on one side the

Frenchman in a tumbledown cottage, shivering, with long teeth, thin,

feeding on snails and a handful of roots, but otherwise charmed with his

lot, consoled by a republican cockade and humanitarian programmes; on

the other, the Englishman, red and puffed out with fat, seated at his

table in a comfortable room, before a dish of most juicy roast-beef,

with a pot of foaming ale, busy in grumbling against the public distress

and the treacherous ministers, who are going to ruin everything.

Thus Englishmen arrive on the threshold of the French Revolution,

Conservatives and Christians facing the French free-thinkers and

revolutionaries. Without knowing it, the two nations have rolled onwards

for two centuries towards this terrible shock; without knowing it, they

have only been working to make it worse. All their effort, all their

ideas, all their great men have accelerated the motion which hurls them

towards the inevitable conflict. A hundred and fifty years of politeness

and general ideas have persuaded the French to trust in human goodness

and pure reason. A hundred and fifty years of moral reflection and

political strife have attached the Englishman to positive religion and

an established constitution. Each has his contrary dogma and his

contrary enthusiasm. Neither understands and each detests the other.

What one calls reform, the other calls destruction; what one reveres as

the establishment of right, the other curses as the overthrow of right;

what seems to one the annihilation of superstition, seems to the other

the abolition of morality. Never was the contrast of two spirits and two

civilizations shown in clearer characters, and it was Burke who, with

the superiority of a thinker and the hostility of an Englishman, took it

in hand to show this to the French.

He is indignant at this "tragi-comick farce," which at Paris is called

the regeneration of humanity. He denies that the contagion of such folly

can ever poison England. He laughs at the cockneys, who, roused by the

pratings of democratic societies, think themselves on the brink of a

revolution:

"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with

their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed

beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray

do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of

the field; that of course, they are many in number; or that, after all,

they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud

and troublesome insects of the hour."[574]

Real England hates and detests the maxims and actions of the French

Revolution:[575]

"The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill

us with disgust and horror. We wished... to derive all we possess as an

inheritance from our forefathers.... (We claim) our franchises not as

the rights of men, but as the rights of Englishmen."[576]

Our rights do not float in the air, in the imagination of philosophers;

they are put down in Magna Charta. We despise this abstract verbiage,

which deprives man of all equity and respect to puff him up with

presumption and theories:

"We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled,

like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred

shreds of paper about the rights of men."[577]

Our constitution is not a fictitious contract, like that of Rousseau,

sure to be violated in three months, but a real contract, by which king,

nobles, people, church, everyone holds the other, and is himself held.

The crown of the prince and the privilege of the noble are as sacred as

the land of the peasant and the tool of the working-man. Whatever be the

acquisition or the inheritance, we respect it in every man, and our law

has but one object, which is, to preserve to each his property and his

rights.

"We fear God; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to

parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and

with respect to nobility."[578]

"There is not one public man in this kingdom who does not reprobate the

dishonest, perfidious, and cruel confiscation which the National

Assembly has been compelled to make.... Church and State are ideas

inseparable in our minds.... Our education is in a manner wholly in the

hands of ecclesiasticks, and in all stages, from infancy to manhood....

They never will suffer the fixed estate of the church to be converted

into a pension, to depend on the treasury.... They made their church

like their nobility, independent. They can see without pain or grudging

an archbishop precede a duke. They can see a Bishop of Durham or a

Bishop of Winchester in possession of ten thousand a year."[579]

We will never suffer the established domain of our church to be

converted into a pension, so as to place it in dependence on the

treasury. We have made our church as our king and our nobility,

independent. We are shocked at your robbery--first, because it is an

outrage upon property; next, because it is an attack upon religion. We

hold that there exists no society without belief, and we feel that, in

exhausting the source, you dry up the whole stream. We have rejected as

a poison the infidelity which defiled the beginning of our century and

of yours, and we have purged ourselves of it, whilst you have been

saturated with it.

"Who, born within the last forty years, has read one word of Collins,

and Toland, and Tindal,... and that whole race who called themselves

Freethinkers?"[580]

"We are Protestants, not from indifference, but from zeal.

"Atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.

"We are resolved to keep an established church, an established monarchy,

an established aristocracy, and an established democracy, each in the

degree it exists, and in no greater."[581]

We base our establishment upon the sentiment of right, and the sentiment

of right on reverence for God.

In place of right and of God, whom do you, Frenchmen, acknowledge as

master? The sovereign people, that is, the arbitrary inconstancy of a

numerical majority. We deny that the majority has a right to destroy a

constitution.

"The constitution of a country being once settled upon some compact,

tacit or expressed, there is no power existing of force to alter it,

without the breach of the covenant, or the consent of all the

parties."[582]

We deny that a majority has a right to make a constitution; unanimity

must first have conferred this right on the majority. We deny that brute

force is a legitimate authority, and that a populace is a nation.[583]

"A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state or

separable from it.... When great multitudes act together under that

discipline of nature, I recognise the people;... when you separate the

common sort of men from their proper chieftains so as to form them into

an adverse army, I no longer know that venerable object called the

people in such a disbanded race of deserters and vagabonds."[584]

We detest with all our power of hatred the right of tyranny which you

give them over others, and we detest still more the right of

insurrection which you give them against themselves. We believe that a

constitution is a trust transmitted to this generation by the past, to

be handed down to the future, and that if a generation can dispose of it

as its own, it ought also to respect it as belonging to others. We hold

that, "by this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and

as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies and fashions,

the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No

one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better

than the flies of a summer."[585] We repudiate this meagre and coarse

reason, which separates a man from his ties, and sees in him only the

present, which separates a man from society, and counts him as only one

head in a flock. We despise these "metaphysics of an undergraduate and

the mathematics of an exciseman," by which you cut up the state and

man's rights according to square miles and numerical unities. We have a

horror of that cynical coarseness by which "all the decent drapery of

life is to be rudely torn off," by which "now a queen is but a woman,

and a woman is but an animal,"[586] which cuts down chivalric and

religious spirit, the two crowns of humanity, to plunge them, together

with learning, into the popular mire, to be "trodden down under the

hoofs of a swinish multitude."[587] We have a horror of this systematic

levelling which disorganizes civil society. Burke continues thus:

"I am satisfied beyond a doubt that the project of turning a great

empire into a vestry, or into a collection of vestries, and of governing

it in the spirit of a parochial administration, is senseless and absurd,

in any mode, or with any qualifications. I can never be convinced that

the scheme of placing the highest powers of the state in churchwardens

and constables, and other such officers, guided by the prudence of

litigious attornies, and Jew brokers, and set in action by shameless

women of the lowest condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns, and

brothels, by pert apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, hairdressers,

fiddlers, and dancers on the stage (who, in such a commonwealth as

yours, will in future overbear, as already they have overborne, the

sober incapacity of dull uninstructed men, of useful but laborious

occupations), can never be put into any shape that must not be both

disgraceful and destructive."[588] "If monarchy should ever obtain an

entire ascendancy in France, it will probably be... the most completely

arbitrary power that has ever appeared on earth. France will be wholly

governed by the agitators in corporations, by societies in the towns

formed of directors in assignats,... attornies, agents, money-jobbers,

speculators, and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy founded on

the destruction of the crown, the church, the nobility, and the

people."[589]

This is what Burke wrote in 1790 at the dawn of the first French

Revolution.[590] Two years after the people of Birmingham destroyed the

houses of some English democrats, and the miners of Wednesbury went out

in a body from their pits to come to the succor of "king and church." If

we compare one crusade with another, scared England was as fanatical as

enthusiastic France. Pitt declared that they could not "treat with a

nation of atheists."[591] Burke said that the war was not between people

and people, but between property and brute force. The rage of

execration, invective, and destruction mounted on both sides like a

conflagration.[592] It was not the collision of the two governments, but

of the two civilizations and the two doctrines. The two vast machines,

driven with all their momentum and velocity, met face to face, not by

chance, but by fatality. A whole age of literature and philosophy had

been necessary to amass the fuel which filled their sides, and laid down

the rail which guided their course. In this thundering clash, amid these

ebullitions of hissing and fiery vapor, in these red flames which licked

the boilers, and whirled with a rumbling noise upwards to the heavens,

an attentive spectator may still discover the nature and the

accumulation of the force which caused such an outburst, dislocated such

iron plates, and strewed the ground with such ruins.

[Footnote 483: 1742, Report of Lord Lonsdale.]

[Footnote 484: In the present inflamed temper of the people, the Act could

not be carried into execution without an armed force.--"Speech of Sir

Robert Walpole."]

[Footnote 485: See Walpole's terrible speech against him, 1734.]

[Footnote 486: See, tor the truth of this statement, "Memoirs of Horace

Walpole," 2 vols, ed. E. Warburton, 1851, I. 381, note.--Tr.]

[Footnote 487: Notes during a journey in England made in 1729 with Lord

Chesterfield.]

[Footnote 488: Dr. W. King, "Political and Literary Anecdotes of his

own Times," 1818, 27.]

[Footnote 489: Frederick died 1751. "Memoirs of Horace Walpole," I. 262.]

[Footnote 490: Walpole's "Memoirs of George II," ed. Lord Holland, 3 vols.

2d ed. 1847, I. 77.]

[Footnote 491: See the character of Birton in Voltaire's "Jenny."]

[Footnote 492: The original letter is in French. Chesterfield's "Letters

to his Son," ed. Mahon, 4 vols. 1845; II. April 15, 1751, p. 127.]

[Footnote 493: Ibid. II. January 3, 1751, p. 72.]

[Footnote 494: Ibid. II. November 12, 1750, p. 57.]

[Footnote 495: Ibid. II. May 16, 1751, p. 146.]

[Footnote 496: Ibid. II. January 21, 1751, p. 81.]

[Footnote 497: "They (the English) are commonly twenty years old before

they have spoken to anybody above their schoolmaster and the fellows of

their college. If they happen to have learning, it is only Greek and

Latin, but not one word of modern history or modern languages. Thus

prepared, they go abroad, as they call it; but, in truth, they stay at

home all that while: for, being very awkward, confoundedly ashamed, and

not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign company, at

least none good; but dine and sup with one another only at the

tavern."--"Chesterfield's Letters to his Son," I. May 10 (O. S.) 1748,

p. 136. "I could wish you would ask him (Mr. Burrish) for some letters

to young fellows of pleasure or fashionable coquettes, that you may be

dans l'honnete débauche de Munich."--Ibid. II. October 3 1753, p. 331.]

[Footnote 498: Speech of the Beggar in the Epilogue of the "Beggars'

Opera."]

[Footnote 499: Gay's Plays, "The Beggars' Opera," I, 1.]

[Footnote 500: Ibid.]

[Footnote 501: Ibid.]

[Footnote 502: Ibid. III. 2.]

[Footnote 503: Ibid. II. 1.]

[Footnote 504: I cannot find these lines in the edition I have

consulted.--Tr.]

[Footnote 505: In these Eclogues the ladies explain in good style that

their friends have their lackeys for lovers: "Her favours Sylvia shares

amongst mankind; such gen'rous Love could never be confin'd." Elsewhere

the servant girl says to her mistress: "Have you not fancy'd, in his

frequent kiss, th' ungrateful leavings of a filthy miss?"]

[Footnote 506: Chesterfield's Letters, II. April 22 (O. S.) 1751, p. 131.

See, for a contrast, Swift's "Essay on Polite Conversation."]

[Footnote 507: Even in 1826, Sydney Smith, arriving at Calais, writes

("Life and Letters", II. 253, 254): "What pleases me is the taste and

ingenuity displayed in the shops, and the good manners and politeness

of the people. Such is the state of manners, that you appear almost to

have quitted a land of barbarians. I have not seen a cobbler who

is not better bred than an English gentleman."]

[Footnote 508: See in "Evelina," by Miss Burney, 3 vols. 1784, the

character of the poor, genteel Frenchman, M. Dubois, who is made to

tremble even whilst lying in the gutter. These very correct young

ladies go to see Congreve's "Love for Love"; their parents are not

afraid of showing them Miss Prue. See also, in "Evelina," by way of

contrast, the boorish character of the English captain; he throws Mrs.

Duval twice in the mud; he says to his daughter Molly: "I charge you,

as you value my favour, that you'll never again be so impertinent as to

have a taste of your own before my face" (I. 190). The change,

even from sixty years ago, is surprising.]

[Footnote 509: Needham (1713-1781), a learned English naturalist, made and

published microscopical discoveries and remarks on the generation of

organic bodies.--Tr.]

[Footnote 510: The title of a philosophical novel by Diderot.--Tr.]

[Footnote 511: The title of a philosophical tale by Voltaire.--Tr.]

[Footnote 512: "The consciousness of silent endurance, so dear to every

Englishman, of standing out against something and not giving in."--"Tom

Brown's School Days."]

[Footnote 513: William Penn.]

[Footnote 514: On one tour he slept three weeks on the bare boards. One

day, at three in the morning, he said to Nelson, his companion: "Brother

Nelson, let us be of good cheer, I have one whole side yet; for the skin

is off but on one side."--Southey's "Life of Wesley," 2 vols, 1820, II.

ch. XV. 54.]

[Footnote 515: Southey's "Life of Wesley," II. 176.]

[Footnote 516: Ibid, I. 251.]

[Footnote 517: Ibid. I. ch. VI, 236.]

[Footnote 518: Southey's "Life of Wesley," II. ch. XVII. 111.]

[Footnote 519: Ibid. II. ch. XXIV. 320.]

[Footnote 520: Tillotson's Sermons, 10 vols. 1760, I. 1.]

[Footnote 521: Ibid. I. 5.]

[Footnote 522: Tillotson's Sermons, III. 2.]

[Footnote 523: Tillotson's Sermons, IV. 15-16; Sermon 55, "Of Sincerity

towards God and Man," John I. 47. This was the last sermon Tillotson

preached; July 29, 1694.--Tr.]

[Footnote 524: Barrow's Theological Works, 6 vols. Oxford, 1818, I.

141-142; Sermon VIII. "The Duty of Thanksgiving," Eph. V. 20.

"These words, although (as the very syntax doth immediately discover)

they bear a relation to, and have a fit coherence with, those that

precede, may yet (especially considering St. Paul's style and manner of

expression in the preceptive and exhortative parts of his Epistles),

without any violence or prejudice on either hand, be severed from the

context, and considered distinctly by themselves.... First, then,

concerning the duty itself, to give thanks, or rather to be

thankful (for εύχαριστέΐν doth not only signify gratias agere,

reddere, dicere, to give, render, or declare thanks, but also gratias

habere, grate affectum esse, to be thankfully disposed, to entertain a

grateful affection, sense, or memory)... I say, concerning this duty

itself (abstractedly considered), as it involves a respect to benefits

or good things received; so in its employment about them it imports,

requires, or supposes these following particulars."]

[Footnote 525: He was a mathematician of the highest order, and had

resigned his chair to Newton.]

[Footnote 526: Barrow's Theological Works, I. Sermon XXIII. 500-501.]

[Footnote 527: Barrow's Theological Works, I. 145; Sermon VIII. "The Duty

of Thanksgiving," Eph. V. 20.]

[Footnote 528: Ibid. I. 159-160, Sermon VIII.]

[Footnote 529: Jacques Bridaine (1701-1767), a celebrated and zealous

French preacher, whose sermons were always extempore, and hence not very

cultivated and refined in style.--Tr.]

[Footnote 530: South's Sermons, 1715, II vols., VI. 110. The fourth and

last discourse from those words in Isaiah V. 20, "Woe unto them that call

evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for

darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter."--Tr.]

[Footnote 531: South's Sermons, VI. 118.]

[Footnote 532: I thought it necessary to look into the Socinian pamphlets,

which have swarmed so much among us within a few years.--Stillingfleet,

"In Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity," 1697.]

[Footnote 533: John Hales of Eaton, Works, 3 vols., 12 mo, 1765, I. 4.]

[Footnote 534: He examines, amongst other things, "the sin against the

Holy Ghost." They would very much like to know in what this consists.

But nothing is more obscure. Calvin and other theologians each gave a

different definition. After a minute dissertation, Hales concludes thus:

"And though negative proofs from Scripture are not demonstrative, yet

the general silence of the apostles may at least help to infer a

probability that the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is not committable

by any Christian who lived not in the time of our Saviour" (1636). This

is a training for argument. So, in Italy, the discussion about giving

drawers to, or withholding them from the Capuchins, developed political

and diplomatic ability.--Ibid. I. 36.]

[Footnote 535: "The Scripture is a book of morality, and not of

philosophy. Everything there relates to practice.... It is evident, from

a cursory view of the Old and New Testament, that they are miscellaneous

books, some parts of which are history, others writ in a poetical style,

and others prophetical; but the design of them all, is professedly to

recommend the practice of true religion and virtue."--John Clarke,

Chaplain of the King, 1721. (I have not been able to find these exact

words in the edition of Clarke accessible to me.--Tr.)]

[Footnote 536: Burke, "Reflections on the Revolution in France."]

[Footnote 537: Ray, Boyle Barrow, Newton.]

[Footnote 538: Bentley, Clarke, Warburton, Berkeley.]

[Footnote 539: Locke, Addison, Swift, Johnson, Richardson.]

[Footnote 540: "Paupertina philosophia" says Leibnitz.]

[Footnote 541: After the constant conjunction of two objects--heat and

flame, for instance, weight and solidity--we are determined by custom

alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other. All inferences

from experience are effects of custom, not of reasoning.... "Upon the

whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of

connection which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and

separate; one event follows another; but we can never observe any tie

between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected."--Hume's

Essays, 4 vols., 1760, III. 117.]

[Footnote 542: We must read Sir Robert Filmer's "Patriarcha," London,

1680, on the prevailing theory in order to see from what a quagmire of

follies people emerged. He said that Adam, on his creation, had received

an absolute and regal power over the universe; that in every society

of men there was one legitimate king, the direct heir of Adam. "Some say

it was by lot, and others that Noah sailed round the Mediterranean in

ten years, and divided the world into Asia, Africa, and Europe"

(p. 15)--portions for his three sons. Compare Bossuet, "Politique fondée

sur l'Ecriture." At this epoch moral science was being emancipated from

theology.]

[Footnote 543: Locke, "Of Civil Government," 1714, book II. ch. II.

sec. 4.]

[Footnote 544: Ibid. sec. 13.]

[Footnote 545: Ibid. II. ch. VII. sec. 87.]

[Footnote 546: Ibid.]

[Footnote 547: Ibid. sec. 93.]

[Footnote 548: Ibid. II. ch. VIII. sec. 95.]

[Footnote 549: De Foe's estimate.]

[Footnote 550: "Their eating, indeed, amazes me; had I five hundred

heads, and were each head furnished with brains, yet would they all be

insufficient to compute the number of cows, pigs, geese, and turkies

which upon this occasion die for the good of their country!... On the

contrary, they seem to lose their temper as they lose their appetites;

every morsel they swallow serves to increase their animosity... The mob

meet upon the debate, fight themselves sober, and then draw off to get

drunk again, and charge for another encounter."--Goldsmith's "Citizen of

the World," Letter CXII. "An election described." See also Hogarth's

prints.]

[Footnote 551: Ibid.]

[Footnote 552: Montesquieu, "Notes sur l'Angleterre."]

[Footnote 553: Smollett, "Peregrine Pickle," ch. 40.]

[Footnote 554: See Hogarth's prints.]

[Footnote 555: Goldsmith's "Traveller."]

[Footnote 556: Chesterfield observes that a Frenchman of his time did not

understand the word Country; you must speak to him of his Prince.]

[Footnote 557: The executioner of Charles I.]

[Footnote 558: Montesquieu, "De l'Esprit des Lois," book XIX. ch. 27.]

[Footnote 559: Junius wrote anonymously, and critics have not yet been

able with certainty to reveal his true name. Most probably he was Sir

Philip Francis.]

[Footnote 560: "Anecdotes and Speeches of the Earl of Chatham," 7th

ed. 3 vols. 1810, II. ch. 42 and 44.]

[Footnote 561: Ibid. II. ch. 29.]

[Footnote 562: Ibid. 42.]

[Footnote 563: Junius's Letters, 2 vols. 1772, XXIII. I. 162.]

[Footnote 564: Ibid. XII. I. 75.]

[Footnote 565: Junius's Letters, XXXVI. II. 56.]

[Footnote 566: Ibid. XXXV. II. 29.]

[Footnote 567: Fox's Speeches, 6 vols. 1815, II. 271; December 17, 1783.]

[Footnote 568: Fox's Speeches, II. p. 268.]

[Footnote 569: "An Inquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and the

Beautiful."]

[Footnote 570: Burke's Works, 1808, 8 vols. IV. 286, "Speech on the

Nabob of Arcot's Debts."]

[Footnote 571: Burke's Works, IV. 282.]

[Footnote 572: Ibid. VIII. 35; "A Letter to a Noble Lord."]

[Footnote 573: Lord Heathfield, the Earl of Mansfield, Major Stringer

Lawrence, Lord Ashburton, Lord Edgecombe, and many others.]

[Footnote 574: Burke's Works, V. 165; "Reflections

on the Revolution in France."]

[Footnote 575: "I almost venture to affirm, that not one in a hundred

amongst us participates in the triumph of the revolution society."--Ibid.]

[Footnote 576: Ibid. 75.]

[Footnote 577: Ibid. 166.]

[Footnote 578: Burke's "Reflections," V. 167.]

[Footnote 579: Ibid. 188.]

[Footnote 580: Ibid. 172.]

[Footnote 581: Ibid. 175.]

[Footnote 582: Burke's Works, VI. 201; "Appeal from the New to the Old

Whigs."]

[Footnote 583: "A government of five hundred country attornies and

obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it

were chosen by eight and forty millions.... As to the share of power,

authority, direction, which each individual ought to have in the

management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct

original rights of man in civil society."--Ibid. v. 109;

"Reflections."]

[Footnote 584: Ibid. VI. 219; "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs."]

[Footnote 585: Ibid. V. 181 "Reflections."]

[Footnote 586: Burke's Works, V. 151; "Reflections."]

[Footnote 587: Ibid. 154.]

[Footnote 588: Ibid. VI. 5; "Letter to a Member of the National

Assembly."]

[Footnote 589: Ibid. V. 349; "Reflections."]

[Footnote 590: "The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may

do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do,

before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into

complaints.... Strange chaos of levity and ferocity,... monstrous

tragicomic scene.... After I have read the list of the persons and

descriptions elected into the Tiers-État, nothing which they afterwards

did could appear astonishing.... Of any practical experience in the

state, not one man was to be found. The best were only men of theory.

The majority was composed of practitioners in the law,... active

chicaners,... obscure provincial advocates, stewards of petty local

jurisdictions, country attornies, notaries, etc."--Ibid. V. 37 and 90.

That which offends Burke, and even makes him very uneasy, was, that no

representatives of the "natural landed interests" were among the

representatives of the Tiers-État. Let us give one quotation more, for

really this political clairvoyance is akin to genius: "Men are qualified

for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral

chains upon their own appetites.... Society cannot exist unless a

controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the

less of it there is within the more there must be without. It is

ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate

minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."]

[Footnote 591: Pitt's Speeches, 3 vols. 1808, II. p. 81, on negotiating

for peace with France, January 26, 1795. Pitt says, however, in the same

speech: "God forbid that we should look on the body of the people of

France as atheists."--Tr.]

[Footnote 592: "Letters to a Noble Lord; Letters on a Regicide Peace."]

CHAPTER FOURTH

Addison

Section I.--The Significance of the Writings of Addison and Swift

In this vast transformation of mind which occupies the whole eighteenth

century, and gives England its political and moral standing, two eminent

men appear in politics and morality, both accomplished writers--the

most accomplished yet seen in England: both accredited mouthpieces of a

party, masters in the art of persuasion and conviction; both limited in

philosophy and art, incapable of considering sentiments in a

disinterested fashion: always bent on seeing in things motives for

approbation or blame; otherwise differing, and even in contrast with one

another; one happy, benevolent, beloved; the other hated, hating, and

most unfortunate: the one a partisan of liberty and the noblest hopes of

man; the other an advocate of a retrograde party, and an eager detractor

of humanity: the one measured, delicate, furnishing a model of the most

solid English qualities, perfected by continental culture; the other

unbridled and formidable, showing an example of the harshest English

instincts, luxuriating without limit or rule in every kind of

devastation and amid every degree of despair. To penetrate to the

interior of this civilization and this people, there are no means better

than to pause and dwell upon Swift and Addison.

Section II.--Addison's Character and Education

"I have often reflected," says Steele of Addison, "after a night spent

with him, apart from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of

conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who

had all their wit and nature heightened with humor, more exquisite and

delightful than any other man ever possessed."[593] And Pope, a rival of

Addison, and a bitter rival, adds: "His conversation had something in it

more charming that I have found in any other man."[594] These sayings

express the whole talent of Addison: his writings are conversations,

masterpieces of English urbanity and reason; nearly all the details of

his character and life have contributed to nourish this urbanity and

this reasoning.

At the age of seventeen we find him at Oxford, studious and peaceful,

loving solitary walks under the elm-avenues, and amongst the beautiful

meadows on the banks of the Cherwell. From the thorny brake of school

education he chose the only flower--a withered one, doubtless, Latin

verse, but one which, compared to the erudition, to the theology, to the

logic of the time, is still a flower. He celebrates, in strophes or

hexameters, the peace of Ryswick, or the system of Dr. Burnet; he

composes little ingenious poems on a puppet-show, on the battle of the

pigmies and cranes; he learns to praise and jest--in Latin it is

true--but with such success that his verses recommend him for the

rewards of the ministry, and even come to the knowledge of Boileau. At

the same time he imbues himself with the Latin poets; he knows them by

heart, even the most affected, Claudian and Prudentius; presently in

Italy quotations will rain from his pen; from top to bottom, in all its

nooks, and under all its aspects, his memory is stuffed with Latin

verses. We see that he loves them, scans them with delight, that a fine

cæsura charms him, that every delicacy touches him, that no hue of art

or emotion escapes him, that his literary tact is refined, and prepared

to relish all the beauties of thought and expression. This inclination,

too long retained, is a sign of a little mind, I allow; a man ought not

to spend so much time in inventing centos. Addison would have done

better to enlarge his knowledge--to study Latin prose-writers, Greek

literature, Christian antiquity, modern Italy, which he hardly knew. But

this limited culture, leaving him weaker, made him more refined. He

formed his art by studying only the monuments of Latin urbanity; he

acquired a taste for the elegance and refinements, the triumphs and

artifices of style; he became self-contemplative, correct, capable of

knowing and perfecting his own tongue. In the designed reminiscences,

the happy allusions, the discreet tone of his little poems, I find

beforehand many traits of the "Spectator."

Leaving the university, he travelled for a long time in the two most

polished countries in the world, France and Italy. He lived at Paris, in

the house of the ambassador, in the regular and brilliant society which

gave fashion to Europe; he visited Boileau, Malebranche, saw with

somewhat malicious curiosity the fine curtsies of the painted and

affected ladies of Versailles, the grave and almost stale civilities of

the fine speakers and fine dancers of the other sex. He was amused at

the complimentary intercourse of Frenchmen, and remarked that when a

tailor accosted a shoemaker, he congratulated himself on the honor of

saluting him. In Italy he admired the works of art, and praised them in

a letter,[595] in which the enthusiasm is rather cold, but very well

expressed.[596] He had the fine training which is now given to young men

of the higher ranks. And it was not the amusements of cockneys or the

racket of taverns which employed him. His beloved Latin poets followed

him everywhere. He had read them over before setting out; he recited

their verses in the places which they mention. "I must confess, it was

not one of the least entertainments that I met with in travelling, to

examine these several descriptions, as it were, upon the spot, and to

compare the natural face of the country with the landscapes that the

poets have given us of it."[597] These were the pleasures of an epicure

in literature; there could be nothing more literary and less pedantic

than the account which he wrote on his return.[598] Presently this

refined and delicate curiosity led him to coins. "There is a great

affinity," he says, "between them and poetry;" for they serve as a

commentary upon ancient authors; an effigy of the Graces makes a verse

of Horace visible. And on this subject he wrote a very agreeable

dialogue, choosing for personages well-bred men: "all three very well

versed in the politer parts of learning, and had travelled into the most

refined nations of Europe.... Their design was to pass away the heat of

the summer among the fresh breezes that rise from the river (the

Thames), and the agreeable mixture of shades and fountains in which the

whole country naturally abounds."[599] Then, with a gentle and

well-tempered gayety, he laughs at pedants who waste life in discussing

the Latin toga or sandal, but pointed out, like a man of taste and wit,

the services which coins might render to history and the arts. Was there

ever a better education for a literary man of the world? He had already

a long time ago acquired the art of fashionable poetry, I mean the

correct verses, which are complimentary, or written to order. In all

polite society we look for the adornment of thought; we desire for it

rare, brilliant, beautiful dress, to distinguish it from vulgar

thoughts, and for this reason we impose upon it rhyme, metre, noble

expression; we keep for it a store of select terms, verified metaphors,

suitable images, which are like an aristocratic wardrobe, in which it is

hampered but must adorn itself. Men of wit are bound to make verses for

it, and in a certain style just as others must display their lace, and

that after a certain pattern. Addison put on this dress, and wore it

correctly and easily, passing without difficulty from one habit to a

similar one, from Latin to English verse. His principal piece, "The

Campaign,"[600] is an excellent model of the agreeable and classical

style. Each verse is full, perfect in itself, with a clever antithesis,

a good epithet, or a concise picture. Countries have noble names; Italy

is Ausonia, the Black Sea is the Scythian Sea; there are mountains of

dead, and a thunder of eloquence sanctioned by Lucian; pretty turns of

oratorical address imitated from Ovid; cannons are mentioned in poetic

periphrases, as later in Delille.[601] The poem is an official and

decorative amplification, like that which Voltaire wrote afterwards on

the battle of Fontenoy. Addison does yet better; he wrote an opera, a

comedy, a much admired tragedy on the death of Cato. Such writing was

always, in the last century; a passport to a good style and to

fashionable society. A young man in Voltaire's time, on leaving college,

had to write his tragedy as now he must write an article on political

economy; it was then a proof that he could converse with ladies, as now

it is a proof that he can argue with men. He learned the art of being

amusing, of touching the heart, of talking of love; he thus escaped from

dry or special studies; he could choose among events or sentiments those

which interest or please; he was able to hold his own in good society,

to be sometimes agreeable there, never to offend. Such is the culture

which these works gave Addison; it is of slight importance that they are

poor. In them he dealt with the passions, with humor. He produced in his

opera some lively and smiling pictures; in his tragedy some noble or

moving accents; he emerged from reasoning and pure dissertation; he

acquired the art of rendering morality visible and truth expressive; he

knew how to give ideas a physiognomy, and that an attractive one. Thus

was the finished writer perfected by contact with ancient and modern,

foreign and national urbanity, by the sight of the fine arts, by

experience of the world and study of style, by continuous and delicate

choice of all that is agreeable in things and men, in life and art.

His politeness received from his character a singular bent and charm. It

was not external, simply voluntary and official; it came from the heart.

He was gentle and kind, of refined sensibility, so shy even as to remain

silent and seem dull in a large company or before strangers, only

recovering his spirits before intimate friends, and confessing that only

two persons can converse together. He could not endure an acrimonious

discussion; when his opponent was intractable, he pretended to approve,

and for punishment, plunged him discreetly into his own folly. He

withdrew by preference from political arguments; being invited to deal

with them in the "Spectator," he contented himself with inoffensive and

general subjects, which could interest all whilst offending none. It

would have pained him to give others pain. Though a very decided and

steady Whig, he continued moderate in polemics; and in an age when the

winners in the political fight were ready to ruin their opponents or to

bring them to the block, he confined himself to show the faults of

argument made by the Tories, or to rail courteously at their prejudices.

At Dublin he went first of all to shake hands with Swift, his great and

fallen adversary. Insulted bitterly by Dennis and Pope, he refused to

employ against them his influence or his wit, and praised Pope to the

end. What can be more touching, when we have read his life, than his

essay on kindness? we perceive that he is unconsciously speaking of

himself:

"There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without

good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance, and supply its

place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of

artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word

good-breeding.... The greatest wits I have conversed with are men

eminent for their humanity.... Good-nature is generally born with us;

health, prosperity, and kind treatment from the world are great

cherishers of it where they find it."[602]

It so happens that he is involuntarily describing his own charm and his

own success. It is himself that he is unveiling; he was very prosperous,

and his good fortune spread itself around him in affectionate

sentiments, in constant consideration for others, in calm cheerfulness.

At college he was distinguished; his Latin verses made him a fellow at

Oxford; he spent ten years there in grave amusements and in studies

which pleased him. Dryden, the prince of literature, praised him in the

highest terms, when Addison was only twenty-two. When he left Oxford,

the ministry gave him a pension of three hundred pounds to finish his

education, and prepare him for public service. On his return from his

travels, his poem on Blenheim placed him in the first rank of the Whigs.

He became twice Secretary for Ireland, Under-Secretary of State, a

member of Parliament, one of the principal Secretaries of State. Party

hatred spared him; amid the almost universal defeat of the Whigs, he was

re-elected member of Parliament; in the furious war of Whigs and Tories,

both united to applaud his tragedy of "Cato"; the most cruel

pamphleteers respected him; his uprightness, his talent, seemed exalted

by common consent above discussion. He lived in abundance, activity, and

honors, wisely and usefully, amid the assiduous admiration and constant

affection of learned and distinguished friends, who could never have too

much of his conversation, amid the applause of all the good men and all

the cultivated minds of England. If twice the fall of his party seemed

to destroy or retard his fortune, he maintained his position without

much effort, by reflection and coolness, prepared for all that might

happen, accepting mediocrity, confirmed in a natural and acquired

calmness, accommodating himself without yielding to men, respectful to

the great without degrading himself, free from secret revolt or internal

suffering. These are the sources of his talent; could any be purer or

finer? could anything be more engaging than worldly polish and elegance,

without the factitious ardor and the complimentary falsehoods of the

world? Where shall we look for more agreeable conversation than that of

a good and happy man, whose knowledge, taste, and wit, are only employed

to give us pleasure?

Section III.--Addison's Seriousness.--His Nobility of Character

This pleasure will be useful to us. Our interlocutor is as grave as he

is polite; he will and can instruct as well as amuse us; his education

has been as solid as it has been elegant; he even confesses in the

"Spectator" that he prefers the serious to the humorous style. He is

naturally reflective, silent, attentive. He has studied literature, men,

and things, with the conscientiousness of a scholar and an observer.

When he travelled in Italy, it was in the English style, noting the

difference of manners, the peculiarities of the soil, the good and ill

effects of various governments; providing himself with precise memoirs,

circumstantial statistics on taxes, buildings, minerals, climate,

harbors, administration, and on a great many other things.[603] An

English lord, who travels in Holland, goes simply into a cheese-shop, in

order to see, for himself all the stages of the manufacture; he returns,

like Addison, provided with exact statistics; complete notes; this mass

of verified information is the foundation of the common-sense of

Englishmen. Addison added to it experience of business, having been

successively, or at the same time, a journalist, a member of Parliament,

a statesman, hand and heart in all the fights and chances of party. Mere

literary education only makes good talkers, able to adorn and publish

ideas which they do not possess, and which others furnish for them. If

writers wish to invent, they must look to events and men, not to books

and drawing-rooms; the conversation of special men is more useful to

them than the study of perfect periods; they cannot think for

themselves, but in so far as they have lived or acted. Addison knew how

to act and live. When we read his reports, letters, and discussions, we

feel that politics and government have given him half his mind. To

exercise patronage, to handle money, to interpret the law, to divine the

motives of men, to foresee the changes of public opinion, to be

compelled to judge rightly, quickly, and twenty times a day, on present

and great interests, looked after by the public and under the espionage

of enemies; all this nourished his reason and sustained his discourses.

Such a man might judge and counsel his fellows; his judgments were not

amplifications arranged by a process of the brain, but observations

controlled by experience: he might be listened to on moral subjects as a

natural philosopher was on subjects connected with physics; we feel that

he spoke with authority, and that we were instructed.

After having listened a little, people felt themselves better; for they

recognized in him from the first a singularly lofty soul, very pure, so

much attached to uprightness that he made it his constant care and his

dearest pleasure. He naturally loved beautiful things, goodness and

justice, science and liberty. From an early age he had joined the

Liberal party, and he continued in it to the end, hoping the best of

human virtue and reason, noting the wretchedness into which nations fell

who abandoned their dignity with their independence.[604] He followed

the grand discoveries of the new physical sciences, so as to give him

more exalted ideas of the works of God. He loved the deep and serious

emotions which reveal to us the nobility of our nature and the infirmity

of our condition. He employed all his talent and all his writings in

giving us the notion of what we are worth, and of what we ought to be.

Of two tragedies which he composed or contemplated, one was on the death

of Cato, the most virtuous of the Romans; the other on that of Socrates,

the most virtuous of the Greeks. At the end of the first he felt some

scruples; and for fear of being accused of finding an excuse for

suicide, he gave Cato some remorse. His opera of "Rosamond" ends with

the injunction to prefer pure love to forbidden joys; the "Spectator,"

the "Tatler," the "Guardian," are mere lay sermons. Moreover, he put his

maxims into practice. When he was in office, his integrity was perfect;

he conferred often obligations on those whom he did not know--always

gratuitously, refusing presents, under whatever form they were offered.

When out of office, his loyalty was perfect; he maintained his opinions

and friendships without bitterness or baseness, boldly praising his

fallen protectors,[605] fearing not thereby to expose himself to the

loss of his only remaining resources. He possessed an innate nobility of

character, and reason aided him in keeping it. He considered that there

is common-sense in honesty. His first care, as he said, was to range his

passions on the side of truth. He had made for himself a portrait of a

rational creature, and he conformed his conduct to this by reflection as

much as by instinct. He rested every virtue on an order of principles

and proofs. His logic fed his morality, and the uprightness of his mind

completed the singleness of his heart. His religion, English in every

sense, was after the like fashion. He based his faith on a regular

succession of historical discussions:[606] he established the existence

of God by a regular series of moral deductions; minute and solid

demonstration was throughout the guide and foundation of his beliefs and

emotions. Thus disposed, he loved to conceive God as the rational head

of the world; he transformed accidents and necessities into calculations

and directions; he saw order and providence in the conflict of things,

and felt around him the wisdom which he attempted to establish in

himself. Addison, good and just himself, trusted in God, also a being

good and just. He lived willingly in His knowledge and presence, and

thought of the unknown future which was to complete human nature and

accomplish moral order. When the end came, he went over his life, and

discovered that he had done some wrong or other to Gay: this wrong was

doubtless slight, since Gay had never thought of it. Addison begged him

to come to his bedside, and asked his pardon. When he was about to die,

he wished still to be useful, and sent for his step-son, Lord Warwick,

whose careless life had caused him some uneasiness. He was so weak that

at first he could not speak. The young man, after waiting awhile, said

to him: "Dear sir, you sent for me, I believe; I hope that you have some

commands; I shall hold them most sacred." The dying man with an effort

pressed his hand, and replied gently: "See in what peace a Christian can

die."[607] Shortly afterwards he expired.

Section IV.--The Morality of Addison's Essays

"The great and only end of these speculations," says Addison, one of his

"Spectators, is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of

Great Britain." And he kept his word. His papers are wholly

moral--advices to families, reprimands to thoughtless women, a sketch

of an honest man, remedies for the passions, reflections on God and a

future life. I hardly know, or father I know very well, what success a

newspaper full of sermons would have in France. In England it was

extraordinary, equal to that of the most popular modern novelists. In

the general downfall of the daily and weekly papers ruined by the Stamp

Act,[608] the "Spectator" doubled its price, and held its ground.[609]

This was because it offered to Englishmen the picture of English reason:

the talent and the teaching were in harmony with the needs of the age

and of the country. Let us endeavor to describe this reason, which

became gradually eliminated from Puritanism and its rigidity, from the

Restoration and its excess. The mind attained its balance, together with

religion and the state. It conceived the rule, and disciplined its

conduct; it diverged from a life of excess, and confirmed itself in a

sensible life; it shunned physical and prescribed moral existence.

Addison rejects with scorn gross corporeal pleasure, the brutal joy of

noise and motion: "I would nevertheless leave to the consideration of

those who are the patrons of this monstrous trial of skill, whether or

no they are not guilty, in some measure, of an affront to their species,

in treating after this manner the human face divine."[610] "Is it

possible that human nature can rejoice in its disgrace, and take

pleasure in seeing its own figure turned to ridicule, and distorted into

forms that raise horror and aversion? There is something disingenuous

and immoral in the being able to bear such a sight."[611] Of course he

sets himself against deliberate shamelessness and the systematic

debauchery which were the taste and the shame of the Restoration. He

wrote whole articles against young fashionable men, "a sort of vermin"

who fill London with their bastards; against professional seducers, who

are the "knights-errant" of vice. "When men of rank and figure pass away

their lives in these criminal pursuits and practices, they ought to

consider that they render themselves more vile and despicable than any

innocent man can be, whatever low station his fortune or birth have

placed him in."[612] He severely jeers at women who expose themselves to

temptations, and whom he calls "salamanders": "A salamander is a kind of

heroine in chastity, that treads upon fire, and lives in the midst of

flames without being hurt. A salamander knows no distinction of sex in

those she converses with, grows familiar with a stranger at first sight,

and is not so narrow-spirited as to observe whether the person she talks

to be in breeches or petticoats. She admits a male visitant to her

bedside, plays with him a whole afternoon at picquet, walks with him two

or three hours by moonlight."[613] He fights like a preacher against the

fashion of low dresses, and gravely demands the tucker and modesty of

olden times: "To prevent these saucy familiar glances, I would entreat

my gentle readers to sew on their tuckers again, to retrieve the modesty

of their characters, and not to imitate the nakedness, but the

innocence, of their mother Eve. In short, modesty gives the maid greater

beauty than even the bloom of youth; it bestows in the wife the dignity

of a matron, and reinstates the widow in her virginity."[614] We find

also lectures on masquerades which end with rendezvous; precepts on the

number of glasses people might drink, and the dishes of which they might

eat: condemnations of licentious professors of irreligion and

immorality; all maxims now somewhat stale, but then new and useful

because Wycherley and Rochester had put into practice and made popular

the opposite maxims. Debauchery passed for French and fashionable: this

is why Addison proscribes in addition all French frivolities. He laughs

at women who receive visitors in their dressing-rooms, and speak aloud

at the theatre: "There is nothing which exposes a woman to greater

dangers, than that gayety and airiness of temper, which are natural to

most of the sex. It should be therefore the concern of every wise and

virtuous woman to keep this sprightliness from degenerating into levity.

On the contrary, the whole discourse and behavior of the French is to

make the sex more fantastical, or (as they are pleased to term it) more

awakened, than is consistent either with virtue or discretion."[615] We

see already in these strictures the portrait of the sensible housewife,

the modest Englishwoman, domestic and grave, wholly taken up with her

husband and children. Addison returns a score of times to the artifices,

the pretty affected babyisms, the coquetry, the futilities of women. He

cannot suffer languishing or lazy habits. He is full of epigrams against

flirtations, extravagant toilets, useless visits.[616] He writes a

satirical journal of a man who goes to his club, learns the news, yawns,

studies the barometer, and thinks his time well occupied. He considers

that time is capital, business duty, and life a task.

Is life only a task? If Addison holds himself superior to sensual life,

he falls short of philosophical life. His morality, thoroughly English,

always drags along among commonplaces, discovering no principles, making

no deductions. The fine and lofty aspects of the mind are wanting. He

gives useful advice, clear instruction, justified by what happened

yesterday, useful for to-morrow. He observes that fathers must not be

inflexible, and that they often repent driving their children to

despair. He finds that bad books are pernicious, because their

durability carries their poison to future ages. He consoles a woman who

has lost her sweetheart, by showing her the misfortunes of so many other

people who are suffering the greatest evils at the same time. His

"Spectator" is only an honest man's manual, and is often like the

"Complete Lawyer." It is practical, its aim being not to amuse, but to

correct us. The conscientious Protestant, nourished with dissertations

and morality, demands an effective monitor and guide; he would like his

reading to influence his conduct, and his newspaper to suggest a

resolution. To this end Addison seeks motives everywhere. He thinks of

the future life, but does not forget the present; he rests virtue on

interest rightly understood. He strains no principle to its limits; he

accepts them all, as they are to be met with everywhere, according to

their manifest goodness, drawing from them only the primary

consequences, shunning the powerful logical pressure which spoils all by

expressing too much. Let us observe him establishing a maxim,

recommending constancy, for instance; his motives are mixed and

incongruous: first, inconstancy exposes us to scorn; next, it puts us in

continual distraction; again, it hinders us as a rule from attaining our

end; moreover, it is the great feature of a human and mortal being;

finally, it is more opposed to the inflexible nature of God, who ought

to be our model. The whole is illustrated at the close by a quotation

from Dryden and a verse from Horace. This medley and jumble describe the

ordinary mind which remains on the level of its audience, and the

practical mind, which knows how to dominate over its audience. Addison

persuades the public, because he draws from the public sources of

belief. He is powerful because he is vulgar, and useful because he is

narrow.

Let us picture now this mind, so characteristically mediocre, limited to

the discovery of good motives of action. What a reflective man, always

calm and dignified! What a store he has of resolutions and maxims! All

rapture, instinct, inspiration, and caprice, are abolished or

disciplined. No case surprises or carries him away. He is always ready

and protected; so much so, that he is like an automaton. Argument has

frozen and invaded him. Consider, for instance, how he puts us on our

guard against involuntary hypocrisy, announcing, explaining,

distinguishing the ordinary and extraordinary modes, dragging on with

exordiums, preparations, methods, allusions to Scripture.[617] After

having read six lines of this morality, a Frenchman would go out for a

mouthful of fresh air. What in the name of heaven would he do, if, in

order to move him to piety, he was told[618] that God's omniscience and

omnipresence furnished us with three kinds of motives, and then

subdivided these motives into first, second, and third? To put

calculation at every stage; to come with weights, scales, and figures,

into the thick of human passions, to label them, classify them like

bales, to tell the public that the inventory is complete; to lead them,

with the reckoning in their hand, and by the mere virtue of statistics,

to honor and duty--such is the morality of Addison and of England. It is

a sort of commercial common-sense applied to the interests of the soul;

a preacher here is only an economist in a white tie, who treats

conscience like food, and refutes vice because its introduction is

prohibited.

There is nothing sublime or chimerical in the end which he sets before

us; all is practical, that is, business-like and sensible; the question

is, how "to be easy here and happy afterwards." To be easy is a word

which has no French equivalent, meaning that comfortable state of the

mind, a middle state between calm satisfaction, approved action and

serene conscience. Addison makes it consist in labor and manly

functions, carefully and regularly discharged. We must see with what

complacency he; paints in the "Freeholder" and Sir Roger the grave

pleasures of a citizen and proprietor:

"I have rather chosen this title (the Freeholder) than any other,

because it is what I most glory in, and what most effectually calls to

my mind the happiness of that government under which I live. As a

British freeholder, I should not scruple taking place of a French

marquis; and when I see one of my countrymen amusing himself in his

little cabbage-garden, I naturally look upon him as a greater person

than the owner of the richest vineyard in Champagne.... There is an

unspeakable pleasure in calling anything one's own. A freehold, though

it be but in ice and snow, will make the owner pleased in the

possession, and stout in the defence of it.... I consider myself as one

who give my consent to every law which passes.... A free-holder is but

one remove from a legislator, and for that reason ought to stand up in

the defence of those laws which are in some degree of his own

making."[619]

These are all English feelings, made up of calculation and pride,

energetic and austere; and this portrait is capped by that of the

married man:

"Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion;

and this I think myself amply possessed of, as I am the father of a

family. I am perpetually taken up in giving out orders, in prescribing

duties, in hearing parties, in administering justice, and in

distributing rewards and punishments.... I look upon my family as a

patriarchal sovereignty, in which I am myself both king and priest."

"... When I see my little troop before me, I rejoice in the additions

which I have made to my species, to my country, and to my religion, in

having produced such a number of reasonable creatures, citizens, and

Christians. I am pleased to see myself thus perpetuated; and as there is

no production comparable to that of a human creature, I am more proud of

having been the occasion of ten such glorious productions, than if I had

built a hundred pyramids at my own expense, or published as many volumes

of the finest wit and learning."[620]

If now we take the man away from his estate and his household, alone

with himself, in moments of idleness or reverie, we will find him just

as positive. He observes, that he may cultivate his own reasoning power,

and that of others; he stores himself with morality; he wishes to make

the most of himself and of existence, that is the reason why he thinks

of death. The northern races willingly direct their thoughts to final

dissolution and the dark future. Addison often chose for his promenade

gloomy Westminster Abbey, with its many tombs: "Upon my going into the

church I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in

every shovel-full of it that was thrown up the fragment of a bone or

skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time or

other had a place in the composition of a human body.... I consider that

great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our

appearance together."[621] And suddenly his emotion is transformed into

profitable meditations. Underneath his morality is a pair of scales

which weigh quantities of happiness. He stirs himself by mathematical

comparisons to prefer the future to the present. He tries to realize,

amidst an assemblage of dates, the disproportion of our short life to

infinity. Thus arises this religion, a product of melancholic

temperament and acquired logic, in which man, a sort of calculating

Hamlet, aspires to the ideal by making a good business of it, and

maintains his poetical sentiments by financial calculations.

In such a subject these habits are offensive. We ought not to try and

over-define or prove God; religion is rather a matter of feeling than of

science; we compromise it by exacting too rigorous demonstrations, and

too precise dogmas. It is the heart which sees heaven; if a man would

make me believe in it, as he makes me believe in the antipodes, by

geographical accounts and probabilities, I shall barely or not at all

believe. Addison has little more than his college or edifying arguments,

very like those of the Abbé Pluche,[622] which let in objections at

every chink, and which we can only regard as dialectical essays or

sources of emotion. When we add to these arguments, motives of interest

and calculations of prudence, which can make recruits, but not converts,

we possess all his proofs. There is an element of coarseness in this

fashion of treating divine things, and we like still less the exactness

with which he explains God, reducing him to a mere magnified man. This

preciseness and this narrowness go so far as to describe heaven:

"Though the Deity be thus essentially present through all the immensity

of space, there is one part of it in which he discovers himself in a

most transcendent and visible glory.... It is here where the glorified

body of our Saviour resides, and where all the celestial hierarchies,

and the innumerable hosts of angels, are represented as perpetually

surrounding the seat of God with hallelujahs and hymns of praise....

With how much skill must the throne of God be erected! ... How great

must be the majesty of that place, where the whole art of creation has

been employed, and where God has chosen to shew himself in the most

magnificent manner! What must be the architecture of infinite power

under the direction of infinite wisdom?"[623]

Moreover, the place must be very grand, and they have music there: it is

a noble palace; perhaps there are antechambers. We had better not

continue the quotation. The same dull and literal precision makes him

inquire what sort of happiness the elect have.[624] They will be

admitted into the councils of Providence, and will understand all its

proceedings: "There is, doubtless, a faculty in spirits by which they

apprehend one another as our senses do material objects; and there is no

question but our souls, when they are disembodied, or placed in

glorified bodies, will by this faculty, in whatever part of space they

reside, be always sensible of the Divine Presence."[625] This grovelling

philosophy repels us. One word of Addison will justify it, and make us

understand it: "The business of mankind in this life is rather to act

than to know." Now, such a philosophy is as useful in action as poor in

science. All its faults of speculation become merits in practice. It

follows in a prosy manner positive religion.[626] What support does it

not attain from the authority of an ancient tradition, a national

institution, an established priesthood, outward ceremonies, every-day

customs! It employs as arguments public utility, the example of great

minds, heavy logic, literal interpretation, and unmistakable texts. What

better means of governing the crowd than to degrade proofs to the

vulgarity of its intelligence and needs? It humanizes the Divinity: is

it not the only way to make men understand Him? It defines almost

obviously a future life: is it not the only way to cause it to be wished

for? The poetry of lofty philosophical deductions is weak compared to

the inner persuasion, rooted by so many positive and detailed

descriptions. In this way an active piety is born and religion thus

constructed doubles the force of the moral spring. Addison's is

admirable, because it is so strong. Energy of feeling rescues

wretchedness of dogma. Beneath his dissertations we feel that he is

moved; minutiæ, pedantry disappear. We see in him now only a soul

deeply penetrated with adoration and respect; no more a preacher

classifying God's attributes, and pursuing his trade as a good logician;

but a man who naturally, and of his own bent, returns to a lofty

spectacle, goes with awe into all its aspects, and leaves it only with a

renewed or overwhelmed heart. The sincerity of his emotions makes us

respect even his catechetical prescriptions. He demands fixed days of

devotion and meditation to recall us regularly to the thought of our

Creator and of our faith. He inserts prayers in his paper. He forbids

oaths, and recommends to keep always before us the idea of a sovereign

Master:

"Such an habitual homage to the Supreme Being would, in a particular

manner, banish from among us that prevailing impiety of using his name

on the most trivial occasions.... What can we then think of those who

make use of so tremendous a name in the ordinary expressions of their

anger, mirth, and most impertinent passions? of those who admit it into

the most familiar questions, and assertions, ludicrous phrases, and

works of humour? not to mention those who violate it by solemn

perjuries! It would be an affront to reason to endeavour to set forth

the horror and profaneness of such a practice."[627]

If a Frenchman was forbidden to swear, he would probably laugh at the

first word of the admonition; in his eyes that is a matter of good

taste, not of morality. But if he had heard Addison himself pronouncing

what I have written, he would laugh no longer.

Section V.--How Addison made Morality Fashionable.--Characteristics

of His Style

It is no small thing to make morality fashionable. Addison did it, and

it remained in fashion. Formerly honest men were not polished, and

polished men were not honest; piety was fanatical, and urbanity

depraved; in manners, as in literature, a man could meet only Puritans

or libertines. For the first time Addison reconciled virtue, with

elegance, taught duty in an accomplished style, and made pleasure

subservient to reason:

"It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven, to

inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that

I have brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and

colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in

coffee-houses. I would therefore, in a very particular manner, recommend

these my speculations to all well-regulated families, and set apart an

hour in every morning for tea and bread and butter; and would earnestly

advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served

up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea-equipage."[628]

In this passage we may detect an inclination to smile, a little irony

tempers the serious idea; it is the tone of a polished man, who, at the

first sign of ennui, turns round, delicately laughs, even at himself,

and tries to please. It is Addison's general tone.

What an amount of art is necessary to please! First, the art of making

one's self understood, at once, always, completely, without difficulty

to the reader, without reflection, without attention. Let us figure to

ourselves men of the world reading a page between two mouthfuls of

"bohea-rolls," ladies interrupting a phrase to ask when the ball begins:

three technical or learned words would make them throw the paper down.

They only desire distinct terms, in common use, into which wit enters

all at once, as it enters ordinary converse; in fact, for them reading

is only a conversation, and a better one than usual. For the select

world refines language. It does not suffer the risks and approximations

of extempore and inexperienced speaking. It requires a knowledge of

style, like a knowledge of external forms. It will have exact words to

express the fine shades of thought, and measured words to preclude

offensive or extreme impressions. It wishes for developed phrases,

which, presenting the same idea, under several aspects, impress it

easily upon its desultory mind. It demands harmonies of words, which,

presenting a known idea in a smart form, may introduce it in a lively

manner to its desultory imagination. Addison gives it all that it

desires; his writings are the pure source of classical style; men never

spoke better in England. Ornaments abound, and never has rhetoric a

share in them. Throughout we have precise contrasts, which serve only

for clearness, and are not too prolonged; happy expressions, easily hit

on, which give things a new and ingenious turn; harmonious periods, in

which the sounds flow into one another with the diversity and sweetness

of a quiet stream; a fertile vein of invention and fancy, through which

runs the most amiable irony. We trust one example will suffice:

"He is not obliged to attend her (Nature) in the slow advance which she

makes from one season to another, or to observe her conduct in the

successive production of plants and flowers. He may draw into his

description all the beauties of the spring and autumn, and make the

whole year contribute something to render it the more agreeable. His

rose-trees, woodbines, and jessamines may flower together, and his beds

be covered at the same time with lilies, violets, and amaranths. His

soil is not restrained to any particular set of plants, but is proper

either for oaks or myrtles, and adapts itself to the products of every

climate. Oranges may grow wild in it; myrrh may be met with in every

hedge; and if he thinks it proper to have a grove of spices, he can

quickly command sun enough to raise it. If all this will not furnish an

agreeable scene, he can make several new species of flowers, with richer

scents and higher colours, than any that grow in the gardens of nature.

His concerts of birds may be as full and harmonious, and his woods as

thick and gloomy as he pleases. He is at no more expense in a long vista

than a short one, and can as easily throw his cascades from a precipice

of half a mile high as from one of twenty yards. He has his choice of

the winds, and can turn the course of his rivers in all the variety of

meanders that are most delightful to the reader's imagination."[629]

I find here that Addison profits by the rights which he grants to

others, and is amused in explaining to us how we may amuse ourselves.

Such is the charming tone of society. Reading the "Spectator," we fancy

it still more amiable than it is: no pretension; no efforts; endless

contrivances employed unconsciously, and obtained without asking; the

gift of being lively and agreeable; a refined banter, raillery without

bitterness, a sustained gayety; the art of finding in everything the

most blooming and the freshest flower, and to smell it without bruising

or sullying it; science, politics, experience, morality, bringing their

finest fruits, adorning them, offering them at a chosen moment, ready to

withdraw them as soon as conversation has enjoyed them, and before it is

tired of them; ladies placed in the first rank,[630] arbiters of

refinement, surrounded with homage, crowning the politeness of men and

the brilliancy of society by the attraction of their toilets, the

delicacy of their wit, and the charm of their smiles; such is the

familiar spectacle in which the writer has formed and delighted himself.

So many advantages are not without their inconvenience. The compliments

of society, which attenuate expressions, blunt the style; by regulating

what is instinctive and moderating what is vehement, they make speech

threadbare and uniform. We must not always seek to please, above all, to

please the ear. M. de Chateaubriand boasted of not admitting a single

elision into the song of "Cymodocée"; so much the worse for

"Cymodocée." So the commentators who have noted in Addison the balance

of his periods, do him an injustice.[631] They explain thus why he

slightly wearies us. The rotundity of his phrases is a scanty merit and

mars the rest. To calculate longs and shorts, to be always thinking of

sounds, of final cadences--all these classical researches spoil a

writer. Every idea has its accent, and all our labor ought to be to put

it down free and simple on paper, as it is in our mind. We ought to copy

and mark our thought with the flow of emotions and images, which raise

it, caring for nothing but its exactness and clearness. One true phrase

is worth a hundred periods: the first is a document which fixes forever

a movement of the heart or the senses; the other is a toy to amuse the

empty heads of verse-makers. I would give twenty pages of Fléchier for

three lines of Saint-Simon. Regular rhythm mutilates the impetus of

natural invention; the shades of inner vision vanish; we see no more a

soul which thinks or feels, but fingers which count measures whilst

scanning. The continuous period is like the shears of La Quintinie,[632]

which clip all the trees round under pretence of beautifying. This is

why there is some coldness and monotony in Addison's style. He seems to

be listening to himself. He is too measured and correct. His most

touching stories, like that of "Theodosius and Constantia," touch us

only partially. Who could feel inclined to weep over such periods as

these?

"Constantia, who knew that nothing but the report of her marriage could

have driven him to such extremities, was not to be comforted: she now

accused herself for having so tamely given an ear to the proposal of a

husband, and looked upon the new lover as the murderer of Theodosius: in

short, she resolved to suffer the utmost effects of her father's

displeasure, rather than to comply with a marriage which appeared to her

so full of guilt and horror."[633]

Is this the way to paint horror and guilt? Where are the passionate

emotions which Addison pretends to paint? The story is related, not

seen.

The classical writer simply cannot see. Always measured and rational,

his first care is to proportion and arrange. He has his rules in his

pocket, and brings them out for everything. He does not rise to the

source of the beautiful at once, like genuine artists, by force and

lucidity of natural inspiration; he lingers in the middle regions, amid

precepts, subject to taste and common-sense. This is why Addison's

criticism is so solid and so poor. They who seek ideas will do well not

to read his "Essays on Imagination,"[634] so much praised, so well

written, but so scant of philosophy, and so commonplace, dragged down by

the intervention of final causes. His celebrated commentary on "Paradise

Lost" is little better than the dissertations of Batteux and Bossu. In

one place he compares, almost in a line, Homer, Vergil, and Ovid. The

fine arrangement of a poem is with him the highest merit. The pure

classics enjoy better arrangement and good order than artless truth and

strong originality. They have always their poetic manual in their hands:

if we agree with the prearranged pattern, we have genius; if not, we

have none. Addison, in praise of Milton, establishes that, according to

the rule of epic poetry, the action of "Paradise Lost" is one, complete

and great; that its characters are varied and of universal interest, and

its sentiments natural, appropriate, and elevated; the style clear,

diversified, and sublime. Now we may admire Milton; he has a testimonial

from Aristotle. Listen, for instance, to cold details of classical

dissertation:

"Had I followed Monsieur Bossu's method in my first paper on Milton, I

should have dated the action of 'Paradise Lost' from the beginning of

Raphael's speech in this book."[635]