Travels in Italy. The first effect produced by this Narrative was
disappointment. The crowd of readers who expected politics and scandal,
speculations on the projects of Victor Amadeus, and anecdotes about the
jollities of convents and the amours of cardinals and nuns, were
confounded by finding that the writer's mind was much more occupied by
the war between the Trojans and Rutulians than by the war between France
and Austria; and that he seemed to have heard no scandal of later date
than the gallantries of the Empress Faustina. In time, however, the
judgment of the many was overruled by that of the few; and, before the
book was reprinted, it was so eagerly sought that it sold for five times
the original price. It is still read with pleasure; the style is pure
and flowing; the classical quotations and allusions are numerous and
happy; and we are now and then charmed by that singularly humane and
delicate humor in which Addison excelled all men. Yet this agreeable
work, even when considered merely as the history of a literary tour, may
justly be censured on account of its faults of omission. We have already
said that, though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, it contains
scarcely any references to the Latin orators and historians. We must add
that it contains little, or rather no information, respecting the
history and literature of modern Italy. To the best of our remembrance,
Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni,
Lorenzo de' Medici, or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us, that at Ferrara
he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at Venice he heard the gondoliers
sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far less than
for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apollinaris. The gentle flow of the
Ticin brings a line of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous steam of
Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. But he has not a
word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce; he crosses the wood
of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman, and wanders up and
down Rimini without one thought of Francesca. At Paris, he had eagerly
sought an introduction to Boileau; but he seems not to have been at all
aware that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom
Boileau could not sustain a comparison, of the greatest lyric poet of
modern times, Vincenzio Filicaja. This is the more remarkable, because
Filicaja was the favorite poet of the accomplished Somers, under whose
protection Addison travelled, and to whom the account of the Travels is
dedicated. The truth is, that Addison knew little, and cared less, about
the literature of modern Italy. His favorite models were Latin. His
favorite critics were French. Half the Tuscan poetry that he had read
seemed to him monstrous, and the other half tawdry.
His Travels were followed by the lively Opera of Rosamond. This piece
was ill set to music, and therefore failed on the stage; but it
completely succeeded in print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. The
smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which
they bound, is, to our ears at least, very pleasing. We are inclined to
think that if Addison had left heroic couplets to Pope, and blank verse
to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and spirited songs,
his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher than it now does.
Some years after his death, Rosamond was set to new music by Doctor
Arne; and was performed with complete success. Several passages long
retained their popularity, and were daily sung during the latter part of
George the Second's reign, at all the harpsichords in England.
While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects and the prospects of
his party were constantly becoming brighter and brighter. In the spring
of 1705 the ministers were freed from the restraint imposed by a House
of Commons, in which Tories of the most perverse class had the
ascendency. The elections were favorable to the Whigs. The coalition
which had been tacitly and gradually formed was now openly avowed. The
Great Seal was given to Cowper. Somers and Halifax were sworn of the
Council. Halifax was sent in the following year to carry the decorations
of the Order of the Garter to the Electoral Prince of Hanover, and was
accompanied on this honorable mission by Addison, who had just been made
Under Secretary of State. The Secretary of State under whom Addison
first served was Sir Charles Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was soon
dismissed to make room for the most vehement of Whigs, Charles, Earl of
Sunderland. In every department of the state, indeed, the High Churchmen
were compelled to give place to their opponents. At the close of 1707,
the Tories who still remained in office strove to rally, with Harley at
their head. But the attempt, though favored by the Queen, who had always
been a Tory at heart, and who had now quarrelled with the Duchess of
Marlborough, was unsuccessful. The time was not yet. The Captain General
was at the height of popularity and glory. The Low Church party had a
majority in Parliament. The country squires and rectors, though
occasionally uttering a savage growl, were for the most part in a state
of torpor, which lasted till they were roused into activity, and indeed
into madness, by the prosecution of Sacheverell. Harley and his
adherents were compelled to retire. The victory of the Whigs was
complete. At the general election of 1708, their strength in the House
of Commons became irresistible; and, before the end of that year, Somers
was made Lord President of the Council, and Wharton Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland.
Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Commons which was elected in
1708. But the House of Commons was not the field for him. The
bashfulness of his nature made his wit and eloquence useless in debate.
He once rose, but could not overcome his diffidence, and ever after
remained silent. Nobody can think it strange that a great writer should
fail as a speaker. But many, probably, will think it strange that
Addison's failure as a speaker should have had no unfavorable effect on
his success as a politician. In our time, a man of high rank and great
fortune might, though speaking very little and very ill, hold a
considerable post. But it would now be inconceivable that a mere
adventurer, a man who, when out of office, must live by his pen, should
in a few years become successively Under Secretary of State, Chief
Secretary for Ireland, and Secretary of State, without some oratorical
talent. Addison, without high birth, and with little property, rose to a
post which Dukes, the heads of the great houses of Talbot, Russell, and
Bentinck, have thought it an honor to fill. Without opening his lips in
debate, he rose to a post, the highest that Chatham or Fox ever reached.
And this he did before he had been nine years in Parliament. We must
look for the explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar
circumstances in which that generation was placed. During the interval
which elapsed between the time when the Censorship of the Press ceased
and the time when parliamentary proceedings began to be freely reported,
literary talents were, to a public man, of much more importance, and
oratorical talents of much less importance, than in our time. At
present, the best way of giving rapid and wide publicity to a fact or an
argument is to introduce that fact or argument into a speech made in
Parliament. If a political tract were to appear superior to the Conduct
of the Allies, or to the best numbers of the Freeholder, the circulation
of such a tract would be languid indeed when compared with the
circulation of every remarkable word uttered in the deliberations of the
legislature. A speech made in the House of Commons at four in the
morning is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech made on the
Monday is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and
Aberdeenshire. The orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, has to a
great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of
Anne. The best speech could then produce no effect except on those who
heard it. It was only by means of the press that the opinion of the
public without doors could be influenced; and the opinion of the public
without doors could not but be of the highest importance in a country
governed by Parliaments, and indeed at that time governed by triennial
Parliaments. The pen was therefore a more formidable political engine
than the tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox contended only in Parliament. But
Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and Fox of an earlier period, had not
done half of what was necessary, when they sat down amidst the
acclamations of the House of Commons. They had still to plead their
cause before the country, and this they could do only by means of the
press. Their works are now forgotten, but it is certain that there were
in Grub Street few more assiduous scribblers of Thoughts, Letters,
Answers, Remarks, than these two great chiefs of parties. Pulteney, when
leader of the Opposition, and possessed of thirty thousand a year,
edited the Craftsman. Walpole, though not a man of literary habits, was
the author of at least ten pamphlets, and retouched and corrected many
more. These facts sufficiently show of how great importance literary
assistance then was to the contending parties. St. John was, certainly,
in Anne's reign, the best Tory speaker; Cowper was probably the best
Whig speaker. But it may well be doubted whether St. John did so much
for the Tories as Swift, and whether Cowper did so much for the Whigs as
Addison. When these things are duly considered, it will not be thought
strange that Addison should have climbed higher in the state than any
other Englishman has ever, by means merely of literary talents, been
able to climb. Swift would, in all probability, have climbed as high, if
he had not been encumbered by his cassock and his pudding sleeves. As
far as the homage of the great went, Swift had as much of it as if he
had been Lord Treasurer.
To the influence which Addison derived from his literary talents was
added all the influence which arises from character. The world, always
ready to think the worst of needy political adventurers, was forced to
make one exception. Restlessness, violence, audacity, laxity of
principle, are the vices ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But
faction itself could not deny that Addison had, through all changes of
fortune, been strictly faithful to his early opinions, and to his early
friends; that his integrity was without stain; that his whole deportment
indicated a fine sense of the becoming; that, in the utmost heat of
controversy, his zeal was tempered by a regard for truth, humanity, and
social decorum; that no outrage could ever provoke him to retaliation
unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman; and that his only faults were a
too sensitive delicacy and a modesty which amounted to bashfulness.
He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of his time; and much of
his popularity he owed, we believe, to that very timidity which his
friends lamented. That timidity often prevented him from exhibiting his
talents to the best advantage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It averted
that envy which would otherwise have been excited by fame so splendid,
and by so rapid an elevation. No man is so great a favorite with the
public as he who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, and of
pity; and such were the feelings which Addison inspired. Those who
enjoyed the privilege of hearing his familiar conversation declared with
one voice that it was superior even to his writings. The brilliant Mary
Montagu said, that she had known all the wits, and that Addison was the
best company in the world. The malignant Pope was forced to own, that
there was a charm in Addison's talk, which could be found nowhere else.
Swift, when burning with animosity against the Whigs, could not but
confess to Stella that, after all, he had never known any associate so
agreeable as Addison. Steele, an excellent judge of lively conversation,
said that the conversation of Addison was at once the most polite, and
the most mirthful, that could be imagined; that it was Terence and
Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite something which was neither
Terence nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an excellent judge of
serious conversation, said that when Addison was at his ease, he went on
in a noble strain of thought and language, so as to chain the attention
of every hearer. Nor were Addison's great colloquial powers more
admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart which appeared in his
conversation. At the same time, it would be too much to say that he was
wholly devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable from a keen
sense of the ludicrous. He had one habit which both Swift and Stella
applauded, and which we hardly know how to blame. If his first attempts
to set a presuming dunce right were ill received, he changed his tone,
"assented with civil leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and
deeper into absurdity. That such was his practice we should, we think,
have guessed from his works. The Tatler's criticisms on Mr. Softly's
sonnet, and the Spectator's dialogue with the politician who is so
zealous for the honor of Lady Q--p--t--s, are excellent specimens of
this innocent mischief.
Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But his rare gifts were
not exhibited to crowds or to strangers. As soon as he entered a large
company, as soon as he saw an unknown face, his lips were sealed, and
his manners became constrained. None who met him only in great
assemblies would have been able to believe that he was the same man who
had often kept a few friends listening and laughing round a table, from
the time when the play ended, till the clock of St. Paul's in Covent
Garden struck four. Yet, even at such a table, he was not seen to the
best advantage. To enjoy his conversation in the highest perfection, it
was necessary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his own phrase,
think aloud. "There is no such thing," he used to say, "as real
conversation, but between two persons."
This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungraceful nor unamiable, led
Addison into the two most serious faults which can with justice be
imputed to him. He found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine
intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into convivial excess.
Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most
venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of
ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine
gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground; and almost
all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing.
Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no
more think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, than that he
wore a long wig and a sword.
To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature, we must ascribe another
fault which generally arises from a very different cause. He became a
little too fond of seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of
admirers, to whom he was as a king or rather as a god. All these men
were far inferior to him in ability, and some of them had very serious
faults. Nor did those faults escape his observation; for, if ever there
was an eye which saw through and through men, it was the eye of Addison.
But, with the keenest observation, and the finest sense of the
ridiculous, he had a large charity. The feeling with which he looked on
most of his humble companions was one of benevolence, slightly
tinctured with contempt. He was at perfect ease in their company; he
was grateful for their devoted attachment; and he loaded them with
benefits. Their veneration for him appears to have exceeded that with
which Johnson was regarded by Boswell, or Warburton by Hurd. It was not
in the power of adulation to turn such a head, or deprave such a heart,
as Addison's. But it must in candor be admitted that he contracted some
of the faults which can scarcely be avoided by any person who is so
unfortunate as to be the oracle of a small literary coterie.
One member of this little society was Eustace Budgell, a young Templar
of some literature, and a distant relation of Addison. There was at this
time no stain on the character of Budgell, and it is not improbable that
his career would have been prosperous and honorable, if the life of his
cousin had been prolonged. But, when the master was laid in the grave,
the disciple broke loose from all restraint, descended rapidly from one
degree of vice and misery to another, ruined his fortune by follies,
attempted to repair it by crimes, and at length closed a wicked and
unhappy life by self-murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched man,
gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, retained his affection and
veneration for Addison, and recorded those feelings in the last lines
which he traced before he hid himself from infamy under London Bridge.
Another of Addison's favorite companions was Ambrose Philips, a good
Whig and a middling poet, who had the honor of bringing into fashion a
species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby
Pamby. But the most remarkable members of the little senate, as Pope
long afterwards called it, were Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell.
Steele had known Addison from childhood. They had been together at the
Charter House and at Oxford; but circumstances had then, for a time,
separated them widely. Steele had left college without taking a degree,
had been disinherited by a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had
served in the army, had tried to find the philosopher's stone, and had
written a religious treatise and several comedies. He was one of those
people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. His temper
was sweet, his affections warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong,
and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting; in
inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, he
was a man of piety and honor; in practice, he was much of the rake and a
little of the swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that it was not
easy to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists felt
more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a
sponging house, or drank himself into a fever. Addison regarded Steele
with kindness not unmingled with scorn, tried, with little success, to
keep him out of scrapes, introduced him to the great, procured a good
place for him, corrected his plays, and, though by no means rich, lent
him large sums of money. One of these loans appears, from a letter dated
in August, 1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary
transactions probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said that, on
one occasion, Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked Addison to
repay himself by the help of a bailiff. We cannot join with Miss Aikin
in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it from Savage, who heard it from
Steele. Few private transactions which took place a hundred and twenty
years ago are proved by stronger evidence than this. But we can by no
means agree with those who condemn Addison's severity. The most amiable
of mankind may well be moved to indignation, when what he has earned
hardly, and lent with great inconvenience to himself, for the purpose of
relieving a friend in distress, is squandered with insane profusion. We
will illustrate our meaning by an example, which is not the less
striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in Fielding's
Amelia, is represented as the most benevolent of human beings; yet he
takes in execution, not only the goods, but the person of his friend
Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong measure because he has been
informed that Booth, while pleading poverty as an excuse for not paying
just debts, has been buying fine jewelry, and setting up a coach. No
person who is well acquainted with Steele's life and correspondence can
doubt that he behaved quite as ill to Addison as Booth was accused of
behaving to Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little doubt, was
something like this: A letter comes to Addison, imploring help in
pathetic terms, and promising reformation and speedy repayment. Poor
Dick declares that he has not an inch of candle, or a bushel of coals,
or credit with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved.
He determines to deny himself some medals which are wanting to his
series of the Twelve Caesars; to put off buying the new edition of
Bayle's Dictionary; and to wear his old sword and buckles another year.
In this way he manages to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next
day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and ladies
assembled. The fiddles are playing. The table is groaning under
champagne, burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange that a
man whose kindness is thus abused should send sheriff's officers to
reclaim what is due to him?
Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who had introduced himself
to public notice by writing a most ingenious and graceful little poem in
praise of the Opera of Rosamond. He deserved, and at length attained,
the first place in Addison's friendship. For a time Steele and Tickell
were on good terms. But they loved Addison too much to love each other,
and at length became as bitter enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil.
At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and
appointed Addison Chief Secretary. Addison was consequently under the
necessity of quitting London for Dublin. Besides the chief
secretaryship, which was then worth about two thousand pounds a year, he
obtained a patent appointing him keeper of the Irish Records for life,
with a salary of three or four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his
cousin in the capacity of private Secretary.
Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but Whiggism. The Lord
Lieutenant was not only licentious and corrupt, but was distinguished
from other libertines and jobbers by a callous impudence which presented
the strongest contrast to the Secretary's gentleness and delicacy. Many
parts of the Irish administration at this time appear to have deserved
serious blame. But against Addison there was not a murmur. He long
afterwards asserted, what all the evidence which we have ever seen tends
to prove, that his diligence and integrity gained the friendship of all
the most considerable persons in Ireland.
The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland has, we think, wholly
escaped the notice of all his biographers. He was elected member for the
borough of Cavan in the summer of 1709; and in the journals of two
sessions his name frequently occurs. Some of the entries appear to
indicate that he so far overcame his timidity as to make speeches. Nor
is this by any means improbable; for the Irish House of Commons was a
far less formidable audience than the English House; and many tongues
which were tied by fear in the greater assembly became fluent in the
smaller. Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of losing the fame
gained by his single speech, sat mute at Westminster during forty years,
spoke with great effect at Dublin when he was Secretary to Lord Halifax.
While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred to which he owes his
high and permanent rank among British writers. As yet his fame rested on
performances which, though highly respectable, were not built for
duration, and which would, if he had produced nothing else, have now
been almost forgotten, on some excellent Latin verses, on some English
verses which occasionally rose above mediocrity, and on a book of
travels, agreeably written, but not indicating any extraordinary powers
of mind. These works showed him to be a man of taste, sense, and
learning. The time had come when he was to prove himself a man of
genius, and to enrich our literature with compositions which will live
as long as the English language.
In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary project, of which he was
far indeed from foreseeing the consequences. Periodical papers had
during many years been published in London. Most of these were
political; but in some of them questions of morality, taste, and love
casuistry had been discussed. The literary merit of these works was
small indeed; and even their names are now known only to the curious.