secretaryship for a seat at the Board of Trade. In the same year his
comedy of the Drummer was brought on the stage. The name of the author
was not announced; the piece was coldly received; and some critics have
expressed a doubt whether it were really Addison's. To us the evidence,
both external and internal, seems decisive. It is not in Addison's best
manner; but it contains numerous passages which no other writer known to
us could have produced. It was again performed after Addison's death,
and, being known to be his, was loudly applauded.
Towards the close of the year 1715, while the Rebellion was still raging
in Scotland, Addison published the first number of a paper called the
Freeholder. Among his political works the Freeholder is entitled to the
first place. Even in the Spectator there are few serious papers nobler
than the character of his friend Lord Somers, and certainly no
satirical papers superior to those in which the Tory fox-hunter is
introduced. This character is the original of Squire Western, and is
drawn with all Fielding's force, and with a delicacy of which Fielding
was altogether destitute. As none of Addison's works exhibits stronger
marks of his genius than the Freeholder, so none does more honor to his
moral character. It is difficult to extol too highly the candor and
humanity of a political writer, whom even the excitement of civil war
cannot hurry into unseemly violence. Oxford, it is well known, was then
the stronghold of Toryism. The High Street had been repeatedly lined
with bayonets in order to keep down the disaffected gownsmen; and
traitors pursued by the messengers of the government had been concealed
in the garrets of several colleges. Yet the admonition which, even under
such circumstances, Addison addressed to the University is singularly
gentle, respectful, and even affectionate. Indeed, he could not find it
in his heart to deal harshly even with imaginary persons. His
fox-hunter, though ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart a good
fellow, and is at last reclaimed by the clemency of the King. Steele was
dissatisfied with his friend's moderation, and though he acknowledged
that the Freeholder was excellently written, complained that the
ministry played on a lute when it was necessary to blow the trumpet. He
accordingly determined to execute a flourish after his own fashion, and
tried to rouse the public spirit of the nation by means of a paper
called the Town Talk, which is now as utterly forgotten as his
Englishman, as his Crisis, as his Letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridge,
as his Reader, in short, as everything that he wrote without the help of
Addison.
In the same year in which the Drummer was acted, and in which the first
numbers of the Freeholder appeared, the estrangement of Pope and Addison
became complete. Addison had from the first seen that Pope was false
and malevolent. Pope had discovered that Addison was jealous. The
discovery was made in a strange manner. Pope had written the Rape of the
Lock, in two cantos, without supernatural machinery. These two cantos
had been loudly applauded, and by none more loudly than by Addison. Then
Pope thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes, Ariel, Momentilla, Crispissa, and
Umbriel, and resolved to interweave the Rosicrucian mythology with the
original fabric. He asked Addison's advice. Addison said that the poem
as it stood was a delicious little thing, and entreated Pope not to run
the risk of marring what was so excellent in trying to mend it. Pope
afterwards declared that this insidious counsel first opened his eyes to
the baseness of him who gave it.
Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was most ingenious, and that
he afterwards executed it with great skill and success. But does it
necessarily follow that Addison's advice was bad? And if Addison's
advice was bad, does it necessarily follow that it was given from bad
motives? If a friend were to ask us whether we would advise him to risk
his all in a lottery of which the chances were ten to one against him,
we should do our best to dissuade him from running such a risk. Even if
he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we should
not admit that we had counselled him ill; and we should certainly think
it the height of injustice in him to accuse us of having been actuated
by malice. We think Addison's advice good advice. It rested on a sound
principle, the result of long and wide experience. The general rule
undoubtedly is that, when a successful work of imagination had been
produced, it should not be recast. We cannot at this moment, call to
mind a single instance in which this rule has been transgressed with
happy effect, except the instance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso recast
his Jerusalem. Akenside recast his Pleasures of the Imagination, and his
Epistle to Curio. Pope himself, emboldened no doubt by the success with
which he had expanded and remodelled the Rape of the Lock, made the same
experiment on the Dunciad. All these attempts failed. Who was to foresee
that Pope would, once in his life, be able to do what he could not
himself do twice, and what nobody else has ever done?
Addison's advice was good. But had it been bad, why should we pronounce
it dishonest? Scott tells us that one of his best friends predicted the
failure of Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising a
subject as Faust. Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from writing the
History of Charles the fifth. Nay, Pope himself was one of those who
prophesied that Cato would never succeed on the stage, and advised
Addison to print it without risking a representation. But Scott, Goethe,
Robertson, Addison, had the good sense and generosity to give their
advisers credit for the best intentions. Pope's heart was not of the
same kind with theirs.
In 1715 while he was engaged in translating the Iliad, he met Addison at
a coffee-house. Philips and Budgell were there; but their sovereign got
rid of them, and asked Pope to dine with him alone. After dinner Addison
said that he lay under a difficulty which he wished to explain.
"Tickell," he said, "translated some time ago the first book of the
Iliad. I have promised to look it over and correct it. I cannot
therefore ask to see yours; for that would be double dealing." Pope made
a civil reply, and begged that his second book might have the advantage
of Addison's revision. Addison readily agreed, looked over the second
book, and sent it back with warm commendations.
Tickell's version of the first book appeared soon after this
conversation. In the preface all rivalry was earnestly disclaimed.
Tickell declared that he should not go on with the Iliad. That
enterprise he should leave to powers which he admitted to be superior to
his own. His only view, he said, in publishing this specimen was to
bespeak the favor of the public to a translation of the Odyssey, in
which he had made some progress.
Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pronounced both the versions
good, but maintained that Tickell's had more of the original. The town
gave a decided preference to Pope's. We do not think it worth while to
settle such a question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said
to have translated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word translation be
used in the sense which it bears in the Midsummer Night's Dream. When
Bottom makes his appearance with an ass's head instead of his own, Peter
Quince exclaims, "Bless thee! Bottom, bless thee! thou art translated."
In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either Pope or Tickell may
very properly exclaim, "Bless thee! Homer; thou art translated indeed."
Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in thinking that no man in
Addison's situation could have acted more fairly and kindly, both
towards Pope and towards Tickell, than he appears to have done. But an
odious suspicion had sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he
soon firmly believed, that there was a deep conspiracy against his fame
and his fortunes. The work on which he had staked his reputation was to
be depreciated. The subscription, on which rested his hopes of a
competence, was to be defeated. With this view Addison had made a rival
translation; Tickell had consented to father it; and the wits of
Button's had united to puff it.
Is there any external evidence to support this grave accusation? The
answer is short. There is absolutely none.
Was there any internal evidence which proved Addison to be the author of
this version? Was it a work which Tickell was incapable of producing?
Surely not. Tickell was a Fellow of a College at Oxford, and must be
supposed to have been able to construe the Iliad; and he was a better
versifier than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pretended to have
discovered any turns of expression peculiar to Addison. Had such turns
of expression been discovered, they would be sufficiently accounted for
by supposing Addison to have corrected his friend's lines, as he owned
that he had done.
Is there anything in the character of the accused persons which makes
the accusation probable? We answer confidently--nothing. Tickell was
long after this time described by Pope himself as a very fair and worthy
man. Addison had been, during many years, before the public. Literary
rivals, political opponents, had kept their eyes on him. But neither
envy nor faction, in their utmost rage, had ever imputed to him a single
deviation from the laws of honor and of social morality. Had he been
indeed a man meanly jealous of fame, and capable of stooping to base and
wicked arts for the purpose of injuring his competitors, would his vices
have remained latent so long? He was a writer of tragedy: had he ever
injured Rowe? He was a writer of comedy: had he not done ample justice
to Congreve, and given valuable help to Steele? He was a pamphleteer:
have not his good nature and generosity been acknowledged by Swift, his
rival in fame and his adversary in politics?
That Tickell should have been guilty of a villainy seems to us highly
improbable. That Addison should have been guilty of a villainy seems to
us highly improbable. But that these two men should have conspired
together to commit a villainy seems to us improbable in a tenfold
degree. All that is known to us of their intercourse tends to prove that
it was not the intercourse of two accomplices in crime. These are some
of the lines in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow over the coffin of
Addison:--
"Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind,
A task well suited to thy gentle mind?
Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend,
To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend.
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms,
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms,
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart,
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart;
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before,
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more."
In what words, we should like to know, did this guardian genius invite
his pupil to join in a plan such as the Editor of the Satirist would
hardly dare to propose to the Editor of the Age?
We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which he knew to be
false. We have not the smallest doubt that he believed it to be true;
and the evidence on which he believed it he found in his own bad heart.
His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as
that of which he suspected Addison and Tickell. He was all stiletto and
masque. To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the consequences
of injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of his
life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos; he was taxed with
it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron Hill;
he was taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a still
fouler lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; he was taxed with it; and
he lied with more than usual effrontery and vehemence. He puffed himself
and abused his enemies under feigned names. He robbed himself of his own
letters, and then raised the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds
of malignity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds
which he seems to have committed from love of frauds alone. He had a
habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came near him.
Whatever his object might be, the indirect road to it was that which he
preferred. For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and
veneration as it was in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope
was scarcely dead when it was discovered that, from no motive except
the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an act of gross perfidy
to Bolingbroke.
Nothing was more natural than that such a man as this should attribute
to others that which he felt within himself. A plain, probable, coherent
explanation is frankly given to him. He is certain that it is all a
romance. A line of conduct scrupulously fair, and even friendly, is
pursued towards him. He is convinced that it is merely a cover for a
vile intrigue by which he is to be disgraced and ruined. It is vain to
ask him for proofs. He has none, and wants none, except those which he
carries in his own bosom.
Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Addison to retaliate for the
first and last time cannot now be known with certainty. We have only
Pope's story, which runs thus. A pamphlet appeared containing some
reflections which stung Pope to the quick. What those reflections were,
and whether they were reflections of which he had a right to complain,
we have now no means of deciding. The Earl of Warwick, a foolish and
vicious lad, who regarded Addison with the feelings with which such lads
generally regard their best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, that
this pamphlet had been written by Addison's direction. When we consider
what a tendency stories have to grow, in passing even from one honest
man to another honest man, and when we consider that to the name of
honest man neither Pope nor the Earl of Warwick had a claim, we are not
disposed to attach much importance to this anecdote.
It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He had already sketched
the character of Atticus in prose. In his anger he turned this prose
into the brilliant and energetic lines which everybody knows by heart,
or ought to know by heart, and sent them to Addison. One charge which
Pope has enforced with great skill is probably not without foundation.
Addison was, we are inclined to believe, too fond of presiding over a
circle of humble friends. Of the other imputations which these famous
lines are intended to convey, scarcely one has ever been proved to be
just, and some are certainly false. That Addison was not in the habit of
"damning with faint praise" appears from innumerable passages in his
writings, and from none more than from those in which he mentions Pope.
And it is not merely unjust, but ridiculous, to describe a man who made
the fortune of almost every one of his intimate friends as "so obliging
that he ne'er obliged."
That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly, we cannot doubt.
That he was conscious of one of the weaknesses with which he was
reproached is highly probable. But his heart, we firmly believe,
acquitted him of the gravest part of the accusation. He acted like
himself. As a satirist he was, at his own weapons, more than Pope's
match; and he would have been at no loss for topics. A distorted and
diseased body, tenanted by a yet more distorted and diseased mind; spite
and envy thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent and noble as those
which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface; a feeble sickly
licentiousness; an odious love of filthy and noisome images--these were
things which a genius less powerful than that to which we owe the
Spectator could easily have held up to the mirth and hatred of mankind.
Addison had, moreover, at his command other means of vengeance which a
bad man would not have scrupled to use. He was powerful in the state.
Pope was a Catholic; and in those times a minister would have found it
easy to harass the most innocent Catholic by innumerable petty
vexations. Pope, near twenty years later, said that "through the lenity
of the government alone he could live with comfort." "Consider," he
exclaimed, "the injury that a man of high rank and credit may do to a
private person, under penal laws and many other disadvantages!" It is
pleasing to reflect that the only revenge which Addison took was to
insert in the Freeholder a warm encomium on the translation of the
Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learning to put down their names as
subscribers. There could be no doubt, he said, from the specimens
already published, that the masterly hand of Pope would do as much for
Homer as Dryden had done for Virgil. From that time to the end of his
life, he always treated Pope, by Pope's own acknowledgment, with
justice. Friendship was, of course, at an end.
One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play the ignominious
part of talebearer on this occasion may have been his dislike of the
marriage which was about to take place between his mother and Addison.
The Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honorable family of the
Myddletons of Chirk, a family which, in any country but ours, would be
called noble, resided at Holland House. Addison had, during some years,
occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn.
Chelsea is now a district of London, and Holland House may be called a
town residence. But, in the days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids
and sportsmen wandered between green hedges and over fields bright with
daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames. Addison and
Lady Warwick were country neighbors, and became intimate friends. The
great wit and scholar tried to allure the young Lord from the
fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, breaking windows, and
rolling women in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of letters
and the practice of virtue. These well-meant exertions did little good,
however, either to the disciple or to the master. Lord Warwick grew up a
rake; and Addison fell in love. The mature beauty of the Countess has
been celebrated by poets in language which, after a very large allowance
has been made for flattery, would lead us to believe that she was a fine
woman; and her rank doubtless heightened her attractions. The courtship
was long. The hopes of the lover appear to have risen and fallen with
the fortunes of his party. His attachment was at length matter of such
notoriety that, when he visited Ireland for the last time, Rowe
addressed some consolatory verses to the Chloe of Holland House. It
strikes us as a little strange that, in these verses, Addison should be
called Lycidas, a name of singularly evil omen for a swain just about to
cross St. George's Channel.
At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was indeed able to treat with her
on equal terms. He had reason to expect preferment even higher than that
which he had attained. He had inherited the fortune of a brother who
died Governor of Madras. He had purchased an estate in Warwickshire, and
had been welcomed to his domain in very tolerable verse by one of the
neighboring squires, the poetical fox-hunter, William Somervile. In
August, 1716, the newspapers announced that Joseph Addison, Esquire,
famous for many excellent works both in verse and prose, had espoused
the Countess Dowager of Warwick.
He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a house which can boast of a
greater number of inmates distinguished in political and literary
history than any other private dwelling in England. His portrait still
hangs there. The features are pleasing; the complexion is remarkably
fair; but in the expression, we trace rather the gentleness of his
disposition than the force and keenness of his intellect.
Not long after his marriage he reached the height of civil greatness.
The Whig Government had, during some time, been torn by internal
dissensions. Lord Townshend led one section of the Cabinet, Lord
Sunderland the other. At length, in the spring of 1717, Sunderland
triumphed. Townshend retired from office, and was accompanied by Walpole
and Cowper. Sunderland proceeded to reconstruct the Ministry; and
Addison was appointed Secretary of State. It is certain that the Seals
were pressed upon him, and were at first declined by him. Men equally
versed in official business might easily have been found; and his
colleagues knew that they could not expect assistance from him in
debate. He owed his elevation to his popularity, to his stainless
probity, and to his literary fame.
But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet when his health began to
fail. From one serious attack he recovered in the autumn; and his
recovery was celebrated in Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by
Vincent Bourne, who was then at Trinity College, Cambridge. A relapse
soon took place; and, in the following spring, Addison was prevented by
a severe asthma from discharging the duties of his post. He resigned it,
and was succeeded by his friend Craggs, a young man whose natural parts,
though little improved by cultivation, were quick and showy, whose
graceful person and winning manners had made him generally acceptable in
society, and who, if he had lived, would probably have been the most
formidable of all the rivals of Walpole.
As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The Ministers, therefore, were able to
bestow on Addison a retiring pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year.
In what form this pension was given we are not told by the biographers,
and have not time to inquire. But it is certain that Addison did not
vacate his seat in the House of Commons.
Rest of mind and body seemed to have reestablished his health; and he
thanked God with cheerful piety, for having set him free both from his
office and from his asthma. Many years seemed to be before him, and he
meditated many works, a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a translation
of the Psalms, a treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Of this last
performance, a part, which we could well spare, has come down to us.
But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradually prevailed against
all the resources of medicine. It is melancholy to think that the last
months of such a life should have been overclouded both by domestic and
by political vexations. A tradition which began early, which has been
generally received, and to which we have nothing to oppose, has
represented his wife as an arrogant and imperious woman. It is said
that, till his health failed him, he was glad to escape from the
Countess Dowager and her magnificent dining room, blazing with the
gilded devices of the House of Rich, to some tavern where he could enjoy
a laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a bottle of claret, with
the friends of his happier days. All those friends, however, were not
left to him. Sir Richard Steele had been gradually estranged by various
causes. He considered himself as one who, in evil times, had braved
martyrdom for his political principles, and demanded, when the Whig
party was triumphant, a large compensation for what he had suffered when
it was militant. The Whig leaders took a very different view of his
claims. They thought that he had, by his own petulance and folly,
brought them as well as himself into trouble, and though they did not
absolutely neglect him, doled out favors to him with a sparing hand. It
was natural that he should be angry with them, and especially angry with
Addison. But what above all seems to have disturbed Sir Richard, was the
elevation of Tickell, who, at thirty, was made by Addison Under
Secretary of State; while the Editor of the Tatler and Spectator, the
author of the Crisis, the member for Stockbridge who had been persecuted
for firm adherence to the House of Hanover, was, at near fifty, forced,
after many solicitations and complaints, to content himself with a share
in the patent of Drury Lane Theatre. Steele himself says in his
celebrated letter to Congreve that Addison, by his preference of
Tickell, "incurred the warmest resentment of other gentlemen;" and
everything seems to indicate that, of those resentful gentlemen, Steele
was himself one.