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 whieh 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 whieh Fielding
was altogether destitute. As none of Addison’s works exhibit stronger
marks of his genius than the Freeholder, so none does more honour to
his moral character. It is difficult to extol too highly the candour
and humanity of a political writer whom even the excitement of civil war
cannot give 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 hy 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
foxhunter, 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. {403}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 every thing 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 {404}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
undoubtedlv is that, when a successful work of imagination has been
produced, it should not be recast. We cannot at this moment call to mind
a single instance in which this ride 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 {405}credit for the best intentions. Pope’s heart was not of
the same kind with theirs.
In 1715, while he was encased in translating the Iliad, he met Addison
at a coffeehouse. Phillipps and Budgell were there: but their sovereign
got rid of them, and asked Pope to dine with him alone. After dinner,
Addison said that he lay under a difficulty which he wished to explain.
“Tickell,” he said, “translated some time ago the first book of
the Iliad. I have promised to look it over and correct it. I cannot
therefore ask to see yours; for that would be double dealing.” Pope made
a civil reply, and begged that his second book might have the advantage
of Addison’s revision. Addison readily agreed, looked over the second
book, and sent it back with warm commendations.
Tickell’s version of the first book appeared soon after this
conversation. In the preface, all rivalry was earnestly disclaimed.
Tickell declared that he should not go on with the Iliad. That
enterprise he should leave to powers which he admitted to be superior
to his own. His only view, he said, in publishing this specimen was to
bespeak the favour of the public to a translation of the Odyssey, in
which he had made some progress.
Addison, and Addison’s devoted followers, pronounced both the versions
good, but maintained that Tickell’s had more of the original. The town
gave a decided preference to Pope’s. We do not think it worth while to
settle such a question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said
to have translated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word translation be
used in the sense which it bears in the Midsummer Night’s Dream. When
Bottom makes his appearance with an ass’s head instead of his own, Peter
Quince exclaims, “Bless {406}thee! Bottom, bless thee! thou art
translated.” In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either Homer 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 any thing in the character of the accused persons which makes
the accusation probable? We {407}answer confidently--nothing. Tiekell
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 simple deviation from the laws of honour and of social morality. Had
he been indeed a man meanly jealous of fame, and capable of stooping to
base and wicked arts for the purpose of injuring his competitors, would
his vices have remained latent so long? He was a writer of tragedy: had
he ever injured Rowe? He was a writer of comedy: had he not done
ample justice to Congreve, and given valuable help to Steele? He was a
pamphleteer: have not his good nature and generosity been acknowledged
by Swift, his rival in fame and his adversary in politics?
That Tiekell should have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly
improbable. That Addison should have been guilty of a villany seems
to us highly improbable. But that these two men should have conspired
together to commit a villany seems to us improbable in a tenfold decree.
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 Tiekell 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.”
{408}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 he
false. We have not the smallest doubt that he believed it to be true;
and the evidence on which he believed it he found in his own bad heart.
His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as
that of which he suspected Addison and Tickell. He was all stiletto and
mask. To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the consequences of
injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of his life.
He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos; he was taxed with it; and
he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron Hill; he was
taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a still fouler
lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montague; he was taxed with it; and he lied
with more than usual effrontery and vehemence. He puffed himself and
abused his enemies under feigned names. He robbed himself of his own
letters, and then raised the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds
of malignity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds
which he seems to have committed from love of fraud alone. He had a
habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came near him.
Whatever his object might be, the indirect road to it was that which
he preferred. For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and
veneration as it was in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope
was scarcely dead when it was discovered that, from no motive except the
mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an act of gross perfidy to
Bolingbroke. {409}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 {410}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. Put
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 {411}later,
said that “through the lenity of the government alone he could live with
comfort.”
“Consider,” he exclaimed, “the injury that a man of high rank and
credit may do to a private person, under penal laws and many other
disadvantages.” It is pleasing to reflect that, the only revenge which
Addison took was to insert in the Freeholder a warm encomium on the
translation of the Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learning to put
down their names as subscribers. There could be no doubt, he said, from
the specimens already published, that the masterly hand of Pope would do
as much for Homer as Dryden had done for Virgil. From that time to the
end of his life, he always treated Pope, by Pope’s own acknowledgment,
with justice. Friendship was, of course, at an end.
One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play the ignominious
part of talebearer on this occasion, may have been his dislike of the
marriage which was about to take place between his mother and Addison.
The Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honourable family of the
Middletons of Chirk, a family which, in any country but ours, would be
called noble, resided at Holland House. Addison had, during some years,
occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn.
Chelsea is now a district of London, and Holland House may be called a
town residence. But, in the days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids
and sportsmen wandered between green hedges, and over fields bright with
daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames. Addison and
Lady Warwick were country neighbours, and became intimate friends.
The great wit and scholar tried to allure the young Lord from the
fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, breaking {412}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 doubt-, less 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
neighbouring squires, the poetical foxhunter, 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 {413}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. {414}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 seems to have re-established his health; and he
thanked God, with cheerful piety, for having set him free both from his
office and from his asthma. Many years seemed to be before him, and he
meditated many works, a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a translation
of the Psalms, a treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Of this last
performance, a part, which we could well spare, has come down to us.
But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradually prevailed against
all the resources of medicine. It is melancholy to think that the last
months of such a life should have been overclouded both by domestic and
by political vexations. A tradition which began early, which has
been generally received, and to which we have nothing to oppose, has
represented his wife as an arrogant and imperious woman. It is said
that, till his health failed him, he was glad to escape from the
Countess Dowager and her magnificent dining-room, blazing with the
gilded devices of the House of Rich, to some tavern where he could enjoy
a laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a bottle of claret, with
the friends of his happier days. All those friends, however, were not
left to him. Sir Richard Steele had been gradually estranged by various
causes. He considered himself as one who, in evil times, had braved
martyrdom for his political principles, and demanded, when the Whig
party was triumphant, a large compensation for {415}what he had suffered
when it was militant. The Whig leaders took a very different view of
his claims. They thought that he had, by his own petulance and folly,
brought them as well as himself into trouble, and though they did not
absolutely neglect him, doled out favours to him with a sparing hand. It
was natural that he should be angry with them, and especially angry with
Addison. But what above all seems to have disturbed Sir Richard, was the
elevation of Tickell, who, at thirty, was made by Addison Undersecretary
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 every thing
seems to indicate that, of those resentful gentlemen, Steele was himself
one.
While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he considered as Addison’s
unkindness, a new cause of quarrel arose. The Whig party, already
divided against itself, was rent by a new schism. The celebrated Bill
for limiting the number of Peers had been brought in.
The proud Duke of Somerset, first in rank of all the nobles whose origin
permitted them to sit in Parliament, was the ostensible author of the
measure. But it was supported, and, in truth, devised by the Prime
Minister.