guish him from all men who have been tried by | College, Oxford; but he had not been many equally full information. months there, when some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, dean of Magdalene College. The young scholar's diction and versification were already such as veteran professors might envy. Dr Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such promise; nor was an opportunity long wanting. The Revolution had just taken place; and nowhere had it been hailed with more delight than at Magdalene College. That great and opulent corporation had been treated by James, and by his chancellor, with an insolence and injustice which, even in such a prince and in such a minister, may justly excite amazement; and which had done more than even the prosecution of the bishops to alienate the Church of England from the throne. A president, duly elected, had been violently expelled from his dwelling. A papist had been set over the society by a royal mandate: the Fellows, who, in conformity with their oaths, refused to submit to this usurper, had been driven forth from their quiet cloisters and gardens, to die of want or to live on charity. But the day of redress and retribution speedily came. The intruders were ejected; the venerable house was again inhabited by its old inmates: learning flourished under the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough; and with learning was united a mild and liberal spirit, too often wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. In conse ciety had passed, there had been no election of new members during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was twice the ordinary number of vacancies; and thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young friend admittance to the advantages of a foundation then generally esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some figure in the world, and occupies with credit two folio pages in the Biographia Britannica." Lancelot was sent up, as a poor scholar, from Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of the Commonwealth; made some progress in learning; became, like most of his fellow-students, a violent royalist; lampooned the heads of the university, and was forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. When he had left college, he earned an humble subsistence by reading the liturgy of the fallen church to the families of those sturdy squires whose manor-houses were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. After the restoration, his royalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was sold to France, he lost his employment. But Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as part of the marriage portion of the Infanta Catharine; and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was sent. A more mise rable situation can hardly be conceived. It was difficult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were more tormented by the heats or by the rains; by the soldiers within the wall or the Moors without it. One advantage the chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity of studying the history and manners of the Jews and Mohammedans; and of this opportunity he ap-quence of the troubles through which the sopears to have made excellent use. On his return to England, after some years of banishment, he published an interesting volume on the polity and religion of Barbary; and another on the Hebrew customs, and the state of rabbinical learning. He rose to eminence in his profession, and became one of the royal chaplains, a doctor of divinity, archdeacon of Salisbury and At Magdalene, Addison resided during ten dean of Litchfield. It is said that he would years. He was, at first, one of those scholars have been made a bishop after the Revolution, who are called demies; but was subsequently if he had not given offence to the government elected a fellow. His college is still proud of by strenuously opposing the convocation of his name; his portrait still hangs in the hall; 1689, the liberal policy of William and Tillotson. and strangers are still told that his favourite In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return walk was under the elms which fringe the from Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It is Joseph's childhood we know little. He learned said, and is highly probable, that he was dishis rudiments at schools in his father's neigh-tinguished among his fellow-students by the bourhood, and was then sent to the Charter delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his House. The anecdotes which are popularly manners, and by the assiduity with which he related about his boyish tricks do not harmo- often prolonged his studies far into the night. nize very well with what we know of his riper It is certain that his reputation for ability and years. There remains a tradition that he was learning stood high. Many years later the the ringleader in a barring-out; and another ancient doctors of Magdalene continued to tradition that he ran away from school, and hid talk in their common room of boyish com himself in a wood, where he fed on berries and positions, and expressed their sorrow that no slept in a hollow tree, till after a long search copy of exercises so remarkable had been he was discovered and brought home. If these preserved. stories be true, it would be curious to know It is proper, however, to remark, that Miss by what moral discipline so mutinous and en-Aikin has committed the error, very pardonterprising a lad was transformed into the gen-able in a lady, of overrating Addison's classi tlest and most modest of men. cal attainments. In one department of learnWe have abundant proof that, whatever Jo-ing, indeed, his proficiency was such as it is seph's pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigorously and successfully. At fifteen he was not only fit for the university, but carried thither a classical taste, and a stock of learning which would have done honour to a inster of arts. He was entered at Queen's hardly possible to overrate. His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound. He understood them thoroughly, entered into their spirit, and had the finest and most discriminating percer LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, JULY, 1843.] is, that she has had to describe men and things without having either a correct or a vivid idea of them, and that she has often fallen into er. rors of a very serious kind. Some of these errors we may, perhaps, take occasion to point out. But we have not time to point out one half of those which we have observed; and a is but too likely that we may not have ob served all those which exist. The reputation which Miss Aikin has justly earned stands so high, and the charm of Addison's letters is so great, that a second edition of this work may probably be required. If so, we hope that every paragraph will be revised, and that every date and statement of fact about which there can be the smallest doubt will be carefully ver SOME reviewers are of opinion that a lady ho dares to publish a book renounces by that act the franchises appertaining to her sex, and can claim no exemption from the utmost rigour of critical procedure. From that opinion we dissent. We admit, indeed, that in a country which boasts of many female writers, eminently qualified by their talents and acquirements to influence the public mind, it would be of most pernicious consequence that inaccurate history or unsound philosophy should be suffered to pass uncensured, merely because the offender chanced to be a lady. But we conceive that, on such occasions, a critic would do well to imitate that courteous knight who found himself compelled by duty to keep the lists against Bradamante. He, we are told, defended suc-fied. cessfully the cause of which he was the champion; but, before the fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a less deadly sword, of which he carefully blunted the point and edge.t Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. Several of her works, and especially the very pleasing Memoirs of the Reign of James the First, have fully entitled her to the privileges enjoyed by good writers. One of those privileges we hold to be this, that such writers, when, either from the unlucky choice of a subject, or from the indolence too often produced by success, they happen to fail, shall not be subjected to the severe discipline which it is sometimes necessary to inflict upon dunces and impostors; but shall merely be reminded by a gentle touch, like that with which the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, that it is high time to wake. Our readers will probably infer from what we have said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed us. The truth is, that she is not weli acquainted with her subject. No person who is not familiar with the political and literary history of England during the reigns of William III., of Anne, and of George I., can possibly write a good life of Addison. Now, we mean no reproach to Miss Aikin, and many will think that we pay her a compliment, when we say that her studies have taken a different direction. She is better acquainted with Shakspeare and Raleigh, than with Congreve and Prior; and is far more at home among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's than among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs which surrounded Queen Anne's tea-table at Hampton. She seems to have written about the Elizabethan age, because she had read much about it; she seems, on the other hand, to have read a little about the age of Addison, because she had determined to write about it. The consequence To Addison himself we are bound by a sen timent as much like affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Wesminster Abbey. We trust, however, that this feeling will not betray us into that abject idolatry which we have often had occasion to reprehend in others, and which seldom fails to make both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot be equally developed; nor can we expect from him perfect self-knowledge. We need not, therefore, hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some compositions which do not rise above mediocrity, some heroie poems hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as superficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to say of a writer, that, in a high department of literature, in which many eminent writers have distinguished themselves, he has had no equal; and this may with strict justice be said of Addison. As a man he may not have deserved the adoration which he received from those, who, be witched by his fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts of life to his generous and delicate friendship, worshipped him nightly in his favourite temple at Button's. But, after full inquiry and impartial reflection, we have long been convinced, that he deserved as much love and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of our infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in his character; but the more carefully it is examined, the more will it ap pear, to use the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the noble parts-free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy. Men may easily be named in whom some particular good disposition has been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual ob servance of every law, not only of moral rec titude, but of moral grace and dignity, distin 66 guish him from all men who have been tried by | College, Oxford; but he had not been many equally full information. months there, when some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the hands of Dr. Lancas ter, dean of Magdalene College. The young scholar's diction and versification were already such as veteran professors might envy. Dr Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such promise; nor was an opportunity long wanting. The Revolution had just taken place; and nowhere had it been hailed with more delight than at Magdalene College. That great and opulent corporation had been treated by James, and by his chancellor, with an insolence and injustice which, even in such a prince and in such a minister, may justly excite amazement; and which had done more than even the prosecution of the bishops to alienate the Church of England from the throne. A president, duly elected, had been violently expelled from his dwelling. A papist had been set over the society by a royal mandate: the Fellows, who, in conformity with their oaths, refused to submit to this usurper, had been driven forth from their quiet cloisters and gardens, to die of want or to live on charity. But the day of redress and retribution speedily came. The intruders were ejected; the venerable house was again inhabited by its old inmates: learning flourished under the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough; and with learning was united a mild and liberal spirit, too often wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. In conse ciety had passed, there had been no election of new members during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was twice the ordinary number of vacancies; and thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young friend admittance the advantages of a foundation then generally esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some figure in the world, and occupies with credit two folio pages in the Biographia Britannica." Lancelot was sent up, as a poor scholar, from Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of the Commonwealth; made some progress in learning; became, like most of his fellow-students, a violent royalist; lampooned the heads of the university, and was forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. When he had left college, he earned an humble subsistence by reading the liturgy of the fallen church to the families of those sturdy squires whose manor-houses were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. After the restoration, his royalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was sold to France, he lost his employment. But Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as part of the marriage portion of the Infanta Catharine; and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was sent. A more mise rable situation can hardly be conceived. It was difficult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were more tormented by the heats or by the rains; by the soldiers within the wall or the Moors without it. One advantage the chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity of studying the history and manners of the Jews and Mohammedans; and of this opportunity he ap-quence of the troubles through which the sopears to have made excellent use. On his return to England, after some years of banishment, he published an interesting volume on the polity and religion of Barbary; and another on the Hebrew customs, and the state of rabbinical learning. He rose to eminence in his profes-to sion, and became one of the royal chaplains, a doctor of divinity, archdeacon of Salisbury and dean of Litchfield. It is said that he would have been made a bishop after the Revolution, if he had not given offence to the government by strenuously opposing the convocation of 1689, the liberal policy of William and Tillotson. In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's childhood we know little. He learned his rudiments at schools in his father's neighbourhood, and was then sent to the Charter | House. The anecdotes which are popularly related about his boyish tricks do not harmonize very well with what we know of his riper years. There remains a tradition that he was the ringleader in a barring-out; and another tradition that he ran away from school, and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on berries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long search he was discovered and brought home. If these stories be true, it would be curious to know It is proper, however, to remark, that Miss by what moral discipline so mutinous and en- Aikin has committed the error, very pardonterprising a lad was transformed into the gen-able in a lady, of overrating Addison's classi tlest and most modest of men. cal attainments. In one department of learnWe have abundant proof that, whatever Jo-ing, indeed, his proficiency was such as it is seph's pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigorously and successfully. At fifteen he was not only fit for the university, but carried thither a classical taste, and a stock of learning which would have done honour to a inster of arts. He was entered at Queen's At Magdalene, Addison resided during ten years. He was, at first, one of those scholars who are called demies; but was subsequently elected a fellow. His college is still proud of his name; his portrait still hangs in the hall; and strangers are still told that his favourite walk was under the elms which fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It is said, and is highly probable, that he was dis tinguished among his fellow-students by the delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his manners, and by the assiduity with which he often prolonged his studies far into the night. It is certain that his reputation for ability and learning stood high. Many years later the ancient doctors of Magdalene continued to talk in their common room of boyish com positions, and expressed their sorrow that no copy of exercises so remarkable had been preserved. hardly possible to overrate. His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound. He understood them thoroughly, entered into their spirit, and had the finest and most discriminating percer All the best ancient works of art at Rome and Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, without recalling one single verse of Pindar, of Callimachus, or of the Attic dramatists; but they brought to his recollection innumerable passages in Horace, Juvenal, Statius, and Ovid. tion of all their peculiarities of style and melody; nay, he copied their manner with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think, all their British imitators who had preceded him, Buchanan and Milton alone excepted. This is high praise; and beyond this we cannot with justice go. It is clear that Addison's serious attention, during his residence at the univer- The same may be said of the "Treatise on sity, was almost entirely concentrated on Latin Medals." In that pleasing work we find about poetry; and that, if he did not wholly neglect three hundred passages extracted with great other provinces of ancient literature, he vouch- judgment from the Roman poets; but we do safed to them only a cursory glance. He does not recollect a single passage taken from any not appear to have attained more than an or- Roman orator or historian; and we are confi dinary acquaintance with the political and dent that not a line is quoted from any Greek moral writers of Rome; nor was his own writer. No person who had derived all his Latin prose by any means equal to his Latin information on the subject of medals from Adverse. His knowledge of Greek, though doubt-dison, would suspect that the Greek coins were less such as was, in his time, thought respect- in historical interest equal, and in beauty of able at Oxford, was evidently less than that execution far superior to those of Rome. which many lads now carry away every year from Eton and Rugby. A minute examination of his work, if we had time to make such an examination, would fully bear out these remarks. We will briefly advert to a few of the facts on which our judgment is grounded. Great praise is due to the notes which Addison appended to his version of the second and third books of the Metamorphoses. Yet these notes, while they show him to have been, in his own domain, an accomplished scholar, .show also how confined that domain was. They are rich in apposite references to Virgil, Statius, and Claudian; but they contain not a single illustration drawn from the Greek poets. Now if, in the whole compass of Latin literature, there be a passage which stands in need of illustration drawn from the Greek poets, it is the story of Pentheus in the third book of the Metamorphoses. Ovid was indebted for that story to Euripides and Theocritus, both of whom he has sometimes followed minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to Theocritus does Addison make the faintest allusion; and we, therefore, believe that we do not wrong him by supposing that he had little or no knowledge of their works. His travels in Italy, again, bound with classical quotations, happily introduced; but his quotations, with scarcely a single exception, are taken from Latin verse. He draws more illustrations from Ausonius and Manilius than from Cicero. Even his notions of the political and military affairs of the Romans seem to be derived from poets and poetasters. Spots made memorable by events which have changed the destinies of the world, and have been worthily recorded by great historians, bring to his mind only scraps of some ancient Pye or Hayley. In the gorge of the Appennines he naturally remembers the hardships which Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to cite, not the authentic narrative of Polybius, not the picturesque narrative of Livy, but the languid hexameters of Silius Italicus. On the banks of the Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's lively description; or of the stern conciseness of the commentaries; or of those letters to Atticus which so forcibly express the alternations of hope and fear in a sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only authority for the events If the civil war is Lucan. If it were necessary to find any further proof that Addison's classical knowledge was confined within narrow limits, that proof would be furnished by his "Essay on the Evidences of Christianity." The Roman poets throw little or no light on the literary and historical questions which he is under the necessity of examining in that essay. He is, therefore, left completely in the dark; and it is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns, as grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as that of the Cock-lane ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's "Vortigern;" puts faith in the lie about the thundering legion; is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the gods; and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, king of Edessa, to be a record of great authority. Nor were these errors the effects of superstition; for to superstition Addison was by no means prone. The truth is, that he was writing about what he did not understand. Miss Aikin has discovered a letter from which it appears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he was one of several writers whom the booksellers engaged to make an English version of Herodotus; and she infers that he must have been a good Greek scholar. We can allow very little weight to this argument, when we consider that his fellow-labourers were to have been Boyle and Blackmore. Boyle is remembered chiefly as the nominal author of the worst book on Greek history and philology that ever was printed; and this book, bad as it is, Boyle was unable to produce with out help. Of Blackmore's attainments in the ancient tongues, it may be sufficient to say that, in his prose, he has confounded an aphorism with an apophthegm, and that when, in his verse, he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to regale his readers with four false quantities to a page! It is probable that the classical acquirements of Addison were of as much service to him as if they had been more extensive. The world generally gives its admiration, not to the man who does what nobody else even attempts to do, but to the man who does best what multitudes do well. Bentley was so immeasurably superior to all the other scholars of his time that very few among them could discover his superiority. But the accomplishment in which | end of every distich, is an art as mechanical Addison excelled his contemporaries was then, as that of mending a kettle, or shoeing a horse as it is now, highly valued and assiduously and may be learned by any human being who cultivated at all English seats of learning. has sense enough to learn any thing. But, like Everybody who had been at a public school other mechanical arts, it was gradually im had written Latin verses; many had written proved by means of many experiments and such verses with tolerable success; and were many failures. It was reserved for Pope to quite able to appreciate, though by no means discover the trick, to make himself complete able to rival, the skill with which Addison master of it, and to teach it to everybody else. imitated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer, From the time when his "Pastorals" appeared, and the Bowling-Green, were applauded by heroic versification became matter of rule and hundreds to whom the "Dissertation on the compass; and, before long, all artists were on Epist.es of Phalaris" was as unintelligible as a level. Hundreds of dunces who never lunthe hieroglyphics on an obelisk. dered on one happy thought or expression were able to write reams of couplets which, as far as euphony was concerned, could not be distinguished from those of Pope himself, and which very clever writers of the reign of Charles the Second-Rochester, for example, or Marvel, or Oldham-would have contemplated with admiring despair. Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are common to all Addison's Latin poems. Our favourite piece is the Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies; for in that piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and humour which many years later enlivened thousands of breakfast tables. Swift boasted that he was never known to steal a hint: and he certainly owed as little Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very to his predecessors as any modern writer. small man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, Yet we cannot help suspecting that he bor- had learned how to manufacture decasyllable rowed, perhaps unconsciously, one of the hap-verses; and poured them forth by thousands piest touches in his Voyage to Lilliput from Addison's verses. Let our readers judge. "The Emperor," says Gulliver, "is taller by about the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders." About thirty years before Gulliver's Travels appeared, Addison wrote these lines: "Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus infert Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus, Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet oinnes Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam." The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and justly admired both at Oxford and Cambridge before his name had ever been heard by the wits who thronged the coffee-houses round Drury-Lane theatre. In his twenty-second year, he ventured to appear before the public as a writer of English verse. He addressed some complimentary lines to Dryden, who, after many triumphs and many reverses, had at length reached a secure and lonely eminence among the literary men of that age. Dryden appears to have been much gratified by the young scholar's praise; and an interchange of civilities and good offices followed. Addison was probably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and was certainly presented by Congreve to Charles Montagu, who was then chancellor of the exchequer, and leader of the whig party in the House of Commons. At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote himself to poetry. He published a translation of part of the fourth Georgic, Lines to King William, and other performances of equal value; that is to say, of no value at all. But in those days the public were in the habit of receiving with applause pieces which would now have little chance of obtaining the Newdigate prize, or the Seatonian prize. And the reason is obvious. The heroic couplet was then the favourite measure. The art of arranging words in that measure, so that the lines may flow smoothly, that the accents may fall correctly, that the rhymes may strike the ear strongly, and that there may be a pause at the and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have passed through Mr. Brunell's mill, in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation of a celebrated passage in the Æneid : "This child our parent earth, stirred up with spite That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, Compare with these jagged misshapen distichs the neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in unlimited abundance. We take the first lines on which we open in his version of Tasso. They are neither better nor worse than the rest: "O thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led Ever since the time of Pope there has been a glut of lines of this sort; and we are now as little disposed to admire a man for being able to write them as for being able to write his name. But in the days of William the Third such versification was rare; and a rhymer who had any skill in it passed for a great poet; just as in the dark ages a person who could write his name passed for a great clerk. Accord ingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsh, and others, whose only title to fame was that they said in tolerable metre what might have been as well said in prose, or what was not worth saying at all, were honoured with marks of distinction which ought to be reserved for gcnius. With these Addison must have ranked, if he had not earned true and lasting glory by performances which very little resembled his juvenile poems. |