the most successful contemporary politician. Perhaps the most brilliant of all that are mentioned in this essay, however, was Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, whose many interests can only be alluded to here.1 Last but not least, there is to be studied with respect the great Marlborough, and his equally great wife, Sarah Jennings. It is true that Addison's contact with them is but slight. Yet the hero of the "Campaign" and the maker of history in this reign is not to be ignored, though his biography cannot be properly discussed at the end of a paragraph. Students should consult Mrs. Creighton's "Life of Marlborough," that of Lord Wolseley, or that of Mr. Saintsbury. 27. It will hardly be necessary for any one who has read Macaulay's essay to look elsewhere for biographical material of Addison. Macaulay has traced with much particularity the course of his life, following Miss Aikin's exhaustive work in its details. If one wishes more, Courthope's "Addison," in the English Men of Letters Series, serves to bring out in a more careful perspective view some facts about Addison which Macaulay distorts in the fervor of his eloquent descriptions. 28. Of late years there has been a great deal of historical work about Addison's contemporaries, as there has been a sort of revival in interest for the habits and customs of our ancestors of Queen Anne's day. Old silver, old furniture, old architecture charm our present caprice and, under the modern historic taste, such books as Ashton's "Social Life of Queen Anne," Sydney's "England in the Eighteenth Century," and Morris's "Age of Anne" in the Epochs of History Series, have made easy of acquisition much of the 1 The student who wishes to know more of these great men may look in Lord Stanhope's Reign of Queen Anne, and Lord Mahon's History of England. See also the opening chapters of Morley's Walpole. Good articles upon them will also be found in the Encyclo pædia Britannica. close information about the period which Macaulay says it is desirable to have in studying Addison. 29. Two or three matters of interest may here be recommended to general students. No one can get the full flavor of the social life of the time who does not study the London coffee-houses, taverns, and clubs. The coffeehouses were much like modern clubs. In each were found every day its own characteristic set of frequenters, sipping coffee or "mineral-water," writing letters, reading the "news-sheets," transacting business, or playing cards. It is said that in 1715 there were as many as two thousand coffee-houses in London. Each had its own clients. Literary men went to "Will's" or "Buttons" or the "Grecian," merchants to "Jonathan's," Whigs to the "St. James," Tories to the "Cocoa-Tree." 1 There were also clubs of a more definite organization. The "October Club" is thus described by Swift: "We are plagued here with an October Club, a set of above a hundred parliament men of the country, who drink October beer, and meet every evening at a tavern near the Parliament to consult affairs, and to drive things on to extremes against the Whigs, to call the old ministry to account and get off five or six heads." The rival Whig club was the "Kit-Cat." It contained a galaxy of wits and statesmen. "Peg Woffington," the actress, was at one time its president. Halifax, Somers, Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, the Dukes of Somerset, Devonshire, Marlborough, Newcastle, the Earls of Dorset, Sutherland, Sir Robert Walpole, and many other great people were members.2 30. Interesting subjects would be found in the investigation of the education of youth in those days; the posi 1 See the first numbers of the Tatler for a list of fashionable coffeehouses. 2 For a full account of these things see Sydney's England, Vol. I., Chapter IV. tion, social and civic, of scholars and literary men; the life at the Universities; the character of the scholarship and the thought of the country; as well as the history of the bookmaking and bookselling of the period. Some of these questions connect themselves with Addison's own history. At school, under the discipline of the rod, he learned the current classical lore, of which Latin was more attentively studied than Greek, and the forms of Latin far more than the contents. The culmination of such an education was to get ability in Latin verse composition. Few reached anything noteworthy in such an artificial accomplishment, though every boy pursued it. Hence Addison's gift was valued and admired by a wide public, and hence the great and admirable talents of Bentley, who is now seen to be the only scholar of any profitable type in a whole generation of English classicists, were only half understood and greatly undervalued by contemporary English scholars, because he dealt scientifically with the classics, with matter as well as form, and with the original Greek rather than the devious traditions of Italy and Rome. Addison's "grand tour" after leaving Magdalen, again indicates the type of the regular genteel English education, though Addison was of course a man who made something of it, just as he did of his Latin verse, where others did not. 31. The good luck of the authors born at this period would be another subject of interest. The literary world in the "Augustan Age" of Queen Anne was in the height of fashion. Places and appointments were showered on successful writers; ministries rivalled each other in recognizing talent; authors lived with noblemen, and noblemen affected to be authors. The men who wrote the Tatler and Spectator had the same lives, the same ambitions, and the same hopes, successes, and failures as the social leaders and statesmen of the aristocracy. The cause of this phenome non has been described by Macaulay in pp. 145-148; it is all the more odd because there is no evidence that Queen Anne herself was fond of literature or art. For any parallel to the social conditions of authorship under Anne we must come down to the reign of Victoria; and it may well be doubted if even here the social valuation placed upon wit and talent has ever been relatively so high as in Anne's reign. In the reign of the Georges all this good fortune was changed; the horrors of Grub Street set in, as exhibited in the life of Samuel Johnson, who was born before Addison died, and who starved and grew prematurely old in the same profession as Addison's, within the very next generation of Englishmen. 32. One should refer to larger works than this for treatment of these interesting topics. Among the most valuable will be the classic novel of Thackeray, "Henry Esmond." Thackeray depicts as few historical novelists have ever done the vanished life that Macaulay is here studying. It is a marvellous reproduction of the distant scene of Anne's reign; the dead figures move again, in habit as they lived, following the course of events with historic accuracy, while yet the story marches on with the freedom and vivacity of untrammelled imaginative fiction. Thackeray may not be always trustworthy. Possibly Steele is drawn. of too light a character, as he is also in Macaulay's essay; very likely the love-story is a little out of keeping, and Henry Esmond himself rather an anachronism. But it remains a remarkable work of art and one of the best places in the world to study the age of Addison.1 33. The character of Addison himself, his prudence, modesty, good temper, and social charm, is on the whole well described by Macaulay. Its distinctive traits are brought out very clearly, as they appeared in his writings, 1 See also Historical Characters of the Reign of Queen Anne, by Mrs. Oliphant. and in the evidence of his contemporaries. Thackeray has drawn the same Addison, with some exaggerations of traits, in the "English Humorists" and in "Henry Esmond." There is a very good biographical article upon Addison by Leslie Stephen in the "Dictionary of National Biography," and another by William Spalding, in the "Encyclopædia Britannica." Courthope's "Addison," in the English Men of Letters Series, has already been mentioned. Out of any of these a clear picture of that fair character may without trouble be derived by the student. 34. There is in the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," as is well-known, a famous characterization of Addison at the hand of Pope, which ought to be compared with these, and which, though preserving the same general picture, gives. a different kind of meaning to the character. For convenience of reference it is here printed. "Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires True Genius kindles and fair Fame inspires; While Wits and Templars every sentence raise, |