Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison

in the young man's rhymes, that his intention was to take orders. But Charles Montague interfered. Montague had first brought himself into notice by

verses, well-timed and not contemptibly written, 6 but never, we think, rising above mediocrity.

Fortunately for himself and for his country, he early quitted poetry, in which he could never have attained a rank as high as that of Dorset or Roch

ester, and turned his mind to official and par10 liamentary business. It is written that the

ingenious person who undertook to instruct Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, waved his wings, sprang

into the air, and instantly dropped into the lake. 15 But it is added that the wings, which were unable

to support him through the sky, bore him up effectually as soon as he was in the water. This is no bad type of the fate of Charles Montague,

and of men like him. When he attempted to soar 20 into the regions of poetical invention, he alto

gether failed; but, as soon as he had descended from that ethereal elevation into a lower and grosser element, his talents instantly raised him

above the mass. He became a distinguished finan25 cier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still

retained his fondness for the pursuits of his early days; but he showed that fondness not by wearying the public with his own feeble performances, but

by discovering and encouraging literary excellence 30 in others. A crowd of wits and poets, who would

of every distich, is an art as mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing a horse, and may be learned by any human being who has sense enough to learn anything. But, like other mechanical arts, it was gradually improved by means of many 5 experiments and many failures. It was reserved for Pope to discover the trick, to make himself complete master of it, and to teach it to everybody else. From the time when his Pastorals appeared, heroic versification became matter of rule and com- 10 pass; and, before long, all artists were on a level. Hundreds of dunces who never blundered 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 15 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.

Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very 20 small man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, had learned how to manufacture decasyllable verses, and poured them forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have passed 25 through Mr. Brunel'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 : 30

"This child our parent earth, stirred up with spite
Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write,
She was last sister of that giant race
That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace,
And swifter far of wing, a monster vast
And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed
On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes
Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise
In the report, as many tongues she wears.

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,
By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread,
No greater wonders east or west can boast
Than yon small island on the pleasing coast.
If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore,
The current pass, and seek the further shore.”

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 25 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. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, 80 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 honored with marks of distinction which ought to be reserved for genius. With these Addison must have ranked, if he had not earned true and lasting glory by performances which very little resembled his juvenile poems.

Dryden was now busied with Virgil, and obtained from Addison a critical preface to the Georgics. In return for this service, and for 10 other services of the same kind, the veteran poet, in the postscript to the translation of the Æneid, complimented his young friend with great liberality, and indeed with more liberality than sincerity. He affected to be afraid that his own 15 performance would not sustain a comparison with the version of the fourth Georgic, by "the most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford.” "After bis bees,” added Dryden, “my latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving.

The time had now arrived when it was necessary for Addison to choose a calling. Everything seemed to point his course towards the clerical profession. His habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His college had large ecclesiastical 25 preferment in its gift, and boasts that it has given at least one bishop to almost every see in England. Dr. Lancelot Addison held an honorable place in the church, and had set his heart on seeing his son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expressions 30

in the young man's rhymes, that his intention was to take orders. But Charles Montague interfered. Montague had first brought himself into notice by

verses, well-timed and not contemptibly written, 8 but never, we think, rising above mediocrity.