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 confidinary 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 ¡ively 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 f 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 without 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. Bat, like Everybody who had been at a public school other mechanical arts, it was gradually imhad 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 Epistles of Phalaris" was as unintelligible as a level. Hundreds of dunces who never blunthe 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 to his predecessors as any modern writer. Yet we cannot help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, one of the happiest 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 omnes 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

Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very 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 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 Eneid :

:

"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 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, 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 ge nius. 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 ob- | had sat only two months in eight years. Now tained from Addison a critical preface to the the press was free, and had begun to exercise Georgics. In return for this service, and for unprecedented influence on the public mind. other services of the same kind, the veteran Parliament met annually and sat long. The poet, in the postscript to the translation of the chief power in the state had passed to the Eneid, complimented his young friend with House of Commons. At such a conjuncture, great liberality, and indeed with more liberality it was natural that literary and oratorical than sincerity. He affected to be afraid that talents should rise in value. There was danhis own performance would not sustain a com- ger that a government which neglected such parison with the version of the fourth Georgic, talents might be subverted by them. It was, by "the most ingenious Mr. Addison of Ox- therefore, a profound and enlightened policy ford." "After his bees," added Dryden, "my which led Montagu and Somers to attach such latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving." talents to the whig party, by the strongest ties both of interest and of gratitude.

markable. "I am called," he said, “an enemy | Hobbes was mentioned, and was indeed so

of the church. But I will never do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it."

This interference was successful; and in the summer of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by his pension, and still retaining his fellow-leau. ship, quitted his beloved Oxford, and set out on his travels. He crossed from Dover to Calais, proceeded to Paris, and was received there with great kindness and politeness by a kinsman of his friend Montagu, Charles Earl of Manchester, who had just been appointed ambassador to the court of France. The countess, a whig and a toast, was probably as gracious as her lord; for Addison long retained an agreeable recollection of the impression which she at this time made on him, and, in some lively lines written on the glasses of the Kit-Cat club, described the envy which her cheeks, glowing with the genuine bloom of England, had excited among the painted beauties of Versailles.

unjust as to call the author of the "Leviathan" a poor silly creature. Addison's modesty restrained him from fully relating, in his letter, the circumstances of his introduction to BoiBoileau, having survived the friends and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom went either to court or to the academy, and was almost in accessible to strangers. Of the English and of English literature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the name of Dryden. Some of our countrymen, in the warmth of their patriotism, have asserted that this ignorance must have been affected. We own that we see no ground for, such a supposition. English literature was to the French of the age of Louis XIV. what German literature was to our own grandfathers. Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished men who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to dine in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham with Mrs. Thrale, had the slightest notion that Wieland was one of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, beyond all dispute, the first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as little about the "Paradise Lost," and about "Absalom and Ahitophel;" but he had read Addison's Latin poems, and admired them greatly. They had given him, he said, quite a new notion of the state of learning and taste among the English. Johnson will have it that these praises were insincere. "Nothing," says he, "is better known of Boileau than that he had an injudicious and peevish contempt of modern Latin; and therefore his profession of regard was probably the effect of his civility rather than approbation." Now, nothing is better known of Boileau than that he was singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember that either friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on any composition which he did not approve. On literary questions, his caustic, disdainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that authority to which every thing else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Louis XIV. firmly, and even rudely, that his majesty knew nothing about poetry, and admired verses which were detestable. What was there in Addison's position that could induce the satirist, whose stern and fastidious temper had been the dread of two generations, to turn sy

Louis XIV. was at this time expiating the vices of his youth by a devotion which had no root in reason, and bore no fruit in charity. The servile literature of France had changed its character to suit the changed character of the prince. No book appeared that had not an air of sanctity. Racine, who was just dead, had passed the close of his life in writing sacred dramas; and Dacier was seeking for the Athanasian mysteries of Plato. Addison described this state of things in a short but lively and graceful letter to Montagu. Another letter, written about the same time to the lord keeper, conveyed the strongest assurances of gratitude and attachment. "The only return I can make to your lordship," said Addison, "will be to apply myself entirely to my business." With this view he quitted Paris and repaired to Blois; a place where it was supposed that the French language was spoken in its highest purity, and where not a single Englishman could be found. Here he passed some months pleasantly and profitably. Of his way of life at Blois, one of his associates, an abbé named Philippeaux, gave an account to Joseph Spence. If this account is to be trusted, Addison studied much. mused much, talked little, had fits of absence, and either had no love affairs, or was too discreet to confide them to the abbé. A man who, even when surrounded by fellow-countrymen and fellow-students, had always been remark-cophant for the first and last time? Nor was ably shy and silent, was not likely to be loquacious in a foreign tongue, and among foreign companions. But it is clear from Addison's letters, some of which were long after published in the "Guardian," that while he appeared to be absorbed in his own meditations, he was really observing French society with that keen and sly, yet not ill-natured side-glance which was peculiarly his own.

From Blois he returned to Paris; and having now mastered the French language, found great pleasure in the society of French philosophers and poets. He gave an account, in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two highly interesting conversations, one with Malebranche, the other with Boileau. Malebranche expressed great partiality for the English, and extolled the genius of Newton, but shook his head when

Boileau's contempt of modern Latin either .njudicious or peevish. He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first order would ever be written in a dead language. And did he think amiss? Has not the experience of centuries confirmed his opinion? Boileau also thought it probable that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan age would have de tected ludicrous improprieties. And who can think otherwise? What modern scholar can honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity in the style of Livy? Yet is it not cer tain that, in the style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the inelegant idiom of the Po? Has any modern scholar understood Latin better than Frederick the Great understood French! Yet is it not notorious that Frederick the Great,

the states-general, accepted the bequest on behalf of his grandson. The house of Bourbon was at the summit of human grandeur. England had been outwitted, and found herself in a situation at once degrading and perilous. The people of France, not presaging the calamities by which they were destined to expiate the perfidy of their sovereign, went mad with pride and delight. Every man looked as if a great estate had just been left him. "The French conversation," said Addison, "begins to grow insupportable; that which was before the vainest nation in the world, is now worse than ever." Sick of the arrogant exultation of the Parisians, and probably foreseeing that the peace between France and England could not be of long duration, he set off for Italy.

after reading, speaking, writing French, and Charles, second of the name, King of Spain, nothing but French, during more than half a died; and bequeathed his dominions to Philip, century-after unlearning his mother tongue Duke of Anjou, a younger son of the dauphin. In order to learn French, after living familiarly | The King of France, in direct violation of his during many years with French associates-engagements both with Great Britain and with could not, to the last, compose in French, without imminent risk of committing some mistake which would have moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris? Do we believe that Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr. Robertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote English? And are there not in the Dissertation on India, (the last of Dr. Robertson's works,) in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a London apprentice would laugh? But does it follow, because we think thus, that we can find nothing to admire in the noble alcaics of Gray, or in the playful elegiacs of Vincent Bourne? Surely not. Nor was Boileau so ignorant or tasteless as to be incapable of appreciating good modern Latin. In the very letter to which Johnson alludes, Boileau says "Ne croyez pas pourtant que je veuille par là blâmer les vers Latins que vous m'avez envoyés d'un de vos illustres académiciens. Je les ai trouvés fort beaux, et dignes de Vida et de Sannazar, mais non pas d'Horace et de Virgile." Several poems, in modern Latin, have been praised by Boileau quite as liberally as it was his habit to praise any thing. He says, for example, of Père Fraguier's epigrams, that Catullus seems to have come to life again. But the best proof that Boileau did not feel the undiscerning contempt for modern Latin verses which has been imputed to him, is, that he wrote and published Latin verses in several metres. Indeed, it happens, curiously encugh, that the most severe censure ever pronounced by him on moden Latin, is conveyed in Latin hexameters. We allude to the fragment which begins

"Quid numeris iterum me balbutire Latinis, Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, Musa, jubes ?"

In December, 1700,* he embarked at Marseilles. As he glided along the Ligurian coast, he was delighted by the sight of myrtles and olive-trees, which retained their verdure under the winter solstice. Soon, however, he encountered one of the black storms of the Mediterranean. The captain of the ship gave up all for lost, and confessed himself to a capuchin who happened to be on board. The English heretic, in the mean time, fortified himself against the terrors of death with devotions of a very different kind. How strong an impression this perilous voyage made on him, appears from the ode-"How are thy servants blest, O Lord!" which was long after published in the Spectator. After some days of discomfort and danger, Addison was glad to land at Savona, and to make his way, over mountains where no road had yet been hewn out by art, to the city of Genoa.

At Genoa, still ruled by her own doge, and For these reasons we feel assured that the by the nobles whose names were inscribed on praise which Boileau bestowed on the Machina her book of gold, Addison made a short stay. Gosticulantes, and the Gerano-Pygmæomachiu, was He admired the narrow streets overhung by sincere. He certainly opened himself to Ad- long lines of towering palaces, the walls rich dison with a freedom which was a sure indica- with frescoes, the gorgeous temple of the Antion of esteem. Literature was the chief subject nunciation, and the tapestries whereon were of conversation. The old man talked on his recorded the long glories of the house of Doria. favourite theme much and well; indeed, as his Thence he hastened to Milan, where he conyoung hearer thought, incomparably well. Boi- templated the Gothic magnificence of the catheleau had undoubtedly some of the qualities of a dral with more wonder than pleasure. He great critic. He wanted imagination; but he passed lake Benacus while a gale was blowhad strong sense. His literary code was formed ing, and saw the waves raging as they raged on narrow principles; but in applying it, he when Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, showed great judgment and penetration. In then the gayest spot in Europe, the traveller mere style, abstracted from the ideas of which spent the carnival, the gayest season of the style is the garb, his taste was excellent. He year, in the midst of masques, dances, and sewas well acquainted with the great Greek writ-renades. Here he was at once diverted and ers; and, though unable fully to appreciate their provoked by the absurd dramatic pieces which creative genius, admired the majestic simpli- then disgraced the Italian stage. To one of rity of their manner, and had learned from those pieces, however, he was indebted for a them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, we think, to discover, in the "Spectator" and the "Guardian," traces of the influence, in part salutary and in part pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had on the mind of Addison.

While Addison was at Paris, an event took place which made that capital a disagreeable residence for an Englishman and a whig.

valuable hint. He was present when a ridiculous play on the death of Cato was performed. Cato, it seems, was in love with a daughter

It is strange that Addison should, in the first line of his travels, have misdated his departure from Marseilles by a whole year, and still more strange that this slip of the confusion, should have been repeated in a succession of pen, which throws the whole narrative into inextricable editions, and never detected by Tickell or by Hurd.