popularity quite as great as that of the most successful works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in our own time.

At the close of 1712 the Spectator ceased to appear. It was probably felt that the short-faced gentleman and his club had been long enough before the town; and that it was time to withdraw them, and to replace them by a new set of characters. In a few weeks the first number But the Guardian was It began 10

of the Guardian was published.
unfortunate both in its birth and in its death.

in dullness, and disappeared in a tempest of faction. The original plan was bad. Addison contributed nothing till sixty-six numbers had appeared; and it was then impossible to make the Guardian what the Spectator had been. Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards were people to 15 whom even he could impart no interest. He could only furnish some excellent little essays, both serious and comic; and this he did.

Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guardian during the first two months of its existence, is a ques- 20 tion which has puzzled the editors and biographers, but which seems to us to admit of a very easy solution. He was then engaged in bringing his 'Cato' on the stage.

The first four acts of this drama had been lying in his desk since his return from Italy. His modest and sensi- 25 tive nature shrank from the risk of a public and shameful failure; and though all who saw the manuscript were loud in praise, some thought it possible that an audience might become impatient even of very good rhetoric, and advised Addison to print the play without hazarding a 30 representation. At length, after many fits of apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of his political friends, who hoped that the public would discover some analogy between the followers of Cæsar and the Tories,

between Sempronius and the apostate Whigs, between Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties of Rome, and the band of patriots who still stood firm round Halifax and Wharton.

5 Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury Lane Theater, without stipulating for any advantage to himself. They therefore thought themselves bound to spare no cost in scenery and dresses. The decorations, it is true, would not have pleased the skillful eye of Mr. Macready. 10 Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace; Marcia's hoop was worthy of a duchess on the birthday; and Cato wore a wig worth fifty guineas. The prologue was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly a dignified and spirited composition. The part of the hero was excellently played by 15 Booth. Steele undertook to pack a house. The boxes

were in a blaze with the stars of the Peers in Opposition. The pit was crowded with attentive and friendly listeners from the Inns of Court and the literary coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor of the Bank of England, 20 was at the head of a powerful body of auxiliaries from the City, warm men and true Whigs, but better known at Jonathan's and Garraway's than in the haunts of wits and critics.

These precautions were quite superfluous. The Tories, 25 as a body, regarded Addison with no unkind feelings. Nor was it for their interest, professing, as they did, profound reverence for law and prescription, and abhorrence both of popular insurrections and of standing armies, to appropriate to themselves reflections thrown on the great 30 military chief and demagogue who, with the support of the legions and of the common people, subverted all the ancient institutions of his country. Accordingly, every shout that was raised by the members of the Kit-Cat was echoed by the High Churchmen of the October; and

the curtain at length fell amidst thunders of unanimous applause.

The delight and admiration of the town were described by the Guardian in terms which we might attribute to partiality, were it not that the Examiner, the organ of the 5 ministry, held similar language. The Tories, indeed, found much to sneer at in the conduct of their opponents. Steele had on this, as on other occasions, shown more zeal than taste or judgment. The honest citizens who marched under the orders of Sir Gibby, as he was face- 10 tiously called, probably knew better when to buy and when to sell stock than when to clap and when to hiss at a play, and incurred some ridicule by making the hypocritical Sempronius their favorite, and by giving to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed on 15 the temperate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, too, who had the incredible effrontery to applaud the lines about flying from prosperous vice and from the power of impious men to a private station, did not escape the sarcasms of those who justly thought that he could fly from nothing more 20 vicious or impious than himself. The epilogue, which was written by Garth, a zealous Whig, was severely and not unreasonably censured as ignoble and out of place. But Addison was described, even by the bitterest Tory writers, as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose 25 friendship many persons of both parties were happy, and whose name ought not to be mixed up with factious squabbles.

Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig party was disturbed, the most severe and happy was Boling- 30 broke's. Between two acts he sent for Booth to his box, and presented him, before the whole theater, with a purse of fifty guineas for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual Dictator. This was a pungent allu

sion to the attempt which Marlborough had made, not long before his fall, to obtain a patent creating him Captain-General for life.

It was April; and in April a hundred and thirty years 5 ago the London season was thought to be far advanced. During a whole month, however, 'Cato' was performed to overflowing houses, and brought into the treasury of the theater twice the gains of an ordinary spring. In the summer the Drury Lane Company went down to act at 10 Oxford, and there, before an audience which retained an affectionate remembrance of Addison's accomplishments and virtues, his tragedy was acted during several days. The gownsmen began to besiege the theater in the forenoon, and by one in the afternoon all the seats 15 were filled.

About the merits of the piece which had so extraordinary an effect, the public, we suppose, has made up its mind. To compare it with the masterpieces of the Attic stage, with the great English dramas of the time of Eliza20 beth, or even with the productions of Schiller's manhood, would be absurd indeed. Yet it contains excellent dialogue and declamation, and, among plays fashioned on the French model, must be allowed to rank high; not indeed with 'Athalie' or 'Saul'; but, we think, not below 25 Cinna,' and certainly above any other English tragedy of the same school; above many of the plays of Corneille; above many of the plays of Voltaire and Alfieri; and above some plays of Racine. Be this as it may, we have

little doubt that 'Cato' did as much as the Tatlers, Spec30 tators, and Freeholders united, to raise Addison's fame among his contemporaries.

The modesty and good nature of the successful dramatist had tamed even the malignity of faction. But literary envy, it should seem, is a fiercer passion than

party spirit. It was by a zealous Whig that the fiercest attack on the Whig tragedy was made. John Dennis published Remarks on Cato,' which were written with some acuteness and with much coarseness and asperity. Addison neither defended himself nor retaliated. On 5 many points he had an excellent defense, and nothing would have been easier than to retaliate; for Dennis had written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies; he had, moreover, a larger share than most men of those infirmities and eccentricities which excite laughter; and Addi- 10 son's power of turning either an absurd book or an absurd man into ridicule was unrivaled. Addison, however, serenely conscious of his superiority, looked with pity on his assailant, whose temper, naturally irritable and gloomy, had been soured by want, by controversy, and by literary 15 failures.

But among the young candidates for Addison's favor there was one distinguished by talents from the rest, and distinguished, we fear, not less by malignity and insincerity. Pope was only twenty-five. But his powers had 20 expanded to their full maturity; and his best poem, the 'Rape of the Lock,' had recently been published. Of his genius Addison had always expressed high admiration. But Addison had early discerned, what might, indeed, have been discerned by an eye less penetrating 25 than his, that the diminutive, crooked, sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on society for the unkindness of nature. In the Spectator the Essay on Criticism' had been praised with cordial warmth; but a gentle hint had been added that the writer of so excellent a poem 30 would have done well to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, though evidently more galled by the censure than gratified by the praise, returned thanks for the admonition, and promised to profit by it. The two writers continued