and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger 2 sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, distinguished from the productions of other soils, not only by their superior bloom and sweetness, but by their miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he laboured for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptation and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame.3

1 Phrases from the English Bible. See Daniel v. 27; Matthew xxii. 20. It would be an interesting inquiry to trace the Biblical phraseology all through this essay.

2 Philip Massinger (1583-1640), an English dramatist, who edited or wrote largely a very popular play with this title, of which the heroine is a Christian martyr. The miracle described here was performed for the benefit of the scoffing persecutor, who challenges his victim, the Virgin Martyr, to send him back a flower from that Paradise to which she says she is going. Accordingly after her death, an angel appears on the stage bearing flowers and fruits from that celestial world.

* For a discussion of Macaulay's florid rhetoric in these and similar paragraphs, read Matthew Arnold's essay entitled A French Critic on Milton.

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

ADDISON

(Edinburgh Review, July, 1843.)

The Life of Joseph Addison. By LUCY AIKIN,1 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1843.

1. SOME reviewers are of opinion that a lady who 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 the courteous Knight who found himself compelled by duty to keep the lists against Bradamante. He, we are told, defended successfully 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.

§§ 1-3. Criticism of Miss Aikin's Life of Addison.

1 Lucy Aikin (1781-1864), daughter of Dr. John Aikin and sister of Mrs. Barbauld. Her best known works are Memoirs of the Court of James I., Memoirs of the Court of Charles I., and this Life. She has some fame also as a correspondent of Dr. Channing, the American preacher; and their letters have been published.

2 See Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, XLV., 68. Bradamante, sister of Rinaldo, loves Ruggiero, the "courteous knight." In many adventures

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2. 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.1

3. 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 well acquainted with her subject. No person who is not familiar with the political and literary history of England during the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, can possibly write a good life of Addison. Now, we mean no reproach in which she figures as a knight in armor with an enchanted sword, she shows the prowess of a warrior. In the adventure here referred to, her hand in marriage is to be the prize of the contest. Unknown to herself her own lover is her disguised antagonist. He purposely blunts the edge of his sword with a hammer, that he may not injure his liege lady. The duty alluded to was his promise to fight as the representative of another prince.

The champions of the romances of chivalry had names for their swords, as well as for their horses. Compare Arthur's sword Excalibur, Orlando's Durindana, Siegfried's Nothung.

1 Gulliver's Travels, Part III., Ch. 2. "Those persons [in Laputa] who are able to afford it always keep a flapper in their family. The business of this officer is, gently to stroke the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him to whom the speaker addresses himself."

2 Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James II. was intended to cover this ground (1688-1727) but was broken off at the death of William III.

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5

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,1 than with Congreve and Prior2; and is far more at home among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's, than among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs4 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 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 errors of a very serious kind. The reputation which Miss Aikin has justly earned stands so high, and the charm of Addison's letters is so

1 Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618), the famous English navigator and courtier of Queen Elizabeth.

2 William Congreve (1672-1729), a writer of comedies which are distinguished for wit and for fine character-drawing, but which were, like other plays of the day, immoral and heartless. Matthew Prior (16641721), a poet, wit, and Tory politician. See Ward's English Poets.

3 Ruffs, projecting muslin bands round the neck, worn in the sixteenth century. Theobald's, the seat of Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's prime-minister.

Or Steinkirk, a large cravat of fine lace, loosely knotted, with one end passed through the buttonhole. The cravat commemorates by its name the disordered and hasty dress of the young French nobles at the battle of Steenkerke (1692). Periwigs, or perukes, immense wigs covered with curls, worn from 1660 to 1725 by all gentlemen in full dress. A reminiscence of this fashion is still to be seen in the big wig of the English Lord Chancellor.

Tea was first known in England about 1660; it became a fashionable beverage in Queen Anne's time. Cf. Pope's familiar couplet, "Imperial Anna, whom three realms obey; who sometimes counsel takes, and sometimes tea." Hampton Court, the palace built by Cardinal Wolsey, was a favorite residence of Queen Anne.

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 fact about which there can be the smallest doubt will be carefully verified.

4. To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as any sentiment can be, which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster 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 heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell's,1 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.

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5. As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration which he received from those who, bewitched by his fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts of life

§§ 4-5. A guarded estimate of Addison as a writer, and an enthusiastic judgment of his character as a man.

1Thomas Parnell (1679-1717), an Irish poet, author of the Hermit and other poems.

2 Hugh Blair (1718-1800), a Scotch preacher. He wrote a famous rhetoric, and became the leading authority on this subject in the eighteenth century. His critical faculty may be measured by the fact that he believed in the genuineness of Ossian's poems.

Dr. Johnson (see Essay on Milton, § 9) wrote a tragedy called