But it is not for his reputation as the great author of " Cato and the Campaign," or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as my Lady Warwick's husband, or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about, hanging and ruthlessa literary Jeffreys- in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried: only peccadilloes and small sins against society: only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops; * or "You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their head-dresses; for as the humor of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at a nuisance in the abuse of beaux' canes and snuff-boxes. It may be a lady is tried for breaking the peace of our sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerously from the side-box: or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian's head: or a citizen's wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too little for her husband and children: every one of the little sinners brought before him is amusing, and he dismisses each with the pleasantest penalties and the most charming words of admonition. Addison wrote his papers as gayly as if he was going out for a holiday. When Steele's "Tatler" first began the same time that they shorten the superstructure. "The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are very airy and very proper for the season; but this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather; besides, I would fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their mothers before them? "I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honor cannot be better intrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops. "Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that it portends the downfall of the French king, and observe, that the farthingale appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same prognostication as the tail of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think that it is a sign that multitudes are com ing into the world rather than going out of it," &c., &c.— Spectator, No. 127. his prattle, Addison, then in Ireland, most charming archness. He sees caught at his friend's notion, poured them in public, in the theatre, or the in paper after paper, and contributed assembly, or the puppet-show; or at the stores of his mind, the sweet the toy-shop higgling for gloves and fruits of his reading, the delightful lace; or at the auction, battling togleanings of his daily observation, gether over a blue porcelain dragon, with a wonderful profusion, and as it or a darling monster in Japan; or at seemed an almost endless fecundity. church, eying the width of their He was six and thirty years old: full rival's hoops, or the breadth of their and ripe. He had not worked crop laces, as they sweep down the aisles. after crop from his brain, manuring Or he looks out of his window at the hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cut- "Garter" in St. James's Street, at ting and sowing and cutting again, Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to the like other luckless cultivators of let- drawing-room with her coronet and ters. He had not done much as yet; six footmen; and remembering that a few Latin poems-graceful prolu- her father was a Turkey merchant in sions; a polite book of travels; a dis- the city, calculates how many sponges sertation on medals, not very deep; went to purchase her ear-ring, and four acts of a tragedy, a great classi- how many drums of figs to build her cal exercise; and the " Campaign," a coach-box; or he demurely watches large prize poem that won an enor- behind a tree in Spring Garden as mous prize. But with his friend's Saccharissa (whom he knows under discovery of "The Tatler," Addison's her mask) trips out of her chair to calling was found, and the most de- the alley where Sir Fopling is waitlightful talker in the world began to ing. He sees only the public life of speak. He does not go very deep: women. Addison was one of the let gentlemen of a profound genius, most resolute club-men of his day. critics accustomed to the plunge of He passed many hours daily in those the bathos, console themselves by haunts. Besides drinking - which thinking that he couldn't go very alas! is past praying for-you deep. There are no traces of suffer- must know it, he owned, too, ladies, ing in his writing. He was so good, that he indulged in that odious pracso honest, so healthy, so cheerfully tice of smoking. Poor fellow! He selfish, if I must use the word. There was a man's man, remember. is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until only woman he did know, he didn't after his marriage, perhaps, whether write about. I take it there would he ever lost his night's rest or his not have been much humor in that day's tranquillity about any woman story. in his life; whereas poor Dick Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and to cry his honest old eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do not show insight into or reverence for the love of women, which I take to be, one the consequence of the other. He walks about the world watching their pretty humors, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries; and noting them with the "Mr. Addison has not had one epithalamium that I can hear of, and must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his own." -POPE's Letters. The He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the "Grecian," or the "Devil; to pace 'Change and the Mall * to mingle in that great club "I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor; with other particulars of a like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings: and shall give some account in them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, of the world-sitting alone in itness for every single man and woman somehow having good-will and kind : digesting, and correcting, will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history. There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my behavior at my very appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favor my mother's dream; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it. first in it- having need of some habit and custom binding him to some few; it be a wrong to hint a little doubt never doing any man a wrong (unless about a man's parts, and to damn him with faint praise); and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humors of all of us — laughs the kindliest laugh -points our neighbor's foible or eccentricity out at Jonathan's.' In short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club. "As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my nonage I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always the favorite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that my parts were solid and would wear well. I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for during the "Thus I live in the world rather as a space of eight years, excepting in the pub- Spectator' of mankind than as one of lic exercises of the college, I scarce ut- the species; by which means I have made tered the quantity of an hundred words: myself a speculative statesman, soldier, and, indeed, I do not remember that I merchant, and artisan, without ever medever spoke three sentences together in mydling in any practical part in life. I am whole life. "I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not more than half a dozen of my select friends that know me.... There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's,' and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's,' and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but "The Postman,' overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Tuesday night at St. James's Coffeehouse; and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian,' the Cocoa-tree,' and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these two years; and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who are engaged in them-as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game. In short, I have acted, in all the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper." — Spectator, No. 1. ... *"So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark of a fool."— MACAULAY. "The Court was sat before Sir Roger came; but, notwithstanding all the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room for the old knight at the head of them; who for his reputation in the country took occasion to whisper in the judge's ear that he was glad his lordship had met with so much good weather in his circuit. I was listening "Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, not mistake Madam Doll Tearsheet | ing with a purer love and adoration for a lady of quality in Temple Gar- than Joseph Addison's. Listen to den: if he were wiser than he is: if him: from your childhood you have he had not his humor to salt his life, known the verses: but who can hear and were but a mere English gentle- their sacred music without love and man and game preserver- of what awe? worth were he to us? We love him for his vanities as much as his virtues. What is ridiculous is delightful in him; we are so fond of him because we laugh at him so. And out of that laughter, and out of that sweet weakness, and out of those harmless eccentricities and follies, and out of that touched brain, and out of that honest manhood and simplicity-we get a result of happiness, goodness, tenderness, pity, piety; such as, if my audience will think their reading and hearing over, doctors and divines but seldom have the fortune to inspire. It seems to me those verses shine They shine out of a And why not? Is the glory of Heaven to be sung only by gentlemen great deep calm. When he turns to in black coats? Must the truth be Heaven, a Sabbath comes over that only expounded in gown and surman's mind and his face lights up plice, and out of those two vestments from it with a glory of thanks and can nobody preach it? Commend me prayer. His sense of religion stirs to this preacher without orders through his whole being. In the this parson in the tye wig. When fields, in the town looking at the this man looks from the world, whose birds in the trees: at the children in weaknesses he describes so benevo- the streets: in the morning or in the lently, up to the Heaven which shines moonlight: over his books in his own over us all, I can hardly fancy a hu- room: in a happy party at a country man face lighted up with a more se- merry-making or a town assembly, rene rapture a human intellect thrill-good-will and peace to God's crea to the proceedings of the Court with much attention, and infinitely pleased with that great appearance and solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our laws; when, after about an hour's sitting, I observed, to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was getting up to speak. I was in some pain for him, till I found he had acquitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much business and great intrepidity. "Upon his first rising, the Court was hushed, and a general whisper ran among the country people that Sir Roger was up. The speech he made was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an account of it, and I believe was not so much designed by the knight himself to inform the Court, as to give him a figure in my eyes, and to keep up his credit in the country."- Spectator, No. 122. like the stars. tures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill his pure heart and shine from his kind face. If Swift's life was the most wretched, I think Addison's was one of the most enviable. A life prosperous and beautiful a calm death an immense fame and affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name.* *"Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his deathbed, to ask him whether the Christian religion was true."-Dr. YOUNG. Spence's Anecdotes. "I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject to the greatest depression of STEELE. WHAT do we look for in studying the history of a past age? Is it to learn the political transactions and characters of the leading public men? is it to make ourselves acquainted with the life and being of the time? If we set out with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has it entire ? What character of what great man is known to you? You can but make guesses as to character, more or less happy. In common life don't you often judge and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behavior - the cut of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a different motive to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is so with those you know, how much more with those you don't know? Say, for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of Marlborough. I read Swift's history of the times in which he took a part; the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the agehe hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity: he speaks of Walpole melancholy on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladness, prevents us from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity." - ADDISON: Spectator, p. 381. as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best information; and I get little or no insight into this secret motive which, I believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough's career, which caused his turnings and windings, his opportune fidelity and treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed him finally on the Hanoverian side — the winning side: I get, I say, no truth, or only a portion of it, in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Coxe's portrait, or Swift's portrait, is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take this as a single instance, prepared to be as sceptical about any other, and say to the Muse of History, "O venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single statement you ever made since your ladyship was a Muse! For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look down. You bid me listen to a general's oration to his soldiers: Nonsense! He no more made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You pronounce a panegyric of a hero: I doubt it, and say you flatter outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character: I doubt it, and think you are prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an autobiography: I doubt all autobiographies I ever read; except those, perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his These have no object in setting themselves right with the public or class. |