1843.]

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON.

of publishing a periodical paper on a new plan. It was to appear on the days on which the post left London for the country, which were, in that generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It was to contain the foreign news, accounts of theatrical representations, and the literary gosIt was sip of Will's and of the Grecian. also to contain remarks on the fashionable topics of the day, compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular preachers. The aim of Steele does not appear to have been at first higher than this. He was not ill qualified to conduct the work which he had planned. His public intelligence he drew from the He knew the town, and had best sources. paid dear for his knowledge. He had read much more than the dissipated men of that time were in the habit of reading. He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style was easy and not incorrect; and, though his wit and humor were of no high order, his gay animal spirits imparted to his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary readers could hardly distinguish from comic genius. His writings have been well compared to those light wines which, though deficient in body and flavor, are yet a pleasant small drink, if not kept too long, or carried too far.

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It is probable that Addison, when he sent across St. George's Channel his first contributions to the Tatler, had no notion of the extent and variety of his own powers. He was the possessor of a vast mine, rich with a hundred ores. But he had been acquainted only with the least precious part of his treasures; and had hitherto contented himself with producing sometimes copper and sometimes lead, intermingled with a little silver. All at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on an inexThe mere choice and arrangement of his haustible vein of the finest gold. words would have sufficed to make his essays classical. For never, not even by Dryden, not even by Temple, had the English language been written with such sweetness, grace, and facility. But this was the smallest part of Addison's praise. Had he clothed his thoughts in the half French style of Horace Walpole, or in the half Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half German jargon of the present day, his genius would have triumphed over all faults of manner.

As a moral satirist, he stands unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and Spectators were equalled in their own kind, we should be the lost comedies of Menander. inclined to guess that it must have been by

In wit, properly so called, Addison was İsaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imaginary person, almost as well not inferior to Cowley or Butler. No single known in that age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. ode of Cowley contains so many happy Swift had assumed the analogies as are crowded into the lines to Pickwick in ours. name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet Sir Godfrey Kneller; and we would underagainst Partridge, the almanack-maker. take to collect from the Spectators' as Partridge had been fool enough to publish great a number of ingenious illustrations a furious reply. Bickerstaff had rejoined as can be found in 'Hudibras.' The still in a second pamphlet, still more diverting than the first. All the wits had combined to keep up the joke, and the town was long in convulsions of laughter. Steele determined to employ the name which this controversy had made popular; and, in April, 1709, it was announced that Isaac Bicker staff, Esquire, Astrologer, was about to pub-sitions give him no claim. As an observer lish a paper called the 'Tatler.'

I

Addison had not been consulted about this
scheme; but as soon as he heard of it, he
determined to give it his assistance. The
effect of that assistance cannot be better
described than in Steele's own words.
fared,' he said, 'like a distressed prince who
calls in a powerful neighbor to his aid. I
was undone by my auxiliary. When I had
once called him in, I could not subsist with-
"The paper,'
out dependence on him.'
he says elsewhere, 'was advanced indeed,
It was raised to a greater thing than I in-
tended it.'

higher faculty of invention Addison possessed in still larger measure. The numer ous fictions, generally orginal, often wild and grotesque, but always singularly graceful and happy, which are found in his essays, fully entitle him to the rank of a great poet-a rank to which his metrical compo

of life, of manners, of all the shades of human character, he stands in the first class. And what he observed he had the art of communicating in two widely different ways. He could describe virtues, vices, habits, whims, as well as Clarendon. But he could do something better. He could call human beings into existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we wish to find any thing more vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must go either to Shakspeare or to Cervantes.

But what shall we say of Addison's humor, of his sense of the ludicrous, of his

power of awakening that sense in others, model, though several have copied his mere and of drawing mirth from incidents which diction with happy effect, none has been occur every day, and from little peculiari- able to catch the tone of his pleasantry. In ties of temper and manner, such as may be the World, in the Connoisseur, in the Mirfound in every man? We feel the charm.ror, in the Lounger, there are numerous We give ourselves up to it. But we strive papers written in obvious imitation of his in vain to analyze it. Tatlers and Spectators. Most of those papers have some merit; many are very lively and amusing; but there is not a single one which could be passed off as Addison's on a critic of the smallest perspicacity.

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the other great masters of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even in his merriment. Severity, gradually hardening and darken

Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar pleasantry, is to compare it with the pleasantry of some other great satirists. The three most eminent masters of the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be questioned. But each of them, within his own domain, was supreme. Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is with-ing into misanthropy, characterizes the out disguise or restraint. He gambols; he grins; he shakes his sides; he points the finger; he turns up the nose; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never joins in it. He appears in his works such as he appeared in society. All the company are convulsed with merriment, while the Dean, the author of all the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness of aspect; and gives utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with the air of a man reading the commination-service.

works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, indeed, not inhuman; but he venerated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of art, nor in the purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause, nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see any thing but subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more monkey-like was his grimacing and chattering. The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistophiles; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns oddly imagined, a portion of the happiness of Seraphim and just men made perfect be derived from an exquisite perception of the ludicrous, their mirth must surely be none other than the mirth of Ad

compassion for all that is frail, and with profound reverence for all that is sublime. Nothing great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doctrine of natural or revealed religion, has ever been associated by Addison with any degrading idea. His humanity is without a parallel in literary history. The

The manner of Addison is as remote from that of Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish wit, throws a double por-dison;-a mirth consistent with tender tion of severity into his countenance while laughing inly; but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look of demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost imperceptible elevation of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. It is that of a gentle-highest proof of human virtue is to possess man, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding.

We own that the humor of Addison is, in our opinion, of a more delicious flavor than the humor of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is certain, that both Swift and Voltaire have been successfully mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to mimic Addison. The letter of the Abbé Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, and imposed, during a long time, on the Academicians of Paris. There are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical works which we, at least, cannot distinguish from Swift's best writing. But of the many eminent men who have made Addison their

boundless power without abusing it. No kind of power is more formidable than the power of making men ridiculous; and that power. Addison possessed in boundless measure. How grossly that power was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is well known. But of Addison it may be confi dently affirmed that he has blackened no man's character, nay, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find in all the volumes which he has left us a single taunt which can be called ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had detractors, whose malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that which men, not superior to him in genius, wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompignan. He was a politi

cian; he was the best writer of his party; he lived in times of fierce excitement-in times when persons of high character and station stooped to scurrility such as is now practised only by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and no example could induce him to return railing for railing.

Of the service which his Essays rendered to morality it is difficult to speak too highly. It is true that, when the Tatler appeared, that age of outrageous profaneness and licentiousness which followed the Restoration had passed away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres into something which, compared with the excesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be called decency. Yet there still lingered in the public mind a pernicious notion that there was some connexion between genius and profligacy-between the domestic virtues and the sullen formality of the Puritans. That error it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He taught the nation that the faith and the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be found in company with wit more sparkling than the wit of Congreve, and with humor richer than the humor of Vanbrugh. 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 among us as the sure mark of a fool. And this revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever effected by any satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, without writing one personal lampoon.

sided in London. The Tatler was now more popular than any periodical paper had ever been; and his connexion with it was generally known. It was not known, however, that almost every thing good in the Tatler was his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty numbers which we owe to him, were not merely the best, but so decidedly the best, that any five of them are more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in which he had no share.

He required, at this time, all the solace which he could derive from literary success. The Queen had always disliked the Whigs. She had during some years disliked the Marlborough family. But, reigning by a disputed title, she could not venture directly to oppose herself to a majority of both Houses of Parliament; and, engaged as she was in a war on the event of which her own crown was staked, she could not venture to disgrace a great and successful general. But at length, in the year 1710, the causes which had restrained her from showing her aversion to the Low Church party ceased to operate. The trial of Sacheverell produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely less violent thin those which we can ourselves remember in 1820, and in 1831. The country gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rabble of the towns, were all, for once, on the same side. It was clear that, if a general election took place before the excitement abated, the Tories would have a majority. The services of Marlborough had been so splendid, that they were no longer necessary. The Queen's throne was secure from all attack on the part of Louis. Indeed, it seemed much more likely that the English and German armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and Marli, than that a Marshal of France would bring back the Pretender to St. James's. The Queen, acting by the advice of Harley, determined to dismiss her servants. In June the change commenced. Sunderland was the first who fell. The Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs tried, during a few weeks, to persuade themselves that her Majesty had acted only from personal dislike to the secretary, and that she meditated no further alteration. But, early in August, Godolphin was surprised by a letter from Anne, which directed him to break his white staff. Even after this event, the irresolution or dissimulation of Harley kept up the hopes During the session of Parliament which of the Whigs during another month; and commenced in November 1709, and which then the ruin became rapid and violent. the impeachment of Sacheverell has made The Parliament was dissolved. The Minmemorable, Addison appears to have re-isters were turned out. The Tories were

In the early contributions of Addison to the Tatler, his peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from the first, his superiority to all his coadjutors was evident. Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to any thing that he ever wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Upholsterer. The proceedings of the Court of Honor, the Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen Words, the Memoirs of the Shilling, are excellent specimens of that ingenious and lively species of fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There is one still better paper of the same class. But though that paper, a hundred and thirtythree years ago, was probably thought as edifying as one of Smalridge's sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeamish readers of the nineteenth century.

that he had lost at once his fortune, his place, his fellowship, and his mistress, that he must think of turning tutor again, and yet that his spirits were as good as ever.

called to office. The tide of popularity ran | told his friends, with smiling resignation, violently in favor of the High Church par- that they ought to admire his philosophy, ty. That party, feeble in the late House of Commons, was now irresistible. The power which the Tories had thus suddenly acquired, they used with blind and stupid ferocity. The howl which the whole pack He had one consolation. Of the unpopset up for prey and for blood, appalled even ularity which his friends had incurred, he him who had roused and unchained them. had no share. Such was the esteem with When at this distance of time, we calmly which he was regarded, that while the review the conduct of the discarded minis- most violent measures were taken for the ters, we cannot but feel a movement of in- purpose of forcing Tory members on Whig dignation at the injustice with which they corporations, he was returned to Parliawere treated. No body of men had ever ment without even a contest. Swift, who administered the government with more was now in London, and who had already energy, ability, and moderation; and their determined on quitting the Whigs, wrote success had been proportioned to their wis- to Stella in these remarkable words :— dom. They had saved Holland and Ger-The Tories carry it among the new memmany. They had humbled France. They bers six to one. Mr. Addison's election had, as it seemed, all but torn Spain from has passed easy and undisputed; and I bethe house of Bourbon. They had made lieve if he had a mind to be king, he would England the first power in Europe. At hardly be refused.' home they had united England and Scotland. They had respected the rights of conscience and the liberty of the subject. They retired, leaving their country at the height of prosperity and glory. And yet they were pursued to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy as was never raised against the government which threw away thirteen colonies; or against the government which sent a gallant army to perish in the ditches of Walcheren.

None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck than Addison. He had just sustained some heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which we are imperfectly in formed, when his Secretaryship was taken from him. He had reason to believe that he should also be deprived of the small Irish office which he held by patent. He had just resigned his Fellowship. It seems probable that he had already ventured to raise his eyes to a great lady; and that, while his political friends were all-powerful, and while his own fortunes were rising, he had been, in the phrase of the romances which were then fashionable, permitted to hope. But Mr. Addison the ingenious writer, and Mr. Addison the chief Secretary, were, in her ladyship's opinion, two very different persons. All these calamities united, however, could not disturb the serene cheerfulness of a mind conscious of innocence, and rich in its own wealth. He

Miss Aikin attributes the unpopularity of the Whigs, and the change of government, to the surrender of Stanhope's army, (ii. 13.) The fact is, that the Ministry was changed, and the new House of Commons elected, before that surrender took place.

The good will with which the tories regarded Addison is the more honorable to him, because it had not been purchased by any concession on his part. During the general election he published a political Journal, entitled the Whig Examiner.' Of that Journal it may be sufficient to say that Johnson, in spite of his strong political prejudices, pronounced it to be superior in wit to any of Swift's writings on the other side. When it ceased to appear, Swift, in a letter to Stella, expressed his exultation. at the death of so formidable an antagonist. 'He might well rejoice,' says Johnson, ‘at the death of that which he could not have killed.' 'On no occasion,' he adds, was the genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and in none did the superiority of his powers more evidently appear.'

The only use which Addison appears to have made of the favor with which he was regarded by the Tories, was to save some of his friends from the general ruin of the Whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation which made it his duty to take a decided part in politics. But the case of Steele and of Ambrose Phillipps was different. For Phillipps, Addison even condescended to solicit; with what success we have not ascertained.* Steele held two

places. He was Gazetteer, and he was also a Commissioner of Stamps. The gazette was taken from him. But he was suffered to retain his place in the StampOffice, on an implied understanding that he should not be active against the new government; and he was, during more than two years, induced by Addison to observe this armistice with tolerable fidelity.

hands, retouched them, colored them, and is in truth the creator of the Sir Roger de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with whom we are all familiar.

The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be both original and eminently happy. Every valuable essay in the series may be read with pleasure separately; yet the five or six hundred essays form a whole, and a Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became whole which has the interest of a novel. It silent upon politics, and the article of must be remembered, too, that at that time News, which had once formed about one no novel, giving a lively and powerful picthird of his paper, altogether disappeared. ture of the common life and manners of The Tatler had completely changed its England, had appeared. Richardson was character. It was now nothing but a working as a compositor. Fielding was series of essays on books, morals, and robbing birds' nests. Smollet was not yet manners. Steele therefore resolved to born. The narrative, therefore, which conbring it to a close, and to commence a new nects together the Spectator's Essays, gave work on an improved plan. It was an- to our ancestors their first taste of an exnounced that this new work would be pub-quisite and untried pleasure. That narralished daily. The undertaking was gene- tive was indeed constructed with no art or rally regarded as bold, or rather rash; but the event amply justified the confidence with which Steele relied on the fertility of Addison's genius. On the 2d of January 1711, appeared the last Tatler. On the 1st of March following, appeared the first of an incomparable series of papers, containing observations on life and literature by an imaginary spectator.

labor. The events were such events as occur every day. Sir Roger comes up to town to see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet always calls Prince Eugene, goes with the Spectator on the water to Spring Gardens, walks among the tombs in the Abbey, is frightened by the Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far as to go to the theatre, when the 'Distressed Mother' is actThe Spectator himself was conceived ed. The Spectator pays a visit in the sumand drawn by Addison; and it is not easy mer to Coverley Hall, is charmed with the to doubt that the portrait was meant to be old house, the old butler, and the old chapin some features a likeness of the painter. lain, eats a jack caught by Will Wimble, The Spectator is a gentleman who, after rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law passing a studious youth at the university, discussed by Tom Touchy. At last a lethas travelled on classic ground, and has ter from the honest butler brings to the club bestowed much attention on curious points the news that Sir Roger is dead. Will Hoof antiquity. He has, on his return, fixed neycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The his residence in London, and has observed club breaks up; and the Spectator resigns all the forms of life which are to be found his functions. Such events can hardly be in that great city;-has daily listened to said to form a plot; yet they are related the wits of Will's, has smoked with the with such truth, such grace, such wit, such philosophers of the Grecian, and has min-humor, such pathos, such knowledge of the gled with the parsons at Child's, and with human heart, such knowledge of the ways the politicians at the St. James's. In the of the world, that they charm us on the morning, he often listens to the hum of the hundredth perusal. We have not the least Exchange; in the evening, his face is con- doubt that, if Addison had written a novel, stantly to be seen in the pit of Drury Lane on an extensive plan, it would have been theatre. But an insurmountable bashful-superior to any that we possess. As it is, ness prevents him from opening his mouth, he is entitled to be considered, not only as except in a small circle of intimate friends. the greatest of the English Essayists, but These friends were first sketched by as the forerunner of the great English Steele. Four of the club, the templar, Novelists. the clergyman, the soldier, and the mer- We say this of Addison alone; for Adchant, were uninteresting figures, fit only dison is the Spectator. About threefor a background. But the other two, sevenths of the work are his; and it is no an old country baronet and an old town exaggeration to say, that his worst essay is rake, though not delineated with a very del- as good as the best essay of any of his coicate pencil, had some good strokes. Ad- adjutors. His best essays approach near dison took the rude outlines into his own to absolute perfection; nor is their excel