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The Life of Joseph Addison. By Lucy Aikin. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1843.
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 rigor 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 uncensored, 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
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 which the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, that it is high time to
wake.
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 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 Shakespeare and Raleigh, than with Congreve and Prior;
and is far more at home among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobalds than
among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs 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 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.
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,
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.
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 to his generous and delicate friendship, worshipped him nightly, in his
favorite temple at Button's. But, after full inquiry and impartial reflection,
we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can be
justly claimed by any of our infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may
undoubtedly be detected in his character; but the more carefully it is examined,
the more will it appear, to use the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the
noble parts, free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of
ingratitude, of envy. Men may easily be named, in whom some particular good
disposition has been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just harmony of
qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the humane virtues, the
habitual observance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral
grace and dignity, distinguish him from all men who have been tried by equally
strong temptations, and about whose conduct we possess equally full information.
His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, though eclipsed by his more
celebrated son, made some figure in the world, and occupies with credit, two
folio pages in the Biographia Britannica. Lancelot was sent up, as a poor
scholar, from Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of the
Commonwealth, made some progress in learning, became, like most of his
fellow-students, a violent Royalist, lampooned the heads of the University, and
was forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. When he had left college, he
earned a humble subsistence by reading the liturgy of the fallen Church to the
families of those sturdy squires whose manor-houses were scattered over the Wild
of Sussex. After the Restoration, his loyalty was rewarded with the post of
chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was sold to France, he lost
his employment. But Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as part of the
marriage portion of the Infanta Catherine; and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was
sent. A more miserable situation can hardly be conceived. It was difficult to
say whether the unfortunate settlers were more tormented by the heats or by the
rains, by the soldiers within the wall or by the Moors without it. One advantage
the chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity of studying the history
and manners of Jews and Mahometans and of this opportunity he appears to have
made excellent use. On his return to England, after some years of banishment, he
published an interesting volume on the Polity and Religion of Barbary, and
another on the Hebrew Customs and the State of Rabbinical Learning. He rose to
eminence in his profession, and became one of the royal chaplains, a Doctor of
Divinity, Archdeacon of Salisbury, and Dean of Lichfield. It is said that he
would have been made a bishop after the Revolution, if he had not given offence
to the Government by strenuously opposing, in the Convocation of 1689, the
liberal policy of William and Tillotson.
In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from Tangier, his son Joseph was
born. Of Joseph's childhood we know little. He learned his rudiments at school
in his father's neighborhood, and was then sent to the Charter House. The
anecdotes which are popularly related about his boyish tricks do not harmonize
very well with what we know of his riper years. There remains a tradition that
he was the ringleader in a barring out, and another tradition that he ran away
from school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on berries and slept in a
hollow tree, till after a long search he was discovered and brought home. If
these stories be true, it would be curious to know by what moral discipline so
mutinous and enterprising a lad was transformed into the gentlest and most
modest of men.
We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's pranks may have been, he pursued
his studies vigorously and successfully. At fifteen he was not only fit for the
university, but carried thither a classical taste and a stock of learning which
would have done honor to a Master of Arts. He was entered at Queen's College,
Oxford; but he had not been many months there, when some of his Latin verses
fell by accident into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalen College. The
young scholar's diction and versification were already such as veteran
professors might envy. Dr. Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such
promise; nor was an opportunity long wanting. The Revolution had just taken
place; and nowhere had it been hailed with more delight than at Magdalen
College. That great and opulent corporation had been treated by James, and by
his Chancellor, with an insolence and injustice which, even in such a Prince and
in such a Minister, may justly excite amazement, and which had done more than
even the prosecution of the Bishops to alienate the Church of England from the
throne. A president, duly elected, had been violently expelled from his
dwelling: a Papist had been set over the society by a royal mandate: the Fellows
who, in conformity with their oaths, had refused to submit to this usurper, had
been driven forth from their quiet cloisters and gardens, to die of want or to
live on charity. But the day of redress and retribution speedily came. The
intruders were ejected: the venerable House was again inhabited by its old
inmates: learning flourished under the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough; and
with learning was united a mild and liberal spirit too often wanting in the
princely colleges of Oxford. In consequence of the troubles through which the
society had passed, there had been no valid election of new members during the
year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was twice the ordinary number of vacancies;
and thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young friend admittance
to the advantages of a foundation then generally esteemed the wealthiest in
Europe.
At Magdalen Addison resided during ten years. He was, at first, one of those
scholars who were called Demies, but was subsequently elected a Fellow. His
college is still proud of his name: his portrait still hangs in the hall; and
strangers are still told that his favorite walk was under the elms which fringe
the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It is said, and is highly probable,
that he was distinguished among his fellow-students by the delicacy of his
feelings, by the shyness of his manners, and by the assiduity with which he
often prolonged his studies far into the night. It is certain that his
reputation for ability and learning stood high. Many years later, the ancient
doctors of Magdalen continued to talk in their common room of his boyish
compositions, and expressed their sorrow that no copy of exercises so remarkable
had been preserved.
It is proper, however, to remark that Miss Aikin has committed the error, very
pardonable in a lady, of overrating Addison's classical attainments. In one
department of learning, indeed, his proficiency was such as it is hardly
possible to overrate. His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and
Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound. He
understood them thoroughly, entered into their spirit, and had the finest and
most discriminating perception 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 university,
was almost entirely concentrated on Latin poetry, and that, if he did not wholly
neglect other provinces of ancient literature, he vouchsafed to them only a
cursory glance. He does not appear to have attained more than an ordinary
acquaintance with the political and moral writers of Rome; nor was his own Latin
prose by any means equal to his Latin Verse. His knowledge of Greek, though
doubtless such as was, in his time, thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently
less than that which many lads now carry away every year from Eton and Rugby. A
minute examination of his works, 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 those 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, abound with classical quotations happily
introduced; but scarcely one of those quotations is in prose. 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 which have been worthily recorded by great historians, bring
to his mind only scraps of some ancient versifier. In the gorge of the Apennines
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 lively 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 of the civil war is Lucan.
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 of Horace, Juvenal, Statius, and Ovid.
The same may be said of the Treatise on Medals. In that pleasing work we find
about three hundred passages extracted with great judgment from the Roman poets;
but we do not recollect a single passage taken from any Roman orator or
historian; and we are confident that not a line is quoted from any Greek writer.
No person, who had derived all his information on the subject of medals from
Addison, would suspect that the Greek coins were in historical interest equal,
and in beauty of execution far superior to those of Rome.
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 Abgarus
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-laborers 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 few among them could
discover his superiority. But the accomplishment in which Addison excelled his
contemporaries was then, as it is now, highly valued and assiduously cultivated
at all English seats of learning. Everybody who had been at a public school had
written Latin verses; many had written such verses with tolerable success, and
were quite able to appreciate, though by no means able to rival, the skill with
which Addison imitated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer and the Bowling Green
were applauded by hundreds, to whom the Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris
was as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk.
Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are common to all Addison's Latin
poems. Our favorite piece is the Battle of the Cranes and Pigmies; for in that
piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and humor 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 Tatler 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 Montague, 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 on King William, and other
performances of equal value, that is to say, of no value at all. But in those
days, the public was 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 favorite 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 end of every distich, is an art
as mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing a horse, and may be learned
by any human being who has sense enough to learn anything. But, like other
mechanical arts, it was gradually improved by means of many experiments and many
failures. It was reserved for Pope to discover the trick, to make himself
complete master of it, and to teach it to everybody else. From the time when his
Pastorals appeared, heroic versification became matter of rule and compass; and,
before long, all artists were on a level. Hundreds of dunces who never blundered
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.
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. Brunel's mill in the dockyard
at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an
unpracticed hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation Of a
celebrated passage in the Aeneid:
"This child our parent earth, stirr'd 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 had 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 meter what might have been as well
said in prose, or what was not worth saying at all, were honored with marks of
distinction which ought to be reserved for genius. 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 obtained from Addison a critical preface
to the Georgics. In return for this service, and for other services of the same
kind, the veteran poet, in the postscript to the translation of the Aenied
complimented his young friend with great liberality, and indeed with more
liberality than sincerity. He affected to be afraid that his own performance
would not sustain a comparison with the version of the fourth Georgic, by "the
most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." "After his bees," added Dryden, "my
latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving."
The time had now arrived when it was necessary for Addison to choose a calling.
Everything seemed to point his course towards the clerical profession. His
habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His college had large ecclesiastical
preferment in its gift, and boasts that it has given at least one bishop to
almost every see in England. Dr. Lancelot Addison held an honorable place in the
Church, and had set his heart on seeing his son a clergyman. it is clear, from
some expressions in the young man's rhymes, that his intention was to take
orders. But Charles Montague interfered. Montague had first brought himself into
notice by verses well-timed and not contemptibly written, but never, we think,
rising above mediocrity. Fortunately for himself and for his country, he early
quitted poetry, in which he could never have attained a rank as high as that of
Dorset or Rochester, and turned his mind to official and parliamentary business.
It is written that the ingenious person who undertook to instruct Rasselas,
prince of Abyssinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, waved his
wings, sprang into the air, and instantly dropped into the lake. But it is added
that the wings, which were unable to support him through the sky, bore him up
effectually as soon as he was in the water. This is no bad type of the fate of
Charles Montague and of men like him. When he attempted to soar into the regions
of poetical invention, he altogether failed; but, as soon as he had descended
from that ethereal elevation into a lower and grosser element, his talents
instantly raised him above the mass. He became a distinguished financier,
debater, courtier, and party leader. He still retained his fondness for the
pursuits of his early days; but he showed that fondness not by wearying the
public with his own feeble performances, but by discovering and encouraging
literary excellence in others. A crowd of wits and poets, who would easily have
vanquished him as a competitor, revered him as a judge and a patron. In his
plans for the encouragement of learning, he was cordially supported by the
ablest and most virtuous of his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. Though
both these great statesmen had a sincere love of letters, it was not solely from
a love of letters that they were desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual
qualifications in the public service. The Revolution had altered the whole
system of government. Before that event the press had been controlled by
censors, and the Parliament had sat only two months in eight years. Now the
press was free, and had begun to exercise unprecedented influence on the public
mind. Parliament met annually and sat long. The chief power in the State had
passed to the House of Commons. At such a conjuncture, it was natural that
literary and oratorical talents should rise in value. There was danger that a
government which neglected such talents might be subverted by them. It was,
therefore, a profound and enlightened policy which led Montague and Somers to
attach such talents to the Whig party, by the strongest ties both of interest
and of gratitude.
It is remarkable that in a neighboring country, we have recently seen similar
effects follow from similar causes. The revolution of July 1830 established
representative government in France. The men of letters instantly rose to the
highest importance in the State. At the present moment most of the persons whom
we see at the head both of the Administration and of the Opposition have been
professors, historians, journalists, poets. The influence of the literary class
in England, during the generation which followed the Revolution, was great, but
by no means so great as it has lately been in France. For in England, the
aristocracy of intellect had to contend with a powerful and deeply-rooted
aristocracy of a very different kind. France had no Somersets and Shrewsburys to
keep down her Addisons and Priors.
It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just completed his twenty-seventh
year, that the course of his life was finally determined. Both the great chiefs
of the Ministry were kindly disposed towards him. In political opinions he
already was what he continued to be through life, a firm, though a moderate
Whig. He had addressed the most polished and vigorous of his early English lines
to Somers, and had dedicated to Montague a Latin poem, truly Virgilian, both in
style and rhythm, on the peace of Ryswick. The wish of the young poet's great
friends was, it should seem, to employ him in the service of the Crown abroad.
But an intimate knowledge of the French language was a qualification
indispensable to a diplomatist; and this qualification Addison had not acquired.
It was, therefore, thought desirable that he should pass some time on the
Continent in preparing himself for official employment. His own means were not
such as would enable him to travel: but a pension of three hundred pounds a year
was procured for him by the interest of the Lord Chancellor. It seems to have
been apprehended that some difficulty might be started by the rulers of Magdalen
College. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote in the strongest terms to
Hough. The State--such was the purport of Montague's letter--could not, at that
time spare to the Church such a man as Addison. Too many high civil posts were
already occupied by adventurers, who, destitute of every liberal art and
sentiment, at once pillaged and disgraced the country which they pretended to
serve. It had become necessary to recruit for the public service from a very
different class, from that class of which Addison was the representative. The
close of the Minister's letter was remarkable. "I am called," he said, "an enemy
of the Church. But I will never do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison
out of it."
1 Orlando Furioso, xiv. 68.
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