son's, however, ascribes it to a Manxman of the same name; see, too, Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, i. 113.) In 1697, Addison contributed an anonymous essay upon the Georgics to Dryden's translation of Virgil; and in a ‘postscript to the Æneis’ Dryden repaid his services by a high compliment to the ‘ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford.’ Referring to Addison's translation of the fourth Georgic, he declares that ‘after his “Bees” my latter swarm is scarce worth the hiving.’
Addison was thus taking a place amongst the professional authors. A correspondence with Tonson (published by Miss Aikin) shows that the bookseller had engaged him for a translation of Herodotus. His academical position might suggest the intention of taking orders, expressed in the conclusion of the poem to H. S. (3 April 1694). Tickell says that Addison was deterred from this step by his modesty; Steele attributes the change of intention to the favour of Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax. Halifax, Pope's Bufo, had himself gained his first successes as a poet; he aspired to be a patron of letters; and in those days political patronage was beginning to descend upon the literary class. Halifax was already the patron of Congreve, the rising poet to whom Dryden was just bequeathing his reputation and his literary sceptre. Congreve, according to Steele (who appeals to Congreve himself in confirmation), introduced Addison to Montague, now chancellor of the exchequer. A poem ‘to the King,’ in 1695, introduced by a dedication to Lord Somers, testified to Addison's political orthodoxy and literary facility. It was followed (1697) by a Latin poem on the Peace of Ryswick, with a dedication to Montague. Montague obtained, through Somers, a pension of 300l. a year for the young poet; and declared at the same time, in a letter to the head of Magdalen, that, though represented as unfriendly to the church, he would never do it any other injury than by keeping Addison out of it. The pension was intended, it seems, to enable Addison to qualify himself for diplomatic employments by foreign travel. He left England in the autumn of 1699, and, after a short stay in Paris, settled for nearly a year at Blois to acquire the language. An abbé of Blois told Spence (Anecdotes, p. 184) that Addison lived there in great seclusion, studying and seeing no one except the masters—of French, presumably—who used to sup with him. In 1700 he returned to Paris, qualified to talk French and to converse with the famous authors Malebranche and Boileau. Boileau, as Tickell tells us, discovered for the first time that Englishmen were not incompetent for poetry by a perusal of Addison's Latin verses; and the influence of Boileau may be traced in Addison's later writings. He left France in December 1700 (misdated 1699 in his ‘Travels’) for a tour through Italy. He sailed from Marseilles; was driven by a storm into Savona; thence crossed the mountains to Genoa, and travelled through Milan to Venice, where his fancy was struck by a grotesque play upon the death of Cato. He visited the little republic of San Marino, passed hastily through Rome, and spent the Holy Week at Naples. He climbed Vesuvius, visited the island of Capri, and returned by Ostia to Rome, where he spent the autumn. Thence he reached Florence, and, crossing the Mont Cenis, reached Geneva in November 1701. Throughout, if we are to judge from his narrative, he seems to have considered the scenery as designed to illustrate his beloved poets. He delights to take Horace as a guide from Rome to Naples, and Virgil for a guide upon the return journey. At every turn his memory suggests fresh quotations from the whole range of Latin poetry. The works of ancient art preserved at Rome delight him specially by clearing up passages in Juvenal, Ovid, Manilius, and Seneca. He turns from the christian antiquities with the brief remark that they are so ‘embroiled with fable and legend that there is little satisfaction in searching into them.’ But Addison was no mere dilettante. His classical acquirements were but the appropriate accomplishment of a mind thoroughly imbued with the culture of his age, in which the classical spirit was regarded as the antithesis of Gothic obscurity. Though a sincere and even devout christian, he looked upon catholic observances with a contempt akin to that of the deistical Shaftesbury. He turns from poetry to point a moral against popery and arbitrary power. The peasants on the ‘savage mountain’ of San Marino are happy because free; whilst tyranny has converted the rich Campagna of Rome into a wilderness. These sentiments are expressed with great vigour in the best written of his poems, the ‘Letter from Italy,’ written as he was crossing the Alps, and addressed to Halifax, who had been driven from office soon after Addison's departure from England. He still had powerful friends. Manchester, now secretary of state, had been known to him in Paris; and Addison waited for some months at Geneva, expecting to receive an appointment to act as British agent in the camp of Eugene. Instead of this, he soon heard of the death of William III and the expulsion from power of his political friends. He had received only one year's payment of his pension, and had nothing but his fellow-
