The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century/Congreve and Addison

by William Makepeace Thackeray

LECTURE THE SECOND.

CONGREVE AND ADDISON.

A great number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the "Union," and I remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the Opposition and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman's nominee. So Jones of John's, or Thomson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping themselves in their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at priests and kings with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman's emissary was listening to the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young Cambridge-men, orators of the Union, were actually caught up thence, and carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the parliamentary chariot.

Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of peers and members of Parliament in Anne's and George's time? Were they all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the watch? How was it that the young gentlemen from the University got such a prodigious number of places? A lad composed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king assailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene complimented, or the reverse; and the party in power was presently to provide for the young poet; and a commissionership, or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an embassy, or a clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A wonderful fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby's. What have men of letters got in our time? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time or empire^{[errata 1]}—but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many others who got public employment, and pretty little pickings out of the public purse.^[1] The wits of whose names we shall treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the King's coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter-day coming round for them.

They all began at school or college in the regular way, producing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public events, battles, sieges, court marriages and deaths, in which the gods of Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invocations, according to the fashion of the time in France and in England. Aid us Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. "Accourez, chastes nymphes de Permesse," says Boileau, celebrating the Grand Monarch. "Des sons que ma lyre enfante, marquez en bien la cadence, et vous, vents, faites silence! je vais parler de Louis!" Schoolboys' themes and foundation-exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country newspaper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman? In the past century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves at these queer compositions; and some got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses.

William Congreve's^[2] Pindaric Odes are still to be found in "Johnson's Poets," that now unfrequented poet's corner, in which so many forgotten big-wigs have a niche—but though he was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve's wit and humour which first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded, that his first play, the "Old Bachelor," brought our author to the notice of that great patron of the English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax, who being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity, instantly made him one of the commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe-office, and likewise a post in the Custom-house of the value of 600l.

A commissionership of hackney-coaches—a post in the Custom-house—a place in the Pipe-office, and all for writing a comedy! Doesn't it sound like a fable, that place in the Pipe-office?^[3] Ah, l'heureux temps que celui de ces fables! Men of letters there still be: but I doubt whether any pipe-offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago.

Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places in society; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers at school, and will permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary "swell" of his age. In my copy of "Johnson's Lives" Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. "I am the great Mr. Congreve.^[4] he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve. From the beginning of his career until the end everybody admired him. Having got his education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift; he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to the law; but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, the Piazza and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. Dryden^[5] declared that he was equal to Shakspeare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him, "Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review the 'Æneis,' and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavoured to correct."

The "excellent young man" was but three or four-and-twenty when the great Dryden thus spoke of him: the greatest literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a school of wits, who daily gathered round his chair and tobacco-pipe at Wills'. Pope dedicated his "Iliad" to him;^[6] Swift, Addison, Steele, all acknowledge Congreve's rank, and lavish compliments upon him. Voltaire went to wait upon him as on one of the Representatives of Literature—and the man who scarce praises any other living person, who flung abuse at Pope, and Swift, and Steele, and Addison,—the Grub-street Timon, old John Dennis,^[7] was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve; and said, that when he retired from the stage, Comedy went with him.

Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in the drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses; as much beloved in the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle,^[8] the heroine of all his plays, the favourite of all the town of her day—and the Duchess of Marlborough, Marlborough's daughter, had such an admiration of him, that when he died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him,^[9] and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed just as the great Congreve's gouty feet were dressed in his great lifetime. He saved some money by his Pipe-office, and his Custom-house office, and his Hackney-coach office, and nobly left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it,^[10] but to the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn't.^[11]

How can I introduce to you that merry and shameless Comic Muse who won him such a reputation? Nell Gwynn's servant fought the other footmen for having called his mistress a bad name; and in like manner, and with pretty like epithets, Jeremy Collier attacked that godless, reckless Jezebel, the English comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn's man's fellow-servants called Nell Gwynn's man's mistress. The servants of the theatre, Dryden, Congreve,^[12] and others, defended themselves with the same success, and for the same cause which set Nell's lackey fighting. She was a disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic Muse. She came over from the continent with Charles (who chose many more of his female friends there) at the Restoration—a wild, dishevelled Laïs, with eyes bright with wit and wine— a saucy court-favourite that sate at the King's knees, and laughed in his face, and when she showed her bold cheeks at her chariot-window, had some of the noblest and most famous people of the land bowing round her wheel. She was kind and popular enough, that daring Comedy, that audacious poor Nell—she was gay and generous, kind, frank, as such people can afford to be: and the men who lived with her and laughed with her, took her pay and drank her wine, turned out when the Puritans hooted her, to fight and defend her. But the jade was indefensible, and it is pretty certain her servants knew it.

There is life and death going on in every thing: truth and lies always at battle. Pleasure is always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is always crying Psha, and sneering. A man in life, a humourist in writing about life, sways over to one principle or the other, and laughs with the reverence for right and the love of truth in his heart, or laughs at these from the other side. Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious business to Harlequin? I have read two or three of Congreve's plays over before speaking of him; and my feelings were rather like those, which I daresay most of us here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust's house and the relics of an orgy, a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast of a dancing girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester, a perfect stillness round about, as the Cicerone twangs his moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve muse is dead, and her song choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once revelled in its mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse over the frolic and daring, the wit, scorn, passion, hope, desire, with which that empty bowl once fermented. We think of the glances that allured, the tears that melted, of the bright eyes that shone in those vacant sockets; and of lips whispering love, and cheeks dimpling with smiles, that once covered yon ghastly yellow framework. They used to call those teeth pearls once. See! there's the cup she drank from, the gold-chain she wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge for her cheeks, her looking-glass, and the harp she used to dance to. Instead of a feast we find a gravestone, and in place of a mistress, a few bones!

Reading in these plays now, is like shutting your ears and looking at people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling and retreating, the cavalier seul advancing upon those ladies—those ladies and men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, after which everybody bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we can't understand that comic dance of the last century—its strange gravity and gaiety, its decorum or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlike life; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too. I'm afraid it's a Heathen mystery, symbolising a Pagan doctrine; protesting, as the Pompeians very likely were, assembled at their theatre and laughing at their games—as Sallust and his friends, and their mistresses protested—crowned with flowers, with cups in their hands, against the new, hard, ascetic pleasure-hating doctrine, whose gaunt disciples, lately passed over from the Asian shores of the Mediterranean were for breaking the fair images of Venus, and flinging the altars of Bacchus down.

I fancy poor Congreve's theatre is a temple of Pagan delights, and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worship, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites from temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for having the young wife: in the ballad, when the poet bid his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying: in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, who is opportunely asleep; and when seduced by the invitations of the rosy youth she comes forward to the footlights, and they perform on each other's tiptoes that pas which you all know and which is only interrupted by old grandpapa awaking from his doze at the pasteboard chalet (whither he returns to take another nap in case the young people get an encore): when Harlequin, splendid in youth, strength and agility, arrayed in gold and a thousand colours, springs over the heads of countless perils, leaps down the throat of bewildered giants, and, dauntless and splendid, dances danger down: when Mr. Punch, that godless old rebel, breaks every law and laughs at it with odious triumph, outwits his lawyer, bullies the beadle, knocks his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman,—don't you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch's puppet-show,—the Pagan protest? Doesn't it seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment? Look how the lovers walk and hold each other's hands and whisper! Sings the chorus—"There is nothing like love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty of your spring time. Look! how old age tries to meddle with merry sport! Beat him with his own crutch, the wrinkled old dotard! There is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty, there is nothing like strength. Strength and valour win beauty and youth. Be brave and conquer. Be young and happy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! Would you know the Segreto per esser felice? Here it is, in a smiling mistress and a cup of Falernian." As the boy tosses the cup and sings his song. Hark! what is that chaunt coming nearer and nearer? What is that dirge which will disturb us? The lights of the festival burn dim—the cheeks turn pale—the voice quavers—and the cup drops on the floor. Who's there? Death and Fate are at the gate, and they will come in.

Congreve's comic feast flares with lights, and round the table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets and attendants as dissolute as their mistresses—perhaps the very worst company in the world. There doesn't seem to be a pretence of morals. At the head of the table sits Mirabel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited on by English imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling is to be irresistible, and to conquer everywhere. Like the heroes of the chivalry story, whose long-winded loves and combats they were sending out of fashion; they are always splendid and triumphant—overcome all dangers, vanquish all enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands, usurers are the foes these champions contend with. They are merciless in old age, invariably, and an old man plays the part in the dramas, which the wicked enchanter or the great blundering giant performs in the chivalry tales, who threatens and grumbles and resists—a huge stupid obstacle always overcome by the knight. It is an old man with a money-box: Sir Belmour his son or nephew spends his money and laughs at him. It is an old man with a young wife whom he locks up: Sir Mirabel robs him of his wife, trips up his gouty old heels and leaves the old hunx—the old fool what business has he to hoard his money, or to lock up blushing eighteen? Money is for youth, love is for youth, away with the old people. When Millamant is sixty, having of course divorced the first Lady Millamant, and married his friend Doricourt's grand-daughter out of the nursery—it will be his turn; and young Belmour will make a fool of him. All this pretty morality you have in the comedies of William Congreve, Esq. They are full of wit. Such manners as he observes, he observes with great humour; but ah! it's a weary feast that banquet of wit were no love is. It palls very soon; sad indigestions follow it and lonely blank headaches in the morning.

I can't pretend to quote scenes from the splendid Congreve's plays^[13]—which are undeniably bright, witty, and daring,—any more than I could ask you to hear the dialogue of a witty bargeman and a brilliant fish-woman exchanging compliments at Billingsgate; but some of his verses,—they were amongst the most famous lyrics of the time, and pronounced equal to Horace by his contemporaries,—may give an idea of his power, of his grace, of his daring manner, his magnificence in compliment, and his polished sarcasm. He writes as if he was so accustomed to conquer, that he has a poor opinion of his victims. Nothing's new except their faces, says he, "Every woman is the same." He says this in his first comedy, which he wrote languidly^[14] in illness, when he was an "excellent young man." Richelieu at eighty could have hardly said a more excellent thing.

When he advances to make one of his conquests it is with a splendid gallantry, in full uniform and with the fiddles playing, like Grammont's French dandies attacking the breach of Lerida.

"Cease, cease to ask her name," he writes of a young lady at the Wells at Tunbridge, whom he salutes with a magnificent compliment—

"Cease, cease to ask her name,
The crowned Muse's noblest theme,
Whose glory by immortal fame
Shall only sounded be,
But if you long to know,
Then look round yonder dazzling row,
Who most does like an angel show
You may be sure 'tis she."

Here are lines about another beauty, who perhaps was not so well pleased at the poet's manner of celebrating her—

"When Lesbia first I saw, so heavenly fair,
With eyes so bright and with that awful air,
I thought my heart would durst so high aspire
As bold as his who snatched celestial fire.
But soon as e'er the beauteous idiot spoke,
Forth from her coral lips such folly broke;
Like balm the trickling nonsense heal'd my wound,
And what her eyes enthralled, her tongue unbound."

Amoret is a cleverer woman than the lovely Lesbia, but the poet does not seem to respect one much more than the other; and describes both with exquisite satirical humour—

"Fair Amoret is gone astray,
Pursue and seek her every lover;
I'll tell the signs by which you may
The wandering shepherdess discover.

Coquet and coy at once her air,
Both studied, though both seem neglected;
Careless she is with artful care,
Affecting to be unaffected.

With skill her eyes dart every glance,
Yet change so soon you'd ne'er suspect them;
For she'd persuade they wound by chance,
Though certain aim and art direct them.

She likes herself, yet others hates
For that which in herself she prizes;
And, while she laughs at them, forgets
She is the thing which she despises."

What could Amoret have done to bring down such shafts of ridicule upon her? Could she have resisted the irresistible Mr. Congreve? Could anybody? Could Sabina, when she woke and heard such a bard singing under her window. See, he writes—

"See! see, she wakes—Sabina wakes!
And now the sun begins to rise:
Less glorious is the morn, that breaks
From his bright beams, than her fair eyes.
With light united day they give;
But different fates ere night fulfil:
How many by his warmth will live!
How many will her coldness kill!"

Are you melted? Don't you think him a divine man? If not touched by the brilliant Sabina, hear the devout Selinda:—

"Pious Selinda goes to prayers,
If I but ask her favour;
And yet the silly fool's in tears,
If she believes I'll leave her.
Would I were free from this restraint,
Or else had hopes to win her:
Would she could make of me a saint,
Or I of her a sinner!"

What a conquering air there is about these! What an irresistible Mr. Congreve it is! Sinner! of course he will be a sinner, the delightful rascal! Win her; of course he will win her, the victorious rogue! He knows he will: he must—with such a grace, with such a fashion, with such a splendid embroidered suit—you see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously turned out, passing a fair jewelled hand through his dishevelled periwig and delivering a killing ogle along with his scented billet. And Sabina? What a comparison that is between the nymph and the sun! The sun gives Sabina the pas, and does not venture to rise before her ladyship: the morn's bright beams are less glorious than her fair eyes: but before night everybody will be frozen by her glances: everybody but one lucky rogue who shall be nameless: Louis Quatorze in all his glory is hardly more splendid than our Phœbus Apollo of the Mall and Spring Garden.^[15]

When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve, the latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation, and in this perhaps the great Congreve was not far wrong.^[16] A touch of Steele's tenderness is worth all his finery—a flash of Swift's lightning—a beam of Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry play-house taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him and he was undoubtedly a pretty fellow.^[17]

We have seen in Swift a humourous philosopher, whose truth frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We have had in Congreve a humourous observer of another school to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and whose ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) when the time comes. We come now to a humour that flows from quite a different heart and spirit—a wit that makes ns laugh and leaves us good and happy; to one of the kindest benefactors that society has ever had, and I believe you have divined already that I am about to mention Addison's honoured name.

From reading over his writings, and the biographies which we have of him, amongst which the famous article in the Edinburgh Review^[18] may be cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer and moralist of the last age, raised by the love and the marvellous skill and genius of one of the most illustrious artists of our own; looking at that calm, fair face, and clear countenance—those chiselled features pure and cold, I can't but fancy that this great man, in this respect, like him of whom we spoke in the last lecture, was also one of the lonely ones of the world. Such men have very few equals, and they don't herd with those. It is in the nature of such lords of intellect to be solitary—they are in the world but not of it; and our minor struggles, brawls, successes, pass under them.

Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fortitude not tried beyond easy endurance, his affections not much used, for his books were his family, and his society was in public; admirably wiser, wittier, calmer, and more instructed than almost every man with whom he met, how could Addison suffer, desire, admire, feel much? I may expect a child to admire me for being taller or writing more cleverly than she; but how can I ask my superior to say that I am a wonder when he knows better than I? In Addison's days you could scarcely show him a literary performance, a sermon, or a poem, or a piece of literary criticism, but he felt he could do better. His justice must have made him indifferent. He didn't praise, because he measured his compeers by a higher standard than common people have.^[19] How was he who was so tall to look up to any but the loftiest genius? He must have stooped to put himself on a level with most men. By that profusion of graciousness and smiles, with which Goethe or Scott, for instance, greeted almost every literary beginner, every small literary adventurer who came to his court and went away charmed from the great king's audience, and cuddling to his heart the compliment which his literary majesty had paid him—each of the two good-natured potentates of letters brought their star and riband into discredit. Everybody had his Majesty's orders. Everybody had his Majesty's cheap portrait, on a box surrounded with diamonds worth twopence a piece. A very great and just and wise man ought not to praise indiscriminately, but give his idea of the truth. Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Pinkethman: Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Doggett^{[errata 2]} the actor, whose benefit is coming off that night: Addison praises Don Saltero: Addison praises Milton with all his heart, bends his knee and frankly pays homage to that imperial genius.^[20] But between those degrees of his men his praise is very scanty. I don't think the great Mr. Addison liked young Mr. Pope, the Papist, much; I don't think he abused him. But when Mr. Addison's men abused Mr. Pope, I don't think Addison took his pipe out of his mouth to contradict them.^[21]

Addison's father was a clergyman of good repute in Wiltshire, and rose in the church.^[22] His famous son never lost his clerical training and scholastic gravity, and was called "a parson in a tye-wig"^[23] in London afterwards at a time when tye-wigs were only worn by the laity, and the fathers of theology did not think it decent to appear except in a full bottom. Having been at school at Salisbury, and the Charterhouse, in 1687, when he was fifteen years old he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where he speedily began to distinguish himself by the making of Latin verses. The beautiful and fanciful poem of "The Pigmies and the Cranes" is still read by lovers of that sort of exercise, and verses are extant in honour of King William by which it appears that it was the loyal youth's custom to toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyæus; and many more works are in the Collection, including one on the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which was so good that Montague got him a pension of 300l. a year, on which Addison set out on his travels.

During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at his fingers' ends when he travelled in Italy.^[24] His patron went out of office, and his pension was unpaid: and hearing that this great scholar, now eminent and known to the literati of Europe (the great Boileau,^[25] upon perusal of Mr. Addison's elegant hexameters, was first made aware that England was not altogether a barbarous nation)—hearing that the celebrated Mr. Addison, of Oxford, proposed to travel as governor to a young gentleman on the grand tour, the great Duke of Somerset proposed to Mr. Addison to accompany his son, Lord Hartford.

Mr. Addison was delighted to be of use to his Grace and his lordship, his Grace's son, and expressed himself ready to set forth.

His Grace the Duke of Somerset now announced to one of the most famous scholars of Oxford and Europe that if was his gracious intention to allow my Lord Hartford's tutor one hundred guineas per annum. Mr. Addison wrote back that his services were his Grace's, but he by no means found his account in the recompense for them. The negotiation was broken off. They parted with a profusion of congées on one side and the other.

Addison remained abroad for some time, living in the best society of Europe. How could he do otherwise? He must have been one of the finest gentlemen the world ever saw: at all moments of life serene and courteous, cheerful and calm.^[26] He could scarcely ever have had a degrading thought. He might have omitted a virtue or two, or many, but could not have had many faults committed for which he need blush or turn pale. When warmed into confidence, his conversation appears to have been so delightful that the greatest wits sate wrapt and charmed to listen to him. No man bore poverty and narrow fortune with a more lofty cheerfulness. His letters to his friends at this period of his life when he had lost his government pension, and given up his college chances, are full of courage and a gay confidence and philosophy: and they are none the worse in my eyes, and I hope not in those of his last and greatest biographer (though Mr. Macaulay is bound to own and lament a certain weakness for wine, which the great and good Joseph Addison notoriously possessed, in common with countless gentlemen of his time), because some of the letters are written when his honest hand was shaking a little in the morning after libations to purple Lyæus over-night. He was fond of drinking the healths of his friends: he writes to Wyche,^[27] of Hamburgh, gratefully remembering Wyche's "hoc." "I have been drinking your health to-day with Sir Richard Shirley," he writes to Bathurst. "I have lately had the honour to meet my Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, where we have drunk Mr. Wood's health a hundred times in excellent champagne," he writes again. Swift^[28] describes him over his cups, when Joseph yielded to a temptation which Jonathan resisted. Joseph was of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the fire of wine to warm his blood. If he was a parson: he wore a tye-wig, recollect. A better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine—why, we could scarcely have found a fault with him, and could not have liked him as we do.^[29]

At thirty-three years of age, this most distinguished wit, scholar, and gentleman was without a profession and an income. His book of "Travels" had failed: his "Dialogues on Medals" had had no particular success: his Latin verses, even though reported the best since Virgil, or Statius at any rate, had not brought him a Government-place, and Addison was living up two shabby pair of stairs in the Haymarket (in a poverty over which old Samuel Johnson rather chuckles), when in these shabby rooms, an emissary from Government and Fortune came and found him.^[30] A poem was wanted about the Duke of Marlborough's victory of Blenheim. Would Mr. Addison write one? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton, took back the reply to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, that Mr. Addison would. When the poem had reached a certain stage, it was carried to Godolphin; and the last lines which he read were these:—

"But O, my muse! what numbers wilt thou find
To sing the furious troops in battle join'd?
Methinks I hear the drum's tumultouus sound,
The victor's shouts and dying groans confound;
The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies,
And all the thunders of the battle rise.
'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved,
That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved,
Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,
Examined all the dreadful scenes of war:
In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed,
To fainting squadrons lent the timely aid,
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage,
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage.
So when an angel by divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land
(Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed),
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm."

Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was pronounced to be of the greatest ever produced in poetry. That angel, that good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and landed him in the place of Commissioner of Appeals—vice Mr. Locke providentially promoted, In the following year, Mr. Addison went to Hanover with Lord Halifax, and the year after was made Under-Secretary of State. O angel visits! you come "few and far between" to literary gentlemen's lodgings! Your wings seldom quiver at second-floor windows now!

You laugh? You think it is in the power of few writers now-a-days to call up such an angel? Well perhaps not; but permit us to comfort ourselves by pointing out that there are in the poem of the "Campaign" some as bad lines as heart can desire: and to hint that Mr. Addison did very wisely in not going further with my Lord Godolphin than that angelical simile. Do allow me, just for a little harmless mischief, to read you some of the lines which follow. Here is the interview between the Duke and the King of the Romans after the battle:—

"Austria's young monarch, whose imperial sway
Sceptres and thrones are destined to obey,

Whose boasted ancestry so high extends
That in the pagan Gods his lineage ends,
Comes from afar, in gratitude to own
The great supporter of his father's throne.
What tides of glory to his bosom ran
Clasped in th' embraces of the godlike man!
How were his eyes with pleasing wonder fixt,
To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt!
Such easy greatness, such a graceful port,
So learned and finished for the camp or court!"

How many fourth-form boys at Mr. Addison's school of Charter-house could write as well as that now? The "Campaign" has blunders, triumphant as it was; and weak points like all campaigns.^[31]

In the year 1718 "Cato" came out. Swift has left a description of the first night of the performance. All the laurels of Europe were scarcely sufficient for the author of this prodigious poem.^[32] Laudations of Whig and Tory chiefs, popular ovations, complimentary garlands from literary men, translations in all languages, delight and homage from all—save from John Dennis in a minority of one—Mr. Addison was called the "great Mr. Addison" after this. The Coffee-house Senate saluted him Divus: it was heresy to question that decree.

Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1717. And letters of his are extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written to young Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him as "my dearest lord," and asks affectionately about his studies, and writes very prettily about nightingales, and birds'-nests, which he has found at Fulham for his lordship. Those nightingales were intended to warble in the ear of Lord Warwick's mamma. Addison married her ladyship in 1716; and died at Holland House three years after that splendid but dismal union.^[33]

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 ruthless—a literary Jeffries—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;^[34] or 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 gaily as if he was going out for a holiday. When Steele's "Tatler" first began his prattle, Addison, then in Ireland, caught at his friend's notion, poured in paper after paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his daily observation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed an almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty years old: full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his brain, manuring hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting again, like other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much as yet; a few Latin poems—graceful prolusions; a polite book of travels; a dissertation on medals, not very deep; four acts of a tragedy, a great classical exercise; and the "Campaign," a large prize poem that won an enormous prize. But with his friend's discovery of the "Tatler," Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful talker in the world began to speak. He does not go very deep: let gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he couldn't go very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night's rest or his day's tranquillity about any woman in his life:^[35] 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 humours, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries; and noting them with the most charming archness. He sees them in public, in the theatre, or the assembly, or the puppet-show; or at the toy-shop higgling for gloves and lace; or at the auction, battling together over a blue porcelain dragon, or a darling monster in Japan; or at church, eyeing the width of their rivals' hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the Garter in St. James's Street, at Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to the drawing-room with her coronet and six footmen; and remembering that her father was a Turkey merchant in the city, calculates how many sponges went to purchase her earring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box; or he demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women. Addison was one of the most resolute clubmen of his day. He passed many hours daily in those haunts. Besides drinking, which alas! is past praying for; you must know it, he owned, too, ladies, that he indulged in that odious practice of smoking. Poor fellow! He was a man's man, remember. The only woman he did know, he didn't write about. I take it there would not have been much humour in that story.

He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the Grecian, or the Devil; to pace 'Change and the Mall^[36]—to mingle in that great club of the world—sitting alone in it somehow: having good-will and kindness for every single man and woman in it—having need of some habit and custom binding him to some few; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong to hint a little doubt about a man's parts, and to damn him with faint praise); and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humours of all of us—laughs the kindest laugh—points our neighbour's foible or eccentricity out to us with the most good-natured, smiling confidence; and then, turning over his shoulder, whispers our foibles to our neighbour. What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and his charming little brain-cracks?^[37] If the good knight did not call out to the people sleeping in church, and say "Amen" with such a delightful pomposity: if he did not make a speech in the assize-court apropos de bottes, and merely to show his dignity to Mr. Spectator:^[38] if he did not mistake Madam Doll Tearsheet for a lady of quality in Temple Garden: if he were wiser than he is: if he had not his humour to salt his life, and were but a mere English gentleman and game-preserver—of what 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. And why not? Is the glory of Heaven to be sung only by gentlemen in black coats? Must the truth be only expounded in gown and surplice, and out of those two vestments can nobody preach it? Commend me to this dear preacher without orders—this parson in the tye-wig. When this man looks from the world whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, up to the Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up with a more serene rapture: a human intellect thrilling with a purer love and adoration than Joseph Addison's. Listen to him: from your childhood you have known the verses: but who can hear their sacred music without love and awe?

"Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth,
Repeats the story of her birth;
And all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole,
What though, in solemn silence, all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball;
What though no real voice nor sound,
Among their radiant orbs be found;
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
For ever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is divine."

It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. They shine out of a great deep calm. When he turns to Heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man's mind: and his face lights up from it with a glory of thanks and prayer. His sense of religion stirs through his whole being. In the fields, in the town: looking at the birds in the trees: at the children in the streets: in the morning or in the moonlight: over his books in his own room: in a happy party at a country merrymaking or a town assembly, good-will and peace to God's creatures, 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.^[39]

---

1. The following is a conspectus of them:—
   Addison.—Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper of the Records in Ireland; Lord of Trade; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively.
   Steele.—Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians; Commissioner of "Forfeited Estates in Scotland."
   Prior.—Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King William; Secretary to the Embassy in France; Under Secretary of State; Ambassador to France.
   Tickell.—Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland.
   Congreve.—Commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches; Commissioner for Wine Licenses; Place in the Pipe Office; post in the Custom House; Secretary of Jamaica.
   Gay.—Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover.)
   John Dennis.—A place in the Custom House.
   "En Angleterre. . . . . . les lettres sont plus en honneur qu'ici."
   —Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 20.
2. He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire—a very ancient family.
3. "Pipe.—Pipe, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the great roll.
   "Pipe-Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out leases of crown lands, by warrant, from the Lord-Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer.
   "Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c."—Rees. Cyclopæd. Art. Pipe.
   "Pipe-Office.—Spelman thinks so called because the papers were kept in a large pipe or cask."
   "These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe . . . . . because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills."—Bacon. The Office of Alienations.
   [We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But a modern man-of-letters can know little on these points, by—experience.]
4. "It has been observed that no change of ministers affected him in the least, nor was he eyer removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His place in the Custom-House, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year."—Biog. Brit., Art. Congreve.
5. Dryden addressed his "twelfth epistle" to "My dear friend Mr. Congreve," on his comedy called the "Double Dealer," in which he says—

   "Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please;
   Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease.
   In differing talents both adorn'd their age;
   One for the study, t'other for the stage.
   But both to Congreve justly shall submit,
   One match'd in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit.
   In him all beauties of this age we see," &c., &c.

   The "Double Dealer," however, was not so palpable a hit as the "Old Bachelor," but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our "Swell" applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "Right Honourable Charles Montague."
   "I was conscious," said he, "where a true critic might have put me upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack. . . . . . but I have not heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer," He goes on—
   "But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected. How can I help it? It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind. . . . . . I should be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood."

6. "Instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave behind me a memorial of my friendship, with one of the most valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country—one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer—and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of Mr. Congreve and of—A. Pope." Postscript to Translation of the Iliad of Homer. Mar. 25, 1720.
7. "When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said, he had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for our author, and generally took him under his protection in his high authoritative manner."—Thos. Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies.
8. "Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess showed us a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle,"—Dr. Young, Spence's Anecdotes.
9. "A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it."—Thos. Davies. Dramatic Miscellanies.
10. The sum Congreve left her was 200l., as is said in the "Dramatic Miscellanies" of Tom Davies; where are some particulars about this charming actress and beautiful woman.
    She had a "lively aspect," says Tom, on the authority of Cibber, and "such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired everybody with desire." "Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of them her lovers."
    Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. "In Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla. . . . . .; Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in his 'Love for Love;' in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the 'Mourning Bride;' and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the 'Way of the World.' Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not very distant from the real character of Congreve."—Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii, 1784.
    She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public favourite. She died in 1745, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.
11. Johnson calls his legacy the "accumulation of attentive parsimony, which," he continues, "though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress."—Lives of the Poets.
12. He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations," &c. A specimen or two are subjoined:—
    "The greater part of these examples which he has produced, are only demonstrations of his own impurity: they only savour of his utterance, and were sweet enough till tainted by his breath.
    "Where the expression is unblameable in its own pure and genuine signification, he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit; he possesses the innocent phrase, and makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies.
    "If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures. . . . . . . I will only call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it.
    "The corruption of a rotten divine is the generation of a sour critic."
    "Congreve," says Dr. Johnson, "a very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security. . . . . . The dispute was protracted through two years; but at last Comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labours in the reformation of the theatre."—Life of Congreve.
13. The scene of Valentine's pretended madness in "Love for Love," is a splendid specimen of Congreve's daring manner:—
    Scandal.—And have you given your master a hint of their plot upon him?
    Jeremy.—Yes, Sir; he says he'll favour it, and mistake her for Angelica.
    Scandal.—It may make us sport.
    Foresight.—Mercy on us!
    Valentine.—Husht—interrupt me not—I'll whisper predictions to thee, and thou shalt prophesie;—I am truth, and can teach thy tongue a new trick,—I have told thee what's passed,—now I'll tell what's to come:—Dost thou know what will happen to-morrow? Answer me not—for I will tell thee, To-morrow knaves will thrive thro' craft, and fools thro' fortune; and honesty will go as it did, frost-nipt in a summer suit. Ask me questions concerning to-morrow.
    Scandal.—Ask him, Mr. Foresight.
    Foresight.—Pray what will be done at Court?
    Valentine.—Scandal will tell you;—I am truth, I never come there.
    Foresight.—In the city?
    Valentine.—Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters, as if religion were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horn'd herd buz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt prentice that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things, that you will see very strange; which are, wanton wives with their legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks. But hold, I must examine you before I go further; you look suspiciously. Are you a husband?
    Foresight.—I am married.
    Valentine.—Poor creature! Is your wife of Covent-garden Parish?
    Foresight.—No; St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.
    Valentine.—Alas, poor man! his eyes are sunk, and his hands shrivelled; his leggs dwindled, and his back bow'd. Pray, pray, for a metamorphosis—change thy shape, and shake off age; get the Medea's kettle and be boiled anew; come forth with lab'ring callous hands, and chine of steel, and Atlas' shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the calves of twenty chairmen, and make the pedestals to stand erect upon, and look matrimony in the face. Ha, ha, ha! That a man should have a stomach to a wedding supper, when the pidgeons ought rather to be laid to his feet! ha, ha, ha!
    Foresight.—His frenzy is very high now, Mr. Scandal.
    Scandal.—I believe it is a spring-tide.
    Foresight.—Very likely—truly; you understand these matters. Mr. Scandal, I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things he has uttered. His sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical.
    Valentine.—Oh! why would Angelica be absent from my eyes so long?
    Jeremy.—She's here, Sir.
    Mrs. Foresight.—Now, Sister!
    Mrs. Frail.—O Lord! what must I say?
    Scandal.—Humour him, Madam, by all means.
    Valentine.—Where is she? Oh! I see her; she comes, like Riches, Health, and Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and abandoned wretch. Oh—welcome, welcome!
    Mrs. Frail.—How d'ye, Sir? Can I serve you?
    Valentine.—Hark'ee—I have a secret to tell you, Endymion and the moon shall meet as on Mount Latmos, and we'll be married in the dead of night. But say not a word. Hymen shall put his torch into a dark lanthorn, that it may be secret; and Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail; and Argus's hundred eyes be shut—ha! Nobody shall know, but Jeremy.
    Mrs. Frail.—No, no; we'll keep it secret; it shall be done presently.
    Valentine.—The sooner the better. Jeremy, come hither—closer—that none may overhear us. Jeremy, I can tell you news; Angelica is turned nun, and I am turning friar, and yet we'll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part; for she'll meet me two hours hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won't see one another's faces 'till we have done something to be ashamed of, and them we'll blush once for all. . . . . .

    Enter Tattle.

    Tattle.—Do you know me, Valentine?
    Valentine.—You!—who are you! No; I hope not.
    Tattle.—I am Jack Tattle, your friend.
    Valentine.—My friend! What to do? I am no married man, and thou canst not lye with my wife; I am very poor, and thou canst not borrow money of me. Then, what employment have I for a friend?
    Tattle.—Hah! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a secret.
    Angelica.—Do you know me, Valentine?
    Valentine.—Oh, very well.
    Angelica.—Who am I?
    Valentine.—You're a woman; one to whom Heaven gave beauty when it grafted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond; and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white—a sheet of spotless paper—when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill. I know you; for I loved a woman, and loved her so long that I found out a strange thing: I found out what a woman was good for.
    Tattle.—Ay! pr'ythee, what's that?
    Valentine.—Why, to keep a secret.
    Tattle.—O Lord!
    Valentine.—O, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she should tell, yet she is not to be believed.
    Tattle.—Hah! Good again, faith.
    Valentine.—I would have musick. Sing me the song that I like.—Congreve. "Love for Love."

    There is a Mrs. Nickleby, of the year 1700, in Congreve's Comedy of "The Double Dealer," in whose character the author introduces some wonderful traits of roguish satire. She is practised on by the gallants of the play, and no more knows how to resist them than any of the ladies above quoted could resist Congreve.

    Lady Plyant.—O! reflect upon the honour of your conduct! Offering to pervert me [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady for her daughter's hand, not for her own]—perverting me from the road of virtue, in which I have trod thus long, and never made one trip—not one faux pas; O, consider it; what would you have to answer for, if you should provoke me to frailty! Alas! humanity is feeble, Heaven knows! Very feeble and unable to support itself.
    Mellefont.—Where am I? Is it day? and am I awake! Madam—
    Lady Plyant.—O Lord, ask me the question! I'll swear I'll deny it—therefore don't ask me; nay, you shan't ask me; I swear I'll deny it. O Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face; I warrant I am as red as a turkey-cock; O fie, cousin Mellefont!
    Mellefont.—Nay, madam, hear me; I mean ——
    Lady Plyant.—Hear you? No, no; I'll deny you first, and hear you afterwards. For one does not know how one's mind may change upon hearing—hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are fallible. I won't trust my honour, I assure you; my honour is infallible and uncomatable.
    Mellefont.—For Heaven's sake, madam ——
    Lady Plyant.—O, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart? May be, you dosn't think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don't think it a sin; but still, my honour, if it were no sin ——. Rut, then, to marry my daughter for the convenience of frequent opportunities,—I'll never consent to that: as sure as can be, I'll break the match.
    Mellefont.—Death and amazement! Madam, upon my knees ——
    Lady Plyant.—Nay, nay, rise up; come, you shall see my good-nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion. 'Tis not your fault; nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms? And how can you help it, if you are made a captive? I swear it is pity it should be a fault; but, my honour. Well, but your honour, too—but the sin! Well, but the necessity. O Lord, here's somebody coming. I dare not stay. Well, you must consider of your crime; and strive as much as can be against it—strive, be sure; but don't be melancholick—don't despair; but never think that I'll grant you anything. O Lord, no; but be sure you lay all thoughts aside of the marriage, for though I know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind for your passion to me; yet it will make me jealous. O Lord, what did I say? Jealous! No, I can't be jealous; for I must not love you; therefore don't hope; but don't despair neither. They're coming; I must fly.—The Double Dealer, Act 2nd, scene v. page 156.

14. "There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance. The Old Bachelor was written for amusement in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant ambition of wit."—Johnson. Lives of the Poets.
15. "Among those by whom it ('Wills's') was frequented, Southerne and Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship. . . . . . But Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon Dryden's friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the celebrated 'Old Bachelor' being put into the poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the stage, returned it to the author with the high and just commendation, that it was the best first play he had ever seen."—Scott's Dryden, vol. i. p. 370.
16. It was in Surrey-street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life.
    The ancedote in the text, relating to his saying that he wished "to be visited on no other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity," is common to all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Voltaire's Letters concerning the English nation, published in London, 1733, as also in Goldsmith's "Memoir of Voltaire." But it is worthy of remark, that it does not appear in the text of the same Letters in the edition of Voltaire's Œuvres Complètes in the Panthéon Litteraire. Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1837.)
    "Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porté le plus loin la gloirè du théâtre comique est feu M. Congreve. Il n'a fait que peu de pièces, mais toutes sont excellentes dans leur genre. . . . . Vous y voyez partout le langage des honnêtes gens avec des actions de fripon; ce qui prouve qu'il connaissait bien son monde, et qu'il vivait dans ce qu'on appelle la bonne compagnie."—Voltaire. Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 19.
17. On the death of Queen Mary, he published a Pastoral—"The  Mourning Muse of Alexis." Alexis and Menaleas sing alternately in the orthodox way. The Queen is called Pastora.
    "I mourn Pastora dead, let Albion mourn,
    And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,"
    
    

    says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that—

    "With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound,
    And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground,"—
    
    

    (a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period!) . . . . It continues—

    "Lord of these woods and wide extended plains,
    Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face,
    Scalding with tears the already faded grass.
    *****To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come?
    And must Pastora moulder in the tomb?
    Ah Death! more fierce and unrelenting far,
    Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are;
    With lambs and sheep their hunger is appeased,
    But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized."
    
    

    This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess; that figure of the "Great Shepherd," lying speechless on his stomach, in a state of despair which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit, are to be remembered in poetry surely, and this style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great Congreve!

    In the "Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas" (the young Lord Blandford, the great Duke of Marlborough's only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah Duchess!

    The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come in to work here again. At the sight of her grief—

    "Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forego,
    And dumb distress and new compassion show,
    Nature herself attentive silence kept,
    And motion seemed suspended while she wept!"—
    
    
     And Pope dedicated the Iliad to the author of these lines—and Dryden wrote to him in his great hand:
    "Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought,
    But Genius must be born and never can be taught.
    This is your portion, this your native store;
    Heaven, that but once was prodigal before,
    To Shakspeare gave as much she could not give him more.
    Maintain your Post: that's all the Fame you need,
    For 'tis impossible you should proceed;
    Already I am worn with cares and age,
    And just abandoning th' ungrateful Stage:
    Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expence,
    I live a Rent-charge upon Providence:
    But you whom every Muse and Grace adorn,
    Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
    Be kind to my remains, and ob defend
    Against your Judgment your departed Friend!
    Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue;
    But shade those Lawrels which descend to You:
    And take for Tribute what these Lines express;
    You merit more, nor could my Love do less,"
    
    

    This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day. In Shadwell, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time, when gentlemen meet they fall into each other's arms, with "Jack, Jack, I must buss thee;" or "Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee, lad." And in a similar manner the poets saluted their brethren. Literary gentlemen do not kiss now; I wonder if they love each other better.

    Steele calls Congreve "Great Sir" and "Great Author;" says, "Well-dressed barbarians knew his awful name," and addresses him as if he were a prince; and speaks of "Pastora" as one of the most famous tragic compositions.

18.  "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. . ."
    . . ."After full inquiry and impartial reflection we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can justly be claimed by any of our infirm and erring race."—Macaulay.
    "Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable to believe that Addison's profession and practice were at no great variance; since, amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and his activity made him formidable, the character given him by his friends was never contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom interest or opinion united him, he had not only the esteem but the kindness; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove against him, though he might lose the love, he retained the reverence,"—Johnson.
19. "Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had something more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man; but with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of silence."—Pope (Spence's Ancedotes).
20.  "Milton's chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence lies in the sublimity of his thoughts. There are others of the modern, who rival him in every other part of poetry; but in the greatness of his sentiments he triumphs over all the poets, both modern and ancient, Homer alone excepted. It is impossible for the imagination of man to disturb itself with greater ideas than those which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth books."—Spectator, No 279.
    "If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one."—Ibid. No. 417.
    These famous papers appeared in each Saturday's Spectator, from January 19th to May 3rd, 1712. Besides his services to Milton, we may place those he did to Sacred Music.
21. "Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards."—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes).
    "'Leave him as soon as you can,' said Addison to me, speaking of Pope; 'he will certainly play you some devilish trick else: he has an appetite to satire.'"—Lady Wortley Montagu (Spence's Anecdotes).
22. Lancelot Addison, his father, was the son of another Lancelot Addison, a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield and Archdeacon of Coventry.
23.  "The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his company, declared that he was 'a parson in a tye-wig,' can detract little from his character. He was always reserved to strangers and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of Mandeville."—Johnson (Lives of the Poets.)
    "Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison: he had a quarrel with him, and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to say of him—'One day or other you'll see that man a bishop—I'm sure he looks that way; and indeed I ever thought him a priest in his heart.'"—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes).
    "Mr. Addison staid above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as between two and three in the height of summer, and lie a bed till between eleven aud twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative whilst here, and often thonghtful; sometimes so lost in thought, that I have come into his room and staid five minutes there before he has known anything of it. He had his masters generally at supper with him; kept very little company beside; and had no amour whilst too, that I know of; and I think I should have known it, if he had had any."—Abbé Philippeaux of Blois (Spence's Anecdotes).
24. "His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus, down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound."—Macaulay.
25. "Our country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing the present he made him of the Musæ Anglicanæ."—Tickell (Preface to Addison's Works).
26. "It was my fate to be much with the wits; my father was acquainted with all of them. Addison was the best company in the world. I never knew anybody that had so much wit as Congreve."—Lady Wortley Montagu (Spence's Anecdotes).
27.  

    MR. ADDISON TO MR. WYCHE.

    "Dear Sir,
    "My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done could I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have escaped for ye present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at Crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible for me to express ye deep sense I have of ye many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met with in my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, I dare say it will be thought a very good excuse when  I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As your company made our stay at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long lived as Methuseleh, or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc in ye cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can't forbear troubling you with my hearty respects to ye owners of them, and desiring you to believe me always,

    "Dear Sir,

    "Yours, &c.

    "To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty's Resident at Hambourg,

    "May, 1708."

    —From the "Life of Addison," by Miss Aikin. Vol. i. p. 146.

28.  It is pleasing to remember, that the relation between Swift and Addison was, on the whole, satisfactory, from first to last. The value of Swift's testimony, when nothing personal inflamed his vision or warped his judgment, can be doubted by nobody.
    "Sept. 10, 1710.—I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele.
    "11.—Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him part of this evening.
    "18.—To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr, Addison's retirement near Chelsea. . . . . . . I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison.
    "27.—To-day all our company dined at Will Frankland's, with Steele and Addison, too.
    "29.—I dined with Mr. Addison, &c."—Journal to Stella.
    Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his Travels "To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age."—(Scott. From the information of Mr. Theophilus Swift.)
    "Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person; and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of persons and things."—Letters.
    "I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I have nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself."—Swift to Addison (1717). Scott's Swift. Vol. xix. p. 274.
    Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly communications. Time renewed them; and Tickell enjoyed Swift's friendship as a legacy from the man with whose memory his is so honourably connected.
29. "Addison usually studied all the morning; then met his party at Button's; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it."—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes).
30. "When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind."—Johnson (Lives of the Poets).
31. "Mr. Addison wrote very fluently; but he was sometimes very slow and scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several friends; and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself; and too much concerned about his character as a poet; or (as he worded it), too solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very little matter after all!"—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes).
32. "As to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at present to be a bare looker-on. . . . . . Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion:
    "'Envy itself is dumb—in wonder lost;
    And factions strive who shall applaud him most.'
    
    
    "The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hands than the head. . . . . . I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgment (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator."—Pope's Letter to Sir W. Trumbull.
    Cato ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue.
    It is worth noticing how many things in Cato keep their ground as habitual quotations, e.g.:—
    ". . . . big with the fate
    Of Cato and of Rome."
    
    

    "Tis not in mortals to command success,
    But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."
    
    

    "Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury."
    
    

    "I think the Romans call it Stoicism."
    
    

    "My voice is still for war."
    
    

    "When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
    The post of honour is a private station,"
    
    

    Not to mention—

    "The woman who deliberates is lost."
    
    

    And the eternal—

    "Plato, thou reasonest well,"
    
    

    which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play!

33.  "The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused,—to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, 'Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave." The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness; it neither found them, nor made them, equal. . . . . . Rowe's ballad of 'The Despairing Shepherd' is said to have been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable pair."—Dr. Johnson.
    "I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. At that time he declined it, and I really believe that he would have done well to have declined it now. Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both.".—Lady Wortley Montagu to Pope. Works, Lord Wharncliffe's edit., vol. ii. p. 111.
    The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who inherited, on her mother's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her father had purchased, and died, unmarried, at an advanced age. She was of weak intellect.
    Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship, for his Collection contains 'Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr. Addison's going to Ireland,' in which her ladyship is called 'Chloe,' and Joseph Addison, 'Lycidas;' besides the ballad mentioned by the Doctor, and which is entitled 'Colin's Complaint.' But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a specimen:—
    "What though I hare skill to complain—
    Though the Muses my temples have crowned;
    What though, when they hear my sweet strain,
    The Muses sit weeping around.
    
    

    "Ah, Colin! thy hopes are in vain;
    Thy pipe and thy laurel resign;
    Thy false one inclines to a swain
    Whose music is sweeter than thine."
    
    
34. One of the most humorous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the "Spectator" tells us, particularly pleased his friend Sir Roger.
    "Mr. Spectator,
    "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 extravagancies, 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 humour 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 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 honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of out-works and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whale-bone 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 observes, that the farthingale appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and blood-shed, 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 coming into the world rather than going out of it," &c. &c.—Spectator, No. 127.
35. "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.
36. "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 the 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, 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 Tam 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 neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favour 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.
    "As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable 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 favourite 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 space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words; and indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my 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 Wills', 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 Coffee-house; 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 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.
    "Thus I live in the world rather as a 'Spectator' of mankind than as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever meddling in any practical part in life. I am 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.
37. "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.
38. "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 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 observe to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was getting up to speak. IT 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.
39. "Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his death-bed, 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 an 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 melancholy: on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladnesss, 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.)

Errata

1. Original: an empire was amended to or empire: detail
2. Original: Peggott was amended to Doggett: detail

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