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Joseph Addison, the Spectator, the true founder of our periodical literature, the finest, if not the greatest writer in the English language, was born at Milston, Wiltshire, on the 1st of May 1672. A fanciful mind might trace a correspondence between the particular months when celebrated men have been born and the peculiar complexion of their genius. Milton, the austere and awful, was born in the silent and gloomy month of December. Shakspeare, the most versatile of all writers, was born in April, that month of changeful skies, of sudden sunshine, and sudden showers. Burns and Byron, those stormy spirits, both appeared in the fierce January; and of the former, he himself says,

"'Twas then a blast o' Januar-win'

Blew welcome in on Robin."

Scott, the broad sunny being, visited us in August, and in the same month the warm genius of Shelley came, as Hunt used to tell him, "from the planet Mercury" to our earth. Coleridge and Keats, with whose song a deep bar of sorrow was to mingle, like the music of falling leaves, or of winds wailing for the departure of summer, arrived in October—that month, the beauty of which is the child of blasting, and its glory the flush of decay. And it seems somehow fitting that Addison, the mild, the quietly-joyous, the sanguine and serene, should come, with the daisy and the sweet summer-tide, on the 1st of May, which Buchanan thus hails—

"Salve fugacis gloria saeculi,

Salve secunda digna dies nota,

Salve vetustae vitae imago,

Et specimen venientis aevi."

"Hail, glory of the fleeting year!

Hail, day, the fairest, happiest here!

Image of time for ever by,

Pledge of a bright eternity."

Dr. Lancelot Addison, himself a man of no mean note, was the father of our poet. He was born in 1632, at Maltesmeaburn, in the parish of Corby Ravensworth, (what a name of ill-omen within ill-omen, or as Dr. Johnson would say, "inspissated gloom"!) in the county of Westmoreland. His father was a minister of the gospel; but in such humble circumstances, that Lancelot was received from the Grammar-school of Appleby into Queen's College, Oxford, in the capacity of a "poor child." After passing his curriculum there, being chiefly distinguished for his violent High Church and Monarchical principles, for which he repeatedly smarted, he, at the Restoration, was appointed chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk, and soon after he accepted a similar situation in Tangier, which had been ceded by Portugal to Britain. In this latter post he felt rather lonely and miserable, and was driven, in self-defence, to betake himself to the study of the manners and the literature of the Moors, Jews, and other Oriental nations. This led him afterwards to publish some works on Barbary, on Hebrew customs, and Mohammedanism, which shew a profound acquaintance with these subjects, and which, not without reason, are supposed to have coloured the imagination of his son Joseph, who is seldom more felicitous than when reproducing the gorgeous superstitions and phantasies of the East.

For eight years, old Addison lingered in loathed Tangier; nor, when he returned to England on a visit, had he any purpose of permanently residing in his own country. But his appointment was hastily bestowed on another; and it was fortunate for him that a private friend stepped in and presented him with the living of Milston, near Ambrosebury, Wilts, worth £120 a-year. This, which Miss Aiken calls a "pittance," was probably equivalent to £250 now. At all events, on the strength of it, he married Jane, daughter of Dr. Gulstone, and sister to the Bishop of Bristol, who, in due time, became the mother of our poet. Lancelot was afterwards made Prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral, and King's Chaplain in ordinary; about the time (1675) when he took the degree of D.D. Subsequently he became Archdeacon of Salisbury, and at last, in 1683, obtained the Deanery of Lichfield. But for his suspected Jacobitism, he would probably have received the mitre. He died in 1703.

Joseph had two brothers and three sisters. His third sister, Dorothy, survived the rest, and was twice married. Swift met her once, and with some awe (for he, like all bullies, had a little of the coward about him), describes her as a kind of wit, and very like her brother. The Spectator seems to have been a wild and wayward boy. He is said to have once acted as ringleader in a "barring out," described by Johnson as a savage license by which the boys, when the periodical vacation drew near, used to take possession of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade the master defiance from the windows. On another occasion, having committed some petty offence at a country school, terrified at the master's apprehended displeasure, he made his escape into the fields and woods, where for some days he fed on fruits and slept in a hollow tree till discovered and brought back to his parents. This last may seem the act of a timid boy, and inconsistent with the former, and yet is somehow congenial to our ideal of the character of our poet. It required perhaps more daring to front the perils of the woods than the frown of the master, and augured, besides, a certain romance in his disposition which found afterwards a vent in literature. After receiving instruction, first at Salisbury, and then at Lichfield, (his connexion with which place forms a link, uniting him in a manner to the great lexicographer, who was born there,) he was removed to the Charterhouse, and there profited so much in Greek and Latin, that at fifteen he was not only, says Macaulay, "fit for the university, but carried thither a classical taste and a stock of learning which would have done honour to a master of arts." He had at the Charter-house formed a friendship, destined to have important bearings on his after history, with Richard Steele, whose character may be summed up in a few sentences. Who has not heard of Sir Richard Steele? Wordsworth says of one of his characters—

"She was known to every star,

And every wind that blows."

Poor Dick was known to every sponging-house, and to every bailiff that, blowing in pursuit, walked the London streets. A fine-hearted, warm-blooded character, without an atom of prudence, self-control, reticence, or forethought; quite as destitute of malice or envy; perpetually sinning and perpetually repenting; never positively irreligious, even when drunk; and often excessively pious when recovering sobriety—Steele reeled his way through life, and died with the reputation of being an orthodox Christian and a (nearly) habitual drunkard; the most affectionate and most faithless of husbands; a brave soldier, and in many points an arrant fool; a violent politician, and the best natured of men; a writer extremely lively, for this, among other reasons, that he wrote generally on his legs, flying or meditating flight from his creditors; and who embodied in himself the titles of his three principal works—"The Christian Hero," "The Tender Husband," and the Tatler;—being a "Christian Hero" in intention, one of those intentions with which a certain place is paved; a "Tender Husband," if not a true one, to his two ladies; and a Tatler to all persons, in all circumstances, and at all times. When Addison first knew this original, he was probably uncontaminated, and must have been, as he continued to the end to be, an irascible but joyous and genial being; and they became intimate at once, although circumstances severed them from each other for a long period.

In 1687 Addison entered Queen's College, Oxford; but sometime after, (Macaulay says "not many months," Johnson "a year," and Miss Aiken "two years,") Dr. Lancaster, of Magdalene College, having accidentally seen some Latin verses from his pen, exerted himself to procure their author admission to the benefits of a foundation, then the wealthiest in Europe. Our poet was first elected Demy, then Probationary Fellow in 1697, and in the year following, Actual Fellow. During the ten years he resided at Oxford, he was a general favourite, remarkable for his diligence in study, for the purity and tenderness of his feelings, for his bashful and retiring manners, for the excellence of his Latin compositions, and for his solitary walks, pursued in a path they still point out below the elms which skirt a meadow on the banks of the Cherwell—a river, we need scarcely say, which there weds the Isis. It was in such lonely evening or Saturday strolls that he probably acquired the habit of pensive reverie to which we owe many of the finest of his speculations in after days, such as that in Spectator, No. 565, beginning, "I was yesterday, about sunset, walking in the open fields, when insensibly the night fell upon me," &c.

Prose English essays, however, were as yet strangers to his pen. His ambition was to be a poet, and while still under twenty-two, he produced and printed some complimentary verses to Dryden, then declining in years, and fallen into comparative neglect. The old poet was pleased with the homage of the young aspirant, which was as graceful in expression as it was generous in purpose. For instance, alluding to Dryden's projected translation of "Ovid," he says, that "Ovid," thus transformed, shall "reveal"

"A nobler change than he himself can tell."

This, however, although happy, starts a different view of the subject. It suggests the idea that most translations are metamorphoses to the worse, like that of a living person into a dead tree, or at least of a superior into an inferior being. In Pope's "Iliad," you have the metamorphosis of an eagle into a nightingale; in Dryden's "Virgil," you have a stately war-horse transformed into a hard-trotting hackney; in Hoole's versions of the Italian Poets, you have nymphs nailed up in timber; while, on the other hand, in Coleridge's "Wallenstein," you have the "nobler change," spoken of by Addison, of—shall we say?-a cold and stately holly-tree turned into a murmuring and oracular oak.

That, after thus introducing himself to Dryden, he met him occasionally seems certain, although the rumour circulated by Spence that he taught the old man to sit late and drink hard seems ridiculous. Dryden introduced him to Congreve, and through Congreve he made the valuable acquaintance of Charles Montague, then leader of the Whigs in the House of Commons, and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He afterwards published a translation of that part of the "Fourth Book of the Georgics" referring to bees, on which Dryden, who had procured a preface to his own complete translation of the same poem from Addison, complimented him by saying—"After his bees, my later swarm is scarcely worth hiving." He published, too, a poem on "King William," and an "Account of the Principal English Poets," in which he ventures on a character of Spenser ere he had read his works. It thus is, as might have been expected, poor and non-appreciative, and speaks of Spenser as a poet pretty nearly forgotten. Some time after this, he collected a volume, entitled, "Musæ Anglicanæ," in which he inserted all his early Latin verses.

Charles Montague, himself a poet of a certain small rank, and a man of great general talents, became—along with Somers—the patron of Addison. He diverted him from the Church, to which his own tastes seemed to destine him, suggesting that civil employment had become very corrupt through want of men of liberal education and good principles, and should be redeemed from this reproach, and declaring that, though he had been called an enemy of the Church, he would never do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it. It is likely that the timid temperament of our poet concurred with these suggestions of Montague in determining his decision. His failure as a Parliamentary orator subsequently seems to prove that the pulpit was not his vocation. After all, his Saturday papers in the Spectator are as fine as any sermons of that age, and he perhaps did more good serving as a volunteer than had he been a regular soldier in the army of the Christian faith.

Somers and Montague wished to employ their protégé in public service abroad. There was, however, one drawback. Addison had plenty of English, Greek, and Latin, but he had little French. This he must be sent abroad to acquire; and for the purpose of defraying the expenses of his travels, a pension of £300 a-year was conferred upon him. Paid thus, as few poets or writers of any kind are, in advance, and having his fellowship besides, Addison, like a young nobleman, instead of a parson's son, set out upon his tour. This was in the summer of 1699. He was twenty-seven years of age, exactly one year younger than Byron, and three years younger than Milton, when they visited the same regions. He went first to Paris, and was received with great distinction by Montague's kinsman, the Earl of Manchester, and his beautiful lady. He travelled with his eyes quietly open, especially to the humorous aspects of things. In a letter to Montague he says that he had not seen a blush from his first landing at Calais, and gives a sarcastic description of the spurious devotion which the example of the old repentant roué, Louis XIV., had rendered fashionable among the literati of France: "There is no book comes out at present that has not something in it of an air of devotion. Dacier has been forced to prove his Plato a very good CHRISTIAN before he ventures upon his translation, and has so far complied with the taste of the age, that his whole book is overrun with texts of Scripture, and the notion of pre-existence, supposed to be stolen from two verses of the prophets." The sincere believer is usually the first to detect and be disgusted with the sham one; and Addison was always a sincere believer, but he had also that happy nature in which disgust is carried quickly and easily off through the safety-valve of a smile.

From Paris he went to Blois, the capital of Loir-and-Cher, a small town about 110 miles south-west of Paris. Here he had two advantages. He found the French language spoken in its perfection; and as he had not a single countryman with whom to exchange a word, he was driven on his own resources. He remained there a year, and spent his time well, studying hard, rising early, having the best French masters, mingling in society, although subject, as in previous and after parts of his life, to fits of absence. His life was as pure as it was simple, his most intimate friend at Blois, the Abbe Philippeaux, saying: "He had no amour whilst here that I know of, and I think I should have known it if he had had any." During this time he sent home letters to his friends in England—to Montague, Colonel Froude, Congreve, and others[1]—which contain sentences of exquisite humour. Thus, describing the famous gallery at Versailles, with the paintings of Louis' victories, he says: "The history of the present King till the sixteenth year of his reign is painted on the roof by Le Brun, so that his Majesty has actions enough by him to furnish another gallery much longer than the first. He is represented with all the terror and majesty that you can imagine in every part of the picture, and see his young face as perfectly drawn in the roof as his present one in the side. The painter has represented His Most Christian Majesty under the figure of Jupiter throwing thunderbolts all about the ceiling, and striking terror into the Danube and Rhine, that lie astonished and blasted with lightning a little above the cornice."

This is Addison all over; and quite as good is his picture of the general character of the French: "'Tis not in the power of want or slavery to make them miserable. There is nothing to be met with in the country but mirth and poverty. Every one sings, laughs, and starves. Their conversation is generally agreeable, for if they have any wit or sense, they are sure to shew it. Their women are perfect mistresses in the art of shewing themselves to the best advantage. They are always gay and sprightly, and set off the worst faces in Europe with the best airs. Every one knows how to give herself as charming a look and posture as Sir Godfrey Kneller could draw her in."

From Blois he returned to Paris, and was now better qualified, from his knowledge of the language, to mingle with its philosophers, savants, and poets. He had some interesting talk with Malebranche and Boileau, the former of whom "very much praised Mr. Newton's mathematics; shook his head at the name of Hobbes, and told me he thought him a pauvre esprit." Here follows a genuine Addisonianism: "His book is now reprinted with many additions, among which he shewed me a very pretty hypothesis of colours, which is different from that of Cartesius or Newton, though they may all three be true." Boileau, now sixty-four, deaf as a post, and full of the "sweltered venom" of ill-natured criticism, nevertheless received Addison kindly; and when presented by him with his "Musæ Anglicanæ," is said from that time to have conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry. Addison says that Boileau "hated an ill poet." Unfortunately, however, for his judgment, it is notorious that he slighted Shakspeare, Milton, and Corneille, and that, next to Homer and Virgil, his great idols were Arnaud and Racine.

In December 1700, tired of French manners, which had lost even their power of moving him to smiles, and it may be apprehensive of the war connected with the Spanish succession, which was about to inflame all Europe, Addison embarked from Marseilles for Italy. After a narrow escape from one of those sudden Mediterranean storms, in which poor Shelley perished, he landed at Savona, and proceeded, through wild mountain paths, to Genoa. He afterwards commemorated his deliverance in the pleasing lines published in the Spectator, beginning with—

"How are Thy servants blest, O Lord,"

one verse in which was wont to awaken the enthusiasm of the boy Burns,

"What though in dreadful whirls we hung,

High on the broken wave," &c.

The survivor of a shipwreck is, or should be, ever afterwards a sadder and a wiser man. And Addison continued long to feel subdued and thankful, and could hardly have been more so though he had outlived that shipwreck which bears now the relation to all recent wrecks which "the storm" of November 1703, as we shall see, bore to all inferior tempests—the loss of the Royal Charter—the stately and gold-laden bark, which, on Wednesday the 26th October 1859, when on the verge of the haven which the passengers so much desired to see, was lifted up by the blast as by the hand of God, and dashed into ten thousand pieces—hundreds of men, women, and, alas! alas! children, drowned, mutilated, crushed by falling machinery, and that, too, at a moment when they had just been assured that there was no immediate danger, and when hope was beginning to sparkle in the eyes that were sinking into despair—sovereigns, spray, and the mangled fragments of human bodies massed together as if in the anarchy of hell, and hurled upon the rocks. Addison, no more than one of the escaped from that saloon of horror and sea of death, could forget the special Providence by which he was saved; and the hymn above referred to, and that other still finer, commencing—

"When all Thy mercies, O my God!

My rising soul surveys,"

seem a pillar erected on the shore to Him that had protected and redeemed him.

From Genoa he went to Milan, and thence to Venice, where he saw a play on the subject of Cato enacted, and began himself to indite his celebrated tragedy, of which he completed four acts ere he quitted Italy. On his way to Rome, he visited the miniature mountain republic of San Marino, which he contemplated and described with much the same feeling of interest and amazement, as afterwards, in the Guardian, the little colony of ants immortalised there. Like Swift, (whom Macaulay accuses of stealing from Addison's Latin poem on the "Pigmies," some hints for his Lilliput,) Addison had a finer eye for the little than for the vast. He enjoyed Marino, therefore, and must have chuckled over the description of it in the geography, as much as if it had been a stroke of his own inventive pen. "Besides the mountain on which the town stands, the republic possesses two adjoining hills." At Rome he did not stay long at this time, but as if afraid of the attractions of the approaching Holy Week—that blaze of brilliant but false light in which so many moths have been consumed—he hurried to Naples and saw Vesuvius burning over its beautiful bay with less admiration than has been felt since by many inferior men. He returned to Rome and lived there unharmed during the sickly season; thence he went to Florence, surveying with interest the glories of its art; and in fine he crossed the Alps by Mount Cenis to Geneva, composing on his way a poetical epistle to Montague, now Lord Halifax. The Alps do not seem to have much delighted his imagination. There are a few even still who look upon mountains as excrescences and deformities, and give to Glencoe only the homage of their unaffected fears, which is certainly better than the false raptures of others. But, in Addison's day, admiration for wild scenery was neither pretended nor felt. Our poet loved, indeed, the great silent starry night, and has whispered and stammered out some beautiful things in its praise. But he does this, so to speak, below his breath, while the white Alps, seeming the shrouded corpses of the fallen Titans, take that breath away, and he shudders all the road through them, and descends delightedly to the green pastures and the still waters of lower regions.

At Geneva, where he arrived in December 1701, he remained some time, expecting from Lord Manchester the official appointment for which he was now qualified. But while waiting there, he heard the tidings of King William's death, which put an end to his hopes as well as to those of his party. His pension, too, was stopped, and he was obliged to become a tutor to a young Englishman of fortune. With him he visited many parts of Switzerland and Germany, and spent a portion of his leisure in writing, not only his "Travels," but his recondite "Dialogue on Medals,"—a book of considerable research and great ingenuity, which was not published, however, till after his death. From Germany he passed to Holland, where he heard the sad intelligence that his father was no more. During his stay in Holland, he watched with keen, yet kindly eye, the manners of the inhabitants; and in his letters hits at their drinking habits with a mixture of severity and sympathy which is very characteristic. Toward the close of 1703 he returned home, and, we doubt not, felt at first desolate enough. His father was dead, his pension withdrawn, his political patrons out of power, and his literary fame not yet fully established. But, on the other hand, he was only thirty-one; he had made some new and influential friends on the Continent, particularly the eminent Edward Wortley Montague, husband of the still more celebrated Mary Wortley Montague, and he had in his portfolio a volume of "Travels" of some mark and likelihood, nearly ready for the press. Besides, the Whigs, low as they were now in political influence, were still true to their party, and they welcomed Addison, as one of their rising hopes, into the famous "Kit-Cat Club," an omniumgaiherum of all whose talents, learning, accomplishments, wit, or wealth were thought useful to the Whig cause.

Addison's arrival in England seems to have synchronised or preceded the great tempest of November 1703, to which we have already referred, and to which he afterwards alludes in his simile of the Angel in "The Campaign"—

"Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past."

Our readers will find a sketch of this terrific tempest in the commencement of Ainsworth's "Jack Shepherd." Macaulay says of it, "It was the only tempest which, in our latitude, has equalled the rage of a tropical hurricane. No other tempest was ever in this country the occasion of a Parliamentary address, or of a national fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had been blown down; one prelate had been buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had presented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of families were thrown into mourning. The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the ruins of houses attested, in all the southern counties, the fury of the blast." How Addison felt or fared during this storm, we have no means of knowing. Perhaps his timid nature shrank from it in spite of its appeal to imagination, or perhaps the poetry that was in him triumphed over his fears, and as he felt what Zanga was afterwards to say—

"I love this rocking of the battlements,"

the image of the Angel, afterwards to be dilated into the vast form of Wrath, described in the "Campaign," rose on his vision, and remained there indelibly fixed till the time arrived when, used with artistic skill, it floated him into fame.

Meanwhile, he spent this winter and spring of 1703–4 in a rather precarious manner, and like a true poet. He was lodging in an obscure garret in the Haymarket, up three stairs, when one day the Right Honourable Henry Boyle, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, called on him and communicated a project that had been concocted between Godolphin and Halifax. The Whigs were now again in the ascendant, and the battle of Blenheim, fought on the 13th August 1704, had brought their triumph to a climax. Halifax and Godolphin were mortified at the bad poems in commemoration of it which poured from the press. Their feeling was sincerely that which Byron affected in reference to Wellington and Waterloo—

"I wish your bards would sing it rather better."

They bethought themselves of Addison, and sent Boyle to request him to write some verses on the subject. He readily undertook the task, and when he had half-finished the "Campaign," he shewed it to Godolphin, who was delighted, especially with the Angel, and in gratitude, instantly appointed the lucky poet to a commissionership worth about £200 a-year, and assured him that this was only a foretaste of greater favours to come. The poem soon after appeared. It was received with acclamation, and Addison felt that his fortune and his fame were both secured.

Yet, in truth, the "Campaign" is not a great poem, nor, properly speaking, if we except the Angel, a poem at all. It is simply a Gazette done into tolerable rhyme; and its chief inspiration comes from its zealous party-feeling. Marlborough, though a first-rate marshal, was not a great man, not by any means so great as Wellington, far less as Napoleon; and how can a heroic poem be written without a hero? Yet the poem fell in with the humour of the times, and was cried up as though it had been another book of the Iliad. Shortly afterwards he published his "Travels," which were thought rather cold and classical. To them succeeded the opera of "Rosamond," which, being ill-set to music, failed on the stage; but became, and is still, a favourite in the closet. It is in the lightest and easiest style of Dryden—that in which he wrote "Alexander's Feast," and some other of his lyrics—but is sustained for some fifteen hundred lines with an energy and a grace which we doubt if even Dryden could have equalled. Its verses not only move but dance. The spirit is genial and sunny, and above the mazy motions shines the light of genuine poetry. Johnson truly says, that if Addison had cultivated this style he would have excelled.

From the date of the "Campaign," Addison's life became an ascending scale of promotion. We find him first in Hanover with Lord Halifax, then appointed under-secretary to Sir Charles Hodges, and in a few months after to the Earl of Sunderland. In 1708 he was elected member for Malmesbury, and the next year he accompanied Thomas, Earl of Wharton, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to that country as his secretary, and became Keeper of the Records in Birmingham's Tower—a nominal office worth £300 a-year. His secretary's salary was £2000 per annum.

Previous to this he had resumed his intimacy with Steele, to whom he lent money, and on one occasion is said to have recovered it by sending a bailiff to his house. This has been called heartless conduct, but the probability is that Addison was provoked by the extravagant use made of the loan by his reckless friend. In Parliament it is well-known Addison never spoke; but he surrounded himself in private life with a parliament of his own, and, like Cato, gave his little senate laws. That senate consisted of Steele, Ambrose, Phillips; the wretched Eustace Budgell, who afterwards drowned himself; sometimes Swift and Pope; and ultimately Tickell, who became his most confidential friend and the depositor of his literary remains. In mixed societies he was silent; but with a few select spirits around him, and especially after the "good wine did the good office" of banishing his bashfulness and taciturnity, he became the most delightful and fascinating of conversers. The staple of his conversation was quiet, sly humour; but there was fine sentiment, touches of pathos, and now and then imagination peeped over like an Alp above meaner hills. Swift alone, we suspect, was his match; but his power lay rather in severe and pungent sarcasm, in broad, coarse, though unsmiling wit, and at times in the fierce and terrible sallies of misanthropic rage and despair. Addison, on leaving England, had, by his modesty, geniality, and amiable manners, become the most popular man in the country, so much so, that, says Swift, "he might be king an' he had a mind."

In Ireland—although he sat as member for Cavan, and appears in Parliament to have got beyond his famous "I conceive—I conceive—I conceive"—(having, as the wag observed, "conceived three times and brought forth nothing"), and spoken sometimes, if not often—he did not feel himself at home. He must have loathed the licentious and corrupt Wharton, and felt besides a longing for the society of London, the noctes coenoeque Deûm he had left behind him. It was in Ireland, however, that his real literary career began. Steele, in the spring of 1709, had commenced the Tatler, a thrice-a-week miscellany of foreign news, town gossip, short sharp papers de omnibus rebus et guibusdum aliis, with a sprinkling of moral and literary criticism. When Addison heard of this scheme, he readily lent his aid to it, and then, as honest Richard admits, "I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid—I was undone by my auxiliary." To the Tatler Addison contributed a number of papers, which, if slighter than his better ones in the Spectator, were nevertheless highly characteristic of his singular powers of observation, character-painting, humour, and invention.

In November 1709, he returned to England, and not long after he shared in the downfall of his party, and lost his secretaryship. This also is thought to have injured him in a tender point. He had already conceived an affection for the Countess-Dowager of Warwick, who had been disposed to encourage the addresses of the Secretary, but looked coldly on those of the mere man and scribbler Joseph Addison, who, to crown his misfortunes at this time, had resigned his Fellowship, suffered some severe pecuniary losses of a kind, and from a quarter which are both obscure, and was trembling lest he should be deprived of his small Irish office too. Yet, although reduced and well-nigh beggared, never did his mind approve itself more rich. Besides writing a great deal in the Tatler, he published a political journal, called the Whig Examiner, in which, although the wit, we think, is not so fine as in his Freeholder, there is a vigour and masculine energy which he has seldom equalled elsewhere. When it expired, Swift exulted over its death in terms which sufficiently proved that he was annoyed and oppressed by its life. "He might well," says Johnson, "rejoice at the death of that which he could not have killed."

On the 2d of January 1711, the last Tatler came forth; and on the 1st of the following March appeared the Spectator, which is now the main pillar of Addison's fame, and the fullest revelation of his exquisite genius. Without being as a whole a great, or in any part of it a profound work, there are few productions which, if lost, would be more missed in literature. One reclines on its pages as on pillows. The sweetness of the spirit—the trembling beauty of the sentences, like that of a twilight wave just touched by the west wind's balmy breath—the nice strokes of humour, so gentle, yet so overpowering—the feminine delicacy and refinement of the allusions—the art which so dexterously conceals itself—the mild enthusiasm for the works of man and God which glows in all its serious effusions—the good nature of its satire—the geniality of its criticism—the everlasting April of the style, so soft and vivid—the purity and healthiness of the moral tone—and the childlike religion which breathes in the Saturday papers—one or two of which, such as the "Vision of Mirza," are almost scriptural in spirit and beautiful simplicity—combine to throw a charm around the Spectator which works of far loftier pretensions, if they need not, certainly do not possess. Macaulay (whom we love for his love of Addison and Bunyan more than for aught else about his works) truly observes, that few writers have discovered so much variety and inventiveness as Addison, who, in the papers of a single week, sometimes traverses the whole gamut of literature, supplying keen sarcasm, rich portraiture of character, the epistle, the tale, the allegory, the apologue, the moral essay, and the religious meditation—all first-rate in quality, and all suggesting the idea that his resources are boundless, and that the half has not been told. His criticisms have been ridiculed as shallow; but while his lucubrations on Milton were useful in their day as plain finger-posts, quietly pointing up to the stupendous sublimities of the theme, his essays on Wit are subtle, and his papers on the "Pleasures of Imagination" throw on the beautiful topic a light like that of a red evening west, giving and receiving glory from the autumnal landscape.

In the end of 1712 the Spectator, which had circulated at one time to the extent of 4000 copies a-day, was discontinued, and in a few weeks the Guardian supplied its place. It was two months ere Addison began to write, and during that time it was flippantly dull; but when he appeared its character changed, and his contributions to the new periodical were quite as good as the best of his Spectators.

In April 1713 his "Cato" was acted with immense success, and in circumstances so well known that they need not be detailed at length. Pope wrote the prologue; Booth enacted the hero; Steele packed the house; peers, both Tory and Whig, crowded the boxes; claps of applause were echoed back from High Churchmen to the members of the "Kit-Cat Club;" Bolingbroke sent fifty guineas, during the progress of the play, to Booth for defending the cause of liberty against a perpetual dictator, (Marlborough;) and with the exception of growling Dennis, everybody was in raptures. The play has long found its level. It has passages of power and thoughts of beauty, but it has one radical fault—formality. Mandeville described Addison as a parson in a tie-wig. "Cato" is a parson without the tie-wig; an intolerable mixture of the patriot and the pedant. Few would now give one of the Spectator's little papers about Sir Roger de Coverley for a century of Catos.

In September 1713 the Guardian stopped; but in June 1714 Addison, now separated from Steele, who was carrying on a political paper called the Englishman, added an eighth volume to the Spectator. Its contents are more uniformly serious than those of the first seven volumes, and it contains, besides Addison's matchless papers, some only inferior to these, especially four by Mr. Grove, a dissenting minister in Taunton. It is recorded in "Boswell" that Baretti having, on the Continent, met with Grove's paper on "Novelty," it quickened his curiosity to visit Britain, for he thought, if such were the lighter periodical essays of our authors, their productions on more weighty occasions must be wonderful indeed!

When George I. succeeded to the throne, Addison's fortunes began to improve. A Council having been appointed to manage matters till the King arrived, Addison was chosen their secretary; and afterwards he went over again to Ireland in his old capacity, Sunderland being now Lord-Lieutenant. Here, much as he differed from Swift in politics, he resumed his intimacy with him—an intimacy, considering the dispositions of the two men, singular, as though a lamb and a flayed bear were to form an alliance. In 1715 our poet returned to England, and obtained a seat at the Board of Trade. Early in the year he brought out, anonymously, on the stage his comedy of the "Drummer," which was coldly received. And towards the close of it, he commenced a very clever periodical called the Freeholder. We only met with this series a few years ago, but can assure our readers that some of the most delectable bits of Addison are to be found in it. There is a Tory fox-hunter yet riding along there, whom we would advise you to join if you would enjoy one of the richest treats of humour; and there is a Jacobite army still on its way to Preston, the only danger connected with approaching which, is lest you be killed with laughter.

Shortly after occurred his famous quarrel with Pope, to which we have already referred in our life of that poet, and do not intend to recur. Next year Addison's long courtship came to a successful close. He wedded the Dowager Warwick, went to reside at Holland-house, and became miserable for life. She was a proud, imperious woman, who, instead of seeking to wean Addison from his convivial habits, (if such habits in any excessive measure were his,) drove him deeper into the slough by her bitter words and haughty carriage. The tavern, which had formerly been his occasional resort, became now his nightly refuge. In 1717 he received his highest civil honour, being made Secretary of State under Lord Sunderland; but, as usual, the slave soon appeared in the chariot. His health began to break down, and asthma soon obliged him to resign his office, on receiving a retiring pension of £1500 a-year. Next Steele and he, having taken opposite sides in politics, got engaged in a paper war—Steele in the Plebeian, and Addison in the Old Whig; and personalities of a disagreeable kind passed between the two friends. In the meantime Addison was dying fast. Dropsy had supervened on asthma, and the help of physicians was vain. He prepared himself, like a man and a Christian, to meet the last stern foe. He sent for Gay and asked his forgiveness for some act of unkindness he had done him. Gay granted it, although utterly ignorant of what the offence had been. He had probably, on account of his Toryism, been deprived, through Addison's means, of some preferment. He entrusted his works to the care of Tickell, and dedicated them to Craggs, his successor in the secretaryship, in a touching and beautiful letter, written a few days before his death. He called, it is said, the young Earl of Warwick, his wife's son, a very dissipated young man, and of unsettled religious principles, to his bedside, and said, "I have sent for you that you may see how a Christian can die." He breathed his last on the 17th June 1709, forty-seven years old, and leaving one child, a daughter, who died, at an advanced age, at Bilton, Warwickshire, in 1797. His funeral took place, at dead of night, in Westminster Abbey, Bishop Atterbury meeting the procession and reading the service by torch-light. He was laid beside his friend Montague, and in a few months his successor, Craggs, was laid beside him. Nearly a century elapsed ere the present monument was erected over his dust. Tickell wrote a fine poem to his memory; and a splendid edition of his works was published by subscription in 1721.

Addison was cut off in the prime of life, and interrupted in some literary undertakings and projects of great pith and moment. He had written a portion of a treatise on the "Evidences of Christianity," and was meditating some works, such as a "Metrical Version of the Psalms" and a tragedy on the history of Socrates, still more suitable to his cast of mind.

We have already indicated our opinion alike of Addison's character and genius, but must be permitted a few closing remarks. Both partook of the feminine type. He was an amiable and highly gifted, rather than a strong or great man. His shrinking timidity of temperament, his singular modesty of manners, his quiet, sly power of humorous yet kindly observation, his minute style of criticism, even the peculiar cast of his piety, all served to stamp the lady-man. In taciturnity alone he bore the sex no resemblance. And hence it is that Campbell in poetry, and Addison in prose, are, or were, the great favourites of female readers. He had many weaknesses, but, as in the character of woman, they appeared beautiful, and cognate to his gentle nature. His fear of giving offence was one of the most prominent of these. In his writings and in his life, he seems always treading on thin ice. Pope said truly of him—

"He hints a fault, and hesitates dislike."

But this was not owing to malice, but to the bashful good nature which distinguished him. It is true, too, that he hints a beauty, and hesitates in his expressions of love. He says himself the finest things, and then blushes as if detected in a crime; or he praises an obvious and colossal merit in another, and then starts at the sound himself had made. His encomiums resemble the evening talk of lovers, being low, sweet, and trembling. Were we to speak of Addison phrenologically, we should say that, next to veneration, wit, and ideality, his principal faculties were caution and secretiveness. He was cautious to the brink of cowardice. We fancy him in a considerable fright in the storm on the Ligurian Gulf, amidst the exhalations of the unhealthy Campagna, and while the avalanches of the Alps—"the thunderbolts of snow"—were falling around him. We know that he walked about behind the scenes perspiring with agitation while the fate of "Cato" was still undecided. Had it failed, Addison never could, as Dr. Johnson, when asked how he felt after "Irene" was damned, have replied, "Like the Monument." We know, too, that he sought to soothe the fury and stroke down the angry bristles of John Dennis. To call the author of the "Campaign" a coward were going too far; but he felt, we believe, more of a martial glow while writing it in his Haymarket garret than had he mingled in the fray. And as to his secretiveness, his still, deep, scarce-rippling stream of humour, his habit, commemorated by Swift, when he found any man invincibly wrong, of flattering his opinions by acquiescence, and sinking him yet deeper in absurdity; even the fact that no word is found more frequently in his writings than "secret" ("secret joy," "secret satisfaction," "secret solace," are phrases constantly occurring,) prove that, whatever else he had possessed of the female character, the title of the play, "A Wonder—a Woman keeps a Secret," had been no paradox in reference to him.

Having his lips in general barred by the double bolts of caution and secretiveness, one ceases to wonder that the "invisible spirit of wine" was welcomed by him as a key to open occasionally the rich treasures of his mind; but that he was a habitual drunkard is one calumny; that he wrote his best Spectators when too much excited with wine is another; and that he "died drunk" is a third—and the most atrocious of all, propagated though it has been by Walpole and Byron. His habits, however, were undoubtedly too careless and convivial; and there used to be a floating tradition in Holland-house, that, when meditating his writings there, he was wont to walk along a gallery, at each end of which stood a separate bottle, out of both of which he never failed, en passant, to sip! This, after all, however, may be only a mythical fable.

While, as an author, the favourite of ladies, of the young, and of catholic-minded critics generally, Addison has had, and has still, severe and able detractors, who are wont to speak of him in such a manner as this:—"He is a highly cultivated artist, but not one thought of any vivid novelty did he put out in all his many books. You become placid reading him, but think of Ossian and Shakspeare, and be silent. He is a lapidary polishing pebbles—a pretty art, but not vested with the glories of sculpture, nor the mathematical magnitude of architecture. He does not walk a demigod, but a stiff Anglicised imitator of French paces. He is a symmetrical, but a small invisible personage at rapier practice." Now, clever as this is, it only proves that Addison is not a Shakspeare or Milton. He does not pretend to be either. He is no demigod, but he is a man, a lady-man if you will, but the lovelier on that account. Besides, he was cut off in his prime, and when he might have girt himself up to achieve greater things than he has done. And although the French taste of his age somewhat affected and chilled his genius, yet he knew of other models than Racine and Boileau. He drank of "Siloa's brook." He admired and imitated the poetry of the Bible. He loves not, indeed, its wilder and higher strains; he gets giddy on the top of Lebanon; the Valley of Dry Bones he treads with timid steps; and his look up to the "Terrible Crystal" is more of fright than of exultation. But the lovelier, softer, simpler, and more pensive parts of the Bible are very dear to the gentle Spectator, and are finely, if faintly, reproduced in his writings. Indeed, the principle which would derogate from Addison's works, would lead to the depreciation of portions of the Scriptures too. "Ruth" is not so grand as the "Revelation;" the "Song of Solomon" is not so sublime as the "Song of Songs, which is Isaiah's;" and the story of Joseph has not the mystic grandeur or rushing fire of Ezekiel's prophecy. But there they are in the same Book of God, and are even dearer to many hearts than the loftier portions; and so with Addison's papers beside the works of Bacon, Milton, and Coleridge.

His poetry is now in our readers' hands, and should be read with a candid spirit. They will admire the elegance and gracefully-used learning of the "Epistle to Halifax." They will not be astonished at the "Campaign," but they will regard it with interest as the lever which first lifted Addison into his true place in society and letters. They will find much to please them in his verses to Dryden, Somers, King William, and his odes on St. Cecilia's Day; and they will pause with peculiar fondness over those delightful hymns, some of which they have sung or repeated from infancy, which they will find again able to "beat the heavenward flame," and start the tender and pious tear, and which are of themselves sufficient to rank Addison high on the list of Christian poets.

[Footnote 1: Among these "others" was Abraham Stanyan, plenipotentiary extraordinary at Neufchatel at the settlement of the rival claims of the Duke of Brandenberg, Holland, and France, to that principality. He was afterwards ambassador to France. He married a daughter of Dr. Pritchett, Bishop of Gloucester. It is said, that, having on one occasion borrowed a sum of money from Addison, the latter observed him to be very subservient, agreeing with every opinion Mr. A. expressed, till Addison, provoked, and guessing the cause, said, "Stanyan, either contradict me, or pay me my money." Our friend, Mr. J. Stanyan Bigg, author of the very brilliant poem, "Night and the Soul," is a descendant of Abraham Stanyan.]