Ymar 1874 THE WORKS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOSEPH ADDISON. WITH NOTES BY RICHARD HURD, D. D. LORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER. A New Edition, WITH LARGE ADDITIONS, CHIEFLY UNPUBLISHED, IN SIX VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. MDCCCLVI. Moore BISHOP Hurd's edition of Addison, which has always ranked as the best, having become a scarce and expensive book, the publisher considered he should render an acceptable service to his subscribers in reproducing it in a popular form. He accordingly undertook a verbatim reprint of it in four volumes. But, after having made considerable progress, he found accidentally that so large a number of Addison's letters remained unpublished, that it seemed desirable to extend his original plan, for the purpose of including them. Bishop Hurd had not given any of Addison's letters, evidently not aware that any of an authentic character existed; neither had his precursor, Tickell, upon whom the duty, as Addison's literary executor, devolved, and who appears to have been in possession of original drafts, which could have been placed in his hands for no other purpose. Miss Aikin, in her Memoir, had so far remedied this omission, from materials which had come into the possession of a descendant of Mr. Tickell, and from other sources, that any further publication or research had at first seemed supererogatory; but the discovery of some unpublished papers which, though they lay in her path, had escaped her, followed up by inquiry and research, led to a very different conclusion. The publisher therefore set himself energetically to work, and, by the help of literary friends and his own appliances, has succeeded in obtaining such an amount of unpublished letters (including the originals of some of those hitherto printed from drafts) as must surprise the literary public; especially when it is borne in mind that most of them have been lying dormant, in accessible places, for considerably more than a century. His success in bringing to light so many letters led him to examine whether all the known works of Addison had been included in the collected editions, and he then found that many interesting and well-authenticated pieces had uniformly been omitted. The necessity of including these led to a still further extension of his plan; and instead of four, as was first intended, then five, his edition of the Works now forms six volumes. All that has been published heretofore as Addison's in Hurd's edition of his Works, which is the most complete, is comprised in the first four volumes of the present and the early pages of the fifth. The remainder, nearly one-third of the whole, is additional, for the most part transcribed from manuscripts in public depositories and private collections, or gleaned from rare or ephemeral volumes. Of the numerous manuscripts now first published nearly all are either holograph or autograph; and nothing has been admitted without sufficient evidence of its authenticity. There are in all nearly 250 letters, of which only those marked in the List of Contents with an asterisk have been published by Miss Aikin. Besides these the publisher has since met with many more, all however so drily official, like those enumerated at p. 527-8, that he has not thought them worth printing; but, as the dates may be convenient, an analysis of them is given on a starred page, to follow 528. Among so many remarkable letters and papers, it is difficult to point out the most interesting, but the following seem in particular to deserve enumeration: Addison's letters to the Earl of Halifax, p. 423-429; the various letters concerning the Royal Disputes, p. 506–522; the original form of Addison's celebrated Letter from Italy,' p. 537-542; the official documents and memorials relating to Addison's public appointments and salaries, p. 632-645; and the Reports on Public Affairs, p. 646-672, especially the feeling paragraph respecting the Duke of Ormond at p. 671. The dates of Addison's letters, and of many others of the period, are a generally acknowledged source of perplexity. As the civil or legal year formerly began on the 25th of March (the Annunciation), the first three months of our present year were then counted as the last three of the old, and conventionally written thus: January 1, 1699-1700, or March 24, 1717-18. The historical year commenced, as at present, on the 1st of January (the Circumcision), and was written with only one set of figures; but as it frequently happened that the civil year was written carelessly without the second date, a doubt would arise as to the exact year intended; so that any month from January to March, 1717, might mean 1718. From April to December no such uncertainty arises, as both modes of denoting these months were uniform; but there would still exist considerable uncertainty as to the day, of which there were two modes of reckoning, the old style and the new. The former was generally adhered to by the Protestants, the latter (introduced by Pope Gregory XIII.) was universally adopted by the Catholics. Sometimes O. S. or N. S. would be adjoined to the dates, but this was much oftener omitted. Before 1700, the difference between the styles was 10 days, and in the next century 11 days. Thus the battle of Blenheim, which Haydn (quoting by some mistake Hume as his authority) places at August 2nd, 1704, is placed by Smollett, Cox, Heeren, and other historians, and by Marlborough himself, (writing from a Catholic country,) at August 13th. In collecting for the |