annum, and during his retirement, engaged himself in writing a work on the Evidences of the Christian Religion,' which he did not live to complete. He was oppressed by asthma and dropsy, and was conscious that he should die at comparatively an early age. Two anecdotes are related of his death-bed. He sent, as Pope relates (but Pope is a very bad authority for any circumstance reflecting upon Addison, or indeed for any question of fact), a message by the Earl of Warwick to Gay, desiring to see him. Gay obeyed the summons; and Addison begged his forgiveness for an injury he had done him, for which, he said, he would recompense him if he recovered. The nature or extent of the injury he did not explain, but Gay supposed it referred to his having prevented some preferment designed for him by the court. At another time, he requested an interview with the Earl of Warwick, whom he was anxious to reclaim from a dissipated and licentious life. I have sent for you,' he said, that you may see in what peace a Christian can die.' The event thus calmly anticipated took place in Holland House on the 17th June, 1719. A minute or critical review of the daily life of Addison, and his intercourse with his literary associates, is calculated to diminish our reverence and affection. He appears to have been jealous and taciturn, until thawed by wine; and the fact of his putting an execution into Steele's house to recover a sum of money he had lent him-a fact which seems to rest on good authority-forms a disagreeable incident in his life. Though reserved in general society, his conversation was peculiarly fascinating among his friends, and he was highly popular with the public. With Swift he maintained throughout life, notwithstanding their political differences, a warm and cordial friendship. The quarrel between Addison and Pope is well known. Addison preferred Tickell's version of the first book of the 'Iliad,' and sought to make the fortune of the translator. Pope resented this as a personal injury, and wrote his memorable satire on Atticus, in which some truth is mingled with bitterness and malig nity. The charge that Addison could bear no rival near the throne' seems to have had some foundation in fact, but as respects Pope's insinuations against his illustrious contemporary, recent investigations have considerably shaken that poet's character for veracity. With all deductions from the idolatry of friends and the servility of flatterers, enough remains to establish Addison's title to the character of a good man and a sincere Christian. The uniform tendency of all his writings is his best and highest eulogium. No man can dissemble upon paper through years of literary exertion, or on topics calculated to disclose the nature of his tastes and feelings, and the qualities of his heart and temper. The display of these by Addison is so fascinating and unaffected, that the impression made by his writings, as has been finely remarked, is like being recalled to a sense of something like that original purity from which man has been long estranged.' 6 A 'Life of Addison,' in two volumes, by Lucy Aiken, published in 1813, contains several letters supplied by a descendant of Tickell. The most interesting of the letters were written by Addison during his early travels; and though brief, and careless, contain touchies of his inimitable pen. He thus records his impressions of France: The French People in 1699. Truly, by what I have yet seen, they are the happiest nation in the world. "Tis not in the power of want or slavery to make 'em 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. They never mend upon a second meeting, but use all the freedom and familiarity at first sight that a long intimacy or abundance of wine can scarce draw from an Englishman. Their women are perfect mistresses in this 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. I have already seen, as I informed you in my last, all the king's palaces, and have now seen a great part of the country; I never thought there had been in the world such an excessive magnificence or poverty as I have met with in both together. One can scarce conceive the pomp that appears in everything about the king; but at the same time it makes half his subjects go barefoot. The people are, however, the happiest in the world, and enjoy, from the benefit of their climate and natural constitution, such a perpetual mirth and easiness of temper, as even liberty and plenty cannot bestow on those of other nations. Devotion and loyalty are everywhere at their greatest height, but learning seems to run very low, especially in the younger people; for all the rising geniuses have turned their ambition another way, and endeavoured to make their fortunes in the army. The belles-lettres in particular seem to be but short-lived in Franee. In acknowledging a present of a snuff-box, we see traces of the easy wit and playfulness of the 'Spectator' 'About three days ago, Mr. Bocher put a very pretty snuff-box in my hand. I was not a little pleased to hear that it belonged to myself, and was much more so when I found it was a present from a gentleman that I have so great an honour for. You do not probably foresee that it would draw on you the trouble of a letter, but you must blame yourself for it. For my part, I can no more accept of a snuff-box without returning my acknowledgements, than I can take snuff without sneezing after it. This last, I must own to you, is so great an absurdity, that I should be ashamed to confess it, were not I in hopes of correcting it very speedily. I am observed to have my box oftener in my hand than those that have been used to one these twenty years, for I can't forbear taking it out of my pocket whenever I think of Mr. Dashwood. You know Mr. Beyes recommends snuff as a great provocative to wit, but you may produce this letter as a standing evidence against him. I have, since the beginning of it, taken above a dozen pinches, and still find myself much more inclined to sneeze than to jest. From whence I conclude, that wit and tobacco are not inseparable; or, to make a pun of it, though a man may be master of a snuff-box, Non cuicunque datum est habere Nasam. I should be afraid of being thought a pedant for my quotation, did not I know that the gentleman I am writing to always carries a Horace in his pocket.' The same taste which led Addison, as we have seen, to censure as fulsome the wild and gorgeous genius of Spenser, made him look with indifference, if not aversion, on the splendid scenery of the Alps. 'I am just arrived at Geneva,' he says, 'by a very troublesome journey over the Alps, where I have been for some days together shivering among the eternal snows. My head is still giddy with mountains and precipices, and you can't imagine how much I am pleased with the sight of a plain, that is as agreeable to me at present as a shore was about a year ago, after our tempest at Genoa.' The matured powers of Addison shew less of this tame prosaic feeling. The higher of his essays, and his criticism on the 'Paradise Lost,' evince no insensibility to the nobler beauties of creation, or the sublime effusions of genius. His conceptions were enlarged, and his mind expanded by that literary study and reflection from which his political ambition never divorced him, even in the busiest and most engrossing period of his life. From the 'Letter from Italy.' For wheresoe'er I turn my ravished eyes, See how the golden groves around me smile, How has kind heaven adorned the happy land, Her blooming mountains, and her sunny shores, The redd'ning orange, and the swelling grain: 1 Malone states that this was the first time the phrase classic ground, since so common was ever used. It was ridiculed by some contemporaries as very quaint and affected. Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines, O Liberty, thou goddess heavenly bright, In ten degrees of more indulgent skies; Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine, Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine: "Tis liberty that crowns Britannia's isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile. Confusion dwelt cn every face,. Yet then from all my griefs, O Lord! Thy mercy set me free; Whilst in the confidence of prayer My soul took hold on thee. * For though in dreadful whirls we hung The storm was laid, the winds retired, The sea that soared at thy command, In midst of dangers, fears, and death, I'll praise thee for for thy mercies past, My life, if thou preserv'st my life, When waves on waves, and gulfs on gulfs, And death, if death must be my doom, The earliest composition that I recollect taking any pleasure in was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning. How are thy servants blest. O Lord!" particularly remember one half-stanza, which was music to my boyish ear: For though in dreadful whirls we hung BURNS-Letter to Dr. Moore. The spacious firmament on high, Soon as the evening shades prevail, Ode. While all the stars that round her burn, What though, in solemn silence, all The Battle of Blenheim.-From 'The Campaign.' But now the trumpet terrible from far, The daring prince his b.asted hopes renews, The fatal day its mighty course began, Behold, in awful march and dread array Yet do their beating breasts demand the strife, A fine passage in Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (Part II. sec. 9) resembles this, and probably suggested it: There is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres: for those wellordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony, Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For myself, not only from my obedience but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatrres of God-such a melody to the ear as the whole world. well understood. would ord the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectuY sounds in the ears of God. |