MISCELLANIES AND GLEANINGS.
The following Poems, although not included among Addison's Work: by either Tickell or Hurd, are admitted by Anderson, (Brit. Poets, vol. vii.,) Chalmers, (Brit. Poets, vol. ix.,) and other equally respectable authorities; they are therefore appended here.
WHERE gentle Thames through stately channels glides, And England's proud metropolis divides,
A lofty fabric does the sight invade,
And stretches o'er the waves a pompous shade;
Whence sudden shouts the neighbourhood surprise,
And thundering claps and dreadful hissings rise.
Here thrifty R- 2 hires monarchs by the day,
And keeps his mercenary kings in pay;
With deep-mouthed actors fills the vacant scenes,
And rakes the stews for goddesses and queens.
Here the lewd punk, with crowns and sceptres graced,
Teaches her eyes a more majestic cast;
And hungry monarchs, with a numerous train
And suppliant slaves, like Sancho, starve and reign.
But enter in, my Muse; the stage survey,
And all its pomp and pageantry display;
Chalmers gives as his authority Sedley's Miscellanies, 8vo, p. 202 It is also found in Park's Supplement to the British Poets, vol. i p. 1.
Trap-doors, and pit-falls, form the unfaithful ground,
And magic walls encompass it around:
On either side maimed temples fill our eyes,
And intermixed with brothel-houses rise;
Disjointed palaces in order stand,
And groves, obedient to the mover's hand,
O'ershade the stage, and flourish at command.
A stamp makes broken towns and trees entire
So, when Amphion struck the vocal lyre,
He saw the spacious circuit all around
With crowding woods and rising cities crowned.
But next the tiring room survey, and see
False titles, and promiscuous quality,
Confusedly swarm, from heroes and from queens
To those that swing in clouds and fill machines.
Their various characters they choose with art:
The frowning bully fits the tyrant's part;
Swoln cheeks and swaggering belly make an host;
Pale, meagre looks and hollow voice, a ghost;
From careful brows and heavy, downcast eyes,
Dull cits and thick-skulled aldermen arise;
The comic tone, inspired by Congreve, draws
At every word loud laughter and applause;
The whining dame continues as before,
Her character unchanged, and acts a whore.
Above the rest, the prince with haughty stalks
Magnificent in purple buskins walks;
The royal robes his awful shoulders grace,
Profuse of spangles and of copper-lace;
Officious rascals to his mighty thigh,
Guiltless of blood, the unpointed weapon tie;
Then the gay, glittering diadem put on,
Ponderous with brass, and starred with Bristol stone. His royal consort next consults her glass,
And out of twenty boxes culls a face;
The whitening first her ghastly look besmears,
All pale and wan the unfinished form appears,
Till on her cheeks the blushing purple glows,
And a false virgin-modesty bestows;
Her ruddy lips the deep vermilion dies;
Length to her brows the pencil's care supplies,
And with black bending arches shades her eyes:
Well pleased at length, the picture she beholds,
And spots it o'er with artificial molds;
Her countenance complete, the beaux she warms
With looks not hers, and, spite of nature, charms.
Thus artfully their persons they disguise,
Till the last flourish bids the curtain rise.
The prince then enters on the stage in state
Behind, a guard of candle-snuffers wait:
There, swoln with empire, terrible and fierce,
He shakes the dome, and tears his lungs with verse:
His subjects tremble; the submissive pit,
Wrapt up in silence and attention, sit:
Till, freed at length, he lays aside the weight
Of public business and affairs of state;
Forgets his pomp, dead to ambition's fires,
And to some peaceful brandy-shop retires;
Where, in full gills, his anxious thoughts he drowns,
And quaffs away the care that waits on crowns.
The princess next her painted charms displays,
Where every look the pencil's art betrays;
The callow 'squire at distance feeds his eyes,
And silently for paint and washes dies.
But if the youth behind the scenes retreat,
He sees the blended colours melt with heat,
And all the trickling beauty run in sweat.
The borrowed visage he admires no more,
And nauseates every charm he loved before :
So the famed spear, for double force renowned,
Applied the remedy that gave the wound.
In tedious lists 'twere endless to engage,
And draw at length the rabble of the stage;
Where one for twenty years has given alarms,
And called contending monarchs to their arms;
Another fills a more important post,
And rises, every other night, a ghost;
Through the cleft stage his mealy face he rears,
Then stalks along, groans thrice, and disappears;
Others, with swords and shields, the soldier's pride,
More than a thousand times have changed their side,
And in a thousand fatal battles died.
Thus several persons several parts perform;
Soft lovers whine, and blustering heroes storm:
The stern, exasperated tyrants rage,
Till the kind bowl of poison clears the stage.
Then honours vanish, and distinctions cease,
Then, with reluctance, haughty queens undress;
Heroes no more their fading laurels boast,
And mighty kings in private men are lost.
He whom such titles swelled, such power
made proud,
To whom whole realms and vanquished nations bowed,
Throws off the gaudy plume, the purple train,
And in his own vile tatters stinks again.
EPILOGUE BY MR. ADDISON.'
Spoken by Mr. Wilks, on the King's Birth-day, (May 28, 1715,) at the house
of Sir Richard Steele, who gave a splendid entertainment on that occasion.
THE sage whose guests you are to-night is known
To watch the public weal, though not his own:
Still have his thoughts uncommon schemes pursued,
And teemed with projects for his country's good.
Early in youth his enemies have shown
How narrowly he missed the chemic stone:2
Not Friar Bacon promised England more;
Our artist, lavish of his fancied ore,
Could he have brought his great design to pass,
Had walled us round with gold instead of brass.
That project sunk, you saw him entertain
A notion more chimerical and vain :
To give chaste morals3 to ungoverned youth,
To gamesters honesty, to statesmen truth;
To make them virtuous all;-a thought more bold,
Than that of changing dross and lead to gold.
Of late with more heroic warmth inspired,
For still his country's good our champion fired;
In treaties versed, in politics grown wise,
He looked on Dunkirk with suspicious eyes;
'Dr. Drake attributed this Epilogue to Steele himself, and has been followed by subsequent writers, but it was certainly written by Addison. Quart. Rev. cxcii. p. 566.
2 It is well known that Steele once entertained hopes of being success. ful in the pursuit of the philosopher's stone; his laboratory was at Poplar, and is now converted into a garden-house.
3 Tatler, Spectator, Guardian.
The Importance of Dunkirk considered. In his "Letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridge, 1713."
Into its dark foundations boldly dug,
And overthrew in fight the Lord Sieur Tugghe.'
But now to nobler thoughts his view extends,
Which I may tell, since none are here but friends.
In a few months, he is not without hope
(But 'tis a secret) to convert the Pope:2
Of this, however, we 'll inform you better,
Soon as his Holiness receives his letter.3
Meanwhile he celebrates (for 'tis his way)
With something singular this happy day,
His honest zeal ambitious to approve
For the great monarch he was born to love;
Resolved in arms and art to do him right,
And serve his sovereign like a trusty knight.
TO SMITH'S PHÆDRA AND HIPPOLITUS.
LONG has a list of heroes filled the stage,
That rant by note, and through the gamut rage;
In songs and airs express their martial fire,
Combat in trills, and in a fugue expire:
While, lulled by sound, and undisturbed by wit,
Calm and serene you indolently sit.
And, from the dull fatigue of thinking free,
Hear the facetious fiddle's repartee:
Our homespun authors must forsake the field,
And Shakspeare to the soft Scarletti yield.
'The Sieur Tugghe, the deputy of the magistrates of Dunkirk, had delivered a memorial to the Queen; to which Mr. Steele's pamphlet was intended as an answer. The whole was ridiculed by Dr. Swift in "The Importance of the Guardian considered."
His humorous dedication to the Pope, prefixed to "The Ecclesiastical History of late Years, 1715," which has by many been ascribed to Bp. Hoadly. Swift alludes to this when he says,
"Thus Steele, who owned what others writ,
And flourished by imputed wit."
It is also ascribed to the Bishop by his son, Mr. Chancellor Hoadly.
• The dedication to "An Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Religion throughout the World." Vide Town Talk, No. 4, p. 55, Nichol's edition.
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