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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 did n't praise, because he measured his compeers by a higher standard than common people have.1 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. Every

1 "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 Anecdotes.

body had his majesty's cheap portrait, on a box surrounded with diamonds worth twopence apiece. 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, 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.1 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.2

Addison's father was a clergyman of good repute in Wiltshire, and rose in the church. His famous son never lost his clerical training and scholastic gravity,

1 "Milton's chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence, lies in the sublimity of his thoughts. There are others of the moderns, 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 only excepted. It is impossible for the imagination of man to distend 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. Beside his services to Milton, we may place those he did to Sacred Music.

2 "Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards."- POPE. Spence's Anecdotes.

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"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.

3 Lancelot Addison, his father, was the son of another Lancelot Addison, a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield and Archdeacon of Coventry.

and was called "a parson in a tye-wig' "1 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 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

1 "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 stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as between two and three in the height of summer, and lie abed till between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative whilst here, and often thoughtful: sometimes so lost in thought, that I have come into his room and stayed 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 that I know of; and I think I should have known it if he had had any."— ABBÉ PHILIPPEAUX OF BLOIS. Spence's Anecdotes.

Italy.1 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,2 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 it 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.3 He could scarcely ever

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1 "His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound." - MACAULAY.

2 "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.

3 "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.

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 sat rapt 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,1 of Ham

1 "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 y 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 Methuselah, 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

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