TALK XXXIX.

ON JOSEPH ADDISON'S ESSAYS.

THERE are so many noble pieces of writing among Addison's Essays that one hesitates in choosing an extract. I advise every one to keep a volume of The Spectator at hand, and cull for herself. In the meantime, I will give some short extracts which show in brief the variety of his humor, and how easily he passes from grave to gay, from lively to severe.

The first is from

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

Going yesterday to dine with an old acquaintance, I had the misfortune to find his whole family very much dejected. Upon asking him the occasion of it, he told me that his wife had dreamt a strange dream the night before, which they were afraid portended some misfortune to themselves or to their children. At her coming into the room, I observed a settled melancholy in her countenance, which I should have been troubled for had I not heard from whence it proceeded. We were no sooner sat down, but after having looked upon me a little while, 'My dear,' says she, turning to her husband, 'you may now see the stranger that was in the candle last night.' Soon after this, as they began to talk of family affairs, a little boy at the lower end of the table told her that he was to go into join-hand on Thursday. 'Thursday!' says she. No, child, if it please God, you shall not begin upon Childermas day; tell your writing-master that Friday will be soon enough.' I was reflecting with myself upon the oddness of her fancy, and wondering that anybody could establish it as a rule, to lose a day in every week. In the midst of these my musings, she desired me to reach her a little salt upon the point of my knife, which I did in such a trepidation and hurry of obedience that I let it drop by the way; at which she immediately started, and

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said it fell towards her. Upon this I looked very blank, and observing the concern of the whole table, began to consider myself, with some confusion, as a person that had brought a disaster upon the family. The lady, however, recovering herself after a little space, said to her husband, with a sigh, 'My dear, misfortunes never come single.' My friend, I found, acted but an under part at his table, and being a man of more good-nature than understanding, thinks himself obliged to fall in with all the humors and passions of his yoke-fellow. Do you not remember, child?' says she, 'that the pigeon-house fell the very afternoon that our careless wench spilt the salt upon the table?' 'Yes,' says he, ‘my dear, and the next port brought us an account of the battle of Almanza. The readers may guess at the figure I made after having done all this mischief. I dispatched my dinner as soon as I could with my usual taciturnity, when, to my utter confusion, the lady seeing me quitting my knife and fork, and laying them across one another on my plate, desired me that I would humor her so far as to take them out of that figure and place them side by side. What the absurdity was which I had committed I did not know, but I suppose there was some traditionary superstition in it, and therefore, in obedience to the lady of the house, I disposed of my knife and fork in two parallel lines, which is the figure I shall always lay them for the future, though I do not know any reason for it.

"It is not difficult for a man to see that a person has conceived an aversion to him. For my own part I quickly found, by the lady's looks, that she regarded me as a very odd kind of a fellow, with an unfortunate aspect. For which reason I took my leave immediately after dinner, and withdrew to my old lodgings. Upon my return home, I fell into a profound contemplation on the evils that attend these superstitious follies of mankind; how they subject us to imaginary afflictions, and additional sorrows that do not properly come with our lot. As if the natural calamities of life were not enough for it, we turn the most indifferent circumstances into misfortune, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as from real evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night's rest, and have seen a man in love grow pale and lose his appetite on the plucking of a merry-thought. A screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket has struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to the imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics. A rusty nail or a crooked pin shoot up into prodigies."

*Battle with Spain in 1707.

The following essay from Addison gives a humorous description of Clubs, which in Queen Anne's time sprang up in such numbers and with such a variety of objects:

ACCOUNTS OF VARIOUS CLUBS.

"Man is said to be a sociable animal, and as an instance of it, we may observe that we take all occasions and pretenses of forming ourselves into those little nocturnal assemblies which are commonly known by the name of clubs. When a set of men find themselves to agree in any particular, though never so trivial, they establish themselves into a rival fraternity, and meet once or twice a week, upon the account of such a fantastic resemblance. I know a considerable markettown in which there was a club of fat men, that did not come together (as you may well suppose) to entertain one another in sprightliness and wit, but to keep one another in countenance. The room where the club met was something of the largest, and had two entrances, the one by a door of moderate size, and the other by a pair of folding doors. If a candidate for this corpulent club could make an entrance through the first, he was looked upon as unqualified; but if he stuck in the passage and could not force his way through it, the foldingdoors were immediately thrown open for his reception, and he was saluted as a brother. I have heard that this club, though it consisted of but fifteen persons, weighed above three ton.

"In opposition to this society, there sprang up another composed of scarecrows and skeletons, who, being very meagre and envious, did all they could to thwart the designs of their bulky brethren, whom they represented as men of dangerous principles, till at length they worked them out of the favor of the people and consequently out of the magistracy. These factions tore the corporation in pieces for several years, till at length they came to this accommodation: that the two bailiffs of the town should be annually chosen out of the clubs, by which means the principal magistrates are at this day coupled like rabbits, one fat and one lean.

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"The Hum-drum club of which I was formerly an unworthy member, was made up of very honest gentlemen of peaceable disposition, that used to sit together, smoke their pipes and say nothing till midnight. The Mum club (as I am informed) is of the same nature, and as great an enemy to noise.

After these two innocent societies, I cannot forbear mentioning a very mischievous one that was erected in the time of Charles II; I mean the club of duelists into which none was to be admitted who had not fought his man. The president of it was said to have killed

half a dozen in single combat, but as for the other members they took their seats according to the number of their slain. There was likewise a side-table, for such as had only drawn blood, and shown a laudable ambition of taking the first opportunity to qualify themselves for the first table. This club, consisting only of men of honor, did not continue long, most of the members being put to the sword, or hanged a little after its institution.

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"Our modern celebrated clubs are founded upon eating and drinking, which are points wherein most men agree, and in which the learned and the illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and the buffoon, can all of them bear a part. * * When men are thus knit together by a love of society, not a spirit of faction, and do not meet to censure or annoy those that are absent, but to enjoy one another; when they are thus combined for their own improvement, or for the good of others, or at least to relax themselves from the business of the day by an innocent and cheerful conversation, there may be something very useful in these little institutions and establishments."

Addison's prose style has ever since his day been regarded as a model, and stands for that which is most stately and polished in English prose. In spite of the fact that his carefully worded sentences sound a little stiff and oldfashioned, we cannot help feeling their charm as they flow from his pen. And there are few names in literature that excite a warmer personal interest in those who are familiar with his life and his writings, than that of Joseph Addison.

TALK XL.

ON THE GREAT DEAN SWIFT.

THE last writer whom we shall include in the Augustan Born 1667. Age is Jonathan Swift, who was a clergyman of the Died 1745. English church and the Dean of the Cathedral of Saint Patrick's, in Ireland, which gave him the title of Dean Swift, by which he is best known. He be

gan life, like so many other great men, without fortune, and as a young man was a secretary and poor dependent in the family of Sir William Temple, a politician and noted statesman of the age. Swift seems to have felt poverty and dependence on a rich patron very bitterly. It soured him and spoiled his manners all his life long. At least this is the only explanation, except natural ill-temper, for the fact that his manners were brusque and disagreeable to the worst degree, although in spite of this he had many friends and won the affection of two lovable and accomplished women. His conduct to the two women, both of whom were devoted to him, was heartless; his behavior to people who befriended him was often rude and uncivil, and if we can judge of him through his biographies, he is a man whom we should prefer to know only in his writings. But there he appears a great man. He was a versatile writer, and whatever he wrote was at once noted. His satires in prose were as keen as Pope's rhymed satires; he was as shrewd an observer and could hit off the follies of the age as cleverly as Addison and Steele; he almost rivaled De Foe in his power of painting fiction with the hues of truth; and he was a clever poet besides. Whatever he does, the quality that impresses one in his work is power.

The first work which drew notice was The Battle of the Books. The question had been raised in France whether modern writers were not as great as the ancient writers. This dispute spread to England. Naturally, in the state of public taste, the greater part of the reading world thought it a terrible heresy to assert that a modern writer could equal those of Greece and Rome, and the valiant few who dared to stand by this idea were hooted at in disdain. In The Battle of the Books, Swift sided with the majority, and assailed with the arrows of his satire those who ventured to plead for the moderns.

The Battle of the Books was soon followed by the Tale of a Tub, which made a sensation in literary circles that we could hardly appreciate in reading it now-a-days. This was