He has such a mirthful cast in his behavior that he is rather loved than esteemed. Repulsed by a fair widow, several years before, he keeps his sentiment alive by wearing a coat and doublet of the same cut that was in fashion at the time, which, he tells us, has been out and in twelve times since he first wore it. All the young women profess to love him, and all the young men are glad of his company. 66 Last of all is the clergyman, whose piety is all reverence, and who talks and acts as one who is hastening to the object of all his wishes, and conceives hope from his decays and infirmities." It is said that Addison, warned by the fate of Cervantes, whose noble hero, Don Quixote, was killed by another pen,determined to conduct Sir Roger to the tomb himself; and the knight makes a fitting end. He congratulates his nephew, Captain Sentry, upon his succession to the inheritance; he is thoughtful of old friends and old servants. In a word, so excellent was his life, and so touching the story of his death, that we feel like mourners at a real grave. Indeed he did live, and still lives, one type of the English country gentleman one hundred and fifty years ago. Other types there were, not so pleasant to contemplate; but Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley and Fielding's Squire Allworthy vindicate their class in that age. ADDISON'S HYMNS. - Addison appears to us also as the writer of beautiful hymns, and has paraphrased some of the Psalms. In this, like Watts, he catered to a decided religious craving of that day. In a Protestant realm, and by reason of religious controversy, the fine old hymns of the Latin. church, which are now renewing their youth in an English dress, had fallen into disrepute : hymnody had, to some extent, superseded the plain chant. Hymns were in demand. Poets like Addison and Watts provided for this new want; and from the beauty of his few contributions, our great regret is that Addison wrote so few. Every one he did write is a gem in many collections. Among them we have that admirable paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm: The Lord my pasture shall prepare, and the hymn When all Thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys. None, however, is so beautiful, stately, and polished as the Divine Ode, so pleasant to all people, little and large, — The spacious firmament on high. HIS PERSON AND CHARACTER. In closing this brief sketch of Addison, a few words are necessary as to his personality, and an estimate of his powers. In 1716 he married the Countess-Dowager of Warwick, and parted with independence to live with a coronet. His married life was not happy. The lady was cold and exacting; and, it must be confessed, the poet loved a bottle at the club-room or tavern better than the luxuries of Holland House; and not infrequently this conviviality led him to excess. He died in 1719, in his forty-eighth year, and made a truly pious end. He wished, he said, to atone for any injuries he had done to others, and sent for his sceptical and dissolute step-son, Lord Warwick, to show him how a Christian could die. A monument has been erected to his memory in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, and the closing words of the inscription upon it calls him "the honor and delight of the English nation." As a man, he was grave and retiring: he had a high opinion of his own powers; in company he was extremely diffident; in the main, he was moral, just, and consistent. His intemperance was in part the custom of the age and in part a physi cal failing, and it must have been excessive to be distinguished in that age. In the Latin-English of Dr. Johnson, "It is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours." This failing must be regarded as a blot on his fame. He was the most accomplished writer of his own age, and in elegance of style superior to all who had gone before him. In the words of his epitaph, his prose papers "encouraged the good and reformed the improvident, tamed the wicked, and in some degree made them in love with virtue." His poetry is chiefly of historical value, in that it represents so distinctly the Artificial School; but it is now very little read. His drama entitled Cato was modelled upon the French drama of the classical school, with its singular preservation of the unities. But his contributions to The Spectator and other periodicals are historically of great value. Here he abandons the artificial school; nothing in his delineations of character is simply statuesque or pictorial. He has done for us what the historians have left undone. processions of automata moving to the sound of trumpet and drum, ushered by Black Rod or Garter King-at-arms; but in Addison we find that Promethean heat which relumes their life; the galvanic motion becomes a living stride; the puppet eyes emit fire; the automata are men. Thus it is, that, al They present though The Spectator, once read as a model of taste and style, has become antiquated and has been superseded, it must still be resorted to for its life-like portraiture of men and women, manners and customs, and will be found truer and more valuable for these than history itself. CHAPTER XXVI. Sir Richard Steele. His Last Days. C STEELE AND SWIFT. Jonathan Swift - Poems. M. B. Drapier. Gulliver's Travels. His Character and Death. ONTEMPORARY with Addison, and forming with him. a literary fraternity, Steele and Swift were besides men of distinct prominence, and clearly represent the age in which they lived. SIR RICHARD STEELE. If Addison were chosen as the principal literary figure of the period, a sketch of his life would be incomplete without a large mention of his lifelong friend and collaborator, Steele. If to Bacon belongs the honor of being the first writer and the namer of the English essay, Steele may claim that of being the first periodical essayist. He was born in Dublin, in 1671, of English parents; his father being at the time secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He received his early education at the CharterHouse school, in London, an institution which has numbered among its pupils many who have gained distinguished names in literature. Here he met and formed a permanent friendship with Addison. He was afterwards entered as a student at Merton College, Oxford; but he led there a wild and reckless life, and leaving without a degree, he enlisted as a private in the Horse Guards. Through the influence of his friends, he was made a cornet, and afterwards a captain, in the Fusileers; but this only gave him opportunity for continued dissipation. His principles were better than his conduct; and, haunted by conscience, he made an effort to reform himself by writing a devotional work called The Christian Hero; but there was such a contrast between his precepts and his life, that he was laughed at by the town. Between 1701 and 1704 he produced his three comedies, The Funeral, or Grief à la Mode; The Tender Husband, and The Lying Lover. The first two were successful upon the stage, but the last was a complete failure. Disgusted for the time with the drama, he was led to find his true place as the writer of those light, brilliant, periodical essays which form a prominent literary feature of the reign of Queen Anne. These Essays were comments, suggestions, strictures, and satires upon the age. They were of immediate and local interest then, and have now a value which the writers did not foresee: they are unconscious history. PERIODICALS. -The first of these periodicals was The Tatler, a penny sheet, issued tri-weekly, on post-days. The first number appeared on the 12th of April, 1709, and asserted the very laudable purpose "to expose the deceits, sins, and vanities of the former age, and to make virtue, simplicity, and plain-dealing the law of social life." "For this purpose," in the words of Dr. Johnson,* "nothing is so proper as the frequent publication of short papers, which we read not as study, but amusement. If the subject be slight, the treatise is short. The busy may find time, and the idle may find patience." One nom de plume of Steele was Isaac Bickerstaff, which he borrowed from Swift, who had issued party pamphlets under that name. The Tatler was a success. The fluent pen of Addison gave it valuable assistance; and in January, 1711, it was merged. *Life of Addison. |