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SIxje ^tttxljeuts' Mcxizs ocT ^nQli&U missies. 
 
 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 
 
 ON 
 
 MILTON AND ADDISON. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JAMES CHALMERS, Ph.D., LLD., 
 
 Associate Professor of English Literature in 
 Ohio State University. 
 
 LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN. 
 
 BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. 
 
 / 
 
.Ma 
 
 Copyright, 1893, 
 
 BY 
 
 Lbach, Shewell, & Sanborn. 
 
 TTPOGKAPHT and ELECTKOTTPINd BT 
 
 C. J. Petebs & Son, Boston. 
 
 Bbkwiok & Smith, Peintebs, Bostok. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Owing to the fact that two well-edited books of 
 Macaulay's Essays have already appeared in this series, 
 each containing information and suggestions common to 
 all of his essays, it does not seem necessary that any 
 part of that same matter should be repeated in this vol- 
 ume. A further reason for brevity in introduction is 
 that the two essays here chosen swell the size of the 
 book beyond that of most of the other numbers of 
 the series. 
 
 There is one fact in particular to which the editor 
 wishes to give the place of emphasis : The essays com- 
 
 PKISING THIS VOLUME ARE EMINENTLY LITERARY. They 
 
 are the most distinctively literary of Macaulay's Essays, 
 and are therefore best adapted to the purpose for which 
 they have been chosen. The essays of Macaulay pre- 
 ceding in the series — " Chatham" and " Clive " — are his- 
 torical and biographical, and yet are of unusual literary 
 value. But the teacher of English literature will recog- 
 nize at once the immense gains to the young student of 
 a comparative study of Milton and Addison, the two 
 writers who stand highest in their respective depart- 
 
 m 
 
iv MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 ments of literature — especially when that study is 
 directed by Macaulay. There are probably but two other 
 books on the list of entrance requirements in English 
 literature, as adopted by the Association of New Eng- 
 land Colleges, that are as fruitful of wholesome results 
 to the student as is a critical comparative study of 
 Macaulay's Essaj^s on Milton and Addison. 
 
 In this comparative study of the two essays the in- 
 structor will not neglect to bring out, incidentally, the 
 differences, particularly in style, due to the fact that 
 the one was written in Macaulay's youth, the other in 
 his maturity. 
 
 The main features of the present volume are : — 
 
 1. A carefully selected text, the result of a compari- 
 son, word by word, of the best English edition, published 
 during Macaulay's lifetime, and with his correction and 
 revision ; and four other standard editions of more recent 
 publication. 
 
 2. A carefully selected consensus of opinion concern- 
 ing Macaulay as an essayist. 
 
 3. A selected list of the best critical and biographical 
 references on Macaulay. 
 
 4. One selection from Macaulay's poems, — " The Bat- 
 tle of Ivry." 
 
 A classified table of all of Macaulay's Essays, histori- 
 cal, biographical, literary, critical, etc., was prepared for 
 this edition, but the limits of the book precluded its 
 insertion. 
 
 I quite agree with Professor Scott of the University 
 of INIichigan, in his preface to the best-edited school- 
 
PREFA CE. V 
 
 edition of Rasselas yet published, that among progres- 
 sive teachers of English literature there has been a rapid 
 shrinkage in the value of miscellaneous annotation. He 
 reduces his notes to very small compass, which, he says, 
 " may be taken as representing one stage in the process 
 of eliminating waste material." This waste material is 
 entirely eliminated in the present volume. 
 
 James Chalmers. 
 Ohio State University. Columbus, 0., April, 1893. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pkeface iii 
 
 Selected References on Macaulay vii 
 
 A Consensus of Opinion and Cbiticism xi 
 
 The Battle of Ivky 1 
 
 Milton 6 
 
 Life and Wbitings of Addison 78 
 
CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL 
 REFERENCES. 
 
 Adams's (Charles Kendall) Representative British Urations, 3. 
 American Journal of Education, 28. 
 American Whig Review, 1, 9. 
 Arnold's (Matthew) Mixed Essays. 
 Bagehot's Estimate of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen. 
 Baldwin's Introduction to English Literature (prose). 
 Bayne's Essays in Biography and Criticism, 2. 
 Belgravia, 29. 
 
 Bentlet's Miscellany, 31, 37. 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 52, 75, 80, 85, 86, 88, 119, 120. 
 British and Foreign Review, 15. 
 British Quarterly Review, 23, 31. 
 Canadian Monthly, 13. 
 
 Canning's (Albert S. G.) Lord Macaulay, Essayist and Histo- 
 rian. 
 
 Chambers' Journal, 34. 
 Christian Examiner, 54. 
 Christian Observer, 76. 
 Christian Review, 5, 26. 
 Cornhill Magazine, 1, 33, 42. 
 Democratic Review, 26. 
 Dobson's Handbook of English Literature. 
 Dublin University Magazine, 51, 57, 58. 
 ix 
 
X MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Eclectic Magazine, 7, 13, 17, 25, 33, 35, 49, 50, 51, 52, 68, 
 87, 111. 
 
 Eclectic Keview, 77, 79. 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 100, 143. 
 
 Emerson's English Traits. 
 
 Exeter Hall Lectures, 17. 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 25. 
 
 Francis' Orators of the Age. 
 
 Eraser's Magazine, 1, 27, 33, 40, 66, 62, 93, 103. 
 
 Galaxy, 22. 
 
 Gentleman's Magazine (New Series), 5. 
 
 Gladstone's Gleanings of Past Years, 2. 
 
 Grant's Last Century of English Literature. 
 
 Griswold's Home Life of Great Authors. 
 
 Harper's Monthly Magazine, 53, 58. 
 
 Horne's a New Spirit of the Age. 
 
 International Review, 3. 
 
 Irish Quarterly Review, 7. 
 
 Jones's Lord Macaulay : His Life, His Writings. 
 
 Knickerbocker Magazine, 33. 
 
 Lakeside Monthly, 8. 
 
 Lancaster's Essays and Reviews. 
 
 Leisure Hour, 5, 9, 26. 
 
 Littell's Living Age, 8, 15, 21, 32, 37, 39, 40, 43, 51, 56, 62, 
 64, 65, 67, 75, 86, 91, 97, 107, 122, 129, 130, 149, 172, 176, 181. 
 
 London Quarterly Review, 14. 
 
 McCarthy's Short History of Our Own Times. 
 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 1, 7, 22, 34, 52. 
 
 Martineau's (Harriet) Biographical Sketches. 
 
 Mason's Personal Traits of British Authors. 
 
 Mathews' Hours with Men and Books. 
 
 Maull and Polyblank's Macaulay, the Historian, Statesman, 
 and Essayist. 
 
 Methodist Quarterly Review, 37. 
 
 Milman's (Dean) Memoir of Lord Macaulay. 
 
CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES, xi 
 
 MiNTo's Manual of English Prose Literatuiv. 
 
 Month, 27. 
 
 Monthly Review, 159, 161. 
 
 Morison's Macaulay (English Men-of- Letters Series). 
 
 Morley's English Literature. 
 
 Morrill's Self-Consciousness of Noted Persons. 
 
 Nation, 22, 36. 
 
 National Quarterly Review, 04. 
 
 New Englander, 7. 
 
 New Quarterly Review, 9. 
 
 New York Quarterly, 3. 
 
 Nicoll's Landmarks of English Literature. 
 
 North American Review, 93. 
 
 North British Review, 25, 33. 
 
 Once a Week, 2. 
 
 Pebody's Authors at Work. 
 
 People's Journal, 7. 
 
 Poe's (E. a.) Criticism of Macaulay (The Literati, 3). 
 
 Princeton Review, 12. 
 
 Putnam's Prose Masterpieces, 2. 
 
 Quarterly Review, 71, 124, 142. 
 
 Reed's English Literature. 
 
 Russell's The Book of Authors. 
 
 St. James's Magazine, 2. 
 
 Saturday- Review, 54, 60. 
 
 Scottish Review, 2. 
 
 Sharpe's London Magazine, 20. 
 
 Shepard's Earlier Victorian Poets. 
 
 Shepard's Enchiridion of Criticism. 
 
 Southern Literary Messenger, 14, 22, 29, 30. 
 
 Southern Quarterly Review, 4. 
 
 Stephen's History of English Thought. 
 
 Stephen's Hours in a Library (Third Series). 
 
 Stirling's Jerrold, Tennyson, and Macaulay. 
 
 Stoddard's The Greville Memoirs. 
 
xu MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Sainton's Studies in Engiisli Literature. 
 Taine's English Literature. 
 Temple Bak, 47, 79, 86. 
 Trevelyan's Macaulay. 
 Tuckerman's Characteristics of Literature. 
 Welsh's English Literature and Language. 
 Westminster Review, 39, 100, 107. 
 Whipple's Essays and Reviews, 1. 
 Wilson's Essay Critical and Imaginative, 7. 
 Yonge's Three Centuries of English Literature. 
 
A CONSENSUS OF OPINION AND 
 CRITICISM. 
 
 With the Essay on INIilton began Macaulay's literary career, 
 and, brilliant as the career was, it had few points more bril- 
 liant than its beginning. — Matthew Arnold. 
 
 The effect on the author's reputation [of the publication of 
 the Essay on Milton] was instantaneous. Like Lord Byron, 
 he awoke one morning and found himself famous. The 
 beauties of the work were sucli as all men could recognize, 
 and its very faults pleased. . . . The family breakfast-table in 
 Bloomsbury was covered with cards of invitation to dinner from 
 eveiy quarter of London. ... A warm admirer of Robert 
 Hall, Macaulay heard with pride how the great preacher, then 
 well-nigh worn out with that long disease, his life, was dis- 
 covered lying on the floor, employed in learning by aid of 
 grammar and dictionary enough Italian to enable him to 
 verify the parallel between Milton and Dante. But the com- 
 pliment that, of all others, came most nearly home, — the only 
 commendation of his literary talent which even in the inner- 
 most domestic circle he was ever known to repeat, — was the 
 sentence with which Jeffi'ey acknowledged the receipt of his 
 manuscript : " The more I think, the less I can conceive where 
 you picked up that style." — G. O. Tkevelyan. 
 
xiv MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 The living, leafy, ^vide-stretching boughs into which the 
 writer's art transforms the mere dead and fragmentary fallen 
 twigs of truth are wonderful, and we are kept in continual 
 admiration of the constant unexceptionable writing, the constant 
 interesting pictures, the constant luminous good sense, and 
 the constant appearance of reseai'ch. — James Hutchison 
 Stirling. 
 
 As a poet, at a time when it was supposed that nothing new 
 could be invented, he sti'uck out a style, the enchantment of 
 which is felt by all ages and all conditions alike ; which has no 
 prototype in ancient, no parallel in modern, times ; which 
 unites the simplicity of our ancient ballads with the rich 
 images and stirring dialogue of the epic, often sweetly de- 
 scending to an idyllic character, reminding us of the happier 
 passages of Theocritus. — The London Times. 
 
 Macaulay's great quality is that of being one of the best 
 stoi*y-tellers that ever lived ; and if we limit the competition 
 to his only proper rivals — the historians — he may be pro- 
 nounced the best story-teller. If any one thinks these super- 
 latives misplaced, let him mention the historical writers whom 
 he would put on a level with or above Macaulay — always 
 remembering that the comparison is limited to this particular 
 point : the art of telling a story with such interest and vivacity 
 that readers have no wish but to read on. ... In his own line 
 he had no rival. And let no one undervalue that line. He 
 kindled a fervent human interest in past and real events, 
 which novelists kindle in fictitious events. He wrote of the 
 seventeenth century with the same vivid sense of present 
 reality which Balzac and Thackeray had when they wrote of 
 the nineteenth century, which was before their eyes. And this 
 was the peculiarity which fascinated contemporaries, and made 
 them so lavish of praise and admiration. They felt, and very 
 
A CONSENSUS OF OPINION. xv 
 
 justly, that history had never been so written before. It was 
 a quality which all classes, of all degrees of culture, could 
 almost equally appreciate. — J. Cottek Mokison. 
 
 The first and strongest impression we derive from a consid- 
 eration of Macaulay's life and writings is that of the robust 
 and masculine qualities of his intellect and character. ... A 
 prominent cause of Macaulay's popularity is to be found in the 
 definiteness of his mind. He always aspired to present his 
 matter in such a form as to exclude the possibility of doubt, 
 either in his statement or argument. ... As an artist, 
 Macaulay is greater in his essays than in his "History of 
 England." Each of his essays is a unit. The results of an- 
 alysis are diifused through the veins of narration, and details 
 are strictly subordinated to leading conceptions. . . . They 
 rank among the finest artistic products of the century. They 
 partake of the imperfections of his thinking, and the limita- 
 tions of his character, but they are still perfect of their kind. 
 . . . The amount of knowledge each of them includes can 
 only be estimated by those who have patiently I'ead the many 
 volumes they so brilliantly condense. In style, they show a 
 mastery of English which has been attained by no other Eng- 
 lish author who did not possess a creative imagination. The 
 ai't of the writer is shown as much in his deliberate choice of 
 common and colloquial phrases as in those splendid passages 
 in which he almost seems to exhaust the resoui'ces of the Eng- 
 lish tongue. As a narrator, in his own province, it would be 
 difl&cult to name his equal among English writers ; to his 
 narrative, all his talents and accomplishments combined to 
 lend fascination ; and in it he exhibited the understanding 
 of Hallam, and the knowledge of Mackintosh, joined to the 
 picturesqueness of Southey, and the wit of Pope. — E. P. 
 Whipple. 
 
xvi MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 The Nimrod of literary criticism was Thomas B. Macaulay, 
 poet, essayist, histoi-ian, legislator, jurist, orator. When three 
 years old, books were his companions. At four he replied to a 
 condolence, "Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." At 
 seven, left for a week with Hannah INIore, he stood on a chair 
 and preached sermons to 2}eople brought in from the fields. 
 At eight, with the whole of "Marmion" in his head, he began 
 to imitate Scott's verse. At fourteen he ajjpeared in print. 
 To retentive memory was added a quick wit. . . . From this 
 power of realizing the past proceeds his skill in the delinea- 
 tion of character. Hence, his energetic, impassioned tone. 
 From his vast and well-digested reading proceed the abound- 
 ing mass and weight of his style, — a I'iver of ideas and facts, 
 urged forward by the internal heat. He is so opulent tliat he 
 makes criticism almost a creative art, and the author or woi'k 
 reviewed becomes a hint for the construction of picturesque 
 dissertations, magnificent comparisons, and glowing dialectic. 
 The chai-aeteristics of his style are opulence of illustration 
 and adornment, antithesis of ideas, regular sequence of thought, 
 harmonious construction, and incomparable lucidity. Jefi'rey, 
 in acknowledging the manuscript of "Milton" said, "The 
 more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that 
 style." It was the prevalent opinion of literary friends, that 
 he wrote rapidly, and made few corrections, so spontaneous 
 seemed his manner. On the contrary, he was minutely stu- 
 dious of every sentence ; would often rewrite paragraphs and 
 chapters to improve the arrangement or expression. Again 
 would he correct, and his manuscripts were covered with 
 erasures. He was equally attentive to proof-sheets. "He 
 could not rest until the lines Avere level to a hair's breadth, 
 and the punctuation correct to a comma; until every pai'a- 
 graph concluded with a telling sentence, and every sentence 
 liowed like running water." Excellence is not matured in a 
 day. — Alfred II. Welsh. 
 
A CONSENSUS OF OPINION. xvii 
 
 Lord Macaulay lived a life of no more than sixty years 
 and three months. Bnt it was an extraordinary full life of 
 sustained exertion — a high table-land without depressions. 
 If in its outer aspect there be anything wearisome, it is only 
 the wearisomeness of reiterated splendor, and of success so 
 uniform as to be almost monotonous. He speaks of himself 
 as idle ; but his idleness was more active, and carried with it 
 hour by hour a greater expenditure of brain-power, than what 
 most men regard as tlieir serious employments. He miglit 
 well have been, in his mental career, the spoiled child of for- 
 tune ; for all he tried succeeded, all he touched turned into 
 gems and gold. In a hapjjy childhood he evinced extreme 
 precocity. His academical career gave sufficient, though not 
 redundant, promise of after celebrity. The new golden age 
 he imparted to the Edinburgh Review, and his first and most 
 important, if not best. Parliamentary speeches in the grand 
 crisis of the first Reform Bill, achieved for him, years before 
 he had reached the middle point of life, what may justly be 
 termed an immense distinction. For a century and more, per- 
 haps no man in England, with the exception of Mr. Pitt and 
 Lord Byron, had attained at thirty-two the fame of Macaulay. 
 His Parliamentary success and his literary eminence were each 
 of them enough, as they stood at this date, to intoxicate any 
 brain and heart of a meaner order. But to these were added 
 in his case an amount and quality of social attentions such as 
 invariably partake of adulation and idolatry; such as, per- 
 haps, the high circles of London never before or since have 
 lavished on a man whose claims lay only in himself, and not 
 in his descent, his rank, or his possessions. . . . He was, in- 
 deed, prosperous and brilliant ; a prodigy, a meteor, almost a 
 portent, in literary history. But his course was laborious, 
 trutlif ul, simple, independent, noble ; and all these in an emi- 
 nent dejrree. — William Ewart Gladstone. 
 
xviii MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Human progress consists in a continual increase in tlie num- 
 ber of tliose who, ceasing to live by the animal life alone and 
 to feel the pleasures of sense only, come to participate in the 
 intellectual life also, and to find enjoyment in the things of the 
 mind. The enjoyment is not at first very discriminating. 
 Rhetoric, brilliant writing, gives to such persons pleasui'e for 
 its own sake ; but it gives them pleasure, still more, when it is 
 employed in commendation of a view of life which is on the 
 wliole theirs, and of men and causes with which they are 
 naturally in sympathy. The immense poiDularity of Macaulay 
 is due to his being pre-eminently fitted to give jileasure to all 
 who are beginning to feel enjoyment in the things of the 
 mind. It is said that the traveller in Australia, visiting one 
 settler's hut after another, finds again and again that the 
 settlei-'s thii'd book, after the Bible and Shakespeai-e, is some 
 work by Macaulay. Nothing can be more natural. The Bible 
 and Shakespeare may be said to be imposed u])on an English- 
 man as objects of his admiration ; but as soon as the common 
 Englishman, desiring culture, begins to choose for himself, he 
 chooses Macaulay. Macaulay's view of things is, on the 
 whole, the vieAV of them which he feels to be his own also ; 
 the persons and causes praised are those which he himself is 
 disposed to admire ; the persons and causes blamed are those 
 with which he himself is out of symjiathy ; and the rhetoric 
 employed to j^raise or to blame tliem is animating and excel- 
 lent. Macaulay is thus a great civilizer. In hundreds of men 
 he hits their nascent taste for the things of the mind, possesses 
 himself of it, and stimulates it, draws it powerfully forth and 
 confirms it. — - Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Macaulay is a model of style — of style not merely as a 
 kind of literary luxury, but of style in its practical aspect. 
 When I say he is a model of style, I do not mean that it is 
 
A CONSENSUS OF OPINION. xix 
 
 wise in any writer to copy Macaulay's style — to try to write 
 something that might be mistaken for Macaulay's Avriting. So 
 to do is not to follow in the steps of a great writer, but merely 
 to imitate his outward manner. So to do is not the part of a 
 disciple, but the part of an ape. But every one who wishes to 
 write clear and pure English will do well to become, not 
 Macaulay's ape, but Macaulay's disciple. Every writer of 
 English will do well not only to study Macaulay's wi'itings, 
 but to bear them in his mind, and very often to ask himself not 
 whether his writing is like Macaulay's writing, but whether 
 his writing is such as Macaulay would have approved. 
 
 I know at least what my own experience is. It is for others 
 to judge whether I have leai'ned of Macaulay the art of being 
 clear ; I at least learned of Macaulay the duty of trying to be 
 clear. And I learned that in order to be clear there were two 
 main rules to be followed. I learned from Macaulay that if 
 I wished to be understood by others, or indeed by myself, I 
 must avoid, not always long sentences, — for long sentences 
 may often be perfectly clear, — but involved, complicated, par- 
 enthetical sentences. I leai'ned that I must avoid sentences 
 crowded with relatives and participles ; sentences in which 
 things are not so much directly stated as implied in some dark 
 and puzzling fashion. I learned, also, never to be afraid of 
 using the same word or name over and over again, if b^ 
 that means anything could be added to clearness or foi'ce. 
 Macaulay never goes on, like some writers, talking about 
 "the former" and "the latter," "he, she, it, they," through 
 clause after clause, while his reader has to look back to see 
 which of several persons it is that is so darkly referred to. 
 No doubt a pronoun, like any other word, may often be 
 repeated with advantage, if it is perfectly clear who is meant 
 by the noun. And with INIacaulay's pronouns it is always per- 
 fectly clear who is meant by them. 
 
XX macaulay's essays. 
 
 Then as to his choice of words. Here and there I myself 
 miglit perhajDS think that a Romance word might well be 
 changed for a Teutonic word. Certainly no one can charge 
 Macaulay with what is called pedantry or ijurisra, in a Teutonic 
 direction, or in any direction. Still, where I might wish to 
 change one word in IMacaulay, I might wish to change ten or 
 a hundred in most other writers. Macaulay never uses a word 
 which, whatever might be its origin, had not really taken I'oot 
 in the language. He has no vulgarisms, no newfangled or 
 affected expressions. No man was ever so clear from the vice 
 of thrusting in foreign words into an English sentence. 
 
 In short, Macaulay never allows himself for a moment to be 
 careless, vulgar, or slijishod. Every person and every thing 
 is called by the right name, and no other. And because he 
 did all this, because he wrote such clear and well-chosen Eng- 
 lish that the printer's reader himself never had to I'ead his 
 sentences twice over, therefore men who cannot write as he 
 could, talk glibly of his " mannerism," and so forth. Every- 
 body, I suppose, must have some manner. Lord Macaulay 
 had a good manner, and not a bad one, and therefore he is 
 found fault with. 
 
 Without, therefore, recommending any one to imitate Macau- 
 lay's manner, or the manner of any one, I do say that in all 
 this Macaulay has left to every writer of English an example 
 which every writer of English will do well to follow. The 
 care which Macaulay took to write, before all things, good and 
 clear English may be followed by writers who make no 
 attempt to imitate his style, and Avho may be led by nature to 
 some quite different style of their own. Many styles which 
 are quite unlike one another may all be equally good ; but no 
 style can be good which does not use pure and straightfor- 
 ward English. No style can be good where the reader has to 
 read a sentence twice over to find out its meaning. In these 
 
A CONSENSUS OF OPINION. xxi 
 
 ways the writings of IMacaiilay may be a direct model to 
 writers and speakers whose natural taste, whose subject, or 
 whose audience may lead them to a style quite unlike his. In 
 every language, and in every kind of writing, purity of 
 speech and clearness of expression must be the first virtues 
 of all. — E. A. Freeman. 
 
THE BATTLE CRY OF IVRY. 
 
 A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS. 
 
 {Published 1824.) 
 
 Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories 
 
 are! 
 And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of 
 
 Navarre ! 
 Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance, 
 Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, oh 
 
 pleasant land of France ! 
 And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the 5 
 
 waters, 
 Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning 
 
 daughters. 
 As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy. 
 For cold, and stiff, and still are. they who wrought thy 
 
 walls annoy. 
 Hurrah ! hurrah ! a single field hath turned the chance 
 
 of war, 
 Hurrah ! hurrah ! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre. 10 
 
 1 
 
2 MA CAUL AY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of 
 
 day, 
 We saw the army of the League drawn out in long 
 
 array ; 
 With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers. 
 And Appeuzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish 
 
 spears. 
 5 There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our 
 
 land ; 
 And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his 
 
 hand: 
 And as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's em- 
 purpled flood. 
 And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; 
 And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of 
 
 war, 
 10 To fight for his own holy name, and Henry of Navarre. 
 
 The King is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest. 
 And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant 
 
 crest. 
 He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye ; 
 He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern 
 
 and high. 
 15 Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing 
 
 to wing, 
 Down all our line a deafening shout, "God save our 
 
 Lord the King." 
 " And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he 
 
 may, 
 
THE BATTLE CRY OF IVRY. 3 
 
 For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray, 
 Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the 
 
 ranks of war, 
 And be your orifiamme to-day the helmet of Navarre." 
 
 Hurrah ! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din. 
 Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring 5 
 
 culverin. 
 The fiery Duke is pricking fast across Saint Andre's 
 
 plain. 
 With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne. 
 Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of 
 
 France, 
 Charge for the golden lilies, — upon them with the 
 
 lance. 
 A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears lo 
 
 in rest, 
 A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow- 
 white crest ; 
 And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a 
 
 guiding star. 
 Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of 
 
 Navarre. 
 
 Now, God be praised, the day is ours. Mayenne hath 
 
 turned his rein. 
 D'Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish count 15 
 
 is slain. 
 Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay 
 
 gale; 
 
4 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and 
 
 cloven mail. 
 And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our 
 
 van, 
 "Remember Saint Bartholomew," was passed from man 
 
 to man. 
 
 But out spake gentle Henry, " No Frenchman is my 
 
 foe : 
 5 Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren 
 
 go." 
 Oh ! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in 
 
 war, 
 As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the soldier of 
 
 Navarre ? 
 
 Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for 
 
 France to-day ; 
 And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey. 
 10 But we of the religion have borne us best in fight ; 
 And the good Lord of Rosny hath ta'en the cornet 
 
 white. 
 Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en. 
 The cornet white, with crosses black, the flag of false 
 
 Lorraine. 
 Up with it high ; unfurl it wide ; that all the host may 
 
 know 
 15 How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought 
 
 his church such woe. 
 
THE BATTLE CRY OF IVRY. 5 
 
 Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest 
 
 point of war, 
 Fling the red shreds, a footcloth meet for Henry of 
 
 Navarre. 
 
 Ho ! maidens of Vienna ; ho ! matrons of Lucerne ; 
 Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never 
 
 shall return. 
 Ho ! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles, 5 
 
 That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor 
 
 spearmen's souls. 
 Ho ! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms 
 
 be bright ; 
 Ho ! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward 
 
 to-night. 
 For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised 
 
 the slave, 
 And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valor of 10 
 
 the brave. 
 Then glory to his holy name, from whom all glories are ; 
 And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of 
 
 Navarre. 
 
MILTON.^ 
 
 {Ed'mbvrgh Review, August, 1825.) 
 
 Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, 
 deputy-keeper of the state papers, in the course of his 
 researches among the presses of his office, met with a 
 large Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected 
 
 5 copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton while 
 he filled the office of secretary, and several papers relat- 
 ing to the Popish Trials and the Rye-house Plot, The 
 whole was wrapped up in an envelope, superscribed, To 
 Mr. Ski7i7ier, Merchant. On examination the large manu- 
 
 10 script proved to be the long-lost Essay on the Doctrines 
 of Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, 
 Milton finished after tlie Restoration, and deposited with 
 Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, held the 
 same political opinions with his illustrious friend. It is 
 
 15 therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he 
 
 - may have fallen under the suspicions of the government 
 
 1 Joannis Milton, Anf/li, deDoctrina Christiana libri duo posthvmi. 
 A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures 
 alone. By John Milton, translated from the original by Charles R. 
 Sumuer, M.A., etc., 1825. 
 
 6 
 
MILTON. 7 
 
 during that persecution of the Whigs which followed 
 the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament ; and that, in 
 consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this 
 work may have been brought to the office in which it 
 has been found. But whatever the adventures of the 5 
 manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is 
 a genuine relic of the great poet. 
 
 Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his majesty to 
 edit and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of 
 his task in a manner honorable to his talents and to his 10 
 character. His version is not, indeed, very easy or ele- 
 gant; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and 
 fidelity. His notes abound with interesting quotations, 
 and have the rare merit of really elucidating the text. 
 The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and 15 
 candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and 
 tolerant towards those of others. 
 
 The book itself will not add much to the fame of 
 Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written, 
 though not exactly in the style of the prize essays of 20 
 Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imitation 
 of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the 
 ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the diction of 
 our academical Pharisees. The author does not attempt 
 to polish and brighten his composition into the Cicero- 25 
 nian gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in short, sacri- 
 fice sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature 
 of his subject compelled him to use many words — 
 
 " That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." 
 
8 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin 
 were his mother tongue ; and, where he is least happy, 
 his failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a 
 native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner. We may 
 
 5 apply to him what Denham with great felicity says of 
 Cowley. He wears the garb, but not the clothes, of the 
 ancients. 
 
 Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a 
 powerful and independent mind, emancipated from the 
 
 10 influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. 
 Milton professes to form his system from the Bible 
 alone ; and his digest of scriptural texts is certainly 
 among the best that have appeared. But he is not 
 always so happy in his inferences as in his citations. 
 
 15 Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seem 
 to have excited considerable amazement, particularly his 
 Arianism, and his theory on the subject of polygamy. 
 Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person could have 
 read the " Paradise Lost " without suspecting him of the 
 
 20 former ; nor do we think that any reader, acquainted 
 with the history of his life, ought to be much startled at 
 the latter. The opinions which he has expressed respect- 
 ing the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, and 
 the observance of the Sabbath, might, we think, have 
 
 25 caused more just surprise. 
 
 But we will not go into the discussion of these points. 
 The book, were it far more orthodox or far more hereti- 
 cal than it is, would not much edify or corrupt the pres- 
 ent generation. The men of our time are not to be 
 converted or perverted by quartos. A few more days 
 
MILTON. 9 
 
 and this essay will follow the " Defensio Populi " to the 
 dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its 
 author, and the remarkable circumstances attending its 
 publication, will secure to it a certain degree of atten- 
 tion. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes 5 
 of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in 
 every magazine ; and it will then, to borrow the elegant 
 language of the playbills, be withdrawn to make room 
 for the forthcoming novelties. 
 
 We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, lO 
 transient as it may be, which this work has excited. 
 The dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on the 
 life and miracles of a saint till they have awakened the 
 devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some 
 relic of him, — a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, 15 
 or a drop of his blood. On the same principle, we 
 intend to take advantage of the late interesting discov- 
 ery, and, while this memorial of a great and good man 
 is still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral 
 and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will 20 
 the severest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion 
 like the present, we turn for a short time from the topics 
 of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, 
 the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the 
 statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English litera- 25 
 ture, the champion and the martyr of English liberty. 
 
 It is by his poetry that Milton is best known ; and it 
 is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the 
 general suffrage of the civilized world, his place has 
 been assigned among the greatest masters of the art. 
 
10 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been 
 silenced. There are many critics, and some of great 
 name, who contrive in the same breath to extol the 
 poems and to decry the poet. The works they acknowl- 
 5 edge, considered in themselves, may be classed among 
 the noblest productions of the human mind. But they 
 will not allow the author to rank with those great men, 
 who, born in the infancy of civilization, supplied by 
 their own powers the want of instruction ; and, though 
 
 10 destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity 
 models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited 
 what his predecessors created : he lived in an enlightened 
 age ; he received a finished education ; and we must, 
 therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his powers, 
 
 15 make large deductions in consideration of these advan- 
 tages. 
 
 We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the 
 remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to strug- 
 gle with more unfavorable circumstances tlian Milton. 
 
 20 He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had 
 not been born ''an age too late." For this notion John- 
 son has thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy 
 ridicule. The poet, Ave believe, understood the nature of 
 his art better than the critic. He knew that liis poeti- 
 
 25 cal genius derived no advantage from the civilization 
 which surrounded him, or from the learning which he 
 had acquired ; and he looked back with something like 
 regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid im- 
 pressions. 
 
 We think that as civilization advances, poetry almost 
 
MILTON. 11 
 
 necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently 
 admire those great works of imagination which have 
 appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more 
 because they have appeared in dark ages. On the con- 
 trary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid 5 
 proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized 
 age. We cannot understand why those who believe in 
 that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the 
 earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at 
 the rule as if it were the exception. Surely, the uni- 10 
 formity of the phenomenon indicates a corresponding 
 uniformity in the cause. 
 
 The fact is, that common observers reason from the 
 progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imi- 
 tative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual 15 
 and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages 
 more in separating and combining them. Even when a 
 system has been formed, there is still something to add, 
 to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use 
 of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and trans- 20 
 mits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to 
 future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first specu- 
 lators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they 
 fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far in- 
 ferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual 25 
 attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's 
 little Dialogues on Political Economy could teach Mon- 
 tague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelli- 
 gent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for 
 a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great 
 
12 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Newton knew after half a century of study and medita- 
 tion. 
 
 But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with 
 sculpture. Still less is it thus Avith poetry. The 
 
 5 progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with 
 better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the 
 instruments which are necessary to the mechanical opera- 
 tions of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. 
 But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for 
 
 10 his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individ- 
 uals, first perceive and then abstract. They advance 
 from particular images to general terms. Hence the 
 vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, 
 that of a half-civilized people is poetical. 
 
 15 This change in the language of men is partly the cause 
 and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the 
 nature of their intellectual operations, of a change by 
 which science gains and poetry loses. Generalization 
 is necessary to the advancement of knowledge ; but 
 
 20 particularity is indispensable to the creations of the 
 imagination. In proportion as men know more and 
 think more, they look less at individuals and more at 
 classes. They therefore make better theories and worse 
 poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, 
 
 25 and personified qualities instead of men. They may be 
 better able to analyze human nature than their prede- 
 cessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. 
 His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe 
 in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all 
 human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius; or he 
 
MILTON. 13 
 
 may never think about the matter at all. His creed on 
 such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly 
 so called, than the notions which a painter may have 
 conceived respecting the lachrymal glands, or the circu- 
 lation of the blood, will affect the tears of his ISTiobe, or 5 
 the blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written 
 a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no 
 means certain that it would have been a good one. It 
 is extremely improbable that it would have contained 
 half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to lo 
 be found in the " Fable of the Bees." But could Mande- 
 ville have created an lago ? Well as he knew how to 
 resolve characters into their elements, would he have 
 been able to combine those elements in such a manner 
 as to make up a man, a real, living, individual man ? 15 
 
 Perhaps no person- can be a poet, or can even enjoy 
 poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if any- 
 thing which gives so much pleasure ought to be called 
 unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in 
 verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition 20 
 excludes many metrical compositions which, on other 
 grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean 
 the art of employing words in such a manner as to pro- 
 duce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by 
 means of words what the painter does by means of 25 
 colors. Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in 
 lines universally admired for the vigor and felicity of 
 their diction, and still more valuable on account of the 
 just notion which they convey of the art in which he 
 excelled : — 
 
14 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 "As imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, tlie poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name." 
 
 These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy " which he 
 ascribes to the poet, — a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still 
 a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry ; but it 
 is the truth of madness. The reasonings are just; but 
 
 5 the premises are false. After the first suppositions 
 have been made, everything ought to be consistent ; but 
 those first suppositions require a degree of credulity 
 which almost amounts to a partial and temporary de- 
 rangement of the intellect. Hence of all people children 
 
 10 are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves 
 without reserve to every illusion. Every image which 
 is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on 
 them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensi- 
 bility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a 
 
 15 little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Eiding- 
 liood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot 
 speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in 
 spite of her knowledge she believes ; she weeps ; she 
 trembles ; she dares not go into a dark room lest she 
 
 20 should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such 
 is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated 
 minds. 
 
 In a rude state of society men are children with a 
 greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state 
 
 25 of society that we may expect to find the poetical tem- 
 perament in its liighest perfection. In an enlightened 
 
MILTON. 15 
 
 age there will be much intelligence, much science, much 
 philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle 
 analysis, abundance of art and eloquence, abundance of 
 verses, and even of good ones ; but little poetry. Men 
 will judge and compare ; but they will not create. They 5 
 will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and 
 to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will be scarcely 
 able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on 
 their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the pleni- 
 tude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according to 10 
 Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into 
 convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping- 
 knife while he shouts his death-song. The power which 
 the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over 
 their auditors seems to modern readers almost miracu- 15 
 lous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilized commu- 
 nity, and most rare among those who participate most 
 in its improvements. They linger longest among the 
 peasantry. 
 
 Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as 20 
 a magic lanteru produces an illusion on the eye of the 
 body. And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark 
 room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in a 
 dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon 
 its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become more 25 
 and more definite, and the shades of probability more 
 and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phan- 
 toms which the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. 
 We cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality 
 and deception, the clear discernment of truth, and the 30 
 exquisite enjoyment of fiction. 
 
16 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires 
 to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He 
 must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He 
 must unlearn much of that knowledge which has per- 
 
 5 haps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. 
 His very talents will be a hindrance to him. His diffi- 
 culties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the 
 pursuits which are fashionable among his contempora- 
 ries ; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned 
 
 10 to the vigor and activity of his mind. And it is well if, 
 after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not 
 resemble a lisping man or a modern ruin. We have 
 seen in our own time great talents, intense labor, and 
 long meditation, employed in this struggle against the 
 
 15 spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say abso- 
 lutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble 
 applause. 
 
 If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed 
 over greater difficulties than Milton, He received a 
 
 20 learned education ; he was a profound and elegant clas- 
 sical scholar; he had studied all the mysteries of rab 
 binical literature : he was intimately acquainted with 
 every language of modern Europe from wliich either 
 pleasure or information was then to be derived. He 
 
 25 was perhaps the only great poet of later times who has 
 been distinguished by tlie excellence of his Latin verse. 
 The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order ; 
 and his poems in the ancient language, though much 
 praised by those who have never read them, are wretched 
 compositions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit and 
 
MILTON. 17 
 
 ingenuity, had little imagination ; nor indeed do we 
 tliink his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. 
 The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. 
 But Johnson had studied the bad writers of the Middle 
 Ages till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan 5 
 elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two 
 Latin styles as a habitual drunkard to set up for a wine- 
 taster. 
 
 Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far- 
 fetched, costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere 10 
 may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. 
 The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in general 
 as ill suited to the production of vigorous native poetry 
 as the flower-pots of a" hot-house to the growth of oaks. 
 That the author of the " Paradise Lost" should have writ- 15 
 ten the Epistle to Manso was truly wonderful. Never 
 before were such marked originality and such exquisite 
 mimicry found together. Indeed, in all the Latin poems 
 of Milton the artificial manner indispensable to such 
 works is admirably preserved, while, at the same time, 20 
 his genius gives to them a peculiar charm, an air of 
 nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes them from 
 all other writings of the same class. They remind us 
 of the amusements of those angelic warriors who com- 
 posed the cohort of Gabriel : — 25 
 
 " About him exercised heroic games 
 The unarmed youth of heaven; but nigh at hand 
 Celestial armoiy, shields, helms, and spears. 
 Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." 
 
18 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which 
 the genius of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a 
 glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is 
 accustomed to wear. The strength of his imagination 
 
 5 triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent 
 was the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffo- 
 cated beneath the weight of fuel, but penetrated the 
 whole superincumbent mass with its own heat and 
 N J radiance. 
 
 10 It is not our intention to attempt anything like a com- 
 plete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public 
 has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remark- 
 able passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, 
 and the excellence of that style which no rival has been 
 
 15 able to equal and no parodist to degrade ; which displays 
 in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the 
 English tongue, and to which every ancient and every 
 modern language has contributed something of grace, of 
 energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on 
 
 20 which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already 
 put their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that 
 the negligent search of a straggling gleaner may be 
 rewarded with a sheaf. 
 
 The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Mil- 
 
 25 ton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by 
 means of which it acts on the reader. Its effect is pro- 
 duced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what it 
 suggests ; not so much by the ideas which it directly 
 conveys, as by other ideas which are connected with 
 them. He electrifies the mind throus:!! conductors. 
 
MILTON. 19 
 
 The most unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. 
 Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no 
 exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and sets the 
 images in so clear a light that it is impossible to be 
 blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be compre- 5 
 hended or enjoyed unless the mind of the reader co- 
 operates with that of the writer. He does not paint 
 a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. 
 He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. 
 He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make 10 
 out the melody. 
 
 We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. 
 The expression in general means nothing ; but, applied 
 to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His 
 poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in 15 
 its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There 
 would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words 
 than in other words. But they are words of enchant- 
 ment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is 
 present and the distant near. New forms of beauty 20 
 start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of 
 the memory give up their dead. Change the structure 
 of the sentence ; substitute one synonym for another, 
 and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its 
 power ; and he who should then hope to conjure with it 25 
 would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the 
 Arabian tale, when he stood crying, "Open Wheat," 
 " Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no sound but 
 " Open Sesame." The miserable failure of Dryden in 
 his attempt to translate into his own diction some parts 
 
20 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 of the '' Paradise Lost," is a remarkable instance of 
 this. 
 
 In support of these observations we may remark, that 
 scarcely any passages in the poems of iMilton are more 
 
 5 generally known, or more frequently repeated, than those 
 which are little more than muster-rolls of names. They 
 are not always more appropriate or more melodious than 
 other names. But they are charmed names. Every one of 
 them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. 
 
 10 Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in man- 
 hood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, 
 they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of 
 their intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote 
 period of history. Another places us among the novel 
 
 15 scenes and manners of a distant region. A third evokes 
 all the dear classical recollections of childhood, the school- 
 room, the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. 
 A fourth brings before us the splendid phantoms of 
 chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered 
 
 20 housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the en- 
 chanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, 
 and the smiles of rescued princesses. 
 
 In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner 
 more happily displayed than in the " Allegro " and the 
 
 25 "Penseroso." It is impossible to conceive that the 
 mechanism of language can be brought to a more ex- 
 quisite degree of perfection. These poems differ from 
 others as ottar of roses differs from ordinary rose-water, 
 the close-packed essence from the thin, dihited mixture. 
 They are indeed not so much poems as collections of 
 
MILTON. 21 
 
 hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a 
 poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza. 
 
 The " Comus " and the " Samson Agonistes " are works 
 which, though of very different merit, offer some marked 
 points of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the 5 
 form of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of com- 
 position so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the 
 ode. Tlie business of the dramatist is to keep himself 
 out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. 
 As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the 10 
 illusion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that 
 which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter 
 or the entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was that 
 the tragedies of Byron were his least successful per- 
 formances. They resemble those pasteboard pictures in- 15 
 vented by the friend of children, Mr. Xewbery, in which 
 a single movable head goes round twenty different bodies, 
 so tliat the same face looks out upon us, successively, 
 from the uniform of a hussar, the furs of a judge, and 
 the rags of a beggar. In all the characters, patriots and 20 
 tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold 
 were discernible in an instant. But this species of 
 egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration 
 of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to abandon 
 himself, without reserve, to his own emotions. 25 
 
 Between these hostile elements many great men have 
 endeavored to effect an amalgamation, but never with 
 complete success. The Greek drama, on the model 
 of which the "Samson" was written, sprung from the 
 ode. The dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and 
 
22 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 naturally partook of its character. The genius of the 
 greatest of the Athenian dramatists co-operated with 
 the circumstances under which tragedy made its first 
 appearance, ^schylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. 
 
 5 In his time the Greeks had far more intercourse with 
 the East than in the days of Homer; and they had not 
 yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in science, 
 and in the arts, which, in the following generation, led 
 them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the 
 
 10 narrative of Herodotus it would seem that they still 
 looked up, with the veneration of disciples, to Egypt 
 and Assyria, x'^t this period, accordingly, it was natural 
 that the literature of Greece should be tinctured with 
 the Oriental style. And that style, we think, is dis- 
 
 15 cernible in the works of Pindar and ^schylus. The 
 latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The 
 book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a 
 considerable resemblance to some of his dramas. Con- 
 sidered as plays, his works are absurd; considered as 
 
 20 choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, 
 we examine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon 
 on his return, or the description of the seven Argive 
 chiefs, by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall 
 instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget 
 
 25 the characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall 
 admit that it has never been surpassed in energy and 
 niagnificence. Sophocles made the Greek drama as dra- 
 matic as was consistent with its original form. His por- 
 traits of men have a sort of similarity ; bat it is the 
 similarity not of a painting, but of a bass-relief. It sug- 
 
MILTON. 23 
 
 gests a resemblance; but it does not produce an illusion. 
 Euripides attempted to carry the reform farther. But 
 it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any 
 powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he de- 
 stroyed what was excellent. He substituted crutches 5 
 for stilts, bad sermons for good odes. 
 
 Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly ; 
 much more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides de- 
 served. Indeed, the caresses which this partiality leads 
 our countryman to bestow on " sad Electra's poet," some- lo 
 times remind us of the beautiful Queen of Fairyland 
 kissing the long ears of Bottom. At all events, there 
 can be no doubt that this veneration for the Athenian, 
 whether just or not, was injurious to the " Samson Ago- 
 nistes." Had Milton taken ^schylus for his model, he 15 
 would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, 
 and poured out profusely all the treasures of his mind, 
 without bestowing a thought on those draraati-c proprie- 
 ties which the nature of the work rendered it impossible 
 to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their 20 
 own nature inconsistent, he has failed, as every one else 
 must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves with 
 the characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify 
 ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting 
 ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralize 25 
 each other. We are by no means insensible to the merits 
 of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the 
 style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the opening 
 speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so 
 striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think 
 
24 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of 
 Milton, 
 
 The " Comus " is framed on the model of the Italian 
 masque, as the " Samson " is framed on the model of the 
 
 5 Greek tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance 
 of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far 
 superior to the Faithful Shepherdess, as the Faithful 
 Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the 
 Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had here 
 
 10 no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved 
 the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for 
 it the same veneration which he entertained for the 
 remains of Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by 
 so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, 
 
 15 moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to 
 which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could 
 stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style ; 
 but false .brilliancy was his utter aversion. His Muse 
 had no objection to a russet attire ; but she turned with 
 
 20 disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as 
 paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. 
 Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not 
 only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing tlie 
 severest test of the crucible. 
 
 25 Milton attended in the " Comus " to the distinction 
 which he afterwards neglected in the " Samson." He 
 made his Masque what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, 
 and dramatic only in semblance. He has not attempted 
 a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in tlie nature 
 of tliat species of composition ; and he has therefore sue- 
 
MILTON. 25 
 
 ceeded, wherever success was not impossible. The 
 speeches must be read as majestic soliloquies ; and he 
 who so reads them will be enraptured with their elo- 
 quence, their sublimity, and their music. The interrup- 
 tions of the dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon r^ 
 the writer, and break the illusion of the reader. The 
 finest passages are those which are lyric in form as well 
 as in spirit. " I should much commend," says the excel- 
 lent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Milton, " the tragical 
 part, if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain lo 
 Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto, I 
 must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet nothing 
 parallel in our language." The criticism was just. It 
 is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dia- 
 logue, when he is discharged from the labor of uniting 15 
 two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge 
 his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even 
 above himself. Then, like his own Good Genius bursting 
 from the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands 
 forth in celestial freedom and beauty ; he seems to cry 20 
 exultingly, — 
 
 " Now my task is smoothly done, 
 lean fly, or I can run," 
 
 to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in 
 the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy 
 smells of nard and cassia, which the musky wings of the 
 zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hes- 25 
 perides. 
 
 There are several of the ininor poems of Milton on 
 
26 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 which we would willingly make a few remarks. Still 
 more willingly would we enter into a detailed examina- 
 tion of that admirable poem, the " Paradise Regained," 
 which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned 
 
 5 except as an instance of the blindness of the parental 
 affection which men of letters bear towards the offspring 
 of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken in pre- 
 ferring this work, excellent as it is, to the "Paradise 
 Lost," we readily admit. But we are sure that the supe- 
 
 10 riority of the "Paradise Lost " to the " Paradise Re- 
 gained " is not more decided than the superiority of the 
 "Paradise Regained" to every poem which has since 
 made its appearance. Our limits, however, prevent us 
 from discussing the point at length. We hasten on to 
 
 15 that extraordinary production which the general suffrage 
 of critics has placed in the highest class of human com- 
 positions. 
 
 The only poem of modern times which can be com- 
 pared with the "Paradise Lost " is the " Divine Comedy." 
 
 20 The subject of Milton, in some points, resembled that 
 of Dante ; but he has treated it in a widely different 
 manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate our 
 opinion respecting our own great poet, than by contrast- 
 ing him with the father of Tuscan literature. 
 
 25 The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as 
 the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture- 
 writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs 
 speak for themselves ; they stand simply for what they 
 are. Those of Milton have a signification which is often 
 discernible only to the initiated. Their value depends 
 
MILTON. 27 
 
 less on what they directly represent than on what they 
 remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque, 
 may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to 
 describe, he never shrinks from describing it. He gives 
 us the shape, the color, the sound, the smell, the taste ; 5 
 he counts the numbers ; he measures the size. His 
 similes are the illustrations of a traveller. Unlike those 
 of other poets, and especially of Milton, they are intro- 
 duced in a plain, business-like manner ; not for the sake 
 of any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn ; lo 
 not for the sake of any ornament which they may impart 
 to the poem ; but simply in order to make the meaning 
 of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. 
 The ruins of the precipice which led from the sixth to 
 the seventh circle of hell were like those of the rock 15 
 which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. The 
 cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at 
 the monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the 
 heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the 
 vast cemetery of Aries. 20 
 
 Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante 
 the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few ex- 
 amples. The English poet has never thought of taking 
 the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea 
 of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched 25 
 out, huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to 
 the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster 
 which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he 
 addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, 
 he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas : his stature reaches the 
 
28 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which 
 Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. 
 " His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball 
 of St. Peter's at Rome ; and his other limbs were in 
 
 5 proportion ; so that the bank, which concealed him from 
 the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of 
 him, that three tall Germans would in vain have at- 
 tempted to reach to his hair." We are sensible that we 
 do no justice to the admirable style of the Florentine 
 
 10 poet. But Mr. Gary's translation is not at hand; and 
 our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our 
 meaning. 
 
 Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh 
 book of the " Paradise Lost " with the last ward of Male- 
 
 15 bolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, 
 and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremen- 
 dous imagery : Despair hurrying from couch to couch to 
 mock the wretches with his attendance ; Death shaking 
 his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delay- 
 
 20 ing to strike. What says Dante ? " There was such a 
 moan there as there would be if all the sick who, be- 
 tween July and September, are in the hospitals of Val- 
 dichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, 
 were in one pit together ; and such a stench was issuing 
 
 25 forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs." 
 
 We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office 
 of settling precedency between two such writers. Each 
 in his own department is incomparable; and each, we 
 may remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken a subject 
 adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest 
 
MILTON. 29 
 
 advantage. The "Divine Comedy " is a personal narrative. 
 Dante is the eye-witness and ear-witness of tliat which 
 he relates. He is the very man who has heard the tor- 
 mented spirits crying out for the second death ; who has 
 read the dusky characters on the portal within which 5 
 there is no hope ; who has hidden his face from the ter- 
 rors of the Gorgon; who has fled from the hooks and the 
 seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His 
 own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. 
 His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation, lo 
 His own brow has been marked by the purifying angel. 
 The reader would throw aside such a tale in incredu- 
 lous disgust, unless it were told with the strongest air of 
 veracity ; with a sobriety even in its horrors ; with the 
 greatest precision and multiplicity in its details. The 15 
 narrative of Milton in this respect differs from that of 
 Dante, as the adventures of Amadis differs from those of 
 Gulliver. The author of "Amadis " would have made his 
 book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute par- 
 ticulars which give such a charm to the work of Swift ; 20 
 the nautical observations, the affected delicacy about 
 names, the ofiicial documents transcribed at full length, 
 and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court, 
 springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We 
 are not shocked at being told that a man who lived, no- 25 
 body knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we 
 can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the 
 romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident 
 at Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, flying 
 islands, and philosophizing horses, nothing but such cir- 
 
30 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 cumstantial touches could produce for a single moment 
 a deception on the imagination. 
 
 Of all the poets who have introduced into their works 
 the agency of supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded 
 
 5 best. Here Dante decidedly yields to him ; and as this 
 is a point on which many rash and ill-considered judg- 
 ments have been pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell 
 on it a little longer. The most fatal error which a poet 
 can possibly commit in the management of his machinery, 
 
 10 is that of attempting to philosophize too much. Milton 
 has been often censured for ascribing to spirits many 
 functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these 
 objections, though sanctioned by eminent names, origi- 
 nate, we venture to say, in profound ignorance of the 
 
 15 art of poetry. 
 
 What is spirit ? What are our own minds, the portion 
 of spirit with which we are best acquainted ? We 
 observe certain phenomena. We cannot explain them 
 into material causes. We therefore infer that there exists 
 
 20 something which is not material. But of this something 
 we have no idea. We can define it only by negatives. 
 We can reason about it only by symbols. We use the 
 word, but we have no image of the thing; and the busi- 
 ness of poetry is with the images, and not with words. 
 
 25 The poet uses words indeed ; but they are merely the 
 instruments of his art, not its objects. They are the 
 materials which he is to dispose in such a manner as 
 to present a picture to the mental eye. And if they are 
 not so disposed, they are no more entitled to be called 
 
 30 poetry than a bale of canvas and a box of colors to be 
 called a painting. 
 
MILTON. 31 
 
 Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the 
 great mass of men must have images. The strong ten- 
 dency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idola- 
 try can be explained on no other principle. The first 
 inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to believe, wor- 5 
 shipped one invisible Deity. But the necessity of hav- 
 ing something more definite to adore produced, in a few 
 centuries, the innumerable crowd of gods and goddesses. 
 In like manner the ancient Persians thought it impious 
 to exhibit the Creator under a human form. Yet even lO 
 these transferred to the sun the worship which, in specu- 
 lation, they considered due only to the Supreme Mind. 
 The history of the Jews is the record of a continued 
 struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most 
 terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire of 15 
 having some visible and tangible object of adoration. 
 Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon has 
 assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread 
 over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a 
 proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feeling. 20 
 God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible, the invisible, 
 attracted few worshippers. A philosopher might admire 
 so noble a conception ; but the crowd turned away in dis- 
 gust from words which presented no image to their minds. 
 It was before Deity, embodied in a human form, walking 25 
 among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning 
 on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering 
 in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices 
 of the Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and 
 the pride of the Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, 
 
32 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the 
 dust. Soon after Christianity had achieved its triumph, 
 the principle which had assisted it began to corrupt it. 
 It became a new paganism. Patron saints assumed the 
 
 5 offices of household gods. St. George took the place of 
 Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss of Cas- 
 tor and Pollux. The Virgin Mother and Cecilia suc- 
 ceeded to Venus and the Muses. The fascination of sex 
 and loveliness was again joined to that of celestial dig- 
 
 10 nity ; and the homage of chivalry was blended with that 
 of religion. Reformers have often made a stand against 
 these feelings ; but never with more than apparent and 
 partial success. The men who demolished the images 
 in cathedrals have not always been able to demolish those 
 
 15 which were enshrined in their minds. It would not be 
 difficult to show that in politics the same rule holds good. 
 Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied 
 before they can excite a strong public feeling. The 
 multitude is more easily interested for the most unmean- 
 
 20 ing badge, or the most insignificant name, than for the 
 most important principle. 
 
 From these considerations, we infer that no poet who 
 should affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of 
 whicl' Milton has been blamed, would escape a disgrace- 
 
 25 ful failure. Still, however, there was another extreme 
 which, though far less dangerous, was also to be avoided. 
 The imaginations of men are in a great measure under 
 the control of their opinions. The most exquisite art of 
 poetical coloring can produce no illusion when it is em- 
 ployed to represent that which is at once perceived to be 
 
MILTON. 33 
 
 incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of 
 philosophers and theologians. It was necessary, there- 
 fore, for him to abstain from giving such a shock to 
 their understandings as might break the charm which it 
 was his object to throw over their imaginations. This is 5 
 the real explanation of the indistinctness and inconsist- 
 ency with which he has often been reproached. Dr. 
 Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary 
 that the spirits should be clothed with material forms. 
 " But," says he, " the poet should have secured the con- 10 
 sistency of his system by keeping immateriality out of 
 sight, and seducing the reader to drop it from his 
 thoughts." This is easily said ; but what if Milton could 
 not seduce his readers to drop immateriality from their 
 thoughts ? What if the contrary opinion had taken so 15 
 full a possession of the minds of men as to leave no 
 room even for the half-belief which poetry requires ? 
 Such we suspect to have been the case. It was impossi- 
 ble for the poet to adopt altogether the material or the 
 immaterial system. He therefore took his stand on 20 
 the debatable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. 
 He has doubtless, by so doing, laid himself open to the 
 charge of inconsistency. But, though philosophically in 
 the wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetically 
 in the right. This task, which almost any other writer 25 
 would have found impracticable, was easy to him. The 
 peculiar art which he possessed of communicating his 
 meaning circuitously through a long succession of asso- 
 ciated ideas, and of intimating more than he expressed, 
 enabled him to disguise those incongruities which he 
 could not avoid. 
 
34 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Poetry which relates to the beings of another workl 
 ought to be at once mysterious and picturesque. That 
 of Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque indeed 
 beyond any that ever was written. Its effect approaches 
 
 5 to that produced by the pencil or the chisel. But it is 
 picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a 
 fault on the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan 
 
 ■ of Dante's poem, which, as we have already observed, 
 rendered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. 
 
 10 Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excite an 
 interest ; but it is not the interest which is proper to 
 supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk to the 
 ghosts and demons, without any emotion of unearthly 
 awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask them to supper, and 
 
 15 eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good 
 men with wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly execu- 
 tioners. His dead men are merely living men in strange 
 situations. The scene which passes between the poet 
 and Farinata is justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in 
 
 20 the burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have 
 been at an aiito da fe. Nothing can be more touching 
 than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice. Yet 
 what is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet aus- 
 tere composure, the lover for whose affection she is 
 
 25 grateful, but whose vices she reprobates ? The feelings 
 which give the passage its charm would suit the streets 
 of Florence as well as the summit of the Mount of 
 Purgatory. 
 
 The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all 
 other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful 
 
MILTON. 35 
 
 creations. Tliey are not metaphysical abstractions. They 
 are not wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They 
 have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso 
 and Klopstock. They have just enough in common 
 with human nature to be intelligible to human beings. 5 
 Their characters are, like their forms, marked by a cer- 
 tain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated 
 to gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom. 
 Perhaps the gods and demons of ^schylus may best 
 bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. 10 
 The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, 
 something of the Oriental character ; and the same pecu- 
 liarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing 
 of the amenity and elegance which we generally find in 
 the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and 15 
 colossal. The legends of ^schylus seem to harmonize 
 less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticos in 
 which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of 
 Light and Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and 
 grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite in which Egypt 20 
 enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still 
 bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favorite gods 
 are those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven 
 and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a 
 stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, and the 25 
 inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of 
 this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, 
 the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of 
 heaven. Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable 
 resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both we find 
 
36 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the 
 same unconquerable pride. In both characters also are 
 mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind 
 and generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly 
 
 5 superhuman enough. He talks too much of his chains 
 and his uneasy posture ; he is rather too much depressed 
 and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on the 
 knowledge which he possesses that he holds the fate of 
 his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his release 
 
 10 will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another 
 sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victori- 
 ous over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which 
 cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, re- 
 solves, and even exults. Against the sword of Michael, 
 
 15 against the thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, 
 and the marl burning with solid fire, against the pros- 
 pect of an eternity of unintermitted misery, his spirit 
 bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, 
 requiring no support from anything external, nor even 
 
 20 from hope itself. 
 
 To return for a moment to the parallel which we have 
 been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we 
 would add that the poetry of these great men has in a 
 considerable degree taken its character from their moral 
 
 25 qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude 
 their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have noth- 
 ing in common with those modern beggars for fame, who 
 extort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperi- 
 enced by exposing the nakedness and sores of their 
 minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers 
 
MILTON. 37 
 
 whose works have been more completely, though un- 
 designedly, colored by their personal feelings. 
 
 The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished 
 by loftiness of spirit ; that of Dante by intensity of 
 feeling. In every line of the " Divine Comedy " we dis- 5 
 cern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling 
 with miser3^ There is perhaps no work in the world so 
 deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of 
 Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at 
 this distance of time can be judged, the effect of external lo 
 circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor 
 glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of 
 heaven, could dispel it. It turned every consolation and 
 every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled that 
 noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is 15 
 said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His 
 mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, 
 "aland of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the 
 light was as darkness." The gloom of his character dis- 
 colors all the passions of men, and all the face of nature, 20 
 and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise 
 and the glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits 
 of him are singularly characteristic. No person can 
 look on the features, noble even to ruggedness, the dark 
 furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woful stare of the 25 
 eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip, and 
 doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too sen- 
 sitive to be happy. 
 
 Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover ; and, 
 like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in 
 
38 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 love. He had survived his health and his sight, the 
 comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party. 
 Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished 
 at his entrance into life, some had been taken away from 
 
 5 the evil to come ; some had carried into foreign climates 
 their unconquerable hatred of oppression ; some were 
 pining in dungeons ; and some had poured forth their 
 blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with 
 just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pandar 
 
 10 in the style of a bellman, were now the favorite writers 
 of the sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome 
 herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to 
 the rabble of " Comus," grotesque monsters, half bestial, 
 half human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, 
 
 15 and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these that fair 
 Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, 
 lofty, spotless, and serene, to be chattered a,t, and pointed 
 at, and grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs and Gob- 
 lins. If ever despondency and asperity could be ex- 
 
 20 cused in any man, they might have been excused in 
 Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every 
 calamity. / Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor 
 penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappoint- 
 ments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had 
 
 25 power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His 
 spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were 
 singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps 
 stern ; but it was a temper which no sufferings could 
 render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the 
 eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the 
 
MILTON. 39 
 
 prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary 
 distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it 
 continued to be when, after having experienced every 
 calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, 
 sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die. 5 
 
 Hence it was that, though he wrote the " Paradise Lost " 
 at a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness 
 are in general beginning to fade, even from those minds 
 in which they have not been effaced by anxiety and dis- 
 appointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely lO 
 and delightful in the physical and in the moral world. 
 Neither Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more 
 healthful sense of the pleasantness of external objects, 
 or loved better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, 
 the songs of nightingales, the juice of summer fruits, and 15 
 the coolness of shady fountains. His conception of love 
 unites all the voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and 
 all the gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all 
 the pure and quiet affection of an English fireside. His 
 poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. 20 
 Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairyland, are embosomed 
 in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses 
 and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the ava- 
 lanche. 
 
 Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton 25 
 may be found in all his works ; but it is most strongly 
 displayed in the Sonnets. Those remarkable poems 
 have been undervalued by critics who have not under- 
 stood their nature. They have no epigrammatic point. 
 There is none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought. 
 
40 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the 
 style. They are simple but majestic records of the feel- 
 ings of the poet ; as little tricked out for the public eye 
 as his diary would have been. A victory, an expected 
 
 5 attack upon the city, a momentary fit of depression or 
 exultation, a jest thrown out against one of his books, 
 a dream which for a short time restored to him that 
 beautiful face over which the grave had closed forever, 
 led him to musings which, without effort, shaped thera- 
 
 10 selves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity 
 of style which characterize these little pieces remind 
 us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still more of the 
 Collects of the English Liturgy. The noble poem on 
 the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse. 
 
 15 The Sonnets are more or less striking, according as 
 the occasions which gave birth to them are more or less 
 interesting. But they are, almost without exception, 
 dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which 
 we know not where to look for a parallel. It would, 
 
 20 indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences 
 as to the character of a writer from passages directly 
 egotistical. But the qualities which we have ascribed 
 to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in 
 those parts of his works which treat of his personal 
 
 25 feelings, are distinguishable in every page, and impart 
 to all his writings, prose and poetry, English, Latin, and 
 Italian, a strong family likeness. 
 
 His public conduct was such as was to be expected 
 from a man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so 
 powerful. He lived at one of the most memorable eras 
 
MILTON. 41 
 
 in the history of mankind ; at the very crisis of the great 
 conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and 
 despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was 
 fought for no single generation, for no single land. The 
 destinies of the human race were staked on the same 5 
 cast with the freedom of the English people. Then 
 were first proclaimed those mighty principles which 
 have since worked their way into the depths of the 
 American forests, which have roused Greece from the 
 slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and 10 
 which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kin- 
 dled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, 
 and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted 
 fear. 
 
 Of those principles, then struggling for their infant 15 
 existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent lit- 
 erary champion. We need not say how much we admire 
 his public conduct. But we cannot disguise from our- 
 selves that a large portion of his countrymen still think 
 it unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, has been more 20 
 discussed, and is less understood, than any event in 
 English history. The friends of liberty labored under 
 the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable com- 
 plained so bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, 
 their enemies were the painters. As a body, the Round- 25 
 heads had done their utmost to decry and ruin litera- 
 ture ; and literature was even with them, as, in the long 
 run, it always is with its enemies. The best book on 
 their side of the question is the charming narrative of 
 Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the Parliament is 
 
42 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 good ; but it breaks off at the most interesting crisis 
 of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish 
 and violent; and most of the later writers who have 
 espoused the same cause, Oldmixon, for instance, and 
 5 Catherine Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more 
 distinguished by zeal than either by candor or by skill. 
 On the other side are the most authoritative and the 
 most popular historical works in our language, that of 
 Clarendon, and that of Hume. The former is not only 
 
 10 ably written and full of valuable information, but has 
 also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even 
 the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respect- 
 able. Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the great 
 mass of the reading public are still contented to take 
 
 15 their opinions, hated religion so much that he hated lib- 
 erty for having been allied with religion, and has pleaded 
 the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate, 
 while affecting the impartiality of a judge. 
 
 The public conduct of Milton must be approved or 
 
 20 condemned, according as the resistance of the people to 
 Charles the First shall appear to be justifiable or crim- 
 inal. We shall therefore make no apology for dedicat- 
 ing a few pages to the discussion of that interesting and 
 most important question. We shall not argue it on gen- 
 
 25 eral grounds. We shall not recur to those primary prin- 
 ciples from which the claim of any government to the 
 obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We are 
 entitled to that vantage-ground; but we will relinquish 
 it. We are, on this point, so confident of superiority, 
 that we are not unwilling to imitate the ostentatious 
 
MILTON. 43 
 
 generosity of those ancient knights, who vowed to joust 
 without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to give 
 their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We 
 will take the naked constitutional question. We confi- 
 dently affirm, that every reason which can be urged in 5 
 favor of the Revolution of 1688 may be urged with at 
 least equal force in favor of what is called the Great 
 Rebellion. 
 
 In one respect only, we think, can the warmest ad- 
 mirers of Charles venture to say that he was a better 10 
 sovereign than his son. He was not, in name and pro- 
 fession, a Papist ; we say in name and profession, be- 
 cause both Charles himself and his creature Laud, while 
 they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained 
 all its worst vices, a complete subjection of reason to 15 
 authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a 
 childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration 
 for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless 
 intolerance. This, however, we waive. We will con- 
 cede that Charles was a good Protestant ; but we say that 20 
 his Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction 
 between his case and that of James. 
 
 The principles of the Revolution have often been 
 grossly misrepresented, and never more than in the 
 course of the present year. There is a certain class of 25 
 men who, while they profess to hold in reverence the 
 great names and great actions of former times, never 
 look at them for any other purpose than in order to find 
 in them some excuse for existing abuses. In every ven- 
 erable precedent they pass by what is essential, and take 
 
44 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 only what is accidental : they keep out of sight what is 
 beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that is de- 
 fective. If, in any part of any great example, there 
 be anything unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with an 
 5 unerring instinct, and dart upon it with a ravenous 
 delight. If some good end has been attained in spite of 
 them, they feel, with their prototype, that — 
 
 " Their labors must be to pervert tbat end, 
 And out of good still to find means of evil." 
 
 To the blessings which England has derived from the 
 Revolution these people are utterly insensible. The ex- 
 
 10 pulsion of a tyrant, the solemn recognition of popular 
 rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for nothing 
 with them. One sect there was, which, from unfortunate 
 temporary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under 
 close restraint. One part of the empire there was so 
 
 15 unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its misery 
 was necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to our 
 freedom. These are the parts of the Revolution which 
 the politicians of whom we speak love to contemplate, 
 and which seem to them not indeed to vindicate, but in 
 
 20 some degree to palliate, the good which it has produced. 
 Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South America. 
 They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine Right, 
 which has now come back to us, like a thief from trans- 
 portation, under the alias of Legitimacy. But mention 
 
 25 the miseries of Ireland. Then William is a hero. Then 
 Somers and Shrewsbury are great men. Then the Revo- 
 
MILTON. 45 
 
 lution is a glorious era. The very same persons who, 
 iu this country, never omit an opportunity of reviving 
 every wretched Jacobite slander respecting the Whigs of 
 that period, have no sooner crossed St. George's Chan- 
 nel, than they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious 5 
 and immortal memory. They may truly boast that they 
 look not at men, but at measures. So that evil be done, 
 they care not who does it ; the arbitrary Charles or the 
 liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic or Frederic the 
 Protestant. On such occasions their deadliest opponents 10 
 may reckon upon their candid construction. The bold 
 assertions of these people have of late impressed a large 
 portion of the public with an opinion that James the 
 Second was expelled simply because he was a Catholic, 
 and that the Eevolution was essentially a Protestant 15 
 Revolution. 
 
 But this certainly was not the case, nor can any per- 
 son who has acquired more knowledge of the history 
 of those times than is to be found in Goldsmith's 
 '' Abridgment," believe that, if James had held his own 20 
 religious opinions without wishing to make proselytes, 
 or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he had contented 
 himself with exerting only his constitutional influence 
 for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have 
 been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew 25 
 their own meaning ; and, if we may believe them, their 
 hostility was primarily not to Popery, but to tyranny. 
 They did not drive out a tyrant because he was a Catho- 
 lic ; but they excluded Catholics from the crown, because 
 they thought them likely to be tyrants. The ground on 
 
46 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 which they, in their famous resolution, declared the 
 throne vacant, was this, " that James had broken the 
 fundamental laws of the kingdom." Every man, there- 
 fore, who approves of the Revolution of 1688 must hold 
 
 5 that the breach of fundamental laws on the part of the 
 sovereign justifies resistance. The question, then, is 
 u/ this : Had Charles the First broken the fundamental 
 laws of England ? 
 
 No person can answer in the negative unless he 
 
 10 refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought 
 against Charles by his opponents, but to the narratives 
 of the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions of the 
 king himself. If there be any truth in any historian of 
 any party who has related the events of that reign, the 
 
 15 conduct of Charles, from his accession to the meeting 
 of the Long Parliament, had been a continued course of 
 oppression and treachery. Let those who applaud the 
 Revolution and condemn the Rebellion mention one 
 act of James the Second to which a parallel is not to 
 
 20 be found in the history of his father. Let them lay 
 their fingers on a single article in the Declaration of 
 Right, presented by the two Houses to William and 
 Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to have vio- 
 lated. He had, according to the testimony of his own 
 
 25 friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, raised 
 taxes without the consent of parliament, and quar- 
 tered troops on the people in the most illegal and 
 vexatious manner. Not a single session of parliament 
 had passed without some unconstitutional attack on the 
 freedom of debate. The right of petition was grossly 
 
MILTON. 47 
 
 violated ; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and 
 unwarranted imprisonments, were grievances of daily 
 occurrence. If these things do not justify resistance, 
 the Revolution was treason ; if they do, the great Re- 
 bellion was laudable, 5 
 
 But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures ? Why, 
 after the king had consented to so many reforms and 
 renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, did the 
 parliament continue to rise in their demands at the risk 
 of provoking a civil war ? The ship-money had been lo 
 given up, the Star Chamber had been abolished, pro- 
 vision had been made for the frequent convocation and 
 secure deliberation of parliaments. Why not pursue an 
 end confessedly good by peaceable and regular means ? 
 We recur again to the analogy of the Revolution. Why 16 
 was James driven from the throne ? Why was he not 
 retained upon conditions ? He too had offered to call 
 a free parliament, and to submit to its decision all the 
 matters in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising 
 our forefathers, who preferred a revolution, a disputed 20 
 succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of for- 
 eign and intestine war, a standing army, and a national 
 debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and 
 proved tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the same 
 principle, and is entitled to the same praise. They 25 
 could not trust the king. He had, no doubt, passed 
 salutary laws ; but what assurance was there that he 
 would not break them ? He had renounced oppressive 
 prerogatives; but where was the security that he would 
 not resume them ? The nation had to deal with a man 
 
48 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke 
 promises with equal facility, a man whose honor had 
 been a hundred times pawned, and never redeemed. 
 Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still 
 5 stronger ground than the Convention of 1688. No 
 action of James can be compared to the conduct of 
 Charles with respect to the Petition of Right. The 
 Lords and Commons present him with a bill in which 
 the constitutional limits of his power are marked out. 
 
 10 He hesitates ; he evades ; at last he bargains to give his 
 assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn 
 assent : the subsidies are voted ; but no sooner is the 
 tyrant relieved than he returns at once to all the arbi- 
 trary measures which he had bound himself to abandon, 
 
 15 and violates all the clauses of the very Act which he had 
 been paid to pass. 
 
 For more than ten years the people had seen the rights 
 which were theirs by a double claim, by immemorial 
 inheritance, and by recent purchase, infringed by the 
 
 20 perfidious king who had recognized them. At length 
 circumstances compelled Charles to summon another 
 parliament. Another chance was given to our fathers : 
 were they to throw it away as they had thrown away 
 the former ? Were they again to be cozened by le Rol 
 
 25 le veut ? Were they again to advance their money 
 on pledges which had been forfeited over and over 
 again ? Were they to lay a second Petition of Right at 
 the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish aid in 
 exchange for another unmeaning ceremonj^, and then to 
 take tlieir departure, till, after ten years more of fraud 
 
MILTON. 49 
 
 and oppression, their prince should again require a sup- 
 ply, and again repay it with a perjury ? They were 
 compelled to choose whether they would trust a tyrant 
 or conquer him ? We think that they chose wisely and 
 nobly. 5 
 
 The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other 
 malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is 
 produced, generally decline all controversy about the 
 facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to 
 character. He had so many private virtues ! And had lo 
 James the Second no private virtues ? Was Oliver 
 Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, 
 destitute of private virtues ? And what, after all, are 
 the virtues ascribed to Charles ? A religious zeal, not 
 more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and 15 
 narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household 
 decencies which half the tombstones in England claim 
 for tliose who lie beneath them. A good father! A good 
 husband ! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of 
 persecution, tyranny, and falsehood ! 20 
 
 We charge him with having broken his coronation 
 oath ; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow ! 
 We accuse him of having given up his people to the 
 merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard- 
 hearted of prelates ; and the defence is that he took his 25 
 little son on his knee, and kissed him ! We censure him 
 for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, 
 after having, for good and valuable consideration, prom- 
 ised to observe them ; and we are informed that he was 
 accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning ! 
 
50 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 It is to such considerations as these, together with his 
 Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, 
 that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity 
 with the present generation. 
 5 For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the 
 common phrase, "a good man, but a bad king." We can 
 as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father, 
 or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in 
 estimating the character of an individual, leave out of 
 
 10 our consideration his conduct in the most important of 
 all human relations ; and if in that relation we find him 
 to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take 
 the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his 
 temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel. 
 
 15 We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting 
 a topic on which the defenders of Charles are fond of 
 dwelling. If, they say, he governed his people ill, he at 
 least governed them after the example of his predeces- 
 sors. If he violated their privileges, it was because 
 
 20 those privileges had not been accurately defined. No 
 act of oppression has ever been imputed to him which 
 has not a parallel in the annals of the Tudors. This 
 point Hume has labored, with an art which is as dis- 
 creditable in a historical work as it would be admirable 
 
 25 in a forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and 
 decisive. Charles had assented to the Petition of Right. 
 He had renounced the oppressive powers said to have 
 been exercised by his predecessors, and he had renounced 
 them for money. He was not entitled to set up his 
 antiquated claims against his own recent release. 
 
MILTON. 61 
 
 These arguments are so obvious that it may seem 
 superfluous to dwell upon them; but those who have 
 observed how much the events of that time are mis- 
 represented and misunderstood, will not blame us for 
 stating the case simply. It is a case of which the 5 
 simplest statement is the strongest. 
 
 The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose 
 to take issue on the great points of the question. 
 They content themselves with exposing some of the 
 crimes and follies to which public commotions neces- lo 
 sarily give birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of 
 Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence of the 
 army. They laugh at the Scriptural names of the 
 preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts ; sol- 
 diers revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry ; 15 
 upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking pos- 
 session of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees 
 of the old gentry ; boys smashing the beautiful windows 
 of cathedrals ; Quakers riding naked through the mar- 
 ket-place ; Fifth-monarchy men shouting for King Jesus ; 20 
 agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of 
 Agag ; — all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the 
 Great Rebellion. 
 
 Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. 
 These charges, were they infinitely more important, 25 
 would not alter our opinion of an event which alone has 
 made us to differ from the slaves who crouch beneath 
 despotic sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were produced 
 by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty. 
 Has the acquisition been worth the sacrifice ? It is the 
 
52 MACAULAY'S ESSAY». 
 
 nature of the devil of tyrauuy to tear aud rend the body 
 which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued posses- 
 sion less horrible than the struggles of the tremendous 
 exorcism ? 
 
 5 If it were possible that a people brought up under an 
 intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that system 
 without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to 
 despotic power would be removed. We should, in that 
 case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least pro- 
 
 10 duces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral 
 character of a nation. We deplore the outrages which 
 accompany revolutions. But the more violent the out- 
 rages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was 
 necessary. The violence of those outrages will always 
 
 15 be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the 
 people, and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will 
 be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under 
 which they have been accustomed to live. Thus it was 
 in our civil war. The heads of the church and state 
 
 20 reaped only that which they had sown. The government 
 had prohibited free discussion ; it had done its best to 
 keep the people unacquainted with their duties and their 
 rights. The retribution was just and natural. If our 
 rulers suffered from popular ignorance, it was because 
 
 25 they had themselves taken away the key of knowledge. 
 If they were assailed with blind fury, it was because 
 they had exacted an equally blind submission. 
 
 It is the character of such revolutions that we always 
 see the worst of them first. Till men have been some 
 time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The 
 
MILTON. 53 
 
 natives of wine countries are generally sober. In cli- 
 mates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A 
 newly liberated people may be compared to a northern 
 army encamped on the Ehine or the Xeres. It is said 
 that, when soldiers in such a situation first find them- 5 
 selves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare 
 and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxi- 
 cation. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion, and, 
 after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, 
 they become more temperate than they had ever been in 10 
 their own country. In the same manner, the final and 
 permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and 
 mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, 
 conflicting errors, scepticism on points the most clear, 
 dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at 15 
 this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They 
 pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice ; 
 they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the com- 
 fortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole 
 appearance ; and then ask in scorn where the promised 20 
 splendor and comfort is to be found. If such miserable 
 sophisms were to prevail there would never be a good 
 house or a good government in the world. 
 
 Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some 
 mysterious law of her nature, was Condemned to appear 25 
 at certain seasons in the form of a foul and poisonous 
 snake. Those who injured her during the period of her 
 disguise were forever excluded from participation in the 
 blessings which she bestowed. But to those who, in 
 spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, 
 
54 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 she afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and 
 celestial form which was natural to her; accompanied 
 their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses 
 with wealth, made them happy in love and victorious in 
 
 5 war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At times she takes the 
 form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she 
 stings. But woe to those who in disgust shall venture 
 to crush her ! And happy are those who, having dared 
 to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall 
 
 10 at length be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty 
 and lier glory ! 
 
 There is only one cure for the evils which newly 
 acquired freedom produces ; and that cure is freedom. 
 When a prisoner first leaves his cell lie cannot bear the 
 
 15 light of day ; he is unable to discriminate colors, or rec- 
 ognize faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him into 
 his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. 
 The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and 
 bewilder nations which have become half blind in the 
 
 20 house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will 
 soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to 
 reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. 
 Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered ele- 
 ments of truth cease to contend, and begin to coalesce. 
 
 25 And at length a system of justice and order is educed 
 out of the chaos. 
 
 Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying 
 it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people 
 ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. 
 The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who 
 
MILTON. 65 
 
 resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to 
 swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become 
 wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever. 
 Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the con- 
 duct of Milton and the other wise and good men who, 5 
 in spite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in the 
 conduct of their associates, stood firmly by the cause of 
 public liberty. We are not aware that the poet has been 
 charged with personal participation in any of the blam- 
 able excesses of that time. The favorite topic of his lo 
 enemies is the line of conduct which he pursued with 
 regard to the execution of the king. Of that celebrated y^ 
 proceeding we by no means approve. Still we must 
 say, in justice to the many eminent persons who con- 
 curred in it, and in justice more particularly to the emi- 15 
 nent person who defended it, that nothing can be more 
 absurd than the imputations which, for the last hundred 
 and sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast upon the 
 Regicides. We have, throughout, abstained from ap- 
 pealing to iirst principles. We will not appeal to them 20 
 now. We recur again to the parallel case of the Revo- 
 lution. What essential distinction can be drawn between 
 the execution of the father and the deposition of the 
 son ? What constitutional maxim is there which applies 
 to the former and not to the latter ? The king can do 25 
 no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as Charles 
 could have been. The minister only ought to be respon- 
 sible for the acts of the sovereign. If so, why not im- 
 peach Jeffreys and retain James ? The person of a king 
 is sacred. Was the person of James considered sacred 
 
 y 
 
56 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 at the Boyne ? To discharge cannon against an army 
 in which a king is known to be posted is to approach 
 pretty near to regicide. Charles, too, it should always 
 be remembered, was put to death by men who had been 
 
 5 exasj)erated by the hostilities of several years, and who 
 had never been bound to him by any other tie than that 
 which was common to them with all their fellow-citizens. 
 Those who drove James from his throne, who seduced 
 his army, who alienated his friends, who first imprisoned 
 
 10 him in his palace, and then turned him out of it, who 
 broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages, 
 who pursued him with fire and sword from one part of 
 the empire to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered 
 his adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, were his 
 
 15 nephew and his two daughters. When we reflect on all 
 these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the same 
 persons who, on the fifth of November, thank God for 
 wonderfully conducting his servant William, and for 
 making all opposition fall before him until he became 
 
 20 our king and governor, can, on the thirteenth of January, 
 contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Koyal Martyr 
 may be visited on themselves and their children. 
 
 \y We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles ; 
 not because the constitution exempts the king from 
 
 25 responsibility, for we know that all such maxims, how- 
 ever excellent, have their exceptions ; not because we 
 feel any particular interest in his character, for we think 
 that his sentence describes him with perfect justice as a 
 "tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy;" 
 but because we are convinced that the measure was most 
 
MILTON. 57 
 
 injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed 
 was a captive and a hostage : his heir, to whom the alle- 
 giance of every Koyalist was instantly transferred, was 
 at large. The Presbyterians could never have been per- 
 fectly reconciled to the father ; they had no such rooted 5 
 enmity to the son. The great body of the people, also, 
 contemplated that proceeding with feelings which, how- 
 ever unreasonable, no government could safely venture 
 to outrage. 
 
 But though we think the conduct of the Regicides lo 
 blamable, that of Milton appears to us in a very differ- 
 ent light. The deed was done. It could not be undone. 
 The evil was incurred; and the object was to render it 
 as small as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army 
 for not yielding to the popular opinion ; but we cannot 15 
 censure Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The 
 very feeling which would have restrained us from com- 
 mitting the act, would have led us, after it had been 
 committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility 
 and superstition. For the sake of public liberty we 20 
 wish that the thing had not been done while the people 
 disapproved of it. But, for the sake of public liberty, 
 we should also have wished the people to approve of it 
 when it was done. If anything more were wanting to 
 the justification of Milton, the book of Salmasius 25 
 would furnish it. That miserable performance is now 
 with justice considered only as a beacon to word-catchers 
 who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of the 
 man who refuted it, the " ^neae magni dextra," gives it 
 all its fame with the present generation. In that age 
 
58 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 the state of things was different. It was not then fully 
 understood how vast an interval separates the mere 
 classical scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can 
 it be doubted that a treatise which, bearing the name of 
 
 5 so eminent a critic, attacked the fundamental principles 
 of all free governments, miist, if suffered to remain unan- 
 swered, have produced a most pernicious effect oh the 
 public mind. 
 
 We wish to add a few words relative to another sub- 
 
 10 ject, on which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, 
 — his conduct during the administration of the Protector. 
 That an enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept 
 office under a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first 
 sight, extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which 
 
 15 the country was then placed were extraordinary. The 
 ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never 
 seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first 
 fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and 
 never deserted it till it had deserted its dv;ty. If he 
 
 20 dissolved it by force, it was not till he found that the 
 few members who remained after so many deaths, seces- 
 sions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to 
 themselves a power which they held only in trust, and 
 to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. 
 
 25 But even when thus placed by violence at the head of 
 affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave 
 the country a constitution far more perfect than any 
 which had at that time been known in the world. He 
 reformed the representative system in a manner which 
 has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For 
 
MILTON. 59 
 
 himself he demanded indeed the first place in the com- 
 monwealth ; but with powers scarcely so great as those 
 of a Dutch stadtholder or an American president. He 
 gave the parliament a voice in the appointment of min- 
 isters, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not 5 
 even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments ; and 
 he did not require that the chief magistracy should be 
 hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think, if the 
 circumstances of the time and tlie opportunities which 
 he had of aggrandizing himself be fairly considered, he lo 
 will not lose by comparison with Washington or Bolivar. 
 Had his moderation been met by corresponding modera- 
 tion, there is no reason to think that he would have over- 
 stepped the line wliich he had traced for himself. But 
 when he found that his parliaments questioned the 15 
 authority under which they met, and that he was in 
 danger of being deprived of the restricted power which 
 was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then it 
 must be acknowledged he adopted a more arbitrary 
 policy. " 20 
 
 Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Crom- 
 well were at first honest, though we believe that he was 
 driven from the noble course which he had marked out 
 for himself by the almost irresistible force of circum- 
 stances, though we admire, in common with all men of 25 
 all parties, the ability and energy of his splendid admin- 
 istration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless 
 power, even in his hands. We know that a good con- 
 stitution is infinitely better than the best despot. But 
 we suspect, that at the time of which we speak, the vio- 
 
60 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 lence of religious and political enmities rendered a stable 
 and happy settlement next to impossible. The choice 
 lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, but between 
 Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well no 
 
 5 man can doubt who fairly compares the events of the 
 protectorate with those of the thirty years which suc- 
 ceeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in the Eng- 
 lish annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in 
 an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable 
 
 10 system. Never before had religious liberty and the 
 freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. 
 Never had the national honor been better upheld abroad, 
 or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was 
 rarely that any opposition which stopped short of open 
 
 15 rebellion provoked the resentment of the liberal and 
 magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had 
 established, as set down in the Instrument of Govern- 
 ment and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excel- 
 lent. His practice, it is true, too often departed from 
 
 20 the theory of these institutions. But had he lived 
 a few years longer, it is probable that his institutions 
 would have survived him, and that his arbitrary practice 
 would have died with him. His power had not been 
 consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only 
 
 25 by his great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was 
 to be dreaded from a second protector, unless he were 
 also a second Oliver Cromwell. The events which fol- 
 lowed his decease are the most complete vindication of 
 those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority. 
 His death dissolved the whole frame of society. The 
 
MILTON. 61 
 
 army rose against the parliament, the different corps of 
 the army against each other. Sect raved against sect. 
 Party plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in their 
 eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed 
 their own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. 5 
 Without casting one glance on the past, or requiring one 
 stipulation for the future, they threw down their free- 
 dom at the feet of the most frivolous and heartless of 
 tyrants. 
 
 Then came those days, never to be recalled without a 10 
 blush, the days of servitude without loyalty, and sen- 
 suality without love ; of dwarfish talents and gigantic 
 vices ; the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds ; the 
 golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The 
 king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his 15 
 people, sank into a viceroy of Prance, and pocketed with 
 complacent infamy her degrading insults and her more 
 degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the jests 
 of buffoons, regulated the policy of the state. The gov- 
 ernment had just ability enough to deceive, and just 20 
 religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty 
 were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anath- 
 ema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every hign 
 place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial 
 and Moloch ; and England propitiated those obscene and 25 
 cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest chil- 
 dren. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to dis- 
 grace, till the race, accursed of God and man, was a second 
 time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, 
 and to be a by -word and a shaking of the head to the 
 nations. 
 
62 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on 
 the public character of Milton, apply to him only as one 
 of a large body. We shall proceed to notice some of the 
 peculiarities which distinguished him from his contem- 
 
 5 poraries. And for that purpose it is necessary to take a 
 short survey of the parties into which the political world 
 was at that time divided. We must premise that our 
 observations are intended to apply only to those who 
 adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other 
 
 10 side. In days of public commotion every faction, like 
 an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-fol- 
 lowers, a useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round 
 its line of march in the hoj)e of picking up something 
 under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, 
 
 15 and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. England, 
 at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle 
 and selfish politicians, who transferred their support to 
 every government as it rose ; who kissed the hand of the 
 king in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649 ; who shouted 
 
 20 with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in 
 Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be 
 hanged at Tyburn ; who dined on calves' heads, or stuck 
 up oak-branches, as circumstances altered, without the 
 slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of 
 
 25 the account. We take our estimate of parties from those 
 who really deserve to be called partisans. 
 
 We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remark- 
 able body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever 
 produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their 
 character lie on the surface. He that runs may read 
 
MILTON. 63 
 
 them ; nor have there beeu wanting attentive and mali- 
 cious observers to point them out. For many years 
 after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeas- 
 ured invective and derision. They were exposed to the 
 utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at 5 
 the time when the press and the stage were most licen- 
 tious. They were not men of letters ; they were, as a 
 body, unpopular ; they could not defend themselves ; and 
 the public would not take them under its protection. 
 They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the 10 
 tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The 
 ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, 
 their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, 
 their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they 
 introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human 15 
 learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were 
 indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from 
 the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to 
 be learned. And he who approaches this subject should 
 carefully guard against the influence of that potent rid- 20 
 icule which has already misled so many excellent writers. 
 
 "Ecco il fonte del riso, eel ecco il rio 
 Che mortali perigli in se contiene : 
 Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
 Ed esser cauti molto a noi convieue." 
 
 Those who roused the people to resistance ; who di- 
 rected their measures through a long series of eventful 
 years ; who formed, out of the most unpromising mate- 
 rials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen ; who 
 
64 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 trampled down king, church, and aristocracy ; who, in 
 the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, 
 made the name of England terrible to every nation on 
 the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most 
 5 of their absurdities were mere external badges, like 
 the signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We 
 regret that these badges were not more attractive. We 
 regret that a body to whose courage and talents mankind 
 has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty ele- 
 
 10 gance which distinguished some of the adherents of 
 Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for which 
 the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if 
 we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the 
 play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only 
 
 15 the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the 
 plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. 
 
 The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a 
 peculiar character from the daily contemplation of supe- 
 rior beings and eternal interests, Not content with ac- 
 
 20 knowledging in general terms, an overruling Providence, 
 they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the 
 Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for 
 whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know 
 him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the 
 
 25 great end of existence. They rejected with contempt 
 the ceremonious hoinage which other sects substituted 
 for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching 
 occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring 
 veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable bright- 
 ness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence 
 
MILTON. 65 
 
 originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. 
 The difference between the greatest and the meanest of 
 mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the 
 boundless interval which separated the whole race from 
 him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. 5 
 They recognized no title to superiority but his favor ; 
 and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accom- 
 plishments and all the dignities of the world. If they 
 were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and 
 poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If lo 
 their names were not found in the registers of heralds, , 
 they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps 
 were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, 
 legions of ministering angels had charge over them. 
 Their palaces were houses not made with hands ; their 15 
 diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. 
 On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they 
 looked down with contempt ; for they esteemed them- 
 selves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in 
 a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an ear- 20 
 lier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier 
 hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose 
 fate a mysterious and terrible- importance belonged, on 
 whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness 
 looked with anxious interest ; who had been destined, 25 
 before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity 
 which should continue when heaven and earth should 
 have passed away. Events which short-sighted politi- 
 cians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on 
 his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flour- 
 
66 - MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 ished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had pro- 
 claimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist and the 
 harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no com- 
 mon deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He 
 
 5 had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by 
 the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that 
 the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, 
 that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered 
 at the sufferings of her expiring God. 
 
 10 Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, 
 the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion ; 
 the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He pros- 
 trated himself in the dust before his Maker ; but he set 
 his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional re- 
 
 15 tirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and 
 tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible 
 illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting 
 whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific 
 Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting 
 
 20 fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with 
 the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he 
 cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his 
 face from him. But when he took his seat in the coun- 
 cil, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous 
 
 25 workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind 
 them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their 
 uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their 
 groans and their whining hymns, might laugli at them. 
 But those had little reason to laugh who encountered 
 them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These 
 
MILTON. 67 
 
 fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness 
 of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some 
 writers have thought inconsistent with their religious 
 zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. 
 The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them 5 
 tranquil on every other. One over-powering sentiment 
 had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and 
 fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. 
 They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and 
 their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. 10 
 Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their 
 minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and 
 raised them above the influence of danger and of corrup- 
 tion. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise 
 ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went 15 
 through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus 
 with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, 
 mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor 
 lot in human infirmities ; insensible to fatigue, to pleas- 
 ure, and to pain ; not to be pierced by any weapon, not 20 
 to be withstood by any barrier. 
 
 Such we believe to have been the character of the 
 Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. 
 We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. 
 We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often 25 
 injured by straining after things too high for mortal 
 reach ; and we know that, in spite of their hatred of 
 Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that 
 bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity ; that 
 they had their anchorites and their crusades, their 
 
68 macaulay's essays. 
 
 Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominies and 
 their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken 
 into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them 
 a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body. 
 
 5 'xhe Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty 
 mainly because it was the cause of religion. - ' There was 
 another party, by no means numerous, but distinguished 
 by learning and ability, which acted with them on very 
 different principles. We speak of those whom Crom- 
 
 10 well was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who 
 were, in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases 
 or careless Galiios with regard to religious subjects, but 
 passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the 
 study of ancient literature, they set up their country as 
 
 15 their idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of 
 Plutarch as their examples. They seem to have borne 
 some resemblance to the Brissotines of the French Eevo- 
 lution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of dis- 
 tinction between them and their devout associates, whose 
 
 20 tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient to 
 affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly 
 adopted. 
 
 We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to 
 speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, 
 
 25 with perfect candor. We shall not charge upon a whole 
 party the profligacy and baseness of the horse-boys, 
 gamblers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license and 
 plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to 
 the standard of Charles, and who disgraced their asso- 
 ciates by excesses which, under the stricter discipline of 
 
MILTON. 69 
 
 the parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will 
 select a more favorable specimen. Thinking as we do 
 that the cause of the king was the cause of bigotry and 
 tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with com- 
 placency on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. 5 
 We feel a national pride in comparing them with the 
 instruments which the despots of other countries are 
 compelled to employ, with the mutes who throng their 
 antechambers, and the Janissaries who mount guard at 
 their gates. Our royalist countrymen were not heartless, 10 
 dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and simpering 
 at every word. They were not mere machines for de- 
 struction, dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill, 
 intoxicated into valor, defending without love, destroy- 
 ing without hatred. There was a freedom in their sub- 15 
 serviency, a nobleness in their very degradation. The 
 sentiment of individual independence was strong within 
 them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or 
 selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honor, the 
 prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of his- 20 
 tory, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa ; 
 and, like the Ked-Cross Knight, they thought that they 
 were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they 
 defended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth, 
 they scarcely entered at all into the merits of the politi- 25 
 cal question. It was not for a treacherous king or an 
 intolerant church that they fought, but for the old ban- 
 ner which had waved in so many battles over the heads 
 of their fathers, and for the altars at which they had 
 received the hands of their brides. Thougfh nothing: 
 
70 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 could be more erroneous than their political opinions, 
 they possessed, in a far greater degree than their adver- 
 saries, those qualities which are the grace of private 
 life. With many of the vices of the Kouud Table, they 
 
 5 had also many of its virtues, — courtesy, generosity, ve- 
 racity, tenderness, and respect for women. They had far 
 more both of profound and of polite learning than the 
 Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, their 
 tempers mor^ amiable, their tastes more elegant, and 
 
 10 their households more cheerful. 
 
 Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes 
 which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He 
 was not a free-thinker. He was not a Royalist. In his 
 character the noblest qualities of every party were com- 
 
 15 bined in harmonious union. From the parliament and 
 from the court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic 
 cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the 
 Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hos- 
 pitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself 
 
 20 whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the 
 base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer 
 elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived — 
 
 " As ever in his great task-master's eye." 
 
 Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an 
 Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he 
 25 acquired their contempt of external circumstances, theit 
 fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. 
 But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer 
 
MILTON. 71 
 
 was more perfectly free from the contagion of their 
 fanatic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous 
 jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to 
 pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had 
 nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities 5 
 which were almost entirely monopolized by the party of 
 the tyrant. There was none who had a stronger sense 
 of the value of literature, a finer relish for every elegant 
 amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honor and 
 love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes 10 
 and his associations were such as harmonize best with 
 monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence 
 of all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers were 
 misled. But of those feelings he was the master and 
 not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed 15 
 all the pleasures of fascination ; but he was not fascin- 
 ated. He listened to the song of the Sirens ; yet he 
 glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. 
 He tasted the cup of Circe ; but he bore about him a 
 sure antidote against the effects of its bewitching sweet- 20 
 ness. The illusions which captivated liis imagination 
 never impaired his reasoning powers. The statesman 
 was proof against the splendor, the solemnity, and the 
 romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who 
 will contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises 25 
 on Prelacy with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical 
 architecture and music in the "Penseroso," which was 
 published about the same time, will understand our 
 meaning. This is an inconsistency which, more than 
 anything else, raises his character in our estimation, 
 
72 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 because it shows how many private tastes and feelings 
 he sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty 
 to mankind. It is tlie very struggle of the noble Othello. 
 His heart relents ; but his hand is firm. He does naught 
 
 5 in hate, but all in honor. He kisses the beautiful de- 
 ceiver before he destroys her. 
 
 That from which the public character of Milton de- 
 rives its great and peculiar splendor, still remains to be 
 mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a for- 
 
 10 sworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted him. 
 self in onj unction with others. But the glory of the 
 battle which he fought for the species of freedom which 
 is the most valuable, and which was then the least 
 understood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his 
 
 15 own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his con- 
 temporaries raised their voices against ship-money and 
 the Star Chamber. But there were few indeed who dis- 
 cerned the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual 
 slavery, and the benefits which would result from the 
 
 20 liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of pri- 
 vate judgment. These were the objects which Milton 
 justly conceived to be the most important. He was 
 desirous that the people should think for themselves as 
 well as tax themselves, and should be emancipated from 
 
 25 the dominion of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. 
 He knew that those who, with the best intentions, over- 
 looked these schemes of reform, and contented them- 
 selves with pulling down the king and imprisoning the 
 malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own 
 poem, who, in their eagerness to disperse the train of 
 
MILTON. 73 
 
 the sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating the cap- 
 tive. They tliought only of conquering when they 
 should have thought of disenchanting. 
 
 ''Oh, ye mistook! Ye should have snatched his wand 
 And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, 
 And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
 We cannot free the lady that sits here 
 In stony fetters fixed and motionless." 
 
 To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to 
 break the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat 5 
 of enchantment, was the noble aim of Milton. To this 
 all his public conduct was directed. For this he joined 
 the Presbyterians ; for this he forsook them. He fought 
 their perilous battle ; but he turned away with disdain 
 from their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like 10 
 those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the 
 liberty of thought. He therefore joined the Indepen- 
 dents, and called upon Cromwell to break the secular 
 chain, and to save free conscience from the paw of the 
 Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the same great ob- 15 
 ject, he attacked the licensing system, in that sublime 
 treatise which every statesman should wear as a sign 
 upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes. His 
 attacks were, in general, directed less against particular 
 abuses than against those deeply seated errors on which 20 
 almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship of 
 eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation. 
 
 That he might shake the foundations of these debas- 
 ing sentiments more effectually, he always selected for 
 
74 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 himself the boldest literary services. He never came 
 up in the rear, when the outworks had been carried and 
 the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. 
 At the beginning of the changes, he wrote with incom- 
 5 parable energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, 
 when his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on 
 to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the crowd 
 of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. 
 There is no more hazardous enterprise than that of bear- 
 
 10 ing the torch of truth into those dark and infected 
 recesses in which no light has ever shone. But it was 
 the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the 
 noisome vapors, and to brave the terrible explosion. 
 Those who most disapprove of his opinions must respect 
 
 15 the hardihood with which he maintained them. He, in 
 general, left to others the credit of expounding and de- 
 fending the popular parts of his religious and political 
 creed. He took his own stand upon those which the 
 great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or 
 
 20 derided as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce and 
 regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems of educa- 
 tion. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that 
 of the god of light and fertility : — 
 
 " Nitor in adversum; nee me, qui csetera, vincit 
 Impetus, et rapido contraries evelior orbi." 
 
 ^^ It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton 
 
 25 should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, 
 
 they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to 
 
 become acquainted with the full power of the English 
 
MILTON. 76 
 
 language. They abound with passages compared with 
 which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insig- 
 nificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold, y 
 The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even 
 in the earlier books of the " Paradise Lost " has the great 5 
 poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his contro- 
 versial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, 
 find a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It 
 is, to borrow his own majestic language, "a sevenfold 
 chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies." 10 
 
 We had intended to look more closely at these per- 
 formances, to analyze the peculiarities of the diction, to 
 dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of the 
 Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, 
 and to point out some of those magnificent passages 15 
 which occur in the Treatise of Reformation, and the 
 Animadversions on the Remonstrant. But the length 
 to which our remarks have already extended renders this 
 impossible. 
 
 We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear our- 20 
 selves away from the subject. The days immediately 
 following the publication of this relic of Milton appear 
 to be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory. 
 And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festi- 
 val, we be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless 25 
 soever may be the offering which we bring to it. While 
 this book lies on our table, we seem to be contempora- 
 ries of the writer. We are transported a hundred and 
 fifty years back. We can almost fancy that we are visit- 
 ing him in his small lodging ; that we see him sitting at 
 
76 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 the old organ beneath the faded green hangings ; that we 
 can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain 
 to find the day ; that we are reading in the lines of his 
 noble countenance the proud and mournful history of 
 
 5 his glory and his afB.iction. We image to ourselves the 
 breathless silence in which we should listen to his slight- 
 est word; the passionate veneration with which we 
 should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it ; the 
 earnestness with which we should endeavor to console 
 
 10 him, if indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for 
 the neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his 
 virtues ; the eagerness with which we should contest 
 with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, 
 the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down 
 
 15 the immortal accents which flowed from his lips. 
 
 These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be 
 ashamed of them ; nor shall we be sorry if what we have 
 written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. 
 We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the liv- 
 
 20 ing or the dead. And we think that there is no more 
 certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect 
 than that propensity which, for want of a better name, 
 we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are 
 a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny 
 
 25 and the severest tests, which have been tried in the fur- 
 nace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in 
 the balance and have not been found wanting, which 
 have been declared sterling by the general consent of 
 mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image 
 and superscription of the Most High. These great men 
 
MILTON. 77 
 
 ■we trust that we know how to prize ; and of these was 
 Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, 
 are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celes- 
 tial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Mas- 
 singer sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the 5 
 earth, and which were distinguished from the productions 
 of other soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, 
 but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. 
 They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate 
 and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study lo 
 either the life or the writings of the great poet and 
 patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sub- 
 lime works with which his genius has enriched our lit- 
 erature, but the zeal with which he labored for the public 
 good, the fortitude with which he endured every private 15 
 calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down 
 on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he 
 bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so 
 sternly kept with his country and with his fame. 
 
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON.^ 
 
 (Edinburgh Review, July, ISJfS^ 
 
 Some reviewers are of opinion that a lady who dares 
 to publish a book renounces by that act the franchises 
 appertaining to her sex, and can claim no exemption 
 from the utmost rigor of critical procedure. From that 
 
 5 opinion we dissent. We admit, indeed, that in a country 
 which boasts of many female writers, eminently qualified 
 by their talents and acquirements to influence the public 
 mind, it would be of most pernicious consequence that 
 inaccurate history or unsound philosophy should be suf- 
 
 10 fered to pass uncensured, merely because the offender 
 chanced to be a lady. But we conceive that, on such 
 occasions, a critic would do well to imitate the courteous 
 knight who found himself compelled by duty to keep 
 the lists against Bradamante. He, we are told, defended 
 
 15 successfully the cause of which he was the champion ; 
 but before the fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a 
 less deadly sword, of which he carefully blunted the 
 point and edge. 
 
 1 " The Life of Joseph Addison." By Lucy Aikin. 2 vols., 8vo. 
 London. 1843. 
 
 78 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 79 
 
 Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities 
 which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. Several of her 
 works, and especially the very pleasing Memoirs of the 
 Reign of James the First, have fully entitled her to the 
 privileges enjoyed by good writers. One of those privi- 5 
 leges we hold to be this, that such writers, when, either 
 from the uulucky choice of a subject, or from the indo- 
 lence too often produced by success, they happen to fail, 
 shall not be subjected to the severe discipline which it is 
 sometimes necessary to inflict upon dunces and impostors, lO 
 but shall merely be reminded by a gentle touch, like 
 that with which the Laputan flapper roused his dream- 
 ing lord, that it is high time to wake. 
 
 Our readers will probably infer from what we have 
 said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed us. The 15 
 truth is, that she is not well acquainted with her subject. 
 No person who is not familiar with the political and lit- 
 erary history of England during the reigns of William 
 the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, can possibly 
 write a good life of Addison. Now, we mean no re- 20 
 proach to Miss Aikin, and many will think that we pay 
 her a compliment, when we say that her studies have 
 taken a different direction. She is better acquainted 
 with Shakespeare and Raleigh, than with Congreve and 
 Prior ; and is far more at home among the ruffs and 25 
 peaked beards of Theobald's than among the Steenkirks 
 and flowing periwigs which surrounded Queen Anne's 
 tea-table at Hampton. She seems to have written about 
 the Elizabethan age, because she had read much about it ; 
 she seems, on the other hand, to have read a little about 
 
80 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 the age of Addison, because she had determined to write 
 about it. The consequence is that she has had to de- 
 scribe men and things without having either a correct or 
 a vivid idea of them, and that she has often fallen into 
 
 5 errors of a very serious kind. The reputation which 
 Miss Aikin has justly earned stands so high, and the 
 charm of Addison's letters is so great, that a second edi- 
 tion of this work may probably be required. If so, we 
 hope that every paragraph will be revised, and that every 
 
 10 date and fact about which there can be the smallest 
 doubt will be carefully verified. 
 
 To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as 
 much like affection as any sentiment can be, which is 
 inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and 
 
 15 twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, however, 
 that this feeling will not betray us into that abject idol- 
 atry which we have often had occasion to reprehend in 
 others, and which seldom fails to make both the idolater 
 and the idol ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is 
 
 20 but a man. All his powers cannot be equally developed ; 
 nor can we expect from him perfect self-knowledge. We 
 need not, therefore, hesitate to admit that Addison has 
 left us some compositions which do not rise above medi- 
 ocrity, some heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell's, 
 
 25 some criticism as superficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy 
 not very much better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise 
 enough to say of a writer that, in a high department of 
 literature, in which many eminent writers have distin- 
 guished themselves, he has had no equal ; and this may 
 with strict justice be said of Addison. 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 81 
 
 As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration 
 which he received from those who, bewitched by his 
 fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts of 
 life to his generous and delicate friendship, worshipped 
 him nightly in his favorite temple at Button's, But, 5 
 after full inquiry and impartial reflection, we have long 
 been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem 
 as can be justly claimed by any of our infirm and erring 
 race. Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in 
 his character; but the more carefully it is examined, the 10 
 more will it appear, to use the phrase of the old anato- 
 mists, sound in the noble parts, free from all taint of per- 
 fidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy. 
 Men may easily be named in whom some particular good 
 disposition has been more conspicuous than in Addison. 15 
 But the just harmony of qualities, the exact temper 
 between the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual 
 observance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but 
 of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all 
 men who have been tried by equally strong temptations, 20 
 and about whose conduct we possess equally full infor- 
 mation. 
 
 His father was the Rev. Lancelot Addison, who, 
 though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some 
 figure in the world, and occupies with credit two folio 25 
 pages in the " Biographia Britannica." Lancelot was sent 
 up as a poor scholar from Westmoreland to Queen's Col- 
 lege, Oxford, in the time of the Commonwealth ; made 
 some progress in learning ; became, like most of his fel- 
 low-students, a violent Royalist ; lampooned the heads of 
 
82 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 the university, and was forced to ask pardon on his 
 bended knees. When he had left college he earned a 
 humble subsistence by reading the liturgy of the fallen 
 church to the families of those sturdy squires whose 
 5 manor-houses were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. 
 After the Restoration his loyalty was rewarded with the 
 post of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk. When 
 Dunkirk was sold to France he lost his employment. 
 But Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as 
 10 part of the marriage portion of the Infanta Catharine ; 
 and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was sent. A more 
 miserable situation can hardly be conceived. It was 
 difficult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were 
 more tormented by the heats or by the rains, by the soi- 
 ls diers within the wall or by the Moors without it. One 
 advantage the chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent 
 opportunity of studying the history and manners of 
 Jews and Mahometans ; and of this opportunity he 
 appears to have made excellent use. On his return to 
 20 England, after some years of banishment, he published 
 an interesting volume on the Polity and Religion of 
 Barbary, and another on the Hebrew Customs and the 
 State of Rabbinical Learning. He rose to eminence in 
 his profession, and became one of the royal chaplains, a 
 '.iS Doctor of Divinity, Archdeacon of Salisbury, and Dean 
 of Lichfield. It is said that he would have been made 
 a bishop after the Revolution if he had not given offence 
 to the government by strenuously opposing, in the Con- 
 vocation of 1689, the liberal policy of William and 
 Tillotson. 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 83 
 
 In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from 
 Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's child- 
 hood we know little. He learned his rudiments at 
 schools in his father's neighborhood, and was then sent 
 to the Charter House. The anecdotes which are popu- 5 
 larly related about his boyish tricks do not harmonize 
 very well with what we know of his riper years. There 
 remains a tradition that he was the ringleader in a bar- 
 ring out, and another tradition that he ran away from 
 school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on berries 10 
 and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long search he was 
 discovered and brought home. If these stories be true, 
 it would be curious to know by what moral discipline so 
 mutinous and enterprising a lad was transformed into 
 the gentlest and most modest of men. 15 
 
 We have abundant proof that whatever Joseph's 
 pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigor- 
 ously and successfull3^ At fifteen he was not only fit 
 for the university, but carried thither a classical taste 
 and a stock of learning whicli would have done honor to 20 
 a Master of Arts. He was entered at Queen's College, 
 Oxford ; but he had not been many months there when 
 some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the hands 
 of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalene College. The 
 young scholar's diction and versification were already 25 
 such as veteran professors might envy. Dr. Lancaster 
 was desirous to serve a boy of such promise ; nor was an 
 opportunity long wanting. The Revolution had just 
 taken place ; and nowhere had it been hailed with more 
 delight than at Magdalene College. That great and 
 
84 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 opiileut corporation had been treated by James and by 
 his chancellor with an insolence and injustice which, 
 even in such a prince and in such a minister, may justly 
 excite amazement, and which had done more than even 
 
 5 the prosecution of the bishops to alienate the Church of 
 England from the throne. A president, duly elected, 
 had been violently expelled from his dwelling : a Papist 
 had been set over the society by a royal mandate : the 
 Fellows, who, in conformity with their oaths, had re- 
 
 10 fused to submit to this usurper, had been driven forth 
 from their quiet cloisters and gardens, to die of want or 
 to live on charity. But the day of redress and retribu- 
 tion speedily came. The intruders were ejected: the 
 venerable House was again inhabited by its old inmates : 
 
 15 learning flourished under the rule of the wise and vir- 
 tuous Hough ; and with learning was united a mild and 
 liberal spirit too often wanting in the princely colleges 
 of Oxford. In consequ.ence of the troubles through 
 which the society had passed, there had been no valid 
 
 20 election of new members during the year 1688. In 1689, 
 therefore, there was twice the ordinary number of vacan- 
 cies ; and thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure 
 for his young friend admittance to the advantages of a 
 foundation then generally esteemed the wealthiest in 
 
 25 Europe. 
 
 At Magdalene Addison resided during ten years. He 
 was at first one of those scholars who are called Demies, 
 but was subsequently elected a fellow. His college is 
 still proud of his name ; his portrait still hangs in the 
 hall ; and strangers are still told that his favorite walk 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 85 
 
 was under the elms which fringe the meadow on the 
 banks of the Cherwell. It is said, and is highly proba- 
 ble, that he was distinguished among his fellow-students 
 by the delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his 
 manners, and by the assiduity with which he often pro- 5 
 longed his studies far into the night. It is certain that 
 his reputation for ability and learning stood high. Many 
 years later the ancient doctors of Magdalene continued 
 to talk in their common room of his boyish compositions, 
 and expressed their sorrow that no copy of exercises so 10 
 remarkable had been preserved. It is proper, however, 
 to remark that Miss Aiken has committed the error, 
 very pardonable in a lady, of overrating Addison's clas- 
 sical attainments. In ene department of learning, in- 
 deed, his proficiency was such as it is hardly possible to 15 
 overrate. His knowledge of the Latin poets, from 
 Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Pruden- 
 tius, was singularly exact and profound. He understood 
 them thoroughly, entered into their spirit, and had the 
 finest and most discriminating perception of all their 20 
 peculiarities of style and melody ; nay, he copied their 
 manner with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think, 
 all their British imitators who had preceded him, 
 Buchanan and Milton alone excepted. This is high 
 praise ; and beyond this we cannot with justice go. It 25 
 is clear that Addison's serious attention during his resi- 
 dence at the university was almost entirely concentrated 
 on Latin poetry, and that, if he did not wholly neglect 
 other provinces of ancient literature, he vouchsafed to 
 them only a cursory glance. He does not appear to 
 
86 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 have attained more than an ordinary acquaintance with 
 the political and moral writers of Rome ; nor was his 
 own Latin prose by any means equal to his Latin verse. 
 His knowledge of Greek, though doubtless such as was 
 
 5 in his time thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently 
 less than that which many lads now carry away every 
 year from Eton and Rugby. A minute examination of 
 his works, if we had time to make such an examination, 
 would fully bear out these remarks. We will briefly 
 
 10 advert to a few of the facts on which our judgment is 
 grounded. 
 
 Great praise is due to the notes which Addison ap- 
 pended to his version of the second and third books of 
 the " Metamorphoses." Yet those notes, while they show 
 
 15 him to have been, in his own domain, an accomplished 
 scholar, show also how confined that domain was. They 
 are rich in apposite references to Virgil, Statins, and 
 Claudian ; but they contain not a single illustration 
 drawn from the Greek poets. Now, if in the whole com- 
 
 20 pass of Latin literature there be a passage which stands 
 in need of illustration, drawn from the Greek poets, it 
 is the story of Pentheus in the third book of the "Meta- 
 morphoses." Ovid was indebted for that story to Eurip- 
 ides and Theocritus, both of whom he has sometimes 
 
 25 followed minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to 
 Theocritus does Addison make the faintest allusion ; and 
 we, therefore, believe that we do not wrong him by sup- 
 posing that he had little or no knowledge of their works. 
 His travels in Italy, again, abound with classical quo- 
 tations, happily introduced; but scarcely one of those 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 87 
 
 quotations is in prose. He draws more illustrations from 
 Ausonius and Manilius than from Cicero. Even his 
 notions of the political and military affairs of the 
 Eomans seem to be derived from poets and poetasters. 
 Spots made memorable by events which have changed 5 
 the destinies of the world, and which have been worthily 
 recorded by great historians, bring to his mind only 
 scraps of some ancient versifier. In the gorge of the 
 Apennines he naturally remembers the hardships which 
 Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to cite, not the lo 
 authentic narrative of Polybius, not the picturesque nar- 
 rative of Livy, but the languid hexameters of Silius 
 Italicus. On the banks of the Rubicon he never thinks 
 of Plutarch's lively description, or of the stern conciseness 
 of the Commentaries, or of those letters to Atticus which 15 
 so forcibly express the alternations of hope and fear in 
 a sensitive mind at a present crisis. His only authority 
 for the events of the civil war is Lucan. 
 
 All the best ancient works of art at Rome and Flor- 
 ence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, without 20 
 recalling one single verse of Pindar, of Callimachus, or 
 of the Attic dramatists ; but they brought to his recol- 
 lection innumerable passages of Horace, Juvenal, Statius, 
 and Ovid. 
 
 The same may be said of the " Treatise on Medals." 25 
 In that pleasing work we find about three hundre"d pas- 
 sages extracted with great judgment from the Roman 
 poets ; but we do not recollect a single passage taken 
 from any Roman orator or historian ; and we are confi- 
 dent that not a line is quoted from any Greek writer. 
 
88 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 No person, who had derived all his information on the 
 subject of medals from Addison, would suspect that the 
 Greek coins were in historical interest equal, and in 
 beauty of execution far superior, to those of Rome. 
 
 5 If it were necessary to find an}^ further proof that 
 Addison's classical knowledge was confined within nar- 
 row limits, that proof would be furnished by his Essay 
 on the Evidences of Christianity. The Roman poets 
 throw little or no light on the literary and historical 
 
 10 questions which he is under the necessity of examining 
 in that essay. He is, therefore, left completely in the 
 dark ; and it is melancholy to see how helplessly he 
 gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns, 
 as gi'ounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as 
 
 15 that of the Cock-Lane ghost, and forgeries as rank as 
 Ireland's Vortigern ; puts faith in the lie about the Thun- 
 dering Legion ; is convinced that Tiberius moved the sen- 
 ate to admit Jesus among the gods, and pronounces the 
 letter of Agbariis, King of Edessa, to be a record of great 
 
 20 authority. Nor were these errors the effects of super- 
 stition ; for to superstition Addison was by no means 
 prone. The truth is, that he was writing about what he 
 did not understand. 
 
 Miss Aikin has discovered a letter from which it ap- 
 
 25 pears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he was one 
 of several writers whom the booksellers engaged to make 
 an English version of Herodotus ; and she infers that he 
 must have been a good Greek scholar. We can allow 
 very little weight to this argument, when we consider 
 that his fellow-laborers were to have been Boyle and 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 89 
 
 Blackmore. Boyle is remembered chiefly as the nom- 
 inal author of the worst book on Greek history and phi- 
 lology that ever was printed ; and this book, bad as it is, 
 Boyle was unable to produce without help. Of Black- 
 more's attainments in the ancient tongues, it may be 5 
 sufficient to say that, in his prose, he has confounded 
 an aphorism with an apophthegm, and that when, in his 
 verse, he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to 
 regale his readers with four false quantities to a page. 
 
 It is probable that the classical acquirements of Addi- 10 
 son were of as much service to him as if they had been 
 more extensive. The world generally gives its admira- 
 tion, not to the man who does what nobody else even 
 attempts to do, but to the man who does best what mul- 
 titudes do well. Bentley was so immeasurably superior 15 
 to all the other scholars of his time that few among 
 them could discover his superiority. But the accom- 
 plishment in which Addison excelled his contemporaries 
 was then, as it is now, highly valued and assiduously 
 cultivated at all English seats of learning. Everybody 20 
 who had been at a public school had written Latin 
 verses ; many had written such verses with tolerable 
 success, and were quite able to appreciate, though by no 
 means able to rival, the skill with which Addison imi- 
 tated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer and the Bow- 25 
 ling Green were applauded by hundreds, to whom the 
 "Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris" was as unin- 
 telligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. 
 
 Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are 
 common to all Addison's Latin poems. Our favorite 
 
90 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 piece is the " Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies ; " for in 
 that piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and humor 
 which many years later enlivened thousands of break- 
 fast-tables. Swift boasted that he was never known to 
 
 5 steal a hint ; and he certainly owed as little to his pred- 
 ecessors as any modern writer. Yet we cannot help 
 suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, one 
 of the happiest touches in his Voyage of Lilliput from 
 Addison's verses. Let our readers judge. 
 
 10 "The Emperor," says Gulliver, "is taller by about the 
 breadth of my nail than any of his court, which alone 
 is enough to strike an awe into the beholders." 
 
 About thirty years before " Gulliver's Travels " ap- 
 peared, Addison wrote these lines : — 
 
 " Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus infert 
 Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus, 
 Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes 
 Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam." 
 
 15 The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and justly 
 admired both at Oxford and Cambridge, before his name 
 had ever been heard by the wits who thronged the coffee- 
 houses round Drury-Lane Theatre. In his twenty-second 
 year he ventured to appear before the public as a writer 
 
 20 of English verse. He addressed some complimentary 
 lines to Dry den, who, after many triumphs and many 
 reverses, had at length reached a secure and lonely emi- 
 nence among the literary men of that age. Dryden ap- 
 pears to have been much gratified by the young scholar's 
 praise ; and an interchange of civilities and good offices 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 91 
 
 followed. Addison was probably introduced by Dryden 
 to Congreve, and was certainly presented by Congreve 
 to Charles Montague, who was then Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, and leader of the Whig party in the House 
 of Commons. 5 
 
 At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote him- 
 self to poetry. He published a translation of part of 
 the fourth Georgic, Lines to King William, and other 
 performances of equal value ; that is to say, of no value 
 at all. But in those days, the public was in the habit of 10 
 receiving with applause pieces which would now have 
 little chance of obtaining the Newdigate prize or the 
 Seatonian prize. And the reason is obvious. The he- 
 roic couplet was then the favorite measure. The art of 
 arranging words in that measure, so that the lines may 15 
 flow smoothly, that the accents may fall correctly, that 
 the rhymes may strike the ear strongly, and that there 
 may be a pause at the end of every distich, is an art as 
 mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing a 
 horse, and may be learned by any human being who has 20 
 sense enough to learn. But, like other mechanical arts, 
 it was gradually improved by means of many experi- 
 ments and many failures. It was reserved for Pope to 
 discover the trick, to make himself complete master of it, 
 and to teach it to everybody else. From the time when 25 
 his " Pastorals " appeared, heroic versification became 
 matter of rule and compass ; and, before long, all artists 
 were on a level. Hundreds of dunces who never blun- 
 dered on one happy thought or expression were able to 
 write reams of couplets which, as far as euphony was 
 
92 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 concerned, could not be distinguished from those of Pope 
 himself, and which very clever writers of the reign of 
 Charles the Second, — Eochester, for example, or Marvel, 
 or Oldham, — would have contemplated with admiring 
 
 5 despair. 
 
 Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very small man. 
 But Hoole, coming after Pope, had learned how to manu- 
 facture decasyllabic verses, and poured them forth by 
 thousands and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as 
 
 10 smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have 
 passed through Mr. Brunei's mill in the dockyards at 
 Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks 
 rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand with a blunt 
 hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation of a cele- 
 
 15 brated passage in the iEneid : — 
 
 "This child our parent earth, stirred up with spite 
 Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write, 
 She was last sister of that giant race 
 That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, 
 And swifter far of wing, a monster vast 
 And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed 
 On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes 
 Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise 
 In the report, as many tongues she wears." 
 
 Compare with these jagged misshapen distichs the 
 neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in unlim- 
 ited abundance. We take the first lines on which we 
 open in his version of Tasso. They are neither better 
 nor worse than the rest : — 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 93 
 
 " O thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led, 
 By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, 
 No greater wonders east or west can boast 
 Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. 
 If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, 
 The current pass, and seek the further shore." 
 
 Ever since the time of Pope there has been a- glut 
 of lines of this sort, and we are now as little disposed to 
 admire a man for being able to write them, as for being 
 able to write his name. But in the days of William the 
 Third such versification was rare ; and a rhymer who 5 
 had any skill in it passed for a great poet, just as in the 
 dark ages a person who could write his name passed for 
 a great clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, 
 Walsh, and others, whose only title to fame was that 
 they said in tolerable metre what might have been as 10 
 well said in prose, or what was not worth saying at all, 
 were honored with marks of distinction which ought to 
 be reserved for genius. With these Addison must have 
 ranked, if he had not earned true and lasting glory by 
 performances which very little resembled his juvenile 15 
 poems. 
 
 Dryden was now busied with Virgil, and obtained from 
 Addison a critical preface to the Georgics. In return 
 for this service, and for other services of the same kind, 
 the veteran poet, in the postscript to the translation of 20 
 the iEneid, complimented his young friend with great 
 liberality, and indeed with more liberality than sincerity. 
 He affected to be afraid that his own performance would 
 not sustain a comparison with the version of the fourth 
 
94 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Georgic, by " the most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." 
 "After his bees," added Dryden, "my latter swarm is 
 scarcely worth the hiving." 
 
 The time had now arrived when it was necessary for 
 
 5 Addison to choose a calling. Everything seemed to 
 point his course towards the clerical profession. His 
 habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His college 
 had large ecclesiastical preferment in its gift, and boasts 
 that it has given at least one bishop to almost every see 
 
 10 in England. Dr. Lancelot Addison held an honorable 
 place in the church, and had set his heart on seeing his 
 son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expressions in 
 the young man's rhymes, that his intention was to take 
 orders. But Charles Montague interfered. Montague 
 
 15 had first brought himself into notice by verses, well- 
 timed and not contemptibly written, but never, we think, 
 rising above mediocrity. Fortunately for himself and 
 for his country, he early quitted poetry, in which he 
 could never have attained a rank as high as that of 
 
 20 Dorset or Eochester, and turned his mind to official and 
 parliamentary business. It is written that the ingenious 
 person who undertook to instruct Easselas, prince of 
 Abyssinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, 
 waved his wings, sprang into the air, and instantly 
 
 25 dropped into the lake. But it is added that the wings, 
 which were unable to support him through the sky, bore 
 him up effectually as soon as he was in the water. This 
 is no bad type of the fate of Charles Montague, and of 
 men like him. When he attempted to soar into the 
 regions of poetical invention, he altogether failed ; but, 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 95 
 
 as soon as he had descended from that ethereal elevation 
 into a lower and grosser element, his talents instantly 
 raised him above the mass. He became a distinguished 
 financier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still 
 retained his fondness for the pursuits of his early days ; 5 
 but he showed that fondness not by Avearying the public 
 with his own feeble performances, but by discovering 
 and encouraging literary excellence in others. A crowd 
 of wits and poets, who would easily have vanquished 
 him as a competitor, revered him as a judge and a patron. 10 
 In his plans for the encouragement of learning, he was 
 cordially svipported by the ablest and most virtuous of 
 his colleagues, Lord Chancellor Somers. Though both 
 these great statesmen had a sincere love of letters, it 
 was not solely from a love of letters that they were 15 
 desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual qualifica- 
 tions in the public service. The Revolution had altered 
 the whole system of government. Before that event 
 the press had been controlled by censors, and the parlia- 
 ment had sat only two months in eight years. Now the 20 
 press was free, and had begun to exercise unprecedented 
 influence on the public mind. Parliament met annually, 
 and sat long. The chief power in the state had passed 
 to the House of Commons. At such a conjuncture, it 
 was natural that literary and oratorical talents should 25 
 rise in value. There was danger that a government 
 which neglected such talents might be subverted by 
 them. It was, therefore, a profound and enlightened 
 policy which led Montague and Somers to attach such 
 talents to the Whig party, by the strongest ties both of 30 
 interest and of gratitude. 
 
96 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 It is remarkable that in a neighboring country, we 
 have recently seen similar effects follow from similar 
 causes. The Eevolution of July 1830 established repre- 
 sentative government in France. The men of letters 
 
 5 instantly rose to the highest importance in the state. 
 At the present moment most of the persons whom we 
 see at the head both of the Administration and of the 
 Opposition, have been professors, historians, journalists, 
 poets. The influence of the literary class in England, 
 
 10 during the generation which followed the Revolution, 
 was great, but by no means so great as it has lately been 
 in France. For, in England, the aristocracy of intellect 
 had to contend with a powerful and deeply rooted aris- 
 tocracy of a very different kind. France had no Somer- 
 
 15 sets and Shrewsburies to keep down her Addisons and 
 Priors. 
 
 It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just com- 
 pleted his twenty-seventh year, that the course of his 
 life was finally determined. Both the great chiefs of 
 
 20 the Ministry were kindly disposed towards him. In 
 political opinions he already was what he continued to 
 be through life, a firm, though a moderate Whig. He 
 had addressed the most polished and vigorous of his 
 early English lines to Somers, and had dedicated to 
 
 25 Montague a Latin poem, truly Virgilian, both in style 
 and rhythm, on the peace of Ryswick. The wish of the 
 young poet's great friends was, it should seem, to em- 
 ploy him in the service of the crown abroad. But an 
 intimate knowledge of the French language was a quali- 
 fication indispensable to a diplomatist; and this qualifi- 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 97 
 
 cation Addison had not acquired. It was, therefore, 
 thought desirable that he should pass some time on the 
 Continent in preparing himself for official employment. 
 His own means were not such as would enable him to 
 travel ; but a pension of three hundred pounds a year 5 
 was procured for him by the interest of the Lord Chan- 
 cellor. It seems to have been apprehended that some 
 difficulty might be started by the rulers of Magdalene 
 College. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote in 
 the strongest terms to Hough. The state — such was 10 
 the purport of Montague's letter — could not, at that 
 time, spare to the church such a man as Addison. Too 
 many high civil posts were already occupied by adven- 
 turers, who, destitute of every liberal art and sentiment, 
 at once pillaged and disgraced the country which they 15 
 pretended to serve. It had become necessary to recruit 
 for the public service from a very different class, from 
 that class of which Addison was the representative. 
 The close of the Minister's letter was remarkable. " I 
 am called," he said, '' an enemy of the church. But I 20 
 will never do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addi- 
 son out of it." 
 
 This interference was successful ; and, in the summer 
 of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by his pension, and 
 still retaining his fellowship, quitted his beloved Oxford, 25 
 and set out on his travels. He crossed from Dover to 
 Calais, proceeded to Paris, and was received there with 
 great kindness and politeness by a kinsman of his friend 
 Montague, Charles Earl of Manchester, who had just 
 been appointed Ambassador to the Court of France. 
 
98 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 The countess, a Whig and a toast, was probably as gra- 
 cious as her lord ; for Addison long retained an agree- 
 able recollection of the impression which she at this 
 time made on him, and, in some lively lines written on 
 
 5 the glasses of the Kit Cat Club, described the envy 
 which her cheeks, glowing with the genuine bloom of 
 England, had excited among the painted beauties of 
 Versailles. 
 
 On the Fourteenth was at this time expiating the 
 
 10 vices of his youth by a devotion which had no root in 
 reason, and bore no fruit of charity. The servile litera- 
 ture of France had changed its character to suit the 
 changed character of the prince. No book appeared 
 that had not an air of sanctity. Racine, who was just 
 
 15 dead, had passed the close of his life in writing sacred 
 dramas ; and Dacier was seeking for the Athanasian 
 mysteries in Plato. Addison described this state of 
 things in a short but lively and graceful letter to Mon- 
 tague. Another letter, written about the same time to 
 
 20 the Lord Chancellor, conveyed the strongest assurances 
 of gratitude and attachment. " The onl}^ return I can 
 make to your lordship," said Addison, " will be to apply 
 myself entirely to my business." With this view he 
 quitted Paris and repaired to Blois, a place where it was 
 
 25 supposed that the French language was spoken in its 
 highest purity, and where not a single Englishman 
 could be found. Here he passed some months pleasantly 
 and profitably. Of his way of life at Blois, one of his 
 associates, an abbe named Philippeaux, gave an account 
 to Joseph Spence. If this account is to be trusted, 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 99 
 
 Addison studied much, mused much, talked little, had 
 fits of absence, and either had no love affairs, or was too 
 discreet to confide them to the abbe. A man who, even 
 when surrounded by fellow-countrymen and fellow-stu- 
 dents, had always been remarkably shy and silent, was 5 
 not likely to be loquacious in a foreign tongue, and 
 among foreign companions. But it is clear from Addi- 
 son's letters, some of which were long after published 
 in the Guardian, that, while he appeared to be absorbed 
 in his own meditations, he was really observing French 10 
 society with that keen and sly, yet not ill-natured side- 
 glance, which was peculiarly his own. 
 
 From Blois he returned to Paris ; and, having now 
 mastered the French language, found great pleasure in 
 the society of French philosophers and poets. He gave 15 
 an account in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two highly 
 interesting conversations, one with Malebranche, the 
 other with Boileau. Malebranche expressed great par- 
 tiality for the English, and extolled the genius of New- 
 ton, but shook his head when Hobbes was mentioned, 20 
 and was indeed so unjust as to call the author of the 
 " Leviathan " a poor silly creature. Addison's modesty 
 restrained him from fully relating, in his letter, the cir- 
 cumstances of his introduction to Boileau. Boileau, 
 having survived the friends and rivals of his youth, old, 25 
 deaf, and melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom went 
 either to Court or to the Academy, and was almost inac- 
 cessible to strangers. Of the English and of English 
 literature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the 
 name of Dryden. Some of our countrymen, in the 
 
100 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 warmth of their patriotism, have asserted that this ig- 
 norance must have been affected. We own that we see 
 no ground for such a supposition. English literature 
 was to the French of the age of Louis the Fourteenth 
 5 what German literature was to our own grandfathers. 
 Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished men who, 
 sixty or seventy years ago, used to dine in Leicester 
 Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham with Mrs. 
 Thrale, had the slightest notion that Wieland was one 
 
 10 of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, beyond all dis- 
 pute, the first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as 
 little about the " Paradise Lost " and about Absalom and 
 Achitophel ; but he had read Addison's Latin poems, 
 and admired them greatly. They had given him, he 
 
 15 said, quite a new notion of the state of learning and 
 taste among the English. Johnson will have it that 
 these praises were insincere. " Nothing," says he, " is 
 better known of Boileau than that he had an injudicious 
 and peevish contempt of modern Latin ; and therefore 
 
 20 his profession of regard Avas probably the effect of his 
 civility rather than approbation." Now, nothing is bet- 
 ter known of Boileau than that he was singularly spar- 
 ing of compliments. We do not remember that either 
 friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on 
 
 25 any composition which he did not approve. On literary 
 questions, his caustic, disdainful, and self-confident spirit 
 rebelled against that authority to which everything else 
 in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Louis 
 the Fourteenth firmly and even rudely, that his majesty 
 knew nothing about poetry, and admired verses which 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 101 
 
 were detestable. What was there in Addison's position 
 that could induce the satirist, whose stern and fastidious 
 temper had been the dread of two generations, to turn 
 sycophant for the first and last time ? Kor was Boileau's 
 contempt of modern Latin either injudicious or peevish. 5 
 He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first order 
 would ever be written in a dead language. And did he 
 think amiss ? Has not the experience of centuries con- 
 firmed his opinion ? Boileau also thought it probable 
 that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan 10 
 age would have detected ludicrous improprieties. And 
 who can think otherwise ? What modern scholar can 
 honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity in 
 the style of Livy ? Yet is it not certain that, in the 
 style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been formed on 15 
 the banks of the Tiber, detected the inelegant idiom of 
 the Po ? Has any modern scholar understood Latin 
 better than Frederic the Great understood French ? 
 Yet is it not notorious that Frederic the Great, after 
 reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing but 20 
 French, during more than half a century, after unlearn- 
 ing his mother tongue in order to learn French, after 
 living familiarly during many years with French asso- 
 ciates, could not, to the last, compose in French, without 
 imminent risk of committing some mistake which would 25 
 have moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris ? Do 
 we believe that Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote Latin, 
 as well as Dr. Robertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote 
 English ? And are there not in the " Dissertation on 
 India," the last of Dr. Robertson's works, in '•' Waverley," 
 
102 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 in " MarmioD," Scotticisms at which a London appren- 
 tice would laugh ? But does it follow, because we think 
 thus, that we can find nothing to admire in the noble 
 alcaics of Gray, or in the playful elegiacs of Vincent 
 
 5 Bourne ? Surely not. Nor was Boileau so ignorant or 
 tasteless as to be incapable of appreciating good modern 
 Latin. In the very letter to which Johnson alludes, 
 Boileau says, " Ne croyez pas pourtant que je veuille 
 par Ik blamer les vers Latins que vous m'avez envoyes 
 
 10 d'un de vos illustres academiciens. Je les ai trouves 
 fort beaux, et dignes de Vida et de Sannazar, mais non 
 pas d'Horace et de Virgile." Several poems in modern 
 Latin have been praised by Boileau quite as liberally as 
 it was his habit to praise anything. He says, for ex- 
 
 15 ample, of the Pere Fraguier's epigrams, that Catullus 
 seems to have come to life again. But the best proof 
 that Boileau did not feel the undiscerning contempt for 
 modern Latin verses which has been imputed to him, is 
 that he wrote and published Latin verses in several 
 
 20 metres. Indeed, it happens, curiously enough, that the 
 most severe censure ever pronounced by him on modern 
 Latin is conveyed in Latin hexameters. We allude to 
 the fragment which begins : — 
 
 " Quid numeris iterum me balbutire Latinis, 
 Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, 
 Musa, jubes ?" 
 
 For these reasons we feel assured that the praise 
 
 25 which Boileau bestowed on the Machince Gesticulantes, 
 
 and the Gerayio-Pygmceomachia, was sincere. He cer- 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 103 
 
 tainly opened himself to Addison with a freedom which 
 was a sure indication of esteem. Literature was the 
 chief subject of conversation. The old man talked on 
 his favorite theme much and well, — indeed, as his 
 young hearer thought, incomparably well. Boileau had 5 
 undoubtedly some of the qualities of a great critic. He 
 wanted imagination ; but he had strong sense. His lit- 
 erary code was formed on narrow principles ; but in ' 
 applying it he showed great judgment and penetration. 
 In mere style, abstracted from the ideas of which style 10 
 is the garb, his taste was excellent. He was well 
 acquainted with the great Greek writers, and, though 
 unable fully to appreciate their creative genius, admired 
 the majestic simplicity of their manner, and had learned 
 from them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, we 15 
 think, to discover in the Spectator and the Guardian 
 traces of the influence, in part salutary and in part 
 perilicious, which the mind of Boileau had on the mind 
 of Addison. 
 
 While Addison was at Paris, an event took place which 20 
 made that capital a disagreeable residence for an Eng- 
 lishman and a Whig. Charles, second of the name. 
 King of Spain died, and bequeathed his dominions to 
 Philip, Duke of Anjou, a younger son of the Dauphin. 
 The King of France, in direct violation of his engage- 25 
 ments, both with Great Britain and Avitli the States 
 General, accepted the bequest on behalf of his grandson. 
 The house of Bourbon was at the summit of human 
 grandeur. England had been outwitted, and found her- 
 self in a situation at once degrading and perilous. The 
 
104 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 people of France, not presaging the calamities by which 
 they were destined to expiate the perfidy of their sov- 
 ereign went mad with pride and delight. Every man 
 looked as if a great estate had just been left him. 
 
 5 "The French conversation," said Addison, "begins to 
 grow insupportable ; that which was before the vainest 
 nation in the world, is now worse than ever." Sick of 
 the arrogant exultation of the Parisians, and probably 
 foreseeing that the peace between France and England 
 
 10 could not be of long duration, he set off for Italy. 
 
 In December, 1700, he embarked at Marseilles. As he 
 glided along the Ligurian coast, he was delighted by the 
 sight of myrtles and olive-trees, Avhich retained their 
 verdure under the winter solstice. Soon, however, he 
 
 15 encountered one of the black storms of the Mediterra- 
 nean. The captain of the ship gave up all for lost, 
 and confessed himself to a capuchin who happened 
 to be on board. The English heretic, in the mean- 
 time, fortified himself against the terrors of death with 
 
 20 devotions of a very different kind. How strong an 
 impression this perilous voyage made on him appears 
 from the ode, " How are thy servants blest, Lord ! " 
 which was long after published in the Spectator. After 
 some days of discomfort and danger, Addison was glad 
 
 25 to land at Savona, and to make his way, over mountains 
 where no road had yet been hewn out by art, to the 
 city of Genoa. 
 
 At Genoa, still ruled by her own doge, and by the 
 nobles whose names were inscribed on her Book of Gold, 
 Addison made a short stay. He admired the narrow 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 105 
 
 streets overhung by long lines of towering palaces, the 
 walls rich with frescos, the gorgeous temple of the 
 Annunciation, and the tapestries whereon were recorded 
 the long glories of the house of Doria. Thence he 
 liastened to Milan, where he contemplated the Gothic 5 
 magnificence of the cathedral with more wonder than 
 pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus while a gale was 
 blowing, and saw the waves raging as they raged when 
 Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, then the gayest 
 spot in Europe, the traveller spent the Carnival, the lo 
 gayest season of the year, in the midst of masks, 
 dances, and serenades. Here he was at once diverted 
 and provoked by the absurd dramatic pieces which then 
 disgraced the Italian stage. To one of those pieces, 
 however, he was indebted for a valuable hint. He was 15 
 present when a ridiculous play on the death of Cato was 
 performed. Cato, it seems, was in love with a daughter 
 of Scipio. The lady had given her heart to Caesar. The 
 rejected lover determined to destroy himself. He 
 appeared seated in his library, a dagger in his hand, a 20 
 Plutarch and a Tasso before him ; and, in this position, 
 he pronounced a soliloquy before he struck the blow. 
 We are surprised that so remarkable a circumstance as 
 this should have escaped the notice of all Addison's 
 biographers. There cannot, we conceive, be the smallest 25 
 doubt that this scene, in spite of its absurdities and 
 anachronisms, struck the traveller's imagination, and 
 suggested to him the thought of bringing Cato on the 
 English stage. It is well known that about this time he 
 began his tragedy, and that he finished the first four 30 
 acts before he returned to Ensrland. 
 
106 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 On his way from Venice to Kome, he was drawn some 
 miles out of the beaten road by a wish to see the smallest 
 independent state in Europe. On a rock where the snow 
 still lay, though the Italian spring was now far advanced, 
 
 5 was perched the little fortress of San Marino. The roads 
 which led to the secluded town were so bad that few 
 travellers had ever visited it, and none had ever pub- 
 lished an account of it. Addison could not suppress a 
 good-natured smile at the simple manners and institu- 
 
 10 tions of this singular community. But he observed, 
 with the exultation of a Whig, that the rude mountain 
 tract which formed the territory of the republic swarmed 
 with an honest, healthy, and contented peasantry, while 
 the rich plain which surrounded the metropolis of civil 
 
 15 and spiritual tyranny was scarcely less desolate than the 
 uncleared wilds of America. 
 
 At Eome Addison remained on his first visit only long 
 enough to catch a glimpse of St. Peter's and of the 
 Pantheon. His haste is the more extraordinary because 
 
 20 the Holy Week was close at hand. He has given no 
 hint which can enable us to pronounce why he chose to 
 fly from a spectacle which every year allures from distant 
 regions persons of far less taste and sensibility than his. 
 Possibly, travelling, as he did, at the charge of a gov- 
 
 25 ernment distinguished by its enmity to the Church of 
 Kome, he may have thought that it would be imprudent 
 in him to assist at the most magnificent rite of that 
 church. Many eyes would be upon him, and he might 
 find it difiicult to behave in such a manner as to give 
 offence neither to his patrons in England, nor to those 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 107 
 
 among whom he resided. Whatever his motives may 
 have been, he turned his back on the most august and 
 affecting ceremony which is known among men, and 
 posted along the Appian way to Naples. 
 
 Naples was then destitute of what are now, perhaps, 5 
 its chief attractions. The lovely bay and the awful 
 mountain were indeed there ; but a farmhouse stood on 
 the theatre of Herculaneum, and rows of vines grew 
 over the streets of Pompeii. The temples of Paestum 
 had not indeed been hidden from the eye of man by 10 
 any great convulsion of nature ; but, strange to say, 
 their existence was a secret even to artists and anti- 
 quaries. Though situated within a few hours' journey 
 of a great capital, where Salvator had not long before 
 painted, and where Vico was then lecturing, those noble 15 
 remains were as little known to Europe as the ruined 
 cities overgrown by the forests of Yucatan. What was 
 to be seen at Naples Addison saw. He climbed Vesuvius, 
 explored the tunnel of Posilipo, and wandered among the 
 vines and almond-trees of Capreee ; but neither the 20 
 wonders of nature, nor those of art, could so occupy his 
 attention as to prevent him from noticing, though cur- 
 sorily, the abuses of the government and the misery of 
 the people. The great kingdom which had just descended 
 to Philip the Fifth, was in a state of paralytic dotage. 25 
 Even Castile and Aragon were sunk in wretchedness. 
 Yet, compared with the Italian dependencies of the 
 Spanish crown, Castile and Aragon might be called pros- 
 perous. It is clear that all the observations which 
 Addison made in Italy tended to confirm him in the 
 
108 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 political opinions which he had adopted at home. To 
 the last he always spoke of foreign travel as the best 
 cure for Jacobitism. In his '^ Freeholder " the Troy fox- 
 hunter asks what travelling is good for, except to teach 
 
 5 a man to jabber French and to talk against passive 
 obedience. 
 
 From Naples, Addison returned to Eome by sea, along 
 the coast which his favorite Virgil had celebrated. The 
 felucca passed the headland where the oar and trumpet 
 
 10 were placed by the Trojan adventurers on the tomb of 
 Misenus, and anchored at night under the shelter of the 
 fabled promontory of Circe. The voyage ended in the 
 Tiber, still overhung with dark verdure, and still turbid 
 with yellow sand, as when it met the eyes of ^Eneas. 
 
 15 From the ruined jDort of Ostia, the stranger hurried to 
 Rome ; and at Rome he remained during those hot and 
 sickly months, when, even in the Augustan age, all who 
 could make their escape fled from mad dogs and from 
 streets black with funerals, to gather the first figs of 
 
 20 the season in the country. It is probable that, when 
 he, long after, poured forth in verse his gratitude to 
 the Providence which had enabled liim to breathe unhurt 
 in tainted air, he was thinking of the August and Sep- 
 tember which he passed at Rome. 
 
 25 It was not till the latter end of October that he tore 
 himself away from the masterpieces of ancient and 
 modern art which are collected in the city so long the 
 mistress of the world. He then journeyed northward, 
 passed through Sienna, and for a moment forgot his prej- 
 udices in favor of classic architecture as he looked on 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 109 
 
 the magnificent cathedral. At Florence he spent some 
 days with the Duke of Shrewsbury, who, cloyed with 
 the pleasure* of ambition, and impatient of its pains, 
 fearing both parties, and loving neither, had determined 
 to hide in an Italian retreat talents and accomplishments 5 
 which, if they had been united with fixed principles 
 and civil courage, might have made him the foremost 
 man of his age. These days, we are told, passed pleas- 
 antly ; and we can easily believe it. For Addison was 
 a delightful companion when he was at his ease ; and lo 
 the duke, though he seldom forgot that he was a Talbot, 
 had the invaluable art of putting at ease all who came 
 near him. 
 
 Addison gave some time to Florence, and especially to 
 the sculptures in the Museum, which he preferred even 15 
 to those of the Vatican. He then pursued his journey 
 through a country in which the ravages of the last war 
 were still discernible, and in which all men were looking 
 forward with a dread to a still fiercer conflict. Eugene 
 had already descended from the Rhaetian Alps, to dis- 20 
 pute with Catinat the rich plain of Lombardy. The faith- 
 less ruler of Savoy was still reckoned among the allies 
 of Louis. England had not yet actually declared war 
 against France : but Manchester had left Paris ; and the 
 negotiations which produced the Grand Alliance against 25 
 the house of Bourbon were in progress. Under such 
 circumstances, it was desirable for an English traveller to 
 reach neutral ground without delay. Addison resolved 
 to cross Mont Cenis. It was December ; and the road 
 was very different from that which now reminds the 
 
no MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 stranger of the power and genius of Napoleon. The winter, 
 however, was mild ; and the passage was, for those times, 
 easy. To this journey Addison alluded when, in the 
 ode which we have already quoted, he said that for him 
 
 5 the Divine goodness had warmed the hoary Alpine hills. 
 It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he com- 
 posed his Epistle to his friend Montague, now Lord 
 Halifax. That Epistle, once widely renowned, is now 
 known only to curious readers, and will hardly be consid- 
 
 10 ered by those to whom it is known as in any percepti- 
 ble degree heightening Addison's fame. It is, however, 
 decidedly superior to any English composition which he 
 had previously published. ISTay, we think it quite as 
 good as any poem in heroic metre which appeared during 
 
 15 the interval between the death of Dryden and the pub- 
 lication of the Essay on Criticism. It contains passages 
 as good as the second-rate passages of Pope, and would 
 have added to the reputation of Parnell or Prior. 
 
 But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of the 
 
 20 Epistle, it undoubtedly does honor to the principles and 
 spirit of the author. Halifax liad now nothing to give. 
 He had fallen from power, had been held up to obloquy, 
 had been impeached by the House of Commons, and, 
 though his peers liad dismissed the impeachment, had, 
 
 25 as it seemed, little chance of ever again filling high 
 office. The Epistle, written at such a time, is one among 
 many proofs that there was no mixture of cowardice or 
 meanness in the suavity and moderation which distin- 
 guished Addison from all the other public men of those 
 stormy times. 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Ill 
 
 At Geneva, the traveller learned that a partial change 
 of ministry had taken place in England, and that the 
 Earl of Manchester had become Secretary of State. 
 ■ Manchester exerted himself to serve his young friend. 
 It was thought advisable that an English agent should 5 
 be near the person of Eugene in Italy ; and Addison, 
 whose diplomatic education was now finished, was the 
 man selected. He was preparing to enter on his honor- 
 able functions, when all his prospects were for a time 
 darkened by the death of William the Third. lO 
 
 Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, politi- 
 cal, and religious, to the Whig party. That aversion 
 appeared in the first measures of her reign. Manchester 
 was deprived of the seals, after he had held them only a 
 few weeks. Neither Somers nor Halifax was sworn of 15 
 the Privy Council. Addison shared the fate of his three 
 patrons. His hopes of employment in the public service 
 were at an end ; his pension was stopped ; and it was 
 necessary for him to support himself by his own exer- 
 tions. He became tutor to a young English traveller, and 20 
 appears to have rambled with his pupil over great part 
 of Switzerland and Germany. At this time he wrote his 
 pleasing treatise on Medals. It was not published till after 
 his death; but several distinguished scholars saw the man- 
 uscript, and gave just praise to the grace of the style, and 25 
 to the learning and ingenuity evinced by the quotations. 
 
 From Germany, Addison repaired to Holland, where 
 he learned the melancholy news of his father's death. 
 After passing some months in the United Provinces, he 
 returned about the close of the year 1703 to England. 
 
112 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 He was there cordially received by his friends, and intro- 
 duced by them into the Kit Cat Club, a society in which 
 were collected all the various talents and accomplish- 
 ments which then gave lustre to the Whig party. 
 
 5 Addison was, during some months after his return 
 from the Continent, hard pressed by pecuniary difficul- 
 ties. But it was soon in the power of his noble patrons 
 to serve him effectually. A political change, silent 
 and gradual, but of the highest importance, was in daily 
 
 10 progress. The accession of Anne had been hailed by the 
 Tories with transports of joy and hope ; and for a time 
 it seemed that the Whigs had fallen never to rise again. 
 The throne was surrounded by men supposed to be at- 
 tached to the prerogative and to the church ; and among 
 
 15 these none stood so high in the favor of the sovereign as 
 the Lord-Treasurer Godolphin and the Captain-General 
 Marlborough. 
 
 The country gentlemen and country clergymen had 
 fully expected that the policy of these ministers would 
 
 20 be directly opposed to that which had been almost con- 
 stantly followed by William ; that the lauded interest 
 would be favored at the expense of trade ; that no 
 additions would be made to the funded debt ; that the« 
 privileges conceded to Dissenters by the late king would 
 
 25 be curtailed, if not withdrawn ; that the war with 
 France, if there must be such a war, would, on our part, 
 be almost entirely naval ; and that the government 
 would avoid close connections with foreign powers, and, 
 above all, with Holland. 
 
 But the country gentlemen and country clergymen 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 113 
 
 were fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The 
 prejudices and passions which raged without control in 
 vicarages, in cathedral closes, and in the manor-houses 
 of fox-hunting squires, were not shared by the chiefs of 
 the ministry. Those statesmen saw that it was both for 5 
 the public interest, and for their own interest, to adopt 
 a Whig policy, at least as respected the alliances of 
 the country and the conduct of the war. But, if the for- 
 eign policy of the Whigs were adopted, it was impossi- 
 ble to abstain from adopting also their financial policy. 10 
 The natural consequences followed. The rigid Tories 
 were alienated from the government. The votes of the 
 Whigs became necessary to it. The votes of the Whigs 
 could be secured only by further concessions ; and 
 further concessions the Queen was induced to make. 15 
 
 At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of parties 
 bore a close analogy to the state of parties in 1826. In 
 1826, as in 1704, there was a Tory ministry divided into 
 two hostile sections. The position of Mr. Canning and 
 his friends in 1826 corresponded to that which Marl- 20 
 borough and Godolphin occupied in 1704. Nottingham 
 and Jersey were in 1704 what Lord Eldon and Lord 
 Westmoreland were in 1826. The Whigs of 1704 were 
 in a situation resembling that in which the Whigs of 
 1826 stood. In 1704, Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, Cow- 25 
 per, were not in office. There was no avowed coalition 
 between them and the moderate Tories. It is probable 
 that no direct communication tending to such a coalition 
 had yet taken place ; yet all men saw that such a coa- 
 lition was inevitable ; nay, that it was already half 
 
114 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 formed. Such, or nearly such, was the state of things 
 when tidings arrived of the great battle fought at Blen- 
 heim on the 13th August, 1704. By the Whigs the 
 news was hailed with transports of joy and pride. No 
 
 5 fault, no cause of quarrel, could be remembered by them 
 against the commander whose genius had, in one day, 
 changed the face of Europe, saved the Imperial throne, 
 humbled the house of Bourbon, and secured the Act of 
 Settlement against foreign hostility. The feeling of the 
 
 10 Tories was very different. They could not indeed, with- 
 out imprudence, openly express regret at an event so 
 glorious to their country ; but their congratulations were 
 so cold and sullen as to give deep disgust to the victori- 
 ous general and his friends. 
 
 15 Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time 
 he could spare from business he was in the habit of 
 spending at Newmarket or at the card-table. But he 
 was not absolutely indifferent to poetry ; and he was 
 too intelligent an observer not to perceive that literature 
 
 20 was a formidable engine of political warfare, and that 
 the great Whig leaders had strengthened their party, 
 and raised their character, by extending a liberal and 
 judicious patronage to good writers. He was mortified, 
 and not without reason, by the exceeding badness of the 
 
 25 poems which appeared in honor of the battle of Blenheim. 
 One of these poems has been rescued from oblivion by 
 the exquisite absurdity of three lines : — 
 
 *■' T^ink of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
 And each man mounted on his capering beast; 
 Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 115 
 
 Where to procure better verses the treasurer did not 
 know. He understood how to negotiate a loan, or remit 
 a subsidy ; he was also well versed iu the history of run- 
 ning horses and fighting cocks ; but his acquaintance 
 among the poets was very small. He consulted Halifax ; 5 
 but Halifax affected to decline the office of adviser. He 
 had, he said, done his best, when he had power, to en- 
 courage men whose abilities and acquirements might do 
 honor to their country. Those times were over. Other 
 maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered to pine in 10 
 obscurity ; and the public money was squandered on the 
 undeserving. " I do know," he added, " a gentleman 
 who would celebrate the battle in a manner worthy of 
 the subject, but I will not name him." Godolphin, who 
 was an expert at the soft answer which turneth away 15 
 wrath, and who was under the necessity of paying court 
 to the Whigs, gently replied that there was too much 
 ground for Halifax's complaints, but that what was 
 amiss should in time be rectified, and that in the mean- 
 time the services of a man such as Halifax had described 20 
 should be liberally rewarded. Halifax then mentioned 
 Addison ; but, mindful of the dignity as well as of the 
 pecuniary interest of his friend, insisted that the minis- 
 ter should apply in the most courteous manner to Addi- 
 son himself ; and this Godolphin promised to do. 25 
 
 Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of stairs, 
 over a small shop in the Haymarket. In this humble 
 lodging he was surprised, on the morning which followed 
 the conversation between Godolphin and Halifax, by a 
 visit from no less a person than the Kight Honorable 
 
116 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Henry Boyle, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 
 afterwards Lord Carleton, This high-born minister had 
 been sent by the Lord-Treasurer as ambassador to the 
 needy poet. Addison readily \indertook the proposed 
 
 5 task, a task which, to so good a Whig, was probably a 
 pleasure. When the poem was little more than half 
 finished, he showed it to Godolphin, w^ho was delighted 
 with it, and particularly with the famous similitude of 
 the Angel. Addison was instantly appointed to a com- 
 
 10 missionership worth about two hundred pounds a year, 
 and was assured that this a]3pointment was only an ear- 
 nest of greater favors. 
 
 The " Campaign " came forth, and was as much admired 
 by the public as by the minister. It pleases us less on 
 
 15 the whole than the "Epistle to Halifax." Yet it undoubt- 
 edly ranks high among the poems which appeared during 
 the interval between the death of Dryden and the dawn 
 of Pope's genius. The chief merit of the "Campaign," we 
 think, is that which was noticed by Johnson, the manly 
 
 20 and rational rejection of fiction. The first great poet 
 whose works have come down to us sang of war long 
 before war became a science or a trade. If, in his time, 
 there was enmity between two little Greek towns, each 
 poured forth its crowd of citizens, ignorant of discipline, 
 
 25 and armed with implements of labor rudely turned into 
 weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a few 
 chiefs, whose wealth had enabled them to procure good 
 armor, horses, and chariots, and whose leisure had en- 
 abled them to practise military exercises. One such 
 chief, if he were a man of great strength, agility, and 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 117 
 
 courage, would probably be more formidable than twenty 
 common men ; and the force and dexterity with which 
 he flung his spear might have no inconsiderable share in 
 deciding the event of the day. Such were probably the 
 battles with which Homer was familiar. But Homer 5 
 related the actions of men of a former generation, of men 
 who sprang from the gods, and communed with the 
 gods face to face ; of men, one of whom could with ease 
 hurl rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later period 
 would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally 10 
 represented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, 
 but far surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest 
 and most expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, 
 clad in celestial armor, drawn by celestial coursers, 
 grasping the spear which none but himself could raise, 15 
 driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking 
 Scamander with dead, was only a magnificent exaggera- 
 tion of the real hero, who, strong, fearless, accustomed 
 to the use of weapons, guarded by a shield and helmet 
 of the best Sidonian fabric, and whirled along by horses 20 
 of Thessalanian breed, struck down with his own right 
 arm, foe after foe. In all rude societies similar notions 
 are found. There are at this day countries where the 
 Life-guardsman Shaw would be considered as a much 
 greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. Bona- 25 
 parte loved to describe the astonishment with which tlie 
 Mamelukes looked at his diminutive figure. Mourad 
 Bey, distinguished above all his fellows by his bodily 
 strength, and by the skill with which he managed his 
 horse and his sabre, could not believe that a man who 
 
118 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, 
 could be the greatest soldier in Europe. 
 
 Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as much 
 truth as poetry requires. But truth was altogether 
 
 5 wanting to the performances of those who, writing 
 about battles which had scarcely anything in common 
 with the battles of his times, servilely imitated his 
 manner. The folly of Silius Italicus, in particular, is 
 positively nauseous. He undertook to record in verse 
 
 10 the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals of 
 the first order ; and his narrative is made up of the hid- 
 eous wounds which these generals inflicted with their 
 own hands. Asdrubal flings a spear, which grazes the 
 shoulder of the consul Nero ; but Nero sends his spear 
 
 15 into Asdrubal's side. Fabius slays Thuris and Butes and 
 Maris and Arses, and the longhaired Adherbes, and the 
 gigantic Thylis, and Sapharus and Moneesus, and the 
 trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal runs Perusinus through 
 the groin with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Tele- 
 
 20 sinus with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was 
 copied in modern times, and continued to prevail down 
 to the age of Addison. Several versifiers had described 
 William turning thousands to flight by his single prowess, 
 and dyeing the Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so esti- 
 
 25 mable a writer as John Philips, the author of the " Splen- 
 did Shilling," represented Marlborougli as having won the 
 battle of Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and 
 skill in fence. The following lines may serve as an 
 example : — 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 119 
 
 " Churchill, viewing where 
 The violence of Tallard most prevails, 
 Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed 
 Precipitate he rode, urging his way 
 O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 
 Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, 
 Attends his furious course. Around his head 
 The glowing balls play innocent, while he 
 With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 
 Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood 
 He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground 
 With headless ranks. What can they do ? Or how 
 Withstand his wide-destroying sword ?" 
 
 Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed from 
 this ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise for the 
 qualities which made Marlborough truly great, — en- 
 ergy, sagacity, military science. But, above all, the poet 
 extolled the firmness of that mind which, in the midst 5 
 of confusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined and dis- 
 posed everything with the serene wisdom of a higher 
 intelligence. 
 
 Here it was that he introduced the famous comparison 
 of Marlborough to an Angel guiding the whirlwind. We 10 
 will not dispute the general justice of Johnson's remarks 
 on this passage. But we must point out one circum- 
 stance which appears to have escaped all the critics. 
 The extraordinary effect which this simile produced 
 when it first appeared, and which to the following gen- 15 
 eration seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly 
 attributed to a line which most readers now regard as a 
 feeble parenthesis : — 
 
120 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 "Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia passed." 
 
 Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. The 
 great tempest of November, 1703, the only tempest which 
 in our latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical hurri- 
 cane, had left a dreadful recollection in the minds of all 
 
 5 men. No other tempest was ever in this country the 
 occasion of a parliamentary address or of a public fast. 
 Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had 
 been blown down. One prelate had been buried beneath 
 the ruins of his palace. Loudon and Bristol had pre- 
 
 10 sented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds 
 of families were still in mourning. The prostrate trunks 
 of large trees, and the ruins of houses, still attested, in 
 all the southern counties, the fury of the blast. The 
 popularity which the simile of the Angel enjoyed among 
 
 15 Addison's contemporaries, has always seemed to us to 
 
 be a remarkable instance of the advantage which, in 
 
 rhetoric and poetry, the particular has over the general. 
 
 Soon after the " Campaign," was published Addison's 
 
 Narrative of his Travels in Italy. The first effect pro- 
 
 20 duced by this narrative was disappointment. The crowd 
 of readers who expected politics and scandal, specula- 
 tions on the projects of Victor Amadeus, and anecdotes 
 about the jollities of convents and the amours of cardi- 
 nals and nuns, were confounded by finding that the 
 
 25 writer's mind was much more occupied by the Avar be- 
 tween the Trojans and Rutulians than by the war between 
 France and Austria ; and that he seemed to have heard 
 no scandal of later date than the gallantries of the 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 121 
 
 Empress Faustinia. In time, however, the judgment of the 
 many was overruled by that of the few ; and, before the 
 book was reprinted, it was so eagerly sought that it sold 
 for five times the original price. It is still read with 
 pleasure : the style is pure and flowing ; the classical 5 
 quotations and allusions are numerous and happy ; and 
 we are now and then charmed by that singularly humane 
 and delicate humor in which Addison excelled all men. 
 Yet this agreeable work, even when considered merely 
 as the history of a literary tour, may justly be censured 10 
 on account of its faults of omission. We have already 
 said that, though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, 
 it contains scarcely any references to the Latin orators 
 and historians. We must add, that it contains little, or 
 rather no, information respecting the history and litera- 15 
 ture of modern Italy. To the best of our remembrance, 
 Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, 
 Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de' Medici, or Machiavelli. He 
 coldly tells us that at Ferrara he saw the tomb of Ari- 
 osto, and that at Venice he heard the gondoliers sing 20 
 verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far 
 less than for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apollinaris. 
 The gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line of Silius to his 
 mind. The sulphurous steam of Albula suggests to him 
 several passages of Martial. But he has not a word to 25 
 say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce ; he crosses 
 the wood of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre 
 Huntsman, and wanders up and down Rimini without 
 one thought of Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly 
 sought an introduction to Boileau ; but he seems not to 
 
122 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 have been at all aware that at Florence he was in the 
 vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau could not sustain 
 a comparison, of the greatest lyric poet of modern times, 
 Vincenzio Filicaja. This is the more remarkable, because 
 
 5 Filicaja was the favorite poet of the accomplished 
 Somers, under whose protection Addison travelled, and 
 to whom the account of the Travels is dedicated. The 
 truth is, that Addison knew little, and cared less, about 
 the literature of modern Italy. His favorite models 
 
 10 were Latin. His favorite critics were French. Half 
 the Tuscan poetry that he had read seemed to him mon- 
 strous, and the other half tawdry. 
 
 His Travels were followed by the lively opera of " Ros- 
 amond." This piece was ill set to music, and therefore 
 
 15 failed on the stage, but it completely succeeded in print, 
 and is indeed excellent in its kind. The smoothness 
 with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which 
 they bound, is, to our ears at least, very pleasing. We 
 are inclined to think that if Addison had left heroic 
 
 20 couplets to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had em- 
 ployed himself in writing airy and spirited songs, his 
 reputation as a poet would have stood far higher than it 
 now does. Some years after his death, " Rosamond " was 
 set to new music by Doctor Arne ; and was performed 
 
 25 with complete success. Several passages long retained 
 their popularity, and were daily sung, dui-ing the latter 
 part of George the Second's reign, at all the harpsichords 
 in England. 
 
 While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects, 
 and the prospects of his party, were constantly becoming 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 123 
 
 brighter and brighter. In the spring of 1705 the minis- 
 ters were freed from the restraint imposed by a House of 
 Commons in which Tories of the most perverse class 
 had the ascendency. The elections were favorable to 
 the Whigs. The coalition which had been tacitly and 5 
 gradually formed was now openly avowed. The Great 
 Seal was given to Cowper. Somers and Halifax were 
 sworn of the Council. Halifax was sent in the follow- 
 ing year to carry the decorations of the order of the 
 garter to the Electoral Prince of Hanover, and was ac- 10 
 companied on his honorable mission by Addison, who 
 had just been made Undersecretary of State. The Sec- 
 retary of State under whom Addison first served was Sir 
 Charles Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was soon dis- 
 missed to make room for the most vehement of Whigs, 15 
 Charles, Earl of Sunderland. In every department of 
 the state, indeed, the High Churchmen were compelled 
 to give place to their opponents. At the close of 1707, 
 the Tories who still remained in office strove to rally, 
 with Harley at their head. But the attempt, though 20 
 favored by the Queen, who had always been a Tory at 
 heart, and who had now quarrelled with the Duchess of 
 Marlborough, was unsuccessful. The time was not yet. 
 The Captain General was at the height of popularity and 
 glory. The Low Church party had a majority in Parli- 25 
 ament. The country squires and rectors, though occa- 
 sionally uttering a savage growl, were for the most part 
 in a state of torpor, which lasted till they were roused 
 into activity, and indeed into madness, by the prosecu- 
 tion of Sacheverell. Harley and his adherents were 
 
124 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 compelled to retire. The victory of the Whigs was 
 complete. At the general election of 1708, their strength 
 in the House of Commons became irresistible ; and 
 before the end of that year, Somers was made Lord Pres- 
 
 5 ident of the Council, and Wharton Lord Lieutenant of 
 Ireland. 
 
 Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Commons 
 which was elected in 1708. But the House of Com- 
 mons was not the field for him. The bashfulness of his 
 
 10 nature made his wit and eloquence useless in debate. 
 He once rose, but could not overcome his diffidence, and 
 ever after remained silent. Nobody can think it strange 
 that a great writer should fail as a speaker. But many, 
 probably, will think it strange that Addison's failure as 
 
 15 a speaker should have had no unfavorable effect on his 
 success as a politician. In our time, a man of high rank 
 and great fortune might, though speaking very little and 
 very ill, hold a considerable post. But it would now be 
 inconceivable that a mere adventurer, a man who, when 
 
 20 out of office, must live by his pen, should in a few years 
 become successively Undersecretary of State, chief sec- 
 retary for Ireland, and Secretary of State, without some 
 oratorical talent. Addison, without high birth, and with 
 little property, rose to a post which dukes, the heads of 
 
 25 the great houses of Talbot, Eussell, and Bentinck, have 
 thought it an honor to till. Without opening his lips in 
 debate, he rose to a post the highest that Chatham or 
 Fox ever reached. And this he did before he liad been 
 nine years in Parliament. We must look for the expla- 
 nation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar circum- 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 125 
 
 stances in which that generation was placed. During 
 the interval which elapsed between the time when the 
 Censorship of the Press ceased, and the time when par- 
 liamentary proceedings began to be freely reported, 
 literary talents were, to a public man, of much more 5 
 importance, and oratorical talents of much less impor- 
 tance, than in our time. At present, the best way of 
 giving rapid and wide publicity to a fact or an argument 
 is to introduce that fact or argument into a speech made 
 in Parliament. If a political tract were to appear supe- 10 
 rior to the '' Conduct of the Allies," or to the best num- 
 bers of the Freeholder, the circulation of such a tract 
 would be languid indeed when compared with the circula- 
 tion of every remarkable word uttered in the deliberations 
 of the legislature. A speech made in the House of Com- 15 
 mons at four in the morning is on thirty thousand tables 
 before ten. A speech made on the Monday is read on 
 the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and Aberdeen- 
 shire. The orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, 
 has to a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It 20 
 was not so in the reign of Anne. The best speech could 
 then produce no effect except on those who heard it. 
 It was only by means of the press that the opinion of 
 the public without doors could be influenced ; and the 
 opinion of the public without doors could not but be of 25 
 the highest importance in a country governed by parlia- 
 ments, and indeed at that time governed by triennial 
 parliaments. The pen was, therefore, a more formidable 
 political engine than the tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox 
 contended only in Parliament. But Walpole and Pul- 
 
126 MA CAUL AY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 teney, the Pitt and Fox of an earlier period, had not done 
 half of what was necessary, when they sat down amidst 
 the acclamations of the House of Commons. They had 
 still to plead their cause before the country, and this 
 
 5 they could only do by means of the press. Their works 
 are now forgotten. But it is certain that there were in 
 Grub Street few more assiduous scribblers of Thoughts, 
 Letters, Answers, Remarks, than thes« two great chiefs 
 of parties. Pulteney, when leader of the Opposition, 
 
 10 and possessed of thirty thousand a year, edited the 
 Craftsman. Walpole, though not a man of literary 
 habits, was the author of at least ten pamphlets, and 
 retouched and corrected many more. These facts suffi- 
 ciently show of how great importance literary assistance 
 
 15 then was to the contending parties. St. John was cer- 
 tainly, in Anne's reign, the best Tory speaker; Cowper 
 was probably the best Whig speaker. But it may well 
 be doubted whether St. John did so much for the Tories 
 as Swift, and whether Cowper did so much for the Whigs 
 
 20 as Addison. When these things are duly considered, it 
 will not be thought strange that Addison should have 
 climbed higher in the state than any other Englishman 
 has ever, by means merely of literary talents, been able to 
 climb. Swift would, in all probability, have climbed as 
 
 25 high, if he had not been encumbered by his cassock and 
 his pudding sleeves. As far as the homage of the great 
 went. Swift had as much of it as if he had been Lord- 
 Treasurer. 
 
 To the influence which Addison derived from his lit- 
 erary talents was added all the influence which arises 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 127 
 
 from character. The world, always ready to think the 
 worst of needy political adventurers, was forced to make 
 one exception. Eestlessness, violence, audacity, laxity 
 of principle, are the vices ordinarily attributed to that 
 class of men. But faction itself could not deny that 5 
 Addison had, through all changes of fortune, been strictly 
 faithful to his early opinions, and to his early friends ; 
 that his integrity was without stain ; that his whole 
 deportment indicated a fine sense of the becoming ; that 
 in the utmost heat of controversy, his zeal was tempered 10 
 by a regard for truth, humanity, and social decorum ; 
 that no outrage could ever provoke him to retaliation 
 unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman ; and that his 
 only faults were a too sensitive delicacy, and a modesty 
 which amounted to bashfulness. 15 
 
 He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of 
 his time ; and much of his popularity he owed, we be- 
 lieve, to that very timidity which his friends lamented. 
 That timidity often prevented him from exhibiting his 
 talents to the best advantage. But it propitiated Nem- 20 
 esis. It averted that envy which would otherwise have 
 been excited by fame so splendid, and by so rapid an 
 elevation. No man is so great a favorite with the pub- 
 lic as he who is at once an object of admiration, of 
 respect, and of pity ; and such were the feelings which 25 
 Addison inspired. Those who enjoyed the privilege of 
 hearing his familiar conversation, declared with one 
 voice that it was superior even to his writings. The 
 brilliant Mary Montague said, that she had known all 
 the wits, and that Addison was the best company in the 
 
128 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 world. The malignant Pope was forced to own, that 
 there was a charm in Addison's talk which could be 
 found nowhere else. Swift, when burning with animos- 
 ity against the Whigs, could not but confess to Stella 
 
 5 that, after all, he had never known any associate so 
 agreeable as Addison. Steele, an excellent judge of 
 lively conversation, said, that the conversation of Addi- 
 son was at once the most polite, and the most mirthful, 
 that could be imagined : that it was Terence and Catul- 
 
 10 lus in one, heightened by an exquisite something which 
 was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Addison alone. 
 Young, an excellent judge of serious conversation, said, 
 that when Addison was at his ease, he went on in a 
 noble strain of thought and language, so as to chain the 
 
 15 attention of every hearer. Nor were Addison's great 
 colloquial powers more admirable than the courtesy and 
 the softness of heart which appeared in his conver- 
 sation. At the same time, it would be too much to say 
 that he was wholly devoid of the malice which is, per- 
 
 20 haps, inseparable from a keen sense of the ludicrous. 
 He had one habit which both Swift and Stella ap- 
 plauded, and which we hardly know how to blame. If 
 his first attempts to set a presuming dunce right were 
 ill received, he changed his tone, " assented with civil 
 
 25 leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper 
 into absurdity. That such was his practice we should, 
 we think, have guessed from his works. The Tatler^s 
 criticisms on Mr. Softly's sonnet, and the Sjjectator s 
 dialogue with the politician who is so zealous for the 
 honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are excellent specimens of 
 this innocent mischief. 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 129 
 
 Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But 
 his rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to 
 strangers. As soon as he entered a large company, as 
 soon as he saw an unknown face, his lips were sealed, 
 and his manners became constrained. None who met 5 
 him only in great assemblies would have been able to 
 believe that he was the same man who had often kept a 
 few friends listening and laughing round a table, from 
 the time when the play ended, till the clock of St. Paul's 
 in Covent Garden struck four. Yet, even at such a table 10 
 he was not seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his 
 conversation in the highest perfection, it was necessary 
 to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his own phrase, 
 think aloud. " There is no such thing," he used to say, 
 " as real conversation, but between two persons." 15 
 
 This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungraceful 
 nor unamiable, led Addison into the two most serious 
 faults which can with justice be imputed to him. He 
 found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine 
 intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into con- 20 
 vivial excess. Such excess was in that age regarded, 
 even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes, 
 and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding, that it 
 was almost essential to the character of a fine gentle- 
 man. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground ; 25 
 and almost all the biographers of Addison have said 
 something about this failing. Of any other statesman 
 or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more 
 think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, 
 than that he wore a long wig and a sword. 
 
130 AIACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we 
 must ascribe anotLer fault which generally arises from a 
 very different cause. He became a little too fond of see- 
 ing himself surrounded by a small circle of admirers, to 
 
 5 whom he was as a king, or rather as a god. All these 
 men were far inferior to him in ability, and some of 
 them had very serious faults. Nor did those faults 
 escape his observation ; for, if ever there was an eye 
 which saw through and through men, it was the eye of 
 
 10 Addison. But with the keenest observation, and the 
 finest sense of the ridiculous, he had a large charity. 
 The feeling with which he looked on most of his humble 
 companions was one of benevolence, slightly tinctured 
 with contempt. He was at perfect ease in their com- 
 
 15 pany ; he was grateful for their devoted attachment ; 
 and he loaded them with benefits. Their veneration for 
 him appears to have exceeded that with which Johnson 
 was regarded by Boswell, or Warburton by Hurd. It 
 was not in the power of adulation to turn such a head, 
 
 20 or deprave such a heart, as Addison's. JBut it must in 
 candor be admitted that he contracted some of the faults 
 which can scarcely be avoided by any person who is so 
 unfortunate as to be the oracle of a small literary 
 coterie. 
 
 25 One member of this little society was Eustace Bud- 
 gell, a young Templar of some literature, and a distant 
 relation of Addison. There was at this time no stain on 
 the character of Budgell, and it is not improbable that 
 his career would have been prosperous and honorable, if 
 the life of his cousin had been prolonged. But, when 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 131 
 
 the master was laid in the grave, the disciple broke 
 loose from all restraint, descended rapidly from one 
 degree of vice and misery to another, ruined his fortune 
 by follies, attempted to repair it by crimes, and at length 
 closed a wicked and unhappy life by self-murder. Yet, 5 
 to the last, the wretched man, gambler, lampooner, 
 cheat, forger, as he was, retained his affection and ven- 
 eration for Addison, and recorded those feelings in the 
 last lines which he traced before he hid himself from 
 infamy under London Bridge. 10 
 
 Another of Addison's favorite companions was Am- 
 brose Phillipps, a good Whig and a middling poet, who 
 had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of com- 
 position which has been called, after his name, Namby 
 Pamby. But the most remarkable members of the little 15 
 senate, as Pope long afterwards called it, were Richard 
 Steele and Thomas Tickell. 
 
 Steele had known Addison from childhood. They 
 had been together at the Charter House and at Oxford ; 
 but circumstances had then, for a time, separated them 20 
 widely. Steele had left college without taking a degree, 
 had been disinherited by a rich relation, had led a 
 vagrant life, had served in the army, had tried to find 
 the philosopher's stone, and had written a religious 
 treatise and several comedies. He was one of those 25 
 people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. 
 His temper was sweet, his affections warm, his spirits 
 lively, his passions strong, and his principles weak. 
 His life was spent in sinning and repenting ; in incul. 
 eating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In 
 
132 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 speculation, he was a man of piety and honor; in prac- 
 tice he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler. 
 He was, however, so good-natured that it was not easy 
 to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid 
 
 5 moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, 
 when he diced himself into a spunging-house or drank 
 himself into a fever. Addison regarded Steele with 
 kindness not unmingled with scorn ; tried, with little 
 success, to keep him out of scrapes ; introduced him to 
 
 10 the great, procured a good place for him ; corrected his 
 plays, and, though by no means rich, lent him large 
 sums of money. One of these loans appears, from a 
 letter dated in August, 1708, to have amounted to a 
 thousand pounds. These pecuniary transactions proba- 
 
 15 bly led to frequent bickerings. It is said that, on one 
 occasion, Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked 
 Addison to repay himself by the help of a bailiff. We 
 cannot join with Miss Aikin in rejecting this story. 
 Johnson heard it from Savage, who heard it from Steele. 
 
 20 Few private transactions which took place a hundred 
 and twenty years ago, are proved by stronger evidence 
 than this. But we can by no means agree with those 
 who condemn Addison's severity. The most amiable of 
 mankind may well be moved to indignation, when what 
 
 25 he has earned hardly, and lent with great inconvenience 
 to himself, for the purpose of relieving a friend in dis- 
 tress, is squandered with insane profusion. We will 
 illustrate our meaning by an example which is not the 
 less striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. 
 Harrison, in Fielding's " Amelia," is represented as the 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 133 
 
 most benevolent of human beings ; yet he takes in exe- 
 cution, not only the goods, but the person of his friend 
 Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong measure 
 because he has been informed that Booth, while plead- 
 ing poverty as an excuse for not paying just debts, has 5 
 been buying fine jewellery, and setting up a coach. No 
 person who is well acquainted with Steele's life and 
 correspondence can doubt that he behaved quite as ill 
 to Addison as Booth was accused of behaving to Dr. 
 Harrison. The real history, Ave have little doubt, was 10 
 something like this : A letter comes to Addison, im- 
 ploring help in pathetic terras, and promising reforma- 
 tion and speedy repayment. Poor Dick declares that he 
 has not an inch of candle, or a bushel of coals, or credit 
 with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is 15 
 moved. He determines to deny himself some medals 
 which are wanting to his series of the Twelve Caesars ; 
 to put off buying the new edition of Bayle's Dictionary ; 
 and to wear his old sword and buckles another year. In 
 this way he manages to send a hundred pounds to his 20 
 friend. The next day he calls on Steele, and finds 
 scores of gentlemen and ladies assembled. The fiddles 
 are playing. The table is groaning under champagne, 
 burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange 
 that a man whose kindness is thus abused, should send 25 
 sheriff's officers to reclaim what is due to him ? 
 
 Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who had 
 introduced himself to public notice by writing a most 
 ingenious and graceful little poem in praise of the opera 
 of " Rosamond." He deserved, and at length attained, 
 
134 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 the first place in Addison's friendship. For a time Steele 
 and Tickell were on good terms. But they loved Addison 
 too much to love each other, and at length became as 
 bitter enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil. 
 
 5 At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord Lieutenant 
 of Ireland, and appointed Addison Chief Secretary. 
 Addison was consequently under the necessity of quit- 
 ting London for Dublin. Besides the chief secretaryship, 
 which was then worth about two thousand pounds a 
 
 10 year, he obtained a patent appointing him keeper of the 
 Irish Records for life, with a salary of three or four 
 hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his cousin in the 
 capacity of private secretary. 
 
 Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but 
 
 15 Whiggism. The Lord Lieutenant was not only licen- 
 tious and corrupt, but was distinguished from other 
 libertines and jobbers by a callous impudence which 
 presented the strongest contrast to the Secretary's gen- 
 tleness and delicacy. Many parts of the Irish adminis- 
 
 20 tration at this time appear to have deserved serious 
 blame. But against Addison there was not a murmur. 
 He long afterwards asserted, what all the evidence 
 which we have ever seen tends to prove, that his dili- 
 gence and integrity gained the friendship of all the most 
 
 25 considerable persons in Ireland. 
 
 The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland has, 
 we think, wholly escaped the notice of all his biogra- 
 phers. He was elected member for the borough of Cavan 
 in the summer of 1709; and in the journals of two ses- 
 sions his name frequently occurs. Some of the entries 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 135 
 
 appear to indicate that he so far overcame his timidity 
 as to make speeches. Nor is this by any means improb- 
 able; for the Irisli House of Commons was a far less 
 formidable audience than the English House ; and many 
 tongues which were tied by fear in the greater assembly 5 
 became fluent in the smaller. Gerard Hamilton, for 
 example, who, from fear of losing the fame gained by his 
 single speech, sat mute at Westminster during forty 
 years, spoke with great effect at Dublin when he was 
 secretary to Lord Halifax. 10 
 
 While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred to 
 which he owes his high and permanent rank among 
 British writers. As yet his fame rested on performances 
 which, though highly respectable, were not built for 
 duration, and which would, if he had produced nothing 15 
 else, have now been almost forgotten ; on some excellent 
 Latin verses ; on some English verses which occasionally 
 rose above mediocrity, and on a book of travels, agree- 
 ably written, but not indicating any extraordinary 
 powers of mind. These works showed him to be a man 20 
 of taste, sense, and learning. The time had come when 
 he was to prove himself a man of genius, and to enrich 
 our literature with compositions which will live as long 
 as the English language. 
 
 In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary project, 25 
 of which he was far indeed from foreseeing the con- 
 sequences. Periodical papers had during many years 
 been published in London. Most of these were political ; 
 but in some of them questions of morality, taste, and 
 love-casuistry had been discussed. The literary merit of 
 
136 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 these works was small indeed ; and even their names 
 are now known only to the curious. 
 
 Steele had been appointed gazetteer by Sunderland, 
 at the request, it is said, of Addison, and thus had access 
 
 5 to foreign intelligence earlier and more authentic than 
 was in those times within the reach of an ordinary news- 
 writer. This circumstance seems to have suggested to 
 him the scheme of publishing a periodical paper on a 
 new plan. It was to appear on the days on which the 
 
 10 post left London for the country, which were, in that 
 generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. 
 It was to contain the foreign news, accounts of theatri- 
 cal representations, and the literary gossip of Will's and 
 of the Grecian. It was also to contain remarks on the 
 
 15 fashionable topics of the day, compliments to beauties, 
 pasquinades on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popu- 
 lar preachers. The aim of Steele does not appear to have 
 been at first higher than this. He was not ill-qualified 
 to conduct the work which he had planned. His public 
 
 20 intelligence he drew from the best sources. He knew the 
 town, and had paid dear for his knowledge. He had 
 read much more than the dissipated men of that time 
 were in the habit of reading. He was a rake among 
 scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style was easy 
 
 25 and not incorrect ; and though liis wit and humor were 
 of no high order, his gay animal spirits imparted to his 
 compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary read- 
 ers could hardly distinguish from comic genius. His 
 writings have been well compared to those light wines 
 which, though deficient in body and flavor, are yet a 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 137 
 
 pleasant small drink, if not kept too long, or carried too 
 far. 
 
 Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imagi- 
 nary person, almost as well known in that age as Mr. 
 l\aul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift had 5 
 assumed the name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet 
 against Partridge, the maker of almanacs. Partridge 
 had been fool enough to publish a furious reply. Bick- 
 erstaff had rejoined in a second pamphlet still more 
 diverting than the first. All the wits had combined to 10 
 keep up the joke, and the town was long in convulsions 
 of laughter. Steele determined to employ the name 
 Avhich this controversy had made popular ; and in 1709, 
 it was announced that Isaac Bickerstalf, Esquire, Astrol- 
 oger, was about to publish a paper called the Tatler. 15 
 
 Addison had not been consulted about this scheme ; 
 but as soon as he heard of it he determined to give his 
 assistance. The effect of that assistance cannot be bet- 
 ter described than in Steele's own words. " I fared," 
 he said, " like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful 20 
 neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. 
 When I had once called him in, I could not subsist with- 
 out dependence on him." " The paper," he says else- 
 where, " was advanced indeed. It was raised to a greater 
 thing than I intended it." 25 
 
 It is probable that Addison, when he sent across St. 
 George's Channel his first contributions to the Tatler, 
 had no notion of the extent and variety of his own 
 powers. He was the possessor of a vast mine, rich with 
 a hundred ores. But he had been acquainted only with 
 
138 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 the least precious part of his treasures, and had hitherto 
 contented himself with producing sometimes copper and 
 sometimes lead, intermingled with a little silver. All 
 at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on an in- 
 
 5 exhaustible vein of the finest gold. 
 
 The mere choice and arrangement of his words would 
 have sufficed to make his essays classical. For never, 
 not even by Dryden, not even by Temple, had the Eng- 
 lish language been written with such sweetness, grace, 
 
 10 and facility. But this was the smallest part of Addi- 
 son's praise. Had he clothed his thoughts in the half 
 Prench style of Horace Walpole, or in the half Latin 
 style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half German jargon of 
 the present day, his genius would have triumphed over 
 
 15 all faults of manner. As a moral satirist he stands un- 
 rivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and Spectators were 
 equalled in their own kind, we should be inclined to 
 guess that it must have been by the lost comedies of 
 Menander. 
 
 20 In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior 
 to Cowley or Butlei'. No single ode of Cowley contains 
 so many happy analogies as are crowded into the lines 
 to Sir Godfrey Kneller ; and we would undertake to 
 collect from the S^jectators as great a number of ingen- 
 
 25 ious illustrations as can be found in "Hudibras." The 
 still higher faculty of invention Addison possessed in 
 still larger measure. The numerous fictions, generally 
 original, often wild and grotesque, but always singularly 
 graceful and happy, which are found in his essays, fully 
 entitle him to the rank of a great poet, a rank to which 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 139 
 
 his metrical compositions give him no claim. As an 
 observer of life, of manners, of all the shades of human 
 character, he stands in the first class. And what he 
 observed he had the art of communicating in two widely 
 different ways. He could describe virtues, vices, habits, 5 
 whims as well as Clarendon. But he could do something 
 better. He could call human beings into existence, and 
 make them exhibit themselves. If we wish to find any- 
 thing more vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must 
 go either to Shakespeare or to Cervantes. 10 
 
 But what shall we say of Addison's humor, of his sense 
 of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense 
 in others, and of drawing mirth from incidents which 
 occur every day, and from little peculiarities of temper 
 and manner, such as may be found in every man ? We 15 
 feel the charm : we give ourselves up to it ; but we strive 
 in vain to analyze it. 
 
 Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar 
 pleasantry is to compare it with the pleasantry of some 
 other great satirists. The three most eminent masters 20 
 of the art of ridicule during the eighteenth century, Avere, 
 we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of 
 the three had the greatest power of moving laughter 
 may be questioned. But each of them, within his own 
 domain, was supreme. 25 
 
 Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is 
 without disguise or restraint. He gambols ; he grins ; 
 he shakes the sides ; he points the finger ; he turns up 
 the nose ; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of 
 Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, 
 
140 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 but he never joins in it. He appears in his works such as 
 he appeared in society. All the company are convulsed 
 with merriment, while the Dean, the author of all the 
 mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness 
 
 5 of aspect, and gives utterance to the most eccentric 
 and ludicrous fancies, with the air of a man reading the 
 commination service. 
 
 The manner of Addison is as remote from that of 
 Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs out 
 
 10 like the French wit, nor, like the Irish wit, throws a 
 double portion of severity into his countenance while 
 laughing inwardly ; but preserves a look peculiarly his 
 own, a look of demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch 
 sparkle of the eye, an almost imperceptible elevation of 
 
 15 the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His 
 tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a cynic. 
 It is that of a gentleman, in whom the quickest sense of 
 the ridiculous is constantly tempered by good nature and 
 good breeding. 
 
 20 We own that the humor of Addison is, in our opinion, 
 of a more delicious flavor than the humor of either Swift 
 or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is certain, that both 
 Swift and Voltaire have been successfully mimicked, and 
 that no man has yet been able to mimic Addison. The 
 
 25 letter of the Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, 
 and imposed, during a long time, on the Academicians 
 of Paris. There are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical 
 works which we, at least, cannot distinguish from Swift's 
 best writing. But of the many eminent men Avho have 
 made Addison their model, though several have copied 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 141 
 
 his mere diction with happy effect, noue have been able 
 to catch the tone of his pleasantry. In the World, in 
 the Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the Loimger, there are 
 numerous papers written in obvious imitation of his 
 Tatlers and Spectators. Most of these papers have some 5 
 merit ; many are very lively and amusing ; but there is 
 not a single one which could be passed off as Addison's 
 on a critic of the smallest perspicacity. 
 
 But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from 
 Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the other great 10 
 masters of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, the moral 
 purity, which we find even in his merriment. Severity, 
 gradually hardening and darkening into misanthropy, 
 characterizes the works of Swift. The nature of Vol- 
 taire was, indeed, not inhuman; but he venerated noth- 15 
 ing. Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the purest 
 examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause nor 
 in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see anything 
 but subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august 
 the theme, the more monkey-like was his grimacing and 20 
 chattering. The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephisto- 
 philes ; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. 
 If, as Soame Jenyns oddly imagined, a portion of the 
 happiness of seraphim and just men made perfect be 
 derived from an exquisite perception of the ludicrous, 25 
 their mirth must surely be none other than the mirth of 
 Addison ; a mirth consistent with tender compassion for 
 all that is frail, and with profound reverence for all that 
 is sublime. Nothing great, nothing amiable, no moral 
 duty, no doctrine of natural or revealed religion, has 
 
142 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 ever been associated by Addison with any degrading 
 idea. His hnmanity is without a parallel in literary liis- 
 tory. The highest proof of virtue is to possess bound- 
 less power without abusing it. No kind of power is 
 
 3 more formidable than the power of making men ridicu- 
 lous ; and that power Addison possessed in boundless 
 measure. How grossly that power was abused by Swift 
 and by Voltaire is well known. But of Addison it may 
 be confidently affirmed that he has blackened no man's 
 
 10 character ; nay, that it would be difficult, if not impossi- 
 ble, to find in all the volumes which he has left us a 
 single taunt which can be called ungenerous or unkind. 
 Yet he had detractors, whose malignity might have 
 seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that which 
 
 15 men, not superior to him in genius, wreaked on Bettes- 
 worth and on Franc de Fompignan. He was a politi- 
 cian ; he was the best writer of his party ; he lived in 
 times of fierce excitement, in times when persons of 
 high character and station stooped to scurrility such as 
 
 20 is now practised only by the basest of mankind. Yet 
 no provocation and no example could induce him to 
 return railing for railing. 
 
 Of the service which his essays rendered to morality 
 it is difficult to speak too highly. It is true, that, when 
 
 25 the Tatler appeared, that age of outrageous profaneness 
 and licentiousness which followed the Restoration had 
 passed away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres 
 into something which, compared with the excesses of 
 Etheredge and Wycherley, might be called decency. 
 Yet there still lingered in the public mind a pernicious 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 143 
 
 notion that there was some connection between genius 
 and profligacy ; between the domestic virtues and the 
 sullen formality of the Puritans. That error it is the 
 glory of Addison to have dispelled. He taught the nation 
 that the faith and the morality of Hale and Tillotson 5 
 might be found in company with wit more sparkling 
 than the wit of Congreve, and with humor richer than 
 the humor of Vanbrugh. So effectually, indeed, did he 
 retort on vice the mockery which had recently been 
 directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open lO 
 violation of decency has always been considered among 
 us as the mark of a fool. And this revolution, the great- 
 est and most salutary ever effected by any satirist, he 
 accomplished, be it remembered, without writing one 
 personal lampoon. 15 
 
 In the early contributions of Addison to the Tatler, 
 his peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from 
 the first, his superiority to all his coadjutors was evident. 
 Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to anything 
 that he ever wrote. Among the portraits, we most ad- 20 
 mire Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Uphol- 
 sterer. The proceedings of the Court of Honor, the 
 Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen Words, 
 the Memoirs of the Shilling, are excellent specimens of 
 that ingenious and lively species of fiction in which Ad- 25 
 dison excelled all men. There is one still better paper 
 of the same class. But though that paper, a hundred and 
 thirty-three years ago, was probably thought as edifying 
 as one of Smalridge's sermons, we dare not indicate it to 
 the squeamish readers of the nineteenth century. 
 
144 MAC A ULA Y ' S ESS A YS. 
 
 During the session of Parliament whicli commenced 
 in November, 1709, and which the impeachment of Sach- 
 everell has made memorable, Addison appears to have 
 resided in London. The Tatler was now more popular 
 
 5 that any periodical paper had ever been ; and his connec- 
 tion with it was generally known. It was not known, 
 however, that almost everything good in the Tatler was 
 his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty numbers which 
 we owe to him were not merely the best, but so decidedly 
 
 10 the best that any five of them are more valuable than all 
 the two hundred numbers in which he had no share. 
 
 He required, at this time, all the solace which he 
 could derive from literary success. The Queen had 
 always disliked the Whigs. She had during some years 
 
 15 disliked the Marlborough family. But, reigning by a 
 disputed title, she could not venture directly to oppose 
 herself to a majority of both Houses of Parliament ; and, 
 engaged as she was in a war on the event of which her 
 own crown was staked, she could not venture to dis- 
 
 20 grace a great and successful general. But at length, in 
 the year 1710, the cause which had restrained her from 
 showing her aversion to the Low Church party ceased to 
 operate. The trial of Sacheverell produced an outbreak 
 of public feeling scarcely less violent than the outbreaks 
 
 25 which we can ourselves remember in 1820, and in 1831. 
 The country gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rab- 
 ble of the towns, were all, for once, on the same side. It 
 was clear that, if a general election took place before the 
 excitement abated, tlie Tories would have a majority. 
 The services of Marlborough had been so splendid that 
 
LIFE AND Wni TINGS OF ADDISON. 145 
 
 they were no longer necessary. The Queen's throne was 
 secure from all attack on the part of Louis. Indeed, it 
 seemed much more likely that the English and Ger- 
 man armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and 
 Marli than that a Marshal of France would bring back 5 
 the Pretender to St. James's. The Queen, acting by the 
 advice of Harley, determined to dismiss her servants. 
 In June the change commenced. Sunderland was the 
 first who fell. The Tories exulted over his fall. The 
 Whigs tried, during a few weeks, to persuade themselves 10 
 that her majesty had acted only from personal dislike 
 to the Secretary, and that she meditated no further 
 alteration. But, early in August, Godolphin was sur- 
 prised by a letter from Anne, which directed him to 
 break his white staff. Even after this event, the irreso- 15 
 lution or dissimulation of Harley kept up the hopes of 
 the Whigs during another month ; and then the ruin 
 became rapid and violent. The Parliament was dis- 
 solved. The ministers were turned out. The Tories 
 were called to office. The tide of popularity ran vio- 20 
 lently in favor of the High Church party. That party, 
 feeble in the late House of Commons, was now irresisti- 
 ble. The power which the Tories had thus suddenly 
 acquired, they used with blind and stupid ferocity. The 
 howl which the whole pack set up for prey and for blood 25 
 appalled even him who had roused and unchained them. 
 When, at this distance of time, we calmly review the 
 conduct of the discarded ministers, we cannot but feel a 
 movement of indignation at the injustice with which 
 they were treated. No body of men had ever adminis- 
 
146 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 tered the government with more energy, ability, and 
 moderation ; and their success had been proportioned to 
 their wisdom. They had saved Holland and Germany. 
 They had humbled France. They had, as it seemed, all 
 
 5 but torn Spain from the house of Bourbon. They had 
 made England the first power in Europe. At home they 
 had united England and Scotland. They had respected 
 the rights of conscience and the liberty of the subject. 
 They retired, leaving their country at the height of pros- 
 
 10 perity and glory. And yet they were pursued to their 
 retreat by such a roar of obloquy as was never raised 
 against the government which threw away thirteen col- 
 onies, or against the government which sent a gallant 
 army to perish in the ditches of Walcheren. 
 
 15 None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck 
 than Addison. He had just sustained some heavy pecu- 
 niary losses, of the nature of which we are imperfectly 
 informed, when his secretaryship was taken from hira. 
 He had reason to believe that he should also be deprived 
 
 20 of the small Irish oflB.ce which he held by patent. He 
 had just resigned his fellowship. It seems probable 
 that he had already ventured to raise his eyes to a great 
 lady, and that, while his political friends were in power, 
 and while his own fortunes were rising, he had been, in 
 
 25 the phrase of the romances which were then fashion- 
 able, permitted to hope. But Mr. Addison the ingenious 
 writer, and Mr. Addison the chief secretary, were, in 
 her ladyship's opinion, two very different persons. All 
 these calamities united, however, could not disturb the 
 serene cheerfulness of a mind conscious of innocence, 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 147 
 
 and rich in its own wealth. He told his friends, with 
 smiling resignation, that they ought to admire his phi- 
 losophy ; that he had lost at once his fortune, his place, 
 his fellowship, and his mistress ; that he must think of 
 turning tutor again, and yet that his spirits were as 5 
 good as ever. 
 
 He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which 
 his friends had incurred, he had no share. Such was 
 the esteem with which he was regarded that, while the 
 most violent measures were taken for the purpose of 10 
 forcing Tory members on Whig corporations, he was 
 returned to Parliament without even a contest. Swift, 
 who was now in London, and who had already deter- 
 mined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these 
 remarkable words : " The Tories carry it among the new 15 
 members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed 
 easy and undisputed ; and I believe if he had a mind to 
 be king he would hardly be refused." 
 
 The good will with which the Tories regarded Addi- 
 son is the more honorable to him, because it had not 20 
 been purchased by any concession on his part. During 
 the general election he published a political journal, 
 entitled the Whig ExaDilner. Of that journal it may 
 be sufficient to say that Johnson, in spite of his strong 
 political prejudices, pronounced it to be superior in wit 25 
 to any of Swift's writings on the other side. When it 
 ceased to appear. Swift, in a letter to Stella, expressed 
 his exultation at the death of so formidable an antago- 
 nist. " He might well rejoice," says Johnson, " at the 
 death of that which he could not have killed." •'•' On no 
 
148 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 occasion," he adds, " was the genius of Addison more 
 vigorously exerted, and on none did the superiority of 
 his powers more evidently appear." 
 
 The only use which Addison appears to have made of 
 5 the favor with which he was regarded by the Tories was 
 to save some of his friends from the general ruin of the 
 Whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation which 
 made it his duty to take a decided part in politics. But 
 the case of Steele and of Ambrose Phillipps was differ- 
 
 10 ent. For Phillipps, Addison even condescended to so- 
 licit, with what success we have not ascertained. Steele 
 held two places. He was gazetteer, and he was also a 
 commissioner of stamps. The Gazette was taken from 
 him. But he was suffered to retain his place in the 
 
 15 Stamp Office, on an implied understanding that he should 
 not be active against the new government ; and he was, 
 during more than two years, induced by Addison to 
 observe this armistice with tolerable fidelity. 
 
 Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon poli- 
 
 20 tics, and the article of news which had once formed about 
 one-third of his paper, altogether disappeared. The 
 Tatler had completely changed its character. It was now 
 nothing but a series of essays on books, morals, and 
 manners. Steele therefore resolved to bring it to a 
 
 25 close, and to commence a new work on an improved 
 plan. It was announced that this new work would be 
 published daily. The undertaking was generally re- 
 garded as bold, or rather rash ; but the event amply 
 justified the confidence with which Steele relied on the 
 fertility of Addison's genius. On the second of January, 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 149 
 
 1711, appeared the last Tatler. At the beginning of 
 March following appeared the first of an incomparable 
 series of papers, containing observations on life and lit- 
 eratnre by an imaginary spectator. 
 
 The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by 5 
 Addison ; and it is not easy to doubt that the portrait 
 was meant to be in some features a likeness of the 
 painter. The Spectator is a gentleman who, after pass- 
 ing a studious youth at the university, has travelled on 
 classic ground, and has bestowed much attention on curi- 10 
 ous points of antiquity. He has, on his return, fixed 
 his residence in London, and has observed all the forms 
 of life which are to be found in that great city ; has daily 
 listened to the wits of Will's, has smoked with the 
 philosophers of the Grecian, and has mingled with the 15 
 parsons at Child's, and with the politicians at the St. 
 James's. In the morning, he often listens to the hum 
 of the Exchange ; in the evening, his face is constantly 
 to be seen in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre. Bvit 
 an insurmountable bashfulness prevents him from 20 
 opening his mouth except in a small circle of intimate 
 friends. 
 
 These friends were first sketched by Steele. Four of 
 the club, the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, and 
 the merchant, were uninteresting figures, fit only for a 25 
 background. But the other two, an old country baronet 
 and an old town rake, though not delineated with a very 
 delicate pencil, had some good strokes. Addison took 
 the rude outlines into his own hands, retouched them, 
 colored them, and is in truth the creator of the Sir 
 
150 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Eoger de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with whom 
 we are all familiar. 
 
 The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be both 
 original and eminently happy. Every valuable essay in 
 5 the series may be read with pleasure separately ; yet the 
 five or six hundred essays form a whole, and a whole 
 which has the interest of a novel. It must be remem- 
 bered, too, that at that time no novel, giving a lively 
 and powerful picture of the common life and manners 
 
 10 of England, had appeared. Richardson was working as 
 a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds' nests. Smol- 
 lett was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, which 
 connects together the Spectator's essays, gave to our 
 ancestors their first taste of an exquisite and untried 
 
 15 pleasure. That narrative was indeed constructed with 
 no art or labor. The events were such events as occur 
 every day. Sir Roger comes up to town to see Eugenio, 
 as the worthy baronet always calls Prince Eugene, goes 
 with the Spectator on the water to Spring Gardens, 
 
 20 walks among the tombs in the Abbey, and is frightened 
 by the Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far 
 as to go to the theatre Avhen the " Distressed Mother" is 
 acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to 
 Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old 
 
 2'' butler, and the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will 
 Wimble, rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law 
 discussed by Tom Touchy. At last a letter from the 
 honest butler brings to the club the news that Sir Roger 
 is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. 
 The club breaks up ; and the Spectator resigns his func- 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 151 
 
 tions. Such events can hardly be said to form a plot ; 
 yet they are related with such truth, such grace, such 
 wit, such humor, such pathos, such knowledge of the 
 human heart, such knowledge of the ways of the world, 
 that they charm us on the hundredth perusal. We have 5 
 not the least doubt that if Addison had written a novel, 
 on an extensive plan, it would have been superior to any 
 that we possess. As it is, he is entitled to be considered 
 not only as the greatest of the English essayists, but as 
 the forerunner of the great English novelists. 10 
 
 We say this of Addison alone ; for Addison is the 
 Spectator. About three-sevenths of the work are his ; 
 and it is no exaggeration to say, that his worst essay is 
 as good as the best essay of any of his coadjutors. His 
 best essays approach near to absolute perfection ; nor is 15 
 their excellence more wonderful then their variety. His 
 invention never seems to flag ; nor is he ever under the 
 necessity of repeating himself, or of wearing out a sub- 
 ject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us 
 after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that 20 
 there was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as 
 we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is 
 withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. 
 On the Monday, we have an allegory as lively and ingen- 
 ious as Lucian's " Auction of Lives ; " on the Tuesday, an 25 
 Eastern apologue as richly colored as the Tales of Sche- 
 herezade ; on the Wednesday, a character described with 
 the skill of La Bruyere ; on the Thursday, a scene from 
 common life, equal to the best chapters in the " Vicar of 
 Wakefield ; " on the Friday, some sly Horatian pleasantry 
 
152 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 on fashionable follies, — on hoops, patches, or puppet- 
 shows ; and on the Saturday, a religious meditation, 
 which will bear a comparison with the finest passages 
 in Massillon. 
 
 5 It is dangerous to select where there is so much that 
 deserves the highest praise. We will venture, however, 
 to say, that any person who wishes to form a notion of 
 the extent and variety of Addison's powers, will do well 
 to read at one sitting the following papers : the Two 
 
 10 Visits to the .Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange, the 
 Journal of the Retired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, 
 the Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and the Death 
 of Sir Roger de Coverley. 
 
 The least valuable of Addison's contributions to the 
 
 15 Spectator are, in the judgment of our age, his critical 
 papers. Yet his critical papers are always luminous, 
 and often ingenious. The very worst of them must be 
 regarded as creditable to him, when the character of the 
 school in which he had been trained is fairly considered. 
 
 20 The best of them were much too good for his readers. 
 In truth, he was not so far behind our generation as he 
 was before his own. No essays in the Spectator were 
 more censured and-derided than those in which he raised 
 his voice against the contempt with which our fine old 
 
 25 ballads were regarded, and showed the scoffers that the 
 same gold which, burnished and polished, gives lustre 
 to the iEneid and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with 
 the rude dross of " Chevy Chase." 
 
 It is not strange that the success of the Spectator 
 should have been such as no similar work has ever ob- 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 153 
 
 tained. The number of copies daily distributed was at 
 first three thousand. It subsequently increased, and 
 had risen to near four thousand when the stamp tax was 
 imposed. That tax was fatal to a crowd of journals. 
 The Spectator, however, stood its ground, doubled its 5 
 price, and, though its circulation fell off, still yielded a 
 large revenue both to the state and to the authors. For 
 particular papers, the demand was immense ; of some, it 
 is said, twenty thousand copies were required. But this 
 was not all. To have the Spectator served up every lo 
 morning with the bohea and rolls was a luxury for the 
 few. The majority were content to wait till essays 
 enough had appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand 
 copies of each volume were immediately taken off, and 
 new editions were called for. It must be remembered, 15 
 that the population of England was then hardly a third 
 of what it now is. The number of Englishmen who 
 were in the habit of reading, was probably not a sixth of 
 what it now is. A shopkeeper or a farmer who found 
 any pleasure in literature, was a rarity. Nay, there was 20 
 doubtless more than one knight of the shire whose coun- 
 try seat did not contain ten books, receipt-books and 
 books on farriery included. In these circumstances, the 
 sale of the Sjjectator must be considered as indicating a 
 popularity quite as great as that of the most successful 25 
 Avorks of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in our own 
 time. 
 
 At the close of 1712 the Spectator ceased to appear. 
 It was probably felt that the shortfaced gentleman and 
 his club had been long enough before the town ; and 
 
164 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 that it was time to withdraw them, and to replace them 
 by a new set of characters. In a few weeks the first 
 number of the Guardian was published. But the Guard- 
 ian was unfortunate both in its birth and in its death. 
 5 It began in dulness and disappeared in a tempest of fac- 
 tion. The original plan was bad. Addison contributed 
 nothing till sixty -six numbers had appeared ; and it was 
 then impossible to make the Gitardian what the Specta- 
 tor had been. Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards 
 
 10 were people to whom even he could impart no interest. 
 He could only furnish some excellent little essays, both 
 serious and comic; and this he did. 
 
 Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guardian, dur- 
 ing the first two months of its existence, is a question 
 
 15 which has puzzled the editors and biographers, but which 
 seems to us to admit of a very easy solution. He was 
 then engaged in bringing liis "Cato" on the stage. 
 
 The first four acts of this drama had been lying in his 
 desk since his return from Italy. His modest and sensi- 
 
 20 tive nature shrank from the risk of a public and shame- 
 ful failure ; and, though all who saw the manuscript 
 were loud in praise, some thought it possible that an 
 audience might become impatient even of very good 
 rhetoric, and advised Addison to print the play without 
 
 25 hazarding a representation. At length, after many fits 
 of apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of his 
 political friends, who hoped that the public would dis- 
 cover some analogy between the followers of Caesar and 
 the Tories, between Sempronius and the apostate Whigs, 
 between Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties of 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 155 
 
 Rome, and the band of patriots who still stood j&rm 
 round Halifax and Wharton. 
 
 Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury Lane 
 Theatre, without stipulating for any advantage to him- 
 self. They, therefore, thought themselves bound to 5 
 spare no cost in scenery and dresses. The decorations, 
 it is true, would not have pleased the skilful eye of Mr. 
 Macready. Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace ; 
 Marcia's hoop was worthy of a duchess on the birthday ; 
 and Cato wore a wig worth fifty guineas. The prologue 10 
 was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly a dignified and 
 spirited composition. The part of the hero was excel- 
 lently played by Booth. Steele undertook to pack a 
 house. The boxes were in a blaze with the stars of the 
 Peers in Opposition. The pit was crowded with atten- 15 
 tive and friendly listeners from the Inns of Court and 
 the literary coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Gov- 
 ernor of the Bank of England, was at the head of a pow- 
 erful body of auxiliaries from the city, warm men and 
 true Whigs, but better known at Jonathan's and Garra- 20 
 way's than in the haunts of wits and critics. 
 
 These precautions were quite superfluous. The Tories, 
 as a body, regarded Addison with no unkind feelings. 
 Nor was it for their interest, professing, as they did, pro- 
 found reverence for law and prescription, and abhorrence 25 
 both of popular insurrections and of standing armies, to 
 appropriate to themselves reflections thrown on the great 
 military chief and demagogue, who, with the support of 
 the legions and of the common people, subverted all the 
 ancient institutions of his country. Accordingly, every 
 
156 MAC A UL AY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 shout that was raised by the members of the Kit Cat 
 was echoed by the High Churchmen of the October; 
 and the curtain at length fell amidst thunders of unan- 
 imous applause. 
 
 5 The delight and admiration of the town were described 
 by the G^iardian in terms which we might attribute 
 to partiality, were it not that the Exammer, the organ 
 of the ministry, held similar language. The Tories, 
 indeed, found much to sneer at in the conduct of their 
 
 10 opponents. Steele had on this, as on other occasions, 
 shown more zeal than taste or judgment. The honest 
 citizens who marched under the orders of Sir Gibby, as 
 he was facetiously called, probably knew better when to 
 buy and when to sell stock than when to clap and when 
 
 15 to hiss at a play, and incurred some ridicule by making 
 the hypocritical Sempronius their favorite, and by giv- 
 ing to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they 
 bestowed on the temperate eloquence of Cato. Whar- 
 ton, too, who had the incredible effrontery to applaud 
 
 20 the lines about flying from prosperous vice and from the 
 power of impious men to a private station, did not 
 escape the sarcasms of those who justly thought that he 
 could fly from nothing more vicious or impious than 
 himself. The epilogue, which was written by Garth, a 
 
 25 zealous Whig, was severely and not unreasonably cen- 
 sured as ignoble and out of place. But Addison was 
 described, even by the bitterest Tory writers, as a gen- 
 tleman of wit and virtue, in whose friendship many per- 
 sons of both parties were happy, and whose name ought 
 not to be mixed up with factious squabbles. 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 157 
 
 Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig party 
 was disturbed, the most severe and happy was Boling- 
 broke's. Between two acts he sent for Booth to his box, 
 and presented him, before the whole theatre, with a 
 purse of fifty guineas for defending the cause of liberty 5 
 so well against a perpetual Dictator. This was a pungent 
 allusion to the attempt which Marlborough had made, 
 not long before his fall, to obtain a patent creating him 
 Captain General for life. 
 
 It was April ; and in April, a hundred and thirty years 10 
 ago, the London season was thought to be far advanced. 
 During a whole month, however, " Cato " was performed to 
 overflowing houses, and brought into the treasury of the 
 theatre twice the gains of an ordinary spring. In the 
 summer the Drury Lane company went down to the Act 15 
 at Oxford, and there, before an audience which retained 
 an affectionate remembrance of Addison's accomplish- 
 ments and virtues, his tragedy was enacted during 
 several days. The gownsmen began to besiege the 
 theatre in the forenoon, and by one in the afternoon all 20 
 the seats were filled. 
 
 About the merits of the piece which had so extraor- 
 dinary an effect, the public, we suppose, has made up 
 its mind. To compare it with the masterpieces of the 
 Attic stage, with the great English dramas of the time 25 
 of Elizabeth, or even the productions of Schiller's man- 
 hood, would be absurd indeed ; yet it contains excellent 
 dialogue and declamation, and, among plays fashioned 
 on the French model, must be allowed to rank high, — 
 not indeed with " Athalie " or " Saul," but, we think^ 
 
158 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS.' 
 
 not below " Cinna," and certainly above any other Eng- 
 lish tragedy of the same school ; above many of the plays 
 of Corneille ; above many of the plays of Voltaire and 
 Alfieri, and above some plays of Racine. Be this as it 
 
 5 may, we have little doubt that " Cato " did as much as 
 the Tatlers, Spectators, and Freeholders united, to raise 
 Addison's fame among his contemporaries. 
 
 The modesty and good nature of the successful dram- 
 atist had tamed even the malignity of faction. But 
 
 10 literary envy, it should seem, is a fiercer passion than 
 party spirit. It was by a zealous Whig that the fiercest 
 attack on the Whig tragedy -was made. John Dennis 
 published " Remarks on Cato," which were written with 
 some acuteness and with much coarseness and asperity. 
 
 15 Addison neither defended himself nor retaliated. On 
 many points he had an excellent defence, and nothing 
 would have been easier than to retaliate ; for Dennis had 
 written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies : he had, 
 moreover, a larger share than most men of those infirmi- 
 
 20 ties and eccentricities which excite laughter ; and Addi- 
 son's power of turning either an absurd book or an 
 absurd man into ridicule was unrivalled. Addison, how- 
 ever, serenely conscious of his superiority, looked with 
 pity on his assailant, whose temper, naturally irritable 
 
 25 and gloomy, had been soured by want, by controversy, 
 and by literary failures. 
 
 But among the young candidates for Addison's favor 
 there was one distinguished by talents from the rest, and 
 distinguished, we fear, not less by malignity and insin- 
 cerity. Pope was only twenty-five ; but his powers had 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 159 
 
 expanded to their full maturity, and his best poem, the 
 ■* Eape of the Lock," had recently been published. Of 
 his genius Addison had always expressed high admira- 
 tion. But Addison had early discerned, what might, 
 indeed, have been discerned by an eye less penetrating 5 
 than bis, that the diminutive, crooked, sickly boy was 
 eager to revenge himself on society for the unkindness 
 of nature. In the Spectator the " Essay on Criti- 
 cism " had been praised with cordial warmth ; but a 
 gentle hint had been added that the writer of so excel- 10 
 lent a poem would have done well to avoid ill-natured 
 personalities. Pope, though evidently more galled by 
 the censure than gratified by the praise, returned thanks 
 for the admonition, and promised to profit by it. The 
 two writers continued to exchange civilities, counsel, and 15 
 small good offices. Addison publicly extolled Pope's 
 miscellaneous pieces, and Pope furnished Addison with a 
 prologue. This did not last long. Pope hated Dennis, 
 whom he had injured without provocation. The appear- 
 ance of the " Remarks on Cato " gave the irritable 20 
 poet an opportunity of venting his malice under the 
 show of friendship ; and such an opportunity could not 
 but be welcomed to a nature which was implacable in 
 enmity,, and which always preferred the tortuous to the 
 straight path. He published, accordingly, the " Narra- 25 
 tive of the Frenzy of John Dennis." But Pope had 
 mistaken his powers. He was a great master of invec- 
 tive and sarcasm ; he could dissect a character in terse 
 and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis ; but of 
 dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had 
 
160 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 written a lampoon on Dennis, such as that on Atticus 
 or that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been 
 crushed. But Pope writing dialogue resembled — to 
 borrow Horace's imagery and his own — a wolf, which, 
 
 5 instead of biting, should take to kicking, or a monkey 
 which should try to sting. The Narrative is utterly 
 contemptible. Of argument there is not even the show, 
 and the jests are such as, if they were introduced into 
 a farce, would call forth the hisses of the shilling 
 
 10 gallery. Dennis raves about the drama, and the nurse 
 thinks that he is calling for a dram. ''There is," he 
 cries, "no peripetia in the tragedy, no change of fortune, 
 no change at all." " Pray, good sir, be not angry," says 
 the old woman, "I'll fetch change." This is not exactly 
 
 15 the pleasantry of Addison. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Addison saw through this 
 officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. 
 So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do him no good, 
 and, if he were thought to have any hand in it, must do 
 
 20 him harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridicule, 
 he had never, even in self-defence, used those powers 
 inhumanly or uncourteously ; and he was not disposed 
 to let others make his fame and his interests a pretext 
 under which they might commit outrages from which 
 
 25 he had himself constantly abstained. He accordingly 
 declared that he had no concern in the Narrative, 
 that he disapproved of it, and that if he answered the 
 Remarks, he would answer them like a gentleman ; 
 and he took care to communicate this to Dennis. Pope 
 was bitterly mortified, and to this transaction we are 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 161 
 
 inclined to ascribe the hatred with which he ever after 
 regarded Addison. 
 
 In September, 1713, the Guardian ceased to appear. 
 Steele had gone mad about politics. A general election 
 had just taken place : he had been chosen member for 5 
 Stockbridge, and he fully expected to play a first part in 
 Parliament. The immense success of the Tatler and 
 Spectator had turned his head. He had been the editor 
 of both those papers, and was not aware how entirely 
 they owed their influence and popularity to the genius lO 
 of his friend. His spirits, always violent, were now 
 excited by vanity, ambition, and faction, to such a pitch 
 that he every day committed some offence against good 
 sense and good taste. All the discreet and moderate 
 members of his own party regretted and condemned his 15 
 folly. " I am in a thousand troubles," Addison wrote, 
 " about poor Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public 
 may not be ruinous to himself. But he has sent me 
 word that he is determined to go on, and that any ad- 
 vice I may give him in this particular will have no 20 
 weight with him." 
 
 Steele set up a political paper called the Englishman, 
 which, as it was not supported by contributions from 
 Addison, completely failed. By this work, by some 
 other writings of the same kind, and by the airs which 25 
 he gave himself at the first meeting of the new Parlia- 
 ment, he made the Tories so angry that they determined 
 to expel him. The Whigs stood by him gallantly, but 
 were unable to save him. The vote of expulsion was 
 regarded by all dispassionate men as a tyrannical exer- 
 
162 macaulay's essays. 
 
 cise of the power of the majority. But Steele's violence 
 and folly, though they by no means justified the steps 
 which his enemies took, had completely disgusted his 
 friends ; nor did he ever regain the place which he had 
 
 5 held in the public estimation. 
 
 Addison about this time conceived the design of add- 
 ing an eighth volume to the Sjyectator. In June, 1714, 
 the first number of the new series appeared, and during 
 about six months three papers were published weekly. 
 
 10 Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between 
 the Englishman and the eighth volume of the Spec- 
 tator, between Steele without Addison and Addison 
 without Steele. The Englishman is forgotten : the 
 eighth volume of the Spectator contains, perhaps, the 
 
 15 finest essays, both serious and playful, in the English 
 language. 
 
 Before this volume was completed, the death of Anne 
 produced an entire change in the administration of pub- 
 lic affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It found the Tory 
 
 20 party distracted by internal feuds, and unprepared for 
 any great effort. Harley had just been disgraced. 
 Bolingbroke, it was supposed, would be the chief minis- 
 ter. But the Queen was on her death-bed before the 
 white staff had been given, and her last public act was 
 
 25 to deliver it with a feeble hand to the Duke of Shrews- 
 bury. The emergency produced a coalition between all 
 sections of public men who were attached to the Protes- 
 tant succession. George the Pirst was proclaimed with- 
 out opposition. A council, in wliich the leading Whigs 
 had seatSj took the direction of affairs till the new King 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 163 
 
 should arrive. The first act of the Lord Justices was to 
 appoint Addison their secretary. 
 
 There is an idle tradition that he was directed to pre- 
 pare a letter to the King, that he could not satisfy him- 
 self as to the style of this composition, and that the 5 
 Lords Justices called in a clerk, who at once did what was 
 wanted. It is not strange that a story so flattering 
 to mediocrity should be popular ; and we are sorry to 
 deprive dunces of their consolation. But the truth must 
 be told. It was well observed by Sir James Mackintosh, 10 
 whose knowledge of these times was unequalled, that 
 Addison never, in any official document, affected wit or 
 eloquence, and that his despatches are, without excep- 
 tion, remarkable for unpretending simplicity. Every- 
 body who knows with what ease Addison's finest essays 15 
 were produced, must be convinced that, if well-turned 
 phrases had been wanted, he would have had no diffi- 
 culty in finding them. We are, however, inclined to 
 believe, that the story is not absolutely without a foun- 
 dation. It may well be that Addison did not know, till 20 
 he had consulted experienced clerks who remembered 
 the times when William the Third was absent on the 
 Continent, in what form a letter from the Council of 
 Regency to the King ought to be drawn. We think it 
 very likely that the ablest statesmen of our time. Lord 25 
 John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerstou, for 
 example, would, in similar circumstances, be found quite 
 as ignorant. Every office has some little mysteries 
 which the dullest man may learn with a little attention, 
 and which the greatest man cannot possibly know by 
 
164 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 intuition. One paper must be signed by the chief of 
 the department ; another by his deputy : to a third the 
 royal sign-manual is necessary. One communication is 
 to be registered, and another is not. One sentence must 
 
 5 be in black ink, and another in red ink. If the ablest 
 Secretary for Ireland were moved to the India Board, if 
 the ablest President of the India Board were moved to 
 the War Office, he would require instruction on points 
 like these ; and we do not doubt that Addison required 
 
 10 such instruction when he became, for the first time, 
 Secretary to the Lords Justices. 
 
 George the First took possession of his kingdom with- 
 out opposition. A new ministry was formed, and a new 
 Parliament favorable to the Whigs chosen. Sunderland 
 
 15 was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ; and Addison 
 again went to Dublin as Chief Secretary. 
 
 At Dublin Swift resided ; and there Avas much specu- 
 lation about the way in which the Dean and the Secre- 
 tary would behave towards each other. The relations 
 
 20 which existed between these remarkable men form an 
 interesting and pleasing portion of literary history. 
 They had early attached themselves to the same political 
 party and to the same patrons. While Anne's Whig 
 ministry was in power, the visits of Swift to London 
 
 25 and the official residence of Addison in Ireland had 
 given them opportunities of knowing each other. They 
 were the two shrewdest observers of their age. But 
 their observations on each other had led them to favor- 
 able conclusions. Swift did full justice to the rare powers 
 of conversation which were latent under the bashful 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 165 
 
 deportment of Addison. Addison, on the other hand, 
 discerned much good nature under the severe look and 
 manner of Swift ; and, indeed, the Swift of 1708 and 
 the Swift of 1738 were two very different men. 
 
 But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. 5 
 The Whig statesmen loaded Addison with solid benefits. 
 They praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and did noth- 
 ing more for him. His profession laid them under a 
 difficulty. In the state they could not promote him ; 
 and they had reason to fear that, by bestowing prefer- 10 
 ment in the church on the author of the " Tale of a Tub," 
 they might give scandal to the public, which had no 
 high opinion of their orthodoxy. He did not make fair 
 allowance for the difficulties which prevented Halifax 
 and Somers from serving him, thought himself an ill- 15 
 used man, sacrificed honor and consistency to revenge, 
 joined the Tories, and became their most formidable 
 champion. He soon found, however, that his old friends 
 were less to blame than he had supposed. The dislike 
 with which the Queen and the heads of the church 20 
 regarded him was insurmountable ; and it was with the 
 greatest difficulty that he obtained an ecclesiastical 
 dignity of no great value, on condition of fixing his resi- 
 dence in a country which he detested. 
 
 Difference of political opinion had produced, not in- 25 
 deed a quarrel, but a coolness between Swift and Addi- 
 son. They at length ceased altogether to see each other. 
 Yet there was between them a tacit compact like that 
 between the hereditary guests in the Iliad. 
 
166 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 "EY)(^ea &' aXXr}Xii)v a}.iil>niQa koi hi hfiiXoV 
 TloXXoi ftiv yap lixoi TpCit; xXfiToi r' iniKOvpoi, 
 Kriiveiv, bv Kt 6(6i yf Trhpr] Ka'i iroaal Kiyeiw, 
 HoXXoI 6' av 6ol 'Avoioi, iyalpifiev bv xe Sivrjai 
 
 It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and 
 insulted nobody, should not have calumniated and in- 
 sulted Swift. But it is remarkable that Swift, to whom 
 neither genius nor virtue was sacred, and who generally 
 
 5 seemed to find, like most other renegades, a peculiar 
 pleasure in attacking old friends, should have shown so 
 much respect and tenderness to Addison. 
 
 Fortune had now changed. The accession of the 
 house of Hanover had secured in England the liberties 
 
 10 of the people, and in Ireland the dominion of the Protes- 
 tant caste. To that caste Swift was more odious than 
 any other man. He was hooted and even pelted in the 
 streets of Dublin ; and could not venture to ride along 
 the strand for his health without the attendance of 
 
 15 armed servants. Many whom he had formerly served 
 now libelled and insulted him. At this time Addison 
 arrived. He had been advised not to show the smallest 
 civility to the Dean of St. Patrick's. He had answered, 
 with admirable spirit, that it might be necessary for 
 
 20 men whose fidelity to their party was suspected, to hold 
 no intercourse with political opponents ; but that one 
 who had been a stead}^ Whig in the worst times might 
 venture, when the good cause was triumphant, to shake 
 hands with an old friend who was one of the vanquished 
 Tories. His kindness was soothing to the proud and 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 167 
 
 cruelly wounded spirit of Swift ; and the two great 
 satirists resumed their habits of friendly intercourse. 
 
 Those associates of Addison whose political opinions 
 agreed with his shared his good fortune. He took Tick- 
 ell with him to Ireland. He procured for Budgell a 5 
 lucrative place in the same kingdom. Ambrose Phil- 
 lipps was provided for in England. Steele had injured 
 himself so much by his eccentricity and perverseness, 
 that he obtained but a very small part of what he 
 thought his due. He was, however, knighted ; he had 10 
 a place in the household ; and he subsequently received 
 other marks of favor from the court. 
 
 Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 1715 he 
 quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the Board of 
 Trade. In the same year his comedy of the " Drummer " 15 
 was brought on the stage. The name of the author was 
 not announced ; the piece was coldly received, and some 
 critics have expressed a doubt whether it were really 
 Addison's. To us the evidence, both external and inter- 
 nal, seems decisive. It is not in Addison's best manner ; 20 
 but it contains numerous passages which no other writer 
 known to us could have produced. It was again per- 
 formed after Addison's death, and, being known to be 
 his, was loudly applauded. 
 
 Towards the close of the year 1715, while the Eebel- 25 
 lion was still raging in Scotland, Addison published the 
 first number of a paper called the Freeholder. Among 
 his political works the Freeholder is entitled to the first 
 place. Even in the Spectator there are few serious 
 papers nobler than the character of his friend Lord 
 
168 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 Somers, and certainly 'no satirical papers superior to 
 those in which the Tory fox-hunter is introduced. This 
 character is the original of Squire Western, and is 
 drawn with all Fielding's force, and with a delicacy 
 
 5 of which Fielding was altogether destitute. As none 
 of Addison's works exhibit stronger marks of his gen- 
 ius than the Freeholder, so none does more honor to his 
 moral character. It is difficult to extol too highly the 
 candor and humanity of a political writer whom even 
 
 10 the excitement of civil war cannot hurry into unseemly 
 violence. Oxford, it is well known, was then the strong- 
 hold of Toryism. The High Street had been repeatedly 
 lined with bayonets in order to keep down the disaf- 
 fected gownsmen ; and traitors pursued by the messen- 
 
 15 gers of the government had been concealed in the garrets 
 of several colleges. Yet the admonition which, even 
 under such circumstances, Addison addressed to the 
 university, is singularly gentle, respectful, and even 
 affectionate. Indeed, he could not find it in his heart 
 
 20 to deal harshly even with imaginary persons. His fox- 
 hunter, though ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart 
 a good fellow, and is at last reclaimed by the clemency 
 of the king. Steele was dissatisfied with his friend's 
 moderation, and, though he acknowledged that the Free- 
 
 25 holder was excellently written, complained that the min- 
 istry played on a lute when it was necessary to blow the 
 trumpet. He accordingly determined to execute a flour- 
 ish after his own fashion, and tried to rouse the public 
 spirit of the nation by means of a paper called the Toivn 
 Talk, which is now as utterly forgotten as his English- 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. ^ 169 
 
 man, as his Crisis, as his .Letter. to the Bailiff of Stock- 
 bridge, as his Reader, in short, as everything that he 
 wrote without the help of Addison. 
 
 In the same year in which the ''Drummer" was acted, 
 and in which the first numbers of the Freeholder ap- 5 
 peared, the estrangement of Pope and Addison became 
 complete. Addison had from the first seen that Pope 
 was false and malevolent. Pope had discovered that 
 Addison was jealous. The discovery was made in a 
 strange manner. Pope had written the " Rape of the 10 
 Lock," in two cantos, without supernatural machinery. 
 These two cantos had been loudly applauded, and by 
 none more loudly than by Addison. Then Pope thought 
 of the Sylphs and Gnomes, Ariel, Momentilla, Crispissa, 
 and Umbriel, and resolved to interweave the Rosicru- 15 
 cian mythology with the original fabric. He asked 
 Addison's advice. Addison said that the poem as it 
 stood was a delicious little thing, and entreated Pope not 
 to run the risk of marring what was so excellent in try- 
 ing to mend it. Pope afterward declared that this insid- 20 
 ious counsel first opened his eyes to the baseness of him 
 who gave it. 
 
 Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was most 
 ingenious, and that he afterwards executed it with great 
 skill and success. But does it necessarily follow that 25 
 Addison's advice was bad? And if Addison's advice 
 was bad, does it necessarily follow that it was given 
 from bad motives ? If a friend were to ask us whether 
 we would advise him to risk his all in a lottery of which 
 the chances were ten .to one against him, we should do 
 
170 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 our best to dissuade him from running such a risk. 
 Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand 
 pound prize, we should not admit that we had counselled 
 him ill ; and we should certainly think it the height of 
 
 5 injustice in him to accuse us of having been actuated by 
 malice. We think Addison's advice good advice. It 
 rested on a sound principle, the result of long and wide 
 experience. The general rule undoubtedly is that, when 
 a successful work of imagination has been produced, it 
 
 10 should not be recast. We cannot at this moment call 
 to mind a single instance in which this rule has been 
 transgressed with happy effect, except the instance of 
 the " Eape of the Lock." Tasso recast his " Jerusalem." 
 Akenside recast his •' Pleasures of the Imagination," and 
 
 15 his " Epistle to Curio." Pope himself, emboldened no 
 doubt by the success with which he had expanded and 
 remodelled the "Rape of the Lock," made the same exper- 
 iment on the "Dunciad." All these attempts failed. 
 Who was to foresee that Pope would, once in his life, be 
 
 20 able to do what he could not himself do twice, and what 
 nobody else has ever done ? 
 
 Addison's advice was good. But had it been bad, why 
 should we pronounce it dishonest ? Scott tells us that 
 one of his best friends predicted the failure of Waver- 
 
 25 ley. Herder adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising 
 a subject as Faust. Hume tried to dissuade Eobertson 
 from writing the " History of Charles the Fifth." Nay, 
 Pope himself was one of those who prophesied that 
 " Cato " would never succeed on the stage, and advised 
 Addison to print it without risking a representation. 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 171 
 
 But Scott, Goethe, Eobertson, Addison, had the good 
 sense and generosity to give their advisers credit for the 
 best intentions. Pope's heart was not of the same kind 
 with theirs. 
 
 In 1715, while he was engaged in translating the 5 
 Iliad, he met Addison at a coffee-house. Phillipps and 
 Budgell were there ; but their sovereign got rid of them, 
 and asked Pope to dine with him alone. After dinner, 
 Addison said that he lay under a difficulty which he 
 wished to explain. " Tickell," he said, "translated some lo 
 time ago the first book of the Iliad. I have promised to 
 look it over and correct it. I cannot, therefore, ask 
 to see yours, for that would be double-dealing." Pope 
 made a civil reply, and begged that his second book 
 might have the advantage of Addison's revision. Addi- 15 
 son readily agreed, looked over the second book, and sent 
 it back with warm commendations. 
 
 Tickell's version of the first book appeared soon after 
 this conversation. In the preface, all rivalry was ear- 
 nestly disclaimed. Tickell declared that he should not 20 
 go on with the Iliad. That enterprise he should leave 
 to powers which he admitted to be superior to his own. 
 His only view, he said, in publishing this specimen was 
 to bespeak the favor of the public to a translation of the 
 Odyssey, in which he had made some progress. 25 
 
 Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pronounced 
 both the versions good, but maintained that Tickell's 
 had more of the original. The town gave a decided 
 preference to Pope's. We do not think it worth while 
 to settle such a question of precedence. Neither of the 
 
172 MACAULAY\S ESSAYS. 
 
 rivals can be said to have translated the Iliad, unless 
 indeed, the word translation be used in the sense which 
 it bears in the " Midsummer Night's Dream." When 
 Bottom makes his appearance with an ass's head instead 
 
 5 of his own, Peter Quince exclaims, "Bless thee ! Bottom, 
 bless thee ! thou art translated." In this sense, undoubt- 
 edly, the readers of either Pope or Tickell may very 
 properly exclaim, " Bless thee ! Homer ; thou art trans- 
 lated indeed." 
 
 10 Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in thinking 
 that no man in Addison's situation could have acted 
 more fairly and kindly, both towards Pope, and towards 
 Tickell, than he appears to have done. But an odious 
 suspicion had sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fan- 
 
 15 cied, and he soon firmly believed, that there was a deep 
 conspiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The 
 work on which he had staked his reputation was to be 
 depreciated. The subscription, on which rested his hopes 
 of a competence, was to be defeated. With this view 
 
 20 Addison had made a rival translation : Tickell had con- 
 sented to father it ; and the wits of Button's had united 
 to puff it. 
 
 Is there any external evidence to support this grave 
 accusation ? The answer is short. There is absolutely 
 
 25 none. 
 
 Was there any internal evidence which proved Addi- 
 son to be the author of this version ? Was it a work 
 which Tickell was incapable of producing ? Surely not. 
 Tickell was a fellow of a college at Oxford, and must be 
 supposed to have been able to construe the Iliad ; and 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 173 
 
 he was a better versifier than his friend. We are not 
 aware that Pope pretended to have discovered any turns 
 of expression peculiar to Addison. Had such turns of 
 expression been discovered, they would be sufficiently 
 accounted for by supposing Addison to have corrected 5 
 his friend's lines, as he owned that he had done. 
 
 Is there anything in the character of the accused per- 
 sons which makes the accusation probable ? We answer 
 confidently — nothing. Tickell was long after this time 
 described by Pope himself as a very fair and worthy 10 
 man. Addison had been, during many years, before the 
 public. Literary rivals, political opponents, had kept 
 their eyes on him. But neither envy nor faction, in 
 their utmost rage, had ever imputed to him a single 
 deviation from the laws of honor and of social morality. 15 
 Had he been indeed a man meanly jealous of fame, and 
 capable of stooping to base and wicked acts for the pur- 
 pose of injuring his competitors, would his vices have 
 remained latent so long ? He was a writer of tragedy : 
 had he ever injured Rowe ? He was a writer of comedy : 20 
 had he not done ample justice to Congreve, and given 
 valuable help to Steele ? He was a pamphleteer : have 
 not his good nature and generosity been acknowledged 
 by Swift, his rival in fame and his adversary in politics ? 
 
 That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany 25 
 seems to us highly improbable. That Addison should 
 have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly im- 
 probable. But that these two men should have conspired 
 together to commit a villany seems to us improbable in a 
 tenfold degree. All that is known to us of their inter- 
 
174 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 
 
 course tends to prove, that it was not the intercourse of 
 two accomplices in crime. These are some of the lines in 
 which Tickell pours forth his sorrow over the coffin of 
 Addison : — 
 
 " Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
 A task well suited to thy gentle mintl ? 
 Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend, 
 To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. 
 When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, 
 When pain distresses, or wlien pleasure charms, 
 In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart. 
 And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ; 
 Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before. 
 Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." 
 
 5 In what words, we should like to know, did this guard- 
 ian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan such as the 
 editor of the Satirist would hardly dare to propose to 
 the editor of the Age ? 
 
 We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation 
 
 10 which he knew to be false. We have not the smallest 
 doubt that he believed it to be true ; and the evidence 
 on which he believed it he found in his own bad heart. 
 His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and 
 as malicious as that of which he suspected Addison 
 
 15 and Tickell. He was all stiletto and mask. To injure, 
 to insult, and to save himself from the consequences of 
 injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the 
 habit of his life. He published a lampoon on the Duke 
 of Chandos ; he was taxed with it ; and he lied and 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 176 
 
 equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron Hill ; 
 he was taxed with it ; and he lied and equivocated. He 
 published a still fouler lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montague ; he was taxed with it ; and he lied with more 
 than usual effrontery and vehemence. He puffed him- 5 
 self and abused his enemies under feigned names. He 
 robbed himself of his own letters, and then raised the 
 hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds of malig- 
 nity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds 
 which he seems to have committed from love of fraud 10 
 alone. He had a habit of stratagem, a pleasure in out- 
 witting all who came near him. Whatever his object 
 might be, the indirect road to it was that which he pre- 
 ferred. For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as 
 much love and veneration as it was in his nature to feel 15 
 for any human being. Yet Pope was scarcely dead when 
 it was discovered that, from no motive except the mere 
 love of artifice, he had been guilty of an act of gross 
 perfidy to Bolingbroke. 
 
 Nothing was more natural than that such a man as 20 
 this should attribute to others that which he felt within 
 himself. A plain, probable, coherent explanation is 
 frankly given to him. He is certain that it is all a 
 romance. A line of conduct scrupulously fair, and even 
 friendly, is pursued towards him. He is convinced that 25 
 it is merely a cover for a vile intrigue by which he is to 
 be disgraced and ruined. It is vain to ask him for 
 proofs. He has none, and wants none, except those 
 which he carries in his own bosom. 
 
 Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Addison 
 
176 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 to retaliate for the first and last time, cannot now be 
 known with certainty. We have only Pope's story, 
 which runs thus. A pamphlet appeared containing some 
 reflections which stung Pope to the quick. What those 
 
 5 reflections were, and whether they were reflections of 
 which he had a right to complain, we have now no 
 means of deciding. The Earl of Warwick, a foolish 
 and vicious lad, who regarded Addison with the feelings 
 with which such lads generally regard their best friends, 
 
 10 told Pope, truly or falsely, that this pamphlet had been 
 written by Addison's direction. When we consider 
 what a tendency stories have to grow, in passing even 
 from one honest man to another honest man, and when 
 we consider that to the name of honest man neither 
 
 15 Pope nor the Earl of Warwick had a claim, we are not 
 disposed to attach much importance to this anecdote. 
 
 It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He 
 had already sketched the character of Atticus in prose. 
 In his anger he turned this prose into the brilliant and 
 
 20 energetic lines which everybody knows by heart, or 
 ought to know by heart, and sent them to Addison. 
 One charge which Pope has enforced with great skill is 
 probably not without foundation. Addison was, we are 
 inclined to believe, too fond of presiding over a circle of 
 
 25 humble friends. Of the other imputations which these 
 famous lines are intended to convey, scarcely one has 
 ever been proved to be just, and some are certainly false. 
 That Addison was not in the habit of " damning with 
 faint praise " appears from innumerable passages in his 
 writings, and from none more than from those in which 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 177 
 
 he mentions Pope. And it is not merely unjust, but 
 ridiculous, to describe a man who made the fortune of 
 almost every one of his intimate friends, as "so obliging 
 that he ne'er obliged." 
 
 That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly, 5 
 we cannot doubt. That he was conscious of one of the 
 weaknesses with which he was reproached is highly 
 probable. But his heart, we firmly believe, acquitted 
 him of the gravest part of the accusation. He acted 
 like himself. As a satirist he was, at his own weapons, lo 
 more than Pope's match, and he would have been at no 
 loss for topics. A distorted and diseased body, tenanted 
 by a yet more distorted and diseased mind ; spite and 
 envy thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent and 
 noble as those which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. 15 
 Joseph Surface ; a feeble, sickly licentiousness ; an odi- 
 ous love of filthy and noisome images ; these were things 
 which a genius less powerful than that to which we 
 owe the Spectator could easily have held up to the mirth 
 and hatred of mankind. Addison had, moreover, at his 20 
 command, other means of vengeance which a bad man 
 would not have scrupled to use. He was powerful in the 
 state. Pope was a Catholic ; and, in those times, a 
 minister would have found it easy to harass the most 
 innocent Catholic by innumerable petty vexations. 25 
 Pope, near twenty years later, said that " through the 
 lenity of the government alone he could live with com- 
 fort." '' Consider," he exclaimed, " the injury that a 
 man of high rank and credit may do to a private person, 
 under penal laws and many other disadvantages." It is 
 
178 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 pleasing to reflect that the only revenge which Addison 
 took was to insert in the Freeliolder a warm encomium on 
 the translation of the Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of 
 learning to put down their names as subscribers. There 
 
 5 could be no doubt, he said, from the specimens already 
 published, that the masterly hand of Pope would do as 
 much for Homer as Dryden had done for Virgil. From 
 that time to the end of his life, he always treated Pope, 
 by Pope's own acknowledgment, with justice, Friend- 
 
 10 ship was, of course, at an end. 
 
 One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play 
 the ignominious part of talebearer on this occasion, may 
 have been his dislike of the marriage which was about 
 to take place between his mother and Addison. The 
 
 15 Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honorable 
 family of the Middletons of Chirk, a family which, in 
 any country but ours, would be called noble, resided at 
 Holland House. Addison had, during some years, occu- 
 pied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell 
 
 20 Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of London, and Hol- 
 land House may be called a town residence. But, in tlie 
 days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids and 
 sportsmen wandered between green hedges, and over 
 fields bright with daisies, from Kensington almost to the 
 
 25 shore of the Thames. Addison and Lady "Warwick were 
 country neighbors, and became intimate friends. The 
 great wit and scholar tried to allure the young lord from 
 the fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, break- 
 ing windows, and rolling women in hogsheads down Hol- 
 born Hill, to the study of letters and the practice of 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 179 
 
 virtue. These well-meant exertions did little good, 
 however, either to the disciple or to the master. Lord 
 Warwick grew up a rake ; and Addison fell in love. 
 The mature beauty of the countess has been celebrated 
 by poets in language which, after a very large allowance 5 
 has been made for flattery, would lead us to believe that 
 she was a fine woman ; and her rank doubtless height- 
 ened her attractions. The courtship was long. The 
 hopes of the lover appear to have risen and fallen with 
 the fortunes of his party. His attachment was at length 10 
 matter of such notoriety that, when he visited Ireland 
 for the last time, Rowe addressed some consolatory 
 verses to the Chloe of Holland House. It strikes us as a 
 little strange that, in these verses, Addison should be 
 called Lycidas, a name of singular evil omen for a swain 15 
 just about to cross St. George's Channel. 
 
 At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was indeed 
 able to treat with her on equal terms. He had reason to 
 expect preferment even higher than that which he had 
 attained. He had inherited the fortune of a brother 20 
 who had died Governor of Madras. He had purchased 
 an estate in Warwickshire, and had been welcomed to 
 his domain in very tolerable verse by one of the neigh- 
 boring squires, the poetical fox-hunter, William Somer- 
 vile. In August, 1716, the newspapers announced that 25 
 Joseph Addison, Esquire, famous for many excellent 
 works, both in verse and prose, had espoused the Countess 
 Dowager of Warwick. 
 
 He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a house 
 which can boast of a greater number of inmates distin- 
 
180 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 guished in political and literary history than any other 
 private dwelling in England. His portrait still hangs 
 there. The features are pleasing; the complexion is 
 remarkably fair ; but, in the expression we trace rather 
 
 5 the gentleness of his disposition than the force and keen- 
 ness of his intellect. 
 
 Not long after his marriage he reached the height of 
 civil greatness. The Whig Government had, during 
 some time, been torn by internal dissensions. Lord 
 
 10 Townshend led one section of the Cabinet, Lord Sunder- 
 land the other. At length, in the spring of 1717, Sun- 
 derland triumphed. Townshend retired from office, and 
 was accompanied by Walpole and Cowper. Sunderland 
 proceeded to reconstruct the Ministry ; and Addison was 
 
 15 appointed Secretary of State. It is certain that the 
 seals were pressed upon him, and were at first declined 
 by him. Men equally versed in official business might 
 easily have been found ; and his colleagues knew that 
 they could not expect assistance from him in debate. 
 
 20 He owed his elevation to his popularity, to his stainless 
 probity, and to his literary fame. 
 
 But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet when 
 his health began to fail. From one serious attack he 
 recovered in the autumn; and his recovery was cele- 
 
 25 brated in Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by Vin- 
 cent Bourne, who was then at Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 A relapse soon took place ; and, in the following spring, 
 Addison was prevented by a severe asthma from dis- 
 charging the duties of his post. He resigned it, and was 
 succeeded by his friend Craggs, a young man whose 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 181 
 
 natural parts, though little improved by cultivation, 
 were quick and showy, whose graceful person and win- 
 ning manners had made him generally acceptable in so- 
 ciety, and who, if he had lived, would probably have 
 been the most formidable of all the rivals of Walpole, 5 
 
 As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The ministers, 
 therefore, were able to bestow on Addison a retiring 
 pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. In what form 
 this pension was given we are not told by the biogra- 
 phers, and have not time to inquire. But it is certain that 10 
 Addison did not vacate his seat in the House of Commons, 
 
 Rest of mind and body seems to have re-established 
 his health ; and he thanked God, with cheerful piety, for 
 having set him free both from his office and from his 
 asthma. Many years seemed to be before him, and he 15 
 meditated many works, a tragedy on the death of Socra- 
 tes, a translation of the Psalms, a treatise on the evi- 
 dences of Christianity. Of this last performance, a part, 
 which we could well spare, has come down to us. 
 
 But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradually 20 
 prevailed against all the resources of medicine. It is 
 melancholy to think that the last months of such a life 
 should have been overclouded both by domestic and by 
 political vexations. A tradition which began early, 
 which has been generally received, and to which we have 25 
 nothing to oppose, has represented his wife as an arro- 
 gant and imperious woman. It is said that, till his 
 health failed him, he was glad to escape from the Countess 
 Dowager and her magnificent dining-room, blazing with 
 the gilded devices of the house of Rich, to some tavern 
 
182 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 where he could enjoy a laugh, a talk about Virgil and 
 Boileau, and a bottle of claret with the friends of his 
 happier days. All those friends, however, were not left 
 to him. Sir Eichard Steele had been gradually estranged 
 
 5 by various causes. He considered himself as one who, 
 in evil times, had braved martyrdom for his political 
 principles, and demanded, when the Whig party was 
 triumphant, a large compensation for what he had suf- 
 fered when it was militant. The Whig leaders took a 
 
 10 very different view of his claims. They thought that 
 he had, by his own petulance and folly, brought them as 
 well as himself into trouble, and though they did not 
 absolutely neglect him, doled out favors to him with a 
 sparing hand. It was natural that he should be angry ' 
 
 15 with them, and especially angry with Addison. But 
 what above all seems to have disturbed Sir Richard, was 
 the elevation of Tickell, who, at thirty, was made by 
 Addison Undersecretary of State ; while the editor of the 
 Tatler and Spectator, the author of the " Crisis," the mem- 
 
 20 ber for Stockbridge who had been persecuted for firm 
 adherence to the house of Hanover, was, at near fifty, 
 forced, after many solicitations and complaints, to con- 
 tent himself witli a share in the patent of Drury Lane 
 Theatre. Steele himself says, in his celebrated letter to 
 
 25 Congreve, that Addison, by his preference of Tickell, 
 '' incurred the warmest resentment of other gentlemen ; " 
 and everything seems to indicate that, of those resent- 
 ful gentlemen, Steele was himself one. 
 
 While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he 
 considered as Addison's uukinduess, a new cause of 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON, 183 
 
 quarrel arose. The Whig party, already divided against 
 itself, was rent by a new schism. The celebrated bill 
 for limiting the number of peers had been brought in. 
 The proud Duke of Somerset, first in rank of all the 
 nobles whose origin permitted them to sit in Parliament, 5 
 was the ostensible author of the measure. But it was 
 supported, and, in truth, devised by the Prime Minister. 
 We are satisfied that the bill was most pernicious ; 
 and we fear that the motives which induced Sunderland 
 to frame it were not honorable to him. But we cannot 10 
 deny that it was supported by many of the best and 
 wisest men of that age. Nor was this strange. The 
 royal prerogative had, within the memory of the genera- 
 tion then in the vigor of life, been so grossly abused, 
 that it was still regarded with a jealousy which, when 15 
 the peculiar situation of the House of Brunswick is con- 
 sidered, may perhaps be called immoderate. The par- 
 ticular prerogative of creating peers had, in the opinion 
 of the Whigs, been grossly abused by Queen Anne's last 
 Ministry ; and even the Tories admitted that her majesty 20 
 in swamping, as it has since been called, the Upper 
 House, had done what only an extreme case could justify. 
 The theory of the English constitution, according to 
 many high authorities, was that three independent 
 powers, the sovereign, the nobility, and the commons, 25 
 ought constantly to act as checks on each other. If this 
 theory were sound, it seemed to follow that to put one 
 of these powers under the absolute control of the other 
 two, was absurd. But if the number of peers were un- 
 limited, it could not well be denied that the Upper 
 
184 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 
 
 House was under the absolute control of the Crown and 
 the Commons, and was indebted- only to their modera- 
 tion for any power which it might be suffered to retain. 
 Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison with 
 
 5 the ministers. Steele, in a paper called the Plebeian, 
 vehemently attacked the bill. Sunderland called for 
 help on Addison, and Addison obeyed the call. In a 
 paper called the Old Whig, he answered, and indeed 
 refuted Steele's arguments. It seems to us that the 
 
 10 premises of both the controversialists were unsound ; 
 that, on those premises, Addison reasoned well and Steele 
 ill, and that consequently Addison brought out a false 
 conclusion, while Steele blundered upon the truth. In 
 style, in wit, and in politeness, Addison maintained his 
 
 15 superiority, though the Old Whig is by no means one of 
 his happiest performances. 
 
 At first, both the anonymous opponents observed the 
 laws of propriety. But at length Steele so far forgot 
 himself as to throw an odious imputation on the morals , 
 
 20 of the chiefs of the administration. Addison replied 
 with severity, but, in our opinion, with less severity 
 than was due to so grave an offence against morality 
 and decorum ; nor did he, in his just anger, forget for 
 a moment the laws of good taste and good breeding. 
 
 25 One calumny which has been often repeated, and never 
 yet contradicted, it is our duty to expose. It is asserted 
 in the " Biographia Britannica," that Addison designated 
 Steele as " little Dicky." This assertion was repeated 
 by Johnson, who had never seen the Old Whig, and was 
 therefore excusable. It has also been repeated by Miss 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 185 
 
 Aikin, who has seen the Old Whig, and for whom there- 
 fore there is less excuse. Now, it is true that the words 
 <' little Dicky" occur in the Old Whig, and that Steele's 
 name was Richard, It is equally true that the words 
 " little Isaac" occur in the "Duenna," and that Newton's 5 
 name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that Addi- 
 son's little Dicky had no more to do with Steele, than 
 Sheridan's little Isaac with Kewton. If we apply the 
 words "little Dicky "to Steele, we deprive a very lively 
 and ingenious passage, not only of all its wit, but of all 10 
 its meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname of Henry 
 Norris, an actor of remarkably small stature, but of 
 great humor, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most 
 popular part, in Dryden's " Spanish Friar." 
 
 The merited reproof which Steele had received, though 15 
 softened by some kind and courteous expressions, galled 
 him bitterly. He replied with little force and great 
 acrimony ; but no rejoinder appeared. Addison was fast 
 hastening to his grave ; and had, we may well suppose, 
 little disposition to prosecute a quarrel with an old friend. 20 
 His complaint had terminated in dropsy. He bore up 
 long and manfully. But at length he abandoned all 
 hope, dismissed his physicians, and calmly prepared 
 himself to die. 
 
 His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, and 25 
 dedicated them a very few days before his death to 
 Craggs, in a letter written with the sweet and graceful 
 eloquence of a Saturday's Spectator: In this, his last 
 composition, he alluded to his approaching end in words 
 so manly, so cheerful, and so tender, that it is difficult 
 
186 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 to read them without tears. At the same time he ear- 
 nestly recommended the interests of Tickell to the care 
 of Craggs. 
 
 Within a few hours of the time at which this d^dica- 
 
 5 tion was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, who was then 
 living by his wits about town, to come to Holland House. 
 Gay went, and Avas received with great kindness. To 
 his amazement his forgiveness Avas implored by the dying 
 man. Poor Gay, the most good-natured and simple of 
 
 10 mankind, could not imagine what he had to forgive. 
 There was, however, some wrong, the remembrance of 
 which weighed on Addison's mind, and which he declared 
 himself anxious to repair. He was in a state of extreme 
 exhaustion ; and the parting was doubtless a friendly 
 
 15 one on both sides. Gay supposed that some plan to 
 serve him had been in agitation at Court, and had been 
 frustrated by Addison's influence. Nor is this improb- 
 able. Gay had paid assiduous court to the royal family. 
 But in the Queen's days he had been the eulogist of 
 
 20 Bolingbroke, and was still connected with many Tories. 
 It is not strange that Addison, while heated by conflict, 
 should have felt himself justified in obstructing the pre- 
 ferment of one whom he might regard as a political 
 enemy. Neither is it strange that, when reviewing his 
 
 25 whole life, and earnestly scrutinizing all his motives, he 
 should think that he had acted an unkind and ungener- 
 ous part, in using his power against a distressed man of 
 letters, who was as harmless and as helpless as a child. 
 
 One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. It 
 appears that Addison, on his death-bed, called himself to 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 187 
 
 a strict account, and was not at ease till he had asked 
 pardon for an injury which it was not even suspected 
 that he had committed, for an injury which would have 
 caused' disquiet only to a very tender conscience. Is it 
 not then reasonable to infer that, if he had really been 5 
 guilty of forming a base conspiracy against the fame and 
 fortunes of a rival, he would have expressed some re- 
 morse for so serious a crime ? But it is unnecessary to 
 multiply arguments and evidence for the defence, when 
 there is neither argument nor evidence for the accusa- lo 
 tion. 
 
 The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. 
 His interview with his son-in-law is universally known. 
 " See," he said, " how a Christian can die." The piety 
 of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful charac- 15 
 ter. The feeling which predominates in all his devo- 
 tional writings is gratitude. God was to him the allwise 
 and allpowerful friend who had watched over his cradle 
 with more than maternal tenderness ; who had listened 
 to his cries before they could form themselves in prayer ; 20 
 who had preserved his youth from the snares of vice ; 
 who had made his cup run over with worldly bless- 
 ings ; who had doubled the value of those blessings by be- 
 stowing a thankful heart to ejijoy them, and dear friends 
 to partake them ; who had rebuked the waves of the 25 
 Ligurian gulf, had purified the autumnal air of the Cam- 
 pagna, and had restrained the avalanches of Mont Cenis. 
 Of the Psalms, his favorite was that which represents the 
 Euler of all things under the endearing image of a shep- 
 herd, whose crook guides the flock safe, through gloomy 
 
188 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 and desolate glens, to meadows well watered and rich 
 with herbage. On that goodness to which he ascribed 
 all the happiness of his life, he relied in the hour of 
 death with the love which casteth out fear. He died on 
 5 the seventeenth of June, 1719. He had just entered on 
 his forty-eiglath year. 
 
 His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and 
 was borne thence to the Abbey at dead of night. The 
 choir sang a funeral hymn. Bishop Atterbury, one of 
 
 10 those Tories who had loved and honored the most accom- 
 plished of the Whigs, met the corpse, and led the proces- 
 sion by torchlight, round the shrine of Saint Edward 
 and the graves of the Plantagenets, to tlie Chapel of 
 Henry the Seventh. On the north side of that chapel, 
 
 15 in the vault of the house of Albemarle, the coffin of 
 Addison lies next to the coffin of Montague. Yet a few 
 months; and the same mourners passed again along the 
 same aisle. The same sad anthem was again chanted. 
 The same vault was again opened ; and the coffin of 
 
 20 Craggs was placed close to the coffin of Addison. 
 
 Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addison ; 
 but one alone is now remembered. Tickell bewailed his 
 friend in an elegy which would do honor to the greatest 
 name in our literature, and which unites the energy and 
 
 25 magnificence of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of 
 Cowper. This fine poem was prefixed to a superb edi- 
 tion of Addison's works, which was published in 1721, 
 by subscription. The names of the subscribers proved 
 how widely his fame had been spread. That his country- 
 men should be eager to possess his writings, even in a 
 
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 189 
 
 costly form, is not wonderful. But it is wonderful that, 
 though English literature was then little studied on the 
 continent, Spanish grandees, Italian prelates, marshals 
 of France, should be found in the list. Among the most 
 remarkable names are those of the Queen of Sweden, 5 
 of Prince Eugene, of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of 
 the Dukes of Parma, Modena, and Guastalla, of the 
 Doge of Genoa, of the Eegent Orleans, and of Cardinal 
 Dubois. We ought to add that this edition, though 
 eminently beautiful, is in some important points defect- 10 
 ive ; nor, indeed, do we yet possess a complete collection 
 of Addison's writings. 
 
 It is strange that neither his opulent and noble widow, 
 nor any of his powerful and attached friends, should 
 have thought of placing even a simple tablet, inscribed 15 
 with his name, on the walls of the Abbey. It was not till 
 three generations had laughed and wept over his pages, 
 that the omission was supplied by the public veneration. 
 At length, in our own time, his image, skilfully graven, 
 appeared in Poet's Corner. It represents him, as we 20 
 can conceive him, clad in his dressing-gown, and freed 
 from his wig, stepping from his parlor at Chelsea into 
 his trim little garden, with the account of the Ever- 
 lasting Club, or the Loves of Hilpa and Shalum, just 
 finished for the next day's Spectator, in his hand. Such 25 
 a mark of national respect was due to the unsullied 
 statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master of 
 pure English eloquence, to the consummate painter of 
 life and maners. It was due, above all, to the great 
 satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without 
 
190 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 abusing it ; who, without iufiictiiig a wound, effected a 
 great social reform, ai\d who reconciled wit and virtue, 
 after a long and disastrous separation, during which 
 wit had been led astray lay profligacy, and virtue by 
 fanaticism. 
 
Ef)e ^tutients' .Scries of lEnslisj) Classics- 
 
 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner 3octs. 
 
 A Ballad Book 54 . . 
 
 Edited by Katharine Lee Bates, Welleslqy College. 
 
 Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum 30 .. 
 
 Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration 30 .. 
 
 Milton, LjTics 35 .. 
 
 Edited by Louise Manning Hodgkins. 
 
 Introduction to the Writings of John Ruskin 54 . . 
 
 Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive 42.. 
 
 Edited by Vida D. Scudder, Wellesley College. 
 
 George Eliot's Silas Marner . . 42.. 
 
 Scott's Marmion 42 .. 
 
 Edited by Mary Harriott Norris, Instructor, New York. 
 Sir Roger de Coverley Papers from The Spectator . . . . 42 .. 
 
 Edited by A. S. Roe, Worcester, Mass. 
 Macaulay's Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham . . . . 42 .. 
 
 Edited by W. W, Curtis, High School, Pawtucket, R.I. 
 Johnson's History of Rasselas 42 .. 
 
 Edited by Fred N. Scott, University of Michigan. 
 Joan of Arc and Other Selections from De Quincey . . . . 42 .. 
 
 Edited by Henry H. Belfield, Chicago Manual Training School. 
 Carlyle's The Diamond Necklace 42 .. 
 
 Edited by W. F. Mozier, High School, Ottawa, 111. 
 Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison 42 .. 
 
 Edited by James Chalmers, Ohio State University. 
 Lays of Ancient Rome [Nearly reaify] 
 
 Edited by Viola V. Price, Southwest Kansas College. 
 Selections from the Speeches of Henry Clay . . [IVearly ready] 
 
 Edited by Charles H. Raymond, Lawrenceville School. 
 Scott's Lady of the Lake [IVear/y ready] 
 
 Edited by James Arthur Tufts, Phillips Exeter Academy. 
 Charles Sumner's True Grandeur of Nations . . [M'ear/y ready] 
 
 Edited by Geo. L. Maris, Friends' Central School, Philadelphia. 
 Selected Orations and Speeches .... [JVearly ready] 
 
 Edited by C. A. Whiting, University of Utah. 
 
 Several others are in preparation, and all are substantially bound in cloth. 
 
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