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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 IRVINE 
 
 Gift of 
 
 THE HONNOLD LIBRARY
 
 T. B. Macau lay.
 
 LITERARY ESSAYS 
 
 OF 
 
 Thomas Babington Macaulay 
 
 SELECTED AND EDITED 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE A. WATROUS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 
 
 // 
 
 Copyright, 1900, 
 Bv THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The excuse for the present edition of selections 
 from Macaulay's essays may be found in an increasing 
 interest in this author and in the subjects treated. It 
 may be objected to the title that, from their lack of all 
 analytic and sympathetic treatment, none of Macau- 
 lay's essays can be described as literary. The title is 
 justified, however, by the author's purpose. The 
 essays chosen for the compilation — those on Milton, 
 Dryden, Addison, Bunyan, Goldsmith, and Johnson 
 — cover a long period of time in our literary history 
 and include a wide range of subject matter. Macau- 
 lay's opinion of himself, that he constantly improved, 
 may be judged by reading the collection here pre- 
 sented. The essay on Milto7i was his first note- 
 worthy attempt, and the 'essay on Johnson was among 
 his last compositions. The editor's desire has been 
 to collect essays which should be representative of 
 their author and at the same time offer an attractive 
 subject matter. 
 
 The biographical sketch owes much to Trevelyan's 
 Life and to the Life of Macaulay by J. Cotter Morri- 
 son. The editor desires also to acknowledge the 
 courtesy of Mr. Clinton Scollard in reading the 
 manuscript and in offering suggestions very grate- 
 fully received. 
 
 G. A. W. 
 
 Utica, N.Y., January, 1900. 
 
 iii
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Biographical Note 
 Essay on Milton . 
 Essay on Dryden . 
 Essay on Addison 
 Essay on Bunyan . 
 Essay on Goldsmith 
 Essay on Johnson 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 68 
 
 I2 5 
 231 
 
 251 
 272
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 Few men have been more fortunate in their parent- 
 age than was Thomas Babington Macaulay. He was 
 descended from the stock of the common people, 
 Scotch Presbyterians on his father's side, Quakers 
 on his mother's. His father was a stern, earnest, 
 self-sacrificing man, who devoted his life, with a 
 singleness of purpose rarely seen, to the emancipa- 
 tion of the negroes. Throughout his life he was 
 well known and known widely as an uncompromising 
 enemy of the slave trade. To his untiring efforts 
 in behalf of the negroes is due the founding of the 
 Sierra Leone colony. His life was one of deeds, 
 not words. Macaulay's mother was a woman of 
 tender heart, affectionate temper, and firm purpose. 
 She did not humor, nor threaten, nor cajole, and in 
 the ruling of her home she furnishes an example 
 which most mothers of to-day might imitate to the 
 great advantage of their children. Young Macaulay 
 disliked his school, as most boys do ; he preferred 
 to stay at home, feeling that he could spend his time 
 much more profitably in reading than in conning 
 lessons. " No, Tom ; if it rains cats and dogs, you 
 shall go," was her answer when the lad's appeals 
 were grounded on the inclement weather. The boy 
 was still young when many flattering comments were 
 made on his unusual abilities. Histories, epics,
 
 Vlii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 hymns, odes, and other compositions in prose and 
 verse flowed from his pen with a facility that denoted 
 remarkable precocity. Hannah More pronounced 
 Macaulay's juvenile productions " quite extraordinary 
 for such a baby.'' His mother was pleased with such 
 notice, but she was far too wise to submit her son 
 to the debauching influence of early flattery. " Deep, 
 sober, clear-eyed love watched over Macaulay's child- 
 hood." We marvel not that this boy became a man ; 
 much of Macaulay we owe to his mother. 
 
 -?*-*', He was born __near London, October 25, 1800. 
 
 ^ His early education was received at private schools ; 
 
 at the age of eighteen he entered Trinity College, 
 
 \ Cambridge, whence he was graduated with honors, 
 ^and of w^hich he was made a fellow in 1824. Regard 
 u for his father's wishes led Macaulay to read law. He 
 was called to the bar in 1826, but the profession was 
 little to his liking. Coke and Littleton and Black- 
 stone had few attractions for him. That he might 
 have been successful at the law is more than proba- 
 ble. Later in life while in India he produced a Penal 
 Code which for conciseness and completeness has 
 never been excelled and, with the modifications 
 necessitated by the differences in time and condi- 
 tions, is still the law of procedure in that country. 
 During the time of his practice in England, however, 
 no business of importance came to him, and the dis- 
 tasteful tasks of this profession were soon abandoned 
 for the more attractive labors of literature. 
 
 Here, after a brief period of experiment, he gained 
 immediate recognition. His first appearance in print
 
 INTR OD UCTION. IX 
 
 was in an anonymous article published in a magazine 
 edited by his father, Zachary Macaulay. The article in 
 question was a defence of novels and caused no small 
 stir among the Puritanic following of the Christian 
 Observer. One declared that he had thrown the 
 offending number into the fire and would never read 
 another. Macaulay at the time was sixteen. Seven 
 years later he contributed a few papers to Knight's 
 Quarterly. Among these were the criticisms on 
 Datite and on Petrarch, the Fragments of a Roman 
 Tale, and a Conversation between Mr. Abraham 
 Cowley and Mr. John Milton, touching the Great 
 Civil War, which may still be found in collected 
 editions of his works. 
 
 About this time Jeffrey, editor of the Edinbiirgh 
 Review, was casting about for young blood that might 
 infuse new life into the languid columns of his periodi- 
 cal. " When I see you in London," writes Macaulay 
 to his father in October, 1824, "I will mention to you 
 a bit of secret history," alluding to overtures made 
 to him by the controller of the Review. He accepted 
 the proposals, and in August, 1825, contributed the 
 essay on Milton. The literary world knows the 
 result. Macaulay leaped into fame. By a single 
 article he established a reputation as an essayist 
 superior to that of any contemporary. From this 
 time on he wrote regularly and for an ever widening 
 circle of readers. He had found his right vocation, 
 and entered upon it with eagerness and delight. 
 Between Milton and the essay on The Earl of 
 Chatham (1844), which closes the long list, came
 
 X INTRODUCTION, 
 
 some forty contributions to magazines and to the 
 Encyclopedia Britannica. They fall easily into three 
 general divisions, which have in common character- 
 istics which permit treatment in a group. 
 
 What first impresses the reader of Macaulay's 
 essays is the author's vast and intimate knowledge 
 of events. Whatever his subject, he is clearly at 
 home. Neglected and forgotten names and deeds 
 are marshalled with a rapidity and fluency that well- 
 nigh bewilders. Facts of history, literature, and 
 science that suggest the closest study of the sub- 
 ject considered, abound in every paper. Ancient 
 authors, the classics of Greece and Rome, con- 
 tributed their share to the fulness of his knowledge. 
 The average man, to read Macaulay understandingly, 
 needs near at hand dictionary, mythology, and hand- 
 books of curious lore. Even then he may lose the 
 argument through the tantalizing obstinacy of some 
 baffling allusion. Macaulay's memory was stored 
 with information from myriad sources. This trait, 
 coupled with an astonishing power of collating facts 
 and bringing them to bear directly on any subject 
 he wished to illumine, made him a master of descrip- 
 tion and argument. 
 
 Many brilliant pictures and glowing periods came 
 from this union of widespread knowledge and apt- 
 ness of illustration. Splendid as are these efforts, 
 all are made in the past. " Concerning the pres- 
 ent, 1 ' says John Bach McMaster, " he knew little and 
 cared less." To any one who reads the essays this 
 truth becomes at once apparent. He wrote on sub-
 
 INTR OD UCTION- XI 
 
 jects from art, literature, science, history, philosophy, 
 religion — a wide range, but not once did he fail to 
 treat his subject from the historical standpoint. The 
 essay on Milton is a review on Cromwell's protecto- 
 rate ; that on Dryden pictures the condition of poetry 
 and the drama in the dissolute days of Charles I.; 
 that on Johnson describes the state of literature under 
 the rule of the Great Cham. The essay on Addison 
 contains much of the state of politics when " Cato " 
 was produced, but no analysis of this famous drama. 
 He does not analyze nor criticise nor present fully 
 the ideas of a single production of the men whose 
 literary lives he might be expected to treat. Their 
 names are " to him mere pegs on which to hang a 
 splendid historical picture of the times in which 
 these people lived. 11 There is nimble wit and a lively 
 fancy; there are clear-cut silhouettes and dramatic 
 scenes ; but there is no thoughtful consideration of 
 the work done by his subjects. In describing a 
 picture he has few superiors ; in an analysis of its 
 moral power and in discovering the essential value 
 of that which he describes, Macaulay has few inferiors 
 among those who have gained applause in the world 
 of letters. 
 
 This characteristic lends to all that Macaulay wrote, 
 the Essays, the History, and the Lays, a quality 
 whereby they become especially pleasing to the 
 Anglo-Saxon mind. Macaulay never hesitates, he is 
 always positive. No feeling of doubt appears in his 
 pages. There is a confidence in his own power and 
 a belief in his own opinions that never allow the
 
 Xll INTRODL TC TION. 
 
 reader to question a statement. He knew himself 
 and knew his subject. We never stumble over ideas 
 timidly suggested nor are we perplexed with the vague 
 shadows of incomplete thought. Before he put pen 
 to paper, the subject was carefully considered and 
 fully conceived. Nor is there, in the Essays espe- 
 cially, any sense of weariness. Abundant vitality, 
 with unmeasured strength in reserve, gives force to 
 his periods. 
 
 It seems strange indeed that one of such manifold 
 powers should lack an appreciation of the deeper 
 problems of life. Yet this was beyond question one 
 of Macaulay"s failings. He never sees great intel- 
 lectual and moral questions. He did not know the 
 human heart. There is no ethical depth. On the 
 long voyage from England to India he read inces- 
 santly : on the way back he learned the German 
 language. Three months each way he shut himself 
 apart from human intercourse and immured himself 
 in books. Most classical authors he read several 
 times, but he had rarely a moment to spend in medi- 
 tation. His learning is restricted to book lore. In 
 all that he wrote there is nothing to show that he 
 ever deeply considered the noblest relations in life, — 
 friendship, love, education, religious faith, or doubt. 
 The heart is the source of poetry and fiction, and he 
 who criticises them must read not only widely but 
 deeply. 
 
 We turn from Macaulay's essays to a brief outline 
 of his political career. The characteristic of posi- 
 tiveness which we noticed in the essayist was no
 
 INTR OD UCTION. Xlll 
 
 less evident in the politician. Macaulay was an 
 earnest Whig and an ardent party man. The essay 
 on Milton brought the young author prominently 
 before the people ; he became immediately popular, 
 and i . was not long before the Whigs discovered in 
 him an eligible candidate. In 1828 Lord Lyndhurst 
 made him a Commissioner of Bankruptcy. Lord 
 Lansdowne was so impressed with the articles on 
 Mill (1830) that he offered Macaulay, though an 
 entire stranger, a seat in Parliament for the borough 
 of Calne. At the age of thirty he took his place 
 in the national council, just before the death of 
 George IV. and in time to become a conspicuous 
 figure in the great struggle impending. His first 
 speech on the Reform Bill placed him in the fore- 
 most rank of orators. The Speaker sent for him to 
 say that "he had never seen such excitement in the 
 House." Sir Robert Peel was equally compliment- 
 ary, and one member said there had been no such 
 speaking since the days of Fox. For oratory Ma- 
 caulay was exceptionally qualified. His ready wit, 
 his fluency of speech, and his power of illustration 
 were qualities rarely met in one man. The effect 
 produced by his Reform Bill speeches may be best 
 judged by the pains which the opposition took to 
 answer them. Croker, the ablest Tory debater, de- 
 voted a two-hour speech exclusively to Macaulay ; 
 and he was followed by Wetherell, Praed, Inglis, and 
 Peel. No compliment could be more marked. 
 
 Until he sailed for India four years later, Macaulay's 
 life was one of severe, unceasing labor. In addition
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to his parliamentary duties he served as Commis- 
 sioner and later as Secretary to the Board of Control ; 
 he was the lion of the hour, on the closest terms with 
 Rogers, Campbell, Luttrell, and Moore ; yet he found 
 time in moments of relaxation to keep up his contri- 
 butions to the Edinburgh Review. Constant appli- 
 cation he felt to be a necessity. All his family, 
 owing to the financial misfortunes of his father, now 
 depended on his efforts. To secure an independence 
 for himself and those dear to him, he accepted an 
 appointment as legal adviser to the Supreme Council 
 of India. It was a voluntary exile undergone solely 
 for the purpose of securing a competence that would 
 enable him to devote his after days to the great his- 
 torical work. No man ever gave up more flattering 
 prospects. He was a leader in politics and the ac- 
 knowledged chief in literature. No dinner or at 
 home was complete without him. All this he put 
 behind him, a sacrifice many would have been inca- 
 pable of; but he deemed the object worthy, and time 
 has approved his decision. 
 
 Accompanied by his sister Hannah, he set sail 
 February 15, 1834. The characteristic employment 
 of his time during the tedious voyage has been already 
 mentioned. Arrived in India, he began work with 
 his usual vigor. He reformed the Penal Code so 
 successfully that Mr. Justice Stephen says of it, 
 " Hardly any questions have arisen upon it which 
 have had to be determined by the Courts, while few 
 and slight amendments have had to be made by the 
 Legislature. 11 As a member of the Committee on
 
 INTR OD UCTION. XV 
 
 Education, he rendered services of equal value and 
 importance. Five members of the Board favored 
 the encouragement of Oriental learning among the 
 natives ; five stood for the introduction of English 
 literature and science. Macaulay's influence turned 
 the scale. He submitted an elaborate minute on this 
 question to the authorities in England, who decided 
 that the "great object of the British Government 
 ought to be the promotion of European literature and 
 science among the natives of India. 1 ' 
 
 The period of exile ended toward the close of 1837. 
 Its object was attained in the realization of a fortune, 
 modest, but quite sufficient for his simple life. When 
 he reached England he learned of his father's death, 
 which had occurred during the homeward voyage. 
 After a short rest he set out for Italy, and throughout 
 his travels kept a journal that forms interesting read- 
 ing. His reverence for the great names of history and 
 literature here appears in a pleasing light. At Flor- 
 ence and at Rome he gathered the accurate topo- 
 graphical touches that help to give the Lays their 
 realistic power. The life of ease, however, soon tired 
 him, and he returned to England to enjoy his long- 
 anticipated literary leisure. 
 
 In this hope he was disappointed. The Whigs 
 were in a sorry plight. Macaulay threw himself into 
 the breach and re-entered Parliament as member for 
 Edinburgh. Soon after he was made Secretary of 
 War. Two years were lost here, for there was no 
 gain to politics, and a great loss to literature. The 
 fall of the Whig ministry was probably postponed,
 
 xvi INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 but the world could have endured that party disaster 
 better than an uncompensated sacrifice of the two 
 years that might have given much to our literature. 
 The task was irksome, and a man of less party loyalty 
 would have welcomed the freedom which came when 
 the Tories secured control in the elections of 1841. 
 
 In the following year Macaulay tempted fortune 
 with a new venture, a volume of poems entitled Lays 
 of Ancient Rome. His own opinion of their merit 
 is expressed in a letter to the editor of the Edinburgh 
 Review, " Though they are but trifles, they may pass 
 for scholarlike and not inelegant trifles.'' 1 Again 
 writing to the same person, after the Lays had been 
 published, he said : " I am glad that you like my 
 Lays, and the more glad because I know that, from 
 good-will to me, you must have been anxious about 
 their fate. I do not wonder at your misgivings. I 
 should have felt similar misgivings if I had learned 
 that any person, however distinguished by talents and 
 knowledge, whom I knew as a writer only by prose 
 works, was about to publish a volume of poetry. . . . 
 Without the smallest affection of modesty, I confess 
 that the success of my little book has far exceeded 
 its just claims. I shall be in no hurry to repeat the 
 experiment ; for I am well aware that a second 
 attempt would be made under much less favorable 
 circumstances." September 9, 1850, he writes in his 
 journal : il Those poems have now been eight years 
 published. I do not rate them high ; but I do not 
 remember that any better poetry has been published
 
 INTR OD UC TION. XV11 
 
 His purpose in writing the Lays is distinctly stated 
 in the preface. Macaulay had accepted that theory 
 about early Roman history which said that the roman- 
 tic stories found in Livy originated in the lost ballads 
 of the early Romans. These old folk-songs he sought 
 to reproduce in the Lays. They are, therefore, prima- 
 rily ballads ; not of the primitive, simple type such 
 as The Fight at Maiden or Sir Pat?'ick Spens, but the 
 finished, polished work of the skilful craftsman living 
 in a highly developed period of civilization. The 
 early ballads were simple and wholly unconscious, 
 and depended on the matter, not the manner; the 
 ballads of later days are artificial, imitated, and the 
 art of the writer is rarely lost sight of. This is no 
 more than to say that the tale of his own experiences 
 by Horatius would have differed from Macaulay's 
 account. We do not venture much, however, in 
 saying that no English poet would have succeeded 
 better than Macaulay did in his effort to restore the 
 Roman ballads. Leslie Stephen suggests that Mr. 
 Kingsley might have approached it or possibly Brown- 
 ing. In any case, he concludes that the feat is signifi- 
 cant of Macaulay's true power. Other writers have 
 made similar attempts, but are far from having gained 
 a similar success. The most obvious is Willia m 
 Ay tou n, with his Lays of the Cava lier s . A good way 
 to gain a full appreciation of the sweep and fire of 
 Macaulay's verses is to compare them with Aytoun's 
 work. We may know how good Macaulay is when 
 we know how incapable others have been in their 
 attempts to reproduce the spirit of a time long past.
 
 x Vlll INTR OD UC TION. 
 
 We may not stop to consider carefully this inter- 
 lude in the life of the essayist and historian. They 
 do noi: entitle their author to the name of poet, though 
 they do show no slight poetical ability. They are 
 eminently simple — all intelligent children read 
 them with eager delight, nor are they despised by 
 those of larger growth. They are strong and un- 
 adorned ; the art is that of the sculptor rather than 
 of the painter. His Lays are of the city, his heroes 
 fight for their country, for love, for honor. It is not 
 in the battle that Macaulay delights, but in the spirit 
 that leads men to overthrow the tyrant and to defend 
 the home. 
 
 " For Romans in Rome's quarrel 
 Spared neither land nor gold, 
 Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, 
 In the brave days of old." I 
 
 This is the spirit of all the Lays. The state was 
 everything. Thus the underlying motive differed 
 widely from that of the other Romantic writers — Scott, 
 for instance, " whose sympathies,*' Mr. Ruskin says, 
 " are rather with outlaws and rebels, especially under 
 " the green-wood tree, 1 and he has but little objection 
 to rebellion even to a king, provided it be on private 
 and personal grounds, and not systematic or directed 
 to great public aims. 17 Altogether the Lays do not 
 equal the length of Marmion, yet Macaulay kept them 
 by him several years, and at intervals lightened his 
 more serious labors by their composition. This fact 
 is in itself a guarantee against the result of hasty
 
 1NTR OD UC TION. XIX 
 
 work. The versification is technically faultness, and 
 there is no lack of force and vigor in his lines. 
 
 But Macaulay rested his claim to a place in English 
 literature on the " History of England from the acces- 
 sion of King James the Second down to a time which 
 is within the memory of men still living." On this he 
 had long been engaged with greater or less intent- 
 ness. The Essays interrupted this main task, the 
 Lays served as a recreation from the severer labor, 
 and the parliamentary duties involved a useless waste 
 of his strength. While in Rome he sketched a plan 
 for the Histo?y. " As soon as I return I shall se- 
 riously commence my History. The first part will 
 extend from the Revolution to the commencement of 
 Sir Robert Walpole's long administration — ajp_eriod_ 
 of jthree or four, and that very eventful, years. From 
 the commencement of Walpole's administration to the 
 commencement of the American war, events may be 
 despatched more concisely. From the commence- 
 ment of the American war it will again become neces- 
 sary to be more copious. How far I shall bring the 
 narrative down I have not determined. The death of 
 George IV. would be the best halting place." This 
 was written in 1838, though he did not seriously 
 begin until 1841, nor were the first two volumes pub- 
 lished until 1848. The plan has been given in Macau- 
 lay's own words ; his purpose was novel in historical 
 literature. 
 
 History, he thought, was a compound of poetry and 
 philosophy. They had never been perfectly amalga- 
 mated, and in his day had become completely sepa-
 
 XX INTR OD UC TION. 
 
 rated. Macaulay aimed at a harmonious blending of 
 these two hostile elements. In this he differed 
 widely from all historians who preceded, and still 
 more from those of the present century. To produce 
 his effects, minuteness of detail and a high degree of 
 human interest were necessary. These requisites his 
 artistic temperament enabled him to single out from 
 the mass, and to blend in a close unity. Biographical 
 anecdotes, life-size portraits of characters common 
 already to fiction, were woven into the web of histori- 
 cal truth. This, of course, necessitated a work of 
 great bulk and constitutes an objection, though a 
 childish one. to his plan. The five volumes completed 
 and published cover a period of fifteen years — written 
 at the rate of one volume in three. To finish his 
 design would have required at least fifty volumes, 
 which, written at the rate of those published, would 
 have taken him one hundred and fifty years ! As 
 we read, we should ever remember that we have but a 
 fragment, only the groundwork of the massive struc- 
 ture he had designed. 
 
 Many critics have objected to the plan of the His- 
 tory — an objection which it is not the place of this 
 essay to consider. It is serious from no point of 
 view. The work should be judged on its fidelity 
 or unfaithfulness to the author's scheme. Of more 
 importance and greater weight are the criticisms on 
 the party spirit manifested, and the many inaccura- 
 cies in matter of fact. If the charge of party spirit can 
 be made good, it should bear the burden of the other 
 fault. Macaulay had withdrawn from the arena of
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxi 
 
 politics before the Histoiy was begun. Throughout 
 the work time and again he condemns the Whigs in 
 no measured terms, and does ample justice to upright, 
 honest Tories. Subservience to party feeling would 
 have produced portraits of Bishop Ken and Jeremy 
 Collier much less nattering than those Macaulay drew 
 of those famous non-jurors. He was partial to 
 William, perhaps, and certainly severe on the Stuart 
 dynasty. In the role of kings, no men were ever more 
 foolish and incompetent ; none ever blundered so 
 hopelessly, and few ever so perversely plotted and ac- 
 complished their own destruction. Foreigners are no 
 less severe than Macaulay. Victoria had nothing to 
 say for James II. "To dinner at the palace. The 
 queen was most gracious to me. She talked much 
 about my book, and owned she had nothing to say for 
 her poor ancestor, James II." (Macaulay 's diary, 
 March 9, 1850.) The charge of inaccuracy has better 
 foundation. Macaulay, as has before been indicated, 
 lacked a knowledge of men. In the case of individu- 
 als, he scrutinized acts with scant regard for motives, 
 permitting himself to cultivate antipathies that speedily 
 became prejudices. His powerful imagination gave 
 life to his subjects ; he met them in the streets of Lon- 
 don, at the club, at the palace. From these meetings, 
 the prejudice turned to contempt, and in his drama of 
 English life he assigned them the role of villains. 
 Marlborough becomes a murderer, William Penn a 
 sycophant, Dangerfield a cuckold. With such men 
 he took the liberties of romantic treatment, but lacked 
 both the motive and the license which justify the writer
 
 XX11 JNTR OD UC TION. 
 
 of fiction. And this is all honestly done, for he was 
 utterly incapable of intentional unfairness. Perhaps 
 this is no more than to say that Macaulay was human ; 
 he could entertain prejudices, and he could be inaccu- 
 rate. These faults, beyond all question, are the 
 exception and not the rule. 
 
 We may notice briefly the popularity of Macaulay's 
 productions. Within ten years, eighteen thousand 
 copies of the Lays were sold in Great Britain, and in 
 1875 the one hundred thousand mark was nearly 
 reached. He long refused to publish his Essays, but 
 an enterprising American collected them, and shipped 
 an edition to London. Macaulay gave way. The 
 Essays were issued, and within thirty years one pub- 
 lisher disposed of one hundred and twenty thousand 
 copies. Thirteen thousand copies of the History were 
 sold in four months. This astonishing success con- 
 tinued ; year after year, the London publisher sold on 
 an average seventy sets a week. In the United States, 
 the sale was equally marvellous. Harper and Brothers, 
 in 1849, writing t0 Macaulay, said that already sixty 
 thousand copies had been sold here, and estimated 
 that within three months the number would reach two 
 hundred thousand. The sale in America had never 
 been equalled save by the Bible and a few school 
 books in general use. If popular appreciation gives 
 content, Macaulay surely might well have been 
 satisfied. 
 
 Honors of ever} 7 sort were showered upon him with- 
 out stint. He was rich, flattered, courted by all. He 
 was made a member of the Academies of Utrecht,
 
 INTRODUCTION. XX111 
 
 Munich, and Turin, the King of Prussia named him a 
 Knight of the Order of Merit, and Guizot proposed him 
 for the Institute of France. Oxford honored herself 
 by conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Civil 
 Law, the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh chose 
 him as its president, the University of Cambridge ap- 
 pointed him Professor of History, and in 1857 he was 
 made a peer with the title Baron Macaulay of Rothley. 
 He did not live long to enjoy his merited honors. 
 Stricken in 1852 with heart disease, he soon afterward 
 became an invalid, and yet his last years were peace- 
 ful and happy. In a quiet home, withdrawn from the 
 annoyances of publicity, surrounded with all that a 
 successful life and loyal love can give, he waited 
 patiently for the end. " He died as he had always 
 wished to die — without pain; without any formal 
 farewell, preceding to the grave all whom he loved, 
 and leaving behind him a great and honorable name, 
 and the memory of a life every action of which was as 
 transparent as one of his own sentences.' 1 On the 
 9th of January, i860, he was buried in Poets' Cor- 
 ner, close by his peers in prose and verse, with those 
 whose names and deeds have made glorious the annals 
 of English literature and history.
 
 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 1 609- 1 674. 
 
 The essay on Milton was first published as an 
 article in the Edinburgh Review of August, 1825. 
 Macaulay was then but twenty-five years old. The 
 early maturity of his literary powers is herein abun- 
 dantly evidenced. It is for this fact alone that Mr. 
 J. Cotter Morrison (Life of Milton, E?iglish Men of 
 Letters Series) considers the essay remarkable. Other 
 writers have estimated more highly. Canning says, 
 u Considering its length, it is perhaps one of the most 
 pleasing and brilliant essays in the English language." 
 With reference to the reception granted the essay by 
 the reading public Dean Milman tells us that "it 
 excited greater attention than any article which had 
 ever appeared not immediately connected with the 
 politics of the day." The effect upon the young 
 author's reputation was instantaneous. With a single 
 step he passed from comparative obscurity into full 
 view of the public eye. Flattering invitations, com- 
 pliments from all quarters of London, poured in upon 
 him. Of these, the one most valued, and according 
 to Trevelyan the only one ever repeated by Macaulay, 
 was paid by Jeffries, editor of the Review, in the 
 single sentence with which he acknowledged the re- 
 ceipt of the manuscript, "The more I think the less 
 I can conceive where you picked up that style." 
 
 j 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 
 1
 
 2 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 large Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected 
 copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton, 
 while he filled the office of Secretary, and several 
 papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye- 
 house Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an enve- 
 lope, superscribed To Air. Skinner, Merchant. On 
 examination, the large manuscript proved to be the 
 long lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, 
 which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished 
 after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skin- 
 ner. Skinner, it is well known, held the same political 
 opinions with his illustrious friend. It is therefore 
 probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may 
 have fallen under the suspicions of the government 
 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 
 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 him- 
 self of his task in a manner honorable to his talents 
 and to his character. His version is not indeed very 
 easy or elegant ; but it is entitled to the praise of 
 clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with inter- 
 esting quotations, and have the rare merit of really 
 elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the 
 work of a sensible and 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,
 
 MILTON. 3 
 
 though not exactly in the style of the prize essays of 
 Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imita- 
 tion 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 Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does 
 not in short sacrifice 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." 
 
 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 apply to him what Denham with great felicity 
 says of Cowley. He wears the garb, but not the 
 clothes of the ancients. 
 
 U Throughout the volume are discernible the traces 
 of a powerful and independent mind, emancipated 
 from the 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. 
 
 4* Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows 
 seemed to have excited considerable amazement, par- 
 ticularly 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 former ; nor do we think that 
 any reader, acquainted with the history of his life,
 
 4 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 ought to be much startled at the latter. The opinions 
 which he has expressed respecting the nature of the 
 Deity, the eternity of matter, and the observation of 
 the Sabbath, might, we think, have 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 heret- 
 ical than it is, would not much edify or corrupt the 
 present generation. The men of our time are not to 
 be converted or perverted by (quartos. A few more 
 days and this essay will follow Xhe'Defensio Populi, 
 to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name 
 of its author, and the remarkable circumstances attend- 
 ing its publication, will secure to it a certain degree of 
 attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few 
 minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few 
 columns in every magazine ; and it will then, to bor- 
 row the elegant language of the play-bills, be with- 
 drawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties. 
 
 We wish however to avail ourselves of the interest, 
 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, or a drop of his blood. On the same prin- 
 ciple, we intend to take advantage of the late interest- 
 ing discovery, 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 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. 5 
 
 Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the 
 glory of English literature, the champion and the mar- 
 tyr 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. 
 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 
 acknowledge, 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 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, make large deductions 
 in consideration of these advantages. 
 
 We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as 
 the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to 
 struggle with more unfavorable circumstances than 
 Milton. . He doubted, as he has himself owned, 
 whether he had not been born "an age too late." 
 For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him 
 the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we 
 believe, understood the nature of his art better than 
 the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived 
 no advantage from the civilization which surrounded 
 him, or from the learning which he had acquired ; and
 
 6 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 he looked back with something like regret to the ruder 
 age of simple words and vivid impressions. \ M 
 
 We think that, as civilization advances, poetry VpjL 
 almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though weyr 
 fen-entlx ^admir e those great works of imagination 
 , which h ave appeared in dark ages , we do not admire 
 them trie more because they have appeared in 
 dark a g igs. On the contrary, we hold , that the most 
 wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great 
 poem produced in a civilized age. We cannot unde r- 
 s tand 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 uniformity of the 
 phenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in 
 the cause. 
 
 The fact is, that common observers reason from the J 
 progress of the experimental science to that of the " 
 imitative arts. The improvement of the former is \*^ 
 gradual^ 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 transmits that hoard, aug- 
 mented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these 
 pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great 
 disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled 
 to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual 
 ^powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. 
 \J Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcefs little dialogues 
 i .y on Political Economy could teach Montague or Wal- 
 Jk pole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man 
 may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few
 
 MILTON. 7 
 
 years to mathematics, learn more than the great 
 Newton knew after half a century of study and medi- 
 tation. 
 / V But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with 
 sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The 
 progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with 
 better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve 
 the instruments which are necessary to the mechani- 
 cal operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the 
 painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is 
 best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, /a^L* 
 like individuals, fir st perceive, , pnrl thpn ^trart-. X*^ 
 They advance from pa rticular inqa g as \c> g eneral ter ms. 1 
 Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is 
 philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is 
 poetical. 
 
 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 /fl&s- 
 
 v 
 
 '^change by which science , ggins and poetry loses. V/X& 
 Generalization is necessary to the advancement of ; ' 
 
 li 
 
 knowledge ; but particularly is indispensable to the 
 creations of the imagination. In proportion as men 
 know more and think more, they look less at indi- 
 viduals and more at classes. They therefore make 
 better theories and worse poems. They give us vague 
 phrases instead of images, and personified qualities 
 instead of men. They may be better able to analyze 
 human nature than their predecessors. But analysis 
 is not the business of the poet. His office is to por- 
 tray, 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 may never think 
 about the matter at all. His creed on such subjects^
 
 * 
 
 8 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 will no more influence his poetry, properly so called, 
 than the notions which a painter may have conceived 
 respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of 
 the blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the 
 blushes of his Aurora. If Shakspeare 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 con- 
 tained half so much able reasoning on the subject as 
 is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could 
 Mandeville have created an Iago? 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, indi- 
 vidual man? 
 
 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 
 ^ r- Averse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our defini- 
 \ tion 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 produce an illusion on the imagination, the art 
 of doing by means of words what the painter does by 
 means of 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 : 
 
 " As imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name."
 
 MILTON. 9 
 
 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 the premises are false. After the first sup- 
 positions have been made, everything ought to be 
 consistent ; but those first suppositions require a de- 
 gree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial 
 and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence 
 of all people children 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 sensibility may be, is ever 
 affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected 
 by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows 
 that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there 
 are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowl- 
 « edge she believes ; she weeps ; she trembles ; she 
 M dajgs not go into a dark room lest she should feel 
 \jh the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the 
 v*. 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 of society that we may expect to find the poet- 
 ical temperament in its highest perfection. In an 
 enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much 
 science, much philosophy, abundance of just classifi- 
 cation and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and 
 eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good 
 ones ; but little poetry. Men will judge and com- 
 pare ; but they will not create. They will talk about 
 the old poets, and comment on them, and to a certain 
 y degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able
 
 10 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their 
 ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude 
 of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, 
 could scarce recite Homer without falling into con- 
 vulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping 
 knife while he shouts his death-song. The power 
 which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exer- 
 cised over their auditors seems to modern readers 
 almost miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a 
 civilized community, 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, 
 
 / *7 as a magic lantern 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 be- 
 come more and more definite, and the shades of 
 probability more and more distinct, the hues and 
 lineaments of the phantoms which the poet calls up 
 grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the in- 
 compatible advantages of reality and deception, the 
 clear discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoy- 
 ment of fiction. 
 
 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 perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title 
 to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance 
 to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his 
 proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable 
 among his contemporaries ; and that proficiency will
 
 
 
 MILTON. II 
 
 in general be proportioned 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 spirit of the 
 age, and employed, we will not say, absolutely in vain, 
 but with dubious success and feeble applause. 
 
 If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever tri- 
 umphed over greater difficulties than Milton. He 
 received a learned education ; he was a profound 
 and elegant classical scholar ; he had studied all the 
 mysteries of Rabbinical literature ; he was intimately 
 acquainted with every language of modern Europe, 
 from which either pleasure or information was then 
 to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet 
 of later times who has been distinguished by the 
 excellence of his Latin verse. The genius of Petrarch 
 was scarcely of the first order ; and his poems in the 
 ancient language,^ hough much praised by those who 
 L ave never read themJ are wretched compositions. 
 Cowley, with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had 
 little imagination; nor indeed do we think his clas- 
 sical 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 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 
 may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. 
 
 'ymjMbdiV''
 
 / 
 
 r 2 LITER A R Y ESS A YS. 
 
 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 
 written 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 indispen- 
 sable to such works is admirably preserved, while, at 
 the same time, his genius gives to them a peculiar 
 charm, an air of nobl eness and freedom , which dis- 
 tinguishes them fromall other writings of the same 
 class. They remind us of the amusements of those 
 angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel : 
 
 " About him exercised heroic games 
 The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads 
 Celestial armory, shield, helm, and spear, 
 Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." 
 
 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 imag- 
 ination triumphed over every obstacle. S o intense 
 a nd arden t was the fire of his mind, t hat it_not only 
 was not suffocated beneath t he weight qf_fuel, but 
 penet rated the whole superincumbent mass with its 
 own hea/t and radiance. 
 
 Eis not our intention to attempt anything like a;0 riK 
 plete examination of the poetry of Milton. The 
 public has long been agreed as to th e merit of t he 
 most r emarkable passages, the incomparable harmony 
 of the numbers, and the excellence o f that_§ tvle^which 
 no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to 
 degrade, which displays in their highest perfection
 
 MILTON. 13 
 
 the idiomistic powers of the English tongue, and to 
 which every ancient and every modern language has 
 contributed something of grace, of en ergy, or of music. 
 In the vast field pf criticism on which we are enter- 
 ing innumerable reapers have already put their sickle s. " t ** 
 Yet_the harvest is so abundant th at the negligent 
 search of a straggling gleaner may be rewar ded with 
 a sheaf. 
 
 The most striking characteris tic of thep oetry of *f* p ] 
 Mi lton Is the extreme remo Jejie^o rThe^associations^ - » 
 by means of which it acts on the reader. Its effect iS 
 jV^^produced, notso much by what it expresses, as byj 
 jec* what it suggests ; not so mu ch by_ tlie^ideas which if 
 *^f directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected 
 •^J with them. He electrifies the mind through con- 0/ y 
 j 'yductors. The most unimaginative man must under- "•*"*'' 
 \ ^stand the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and f^^j, 
 rc^r equires from him no exertio n, but takes the whole k^wE 
 •upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a light, 
 hat it is impossible to be blind to them. The works 
 f Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed , unless 
 
 mind of the reader co-operate with that of the fijf-a. 
 rijer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play ^fr*^~- 
 or a mere passive listener . He sketches, and leaves tt£ 
 others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key- " 
 note, and expects his hearer to make out the 
 melody. 
 
 We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. 
 The expression in general mea^ns nothing : but, applied 
 to the writings of Milton, it isWost appropriate. His 
 poetry acts like an incantation. , Its merit lies less in /O 
 i ts obvious meaning than in itXoccjiJt pow er. There 
 would seem, at first sight, to be no mS^e in his words 
 than in other words. But they are woraVoj" ejidiaj)!- ^
 
 14 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 i£ ment. No sooner are they pronounced, than t he past 
 
 is p resent and the distant near , New forms of beauty 
 ) start at once into existence, and all the burial-places 
 ^ < I of the memory give up their dead. Change the struc- 
 ture of the sentence; substitute on e^ svnonym e for 
 P another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell 
 
 If loses its power ; and he who should then hope to con- 
 
 jure with it would find himself as much mistaken as 
 l | Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, 
 , I " Open Wheat,' 1 " Open Barley/' to the door which 
 "^t* obeyed no sound but "Open Sesame." The miser- 
 <£ / W i / able failure of Dryden in his attempt to translate into 
 J his own diction some part of the Paradise Lost, is a 
 I remarkable instance of this. 
 •iV In support of these observations, we may remark, 
 
 '•/ that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are 
 more generally known or mo re frequ entl y repeated 
 than those which are little more than muster-rolls of 
 n ame s. They are not always more appropriate or 
 rnnrp^flglnHirmc; than other names. But they are 
 rfX'vi*^-'' charmed name^^^iiexyi^ene^dithem is the first lin k 
 in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwell- 
 
 <lr*A»* ing-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the 
 
 >, i/iffrt, 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 
 
 f /?> period of history. Another places us among the novel 
 ' scenes and manners of a distant region. A third 
 evokes all the dear classical recollections of child- 
 hood, the s chool-room, the dog-eared Virgil, the hol - 
 
 ^jL " iday and the prize. A fourth brings before us the 
 splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the trophied 
 
 >a lis ts, the em broidered housings, the quaint devices, the 
 haunted forests7"ffie~ V ncrI|[nte^^aTde ns ? ~tlie"^achieve- 
 
 Jtf*Hil'J^&t>*
 
 MIL TON. 1 5 
 
 ments of enamored knights, and the smiles of rescued 
 princesses. 
 
 In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar man-J//^^ 
 ner more happily displayed than in Allegro and the 
 Penseroso. It is impossible to conceive that the 
 mechanism of language can be brought to a more 
 exquisite degree of perfection. These poems differ 
 from others, as atar of roses differ from ordinary rose -<^v, 
 water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted 
 mixture. They are indeed not so much poem s. as_ 
 collections of 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 c j y 
 in the form of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds v *^ l/ 
 of composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama 
 and the ode. The 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 illusion is broken. The 
 effect is as unpleasant as that which is produced on r\ , 
 the stage by the voice of a prompter or the entrance ' u ^ y i, 
 of a scene-shifter. Hence it was, that the tragedies /i u M 
 of Byron were his least successful performances. 
 They resemble those pasteboard pictures invented 
 1 y the friend of children, Mr. Newbury, in which a V 
 single movable head goes round twenty different 
 bodies, so that the same face looks out upon us suc- 
 cessively, from the uniform of a hussar, the furs of a 
 judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the char- 
 acters, p atriots and tyran ts,, h? f *» rg onH lnwprg l f MP ^ 
 frown and sneer of Harold were discernible in an in- ' ***
 
 LITERARY ESSAYS. g < 
 
 stant. But this species of egotisg u 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 emotion. 
 
 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, sprang from 
 the Ode. The dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, 
 and 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. yEschylus was, head and heart, a 
 lyric poet. 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 superior- 
 ity in war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the fol- 
 lowing generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with 
 contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it should 
 seem that they still looked up, with the disciples, to 
 Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it 
 was natural that the literature of Greece should be 
 tinctured with the Oriental style. And that style, we 
 think, is discernible in the works of Pindar and 
 ^Eschylus. The latter often reminds us of the He- 
 brew writers. The book of Job, indeed, in conduct 
 and diction, bears a considerable resemblance to some 
 of ^is_ dramas. Considered as plays, his works ar e 
 a bsurd ; c onsidered^ as ch oruses, they anTabove a jl 
 prais e. If, for instance, we examine the address of 
 Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the 
 description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the princi- 
 ples of dramatic writing, we shall instantly condemn 
 them as monstrous. But if we forget the characters,
 
 MILTON. \y 
 
 and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it 
 has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. 
 Sophocles made the Greek drama as dramatic as was 
 consistent with its original form. His portraits of 
 men have a sort of similarity ; but it is Jhe similarity 
 not of a painting but of a bas-reli ef. It suggests ai 
 resemblance ; but it does not produce an illusion, f 
 Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. But 
 it was a task far beyojioLh.is powers, perhaps beyond 
 anypowers. Instead of correcting what was bad, /^£^ 
 he destroyed what was excellent. He substituted ij. 
 crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes. 
 
 Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, 
 much more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides 
 deserved. Indeed, the caresses which this partiality 
 leads our countryman to bestow on " sad Electra's 
 poet, 1 ' sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queen of 
 Fairy-land 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 Agonistes. Had Milton taken /Eschylus for 
 his model, he 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 
 dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work 
 rendered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to 
 reconcile things in their 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. T he conflicting ingredients, 
 l ike an acid and an alkali mix ed, neutraliz e each other. fyjirfL 
 We are by no means insensible to the merits of this 
 celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the
 
 1 8 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 it, we confess, the least successful effort of the 
 , genius of Milton. 
 
 ^ * v The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian 
 J\lasque, as the Samson is framed on the model of the 
 
 i * Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance 
 a t of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far 
 
 ''" superior to the Faithful Shepherdess, as the Faith- 
 /-^ful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to 
 the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had 
 here 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, con- 
 secrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. 
 The faults, 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 disgust from the finery of Guarini. as taw- 
 dry, 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 capa- 
 ble of standing the severest test of the crucible. 
 
 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 the nature of that species of composition ; and he 
 wherever success was not
 
 MILTON. ig 
 
 impossible. The speeches must be read as majestic 
 soliloquies ; and he who so reads them will be enrap- 
 tured with their eloquence, their sublimity, and their 
 music. The interruptions of the dialogue, however, 
 impose a constraint upon 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, 11 says the excellent Sir Henry Wotten 
 in a letter to Milton, " the tragical part if the lyrical 
 did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in 
 your songs and odes, whereunto, I must plainly con- 
 fess 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 dialogue, 
 when he is discharged from the labor of uniting 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 exultingly, 
 
 " Now my task is smoothly done, 
 I can fly or I can run," 
 
 to skim the ear.th, 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 
 winds of the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys 
 of the Hesperides. 
 
 There are several of the minor poems of Milton on 
 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
 
 20 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 except as an instance of the blindness of the parental 
 affection which men of letters bear towards the off- 
 spring of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken 
 in preferring this work, excellent as it is, to the 
 Paradise Lost, we readily admit. But we are sure - 
 | that the superiority of the Paradise Lost to the 
 Paradise Regained 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 that extraordinary pro- 
 duction which the general suffrage of critics has 
 placed in the highest class of human compositions. 
 ~ The only poem of modern times which can be 
 | compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine 
 [Comedy. 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 contrasting him with the father of Tuscan 
 literature. 
 
 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 less on what they directly represent than on 
 what they remotely suggest. However strange, how- 
 ever grotesque, may be the appearance which Dante 
 undertakes to describe, he never shrinks from describ- 
 ing it. He gives us the shape, the color, the sound, 
 the smell, the taste ; he counts the numbers ; he meas- 
 ures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a
 
 MILTON. 21 
 
 traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and especially 
 of Milton, they are introduced in a plain, business-like 
 manner ; not for the sake of any beauty in the objects 
 from which they are drawn ; 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 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 vas^cem etery of A ries. 
 
 Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante 
 the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few 
 examples. 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 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 sky. Contrast with 
 these descriptions the lines in which Dante has de- 
 scribed the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. " His face 
 seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. 
 Peters at Rome ; and his other limbs were in propor- 
 tion ; 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 attempted 
 to reach to his hair. 1 ' We are sensible that we do no 
 justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet.
 
 22 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 But Mr. Cary's translation is not at hand ; and our 
 version, however >ude, 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- 
 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 shak- 
 ing his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, 
 delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was 
 such a moan there as there would be if all the sick 
 who, between July and September, are in the hospi- 
 tals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and 
 of Sardinia, were in one pit together ; and such a 
 stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from 
 decayed limbs. 11 
 
 We will not take upon ourselves the invidious 
 office of settling precedencv'between two such writ- 
 ers. 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 advantage. The Divine Comedy is a, 
 personal narrative. Dante is the eye-witness and ear- 
 witness of that which he relates. He is the very man 
 [who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for 
 the second death, who has read the dusky characters 
 on the portal within which there is no hope, who has 
 hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who 
 ihas 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. His own 
 brow has been marked by the purifying angel. The
 
 MILTON. 23 
 
 reader would throw aside such a tale in incredulous 
 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 
 narrative of Milton in this respect differs from that of 
 Dante, as the adventures of Amadis differ from those 
 of Gulliver. The author of Amadis would have made 
 his book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute 
 particulars which give such a charm to the work of 
 Swift, the nautical observations, the affected delicacy 
 about names, the official documents transcribed at full I 'isJ\ 
 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, nobody knows when, saw many very 
 strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves 
 to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemue l 
 Gullivej^ surgeon, resident at Rotherhit he, tells us of 
 pygmies and giants, dying islands, and philosophizing 
 horses, nothing but such circumstantial 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 hasj 
 succeeded best. Here Dante decidedly yields to him : 
 and as this is a point on which many rash and ill- 
 considered judgments 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, 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 objec- 
 tions, though sanctioned by eminent names, originate,
 
 ? 
 
 24 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 we venture to say, in profound ignorance of the an 
 of poetry. 
 
 What; is spir it? 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 
 
 V there exists 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 
 Zi& image of the thing ; and the business of poetry is 
 
 with images, and not with words. 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 poetry 
 than a bale of canvas and a box of colors to be called 
 a painting. 
 ~7~~ C Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the 
 / j^reat mass of men must have images. The strong 
 tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to 
 idolatry can be explained on no other principle. The 
 first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to believe, 
 worshipped one invisible Deity. But the necessity 
 of having 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 these transferred to the Sun 
 the worship which, in speculation, 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,
 
 MILTON, 25 
 
 and the strangely fascinating desire of having some 
 visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps 
 none of the secondary causes which Gibbon has as- 
 signed for the rapidity with which Christianity spreadj 
 over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired I 
 a proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feel- I 
 ing. God^Jti^jmcreated, the i ncomprehensible, the 
 invi sible, attracted few worshipper s. A philosopher 
 might admire so noble a conception : but the crowd 
 turned away in disgust from words which presented 
 no image to their minds. It was before Deity em- 
 bodied in a human form, walking among men, par- 
 taking 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 i^y^t^J/U 
 pride of the portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, 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 offices of household gods. St. George took the 
 place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for 
 the loss of Castor and Pollux. The Virgin Mother 
 and Cecilia succeeded to Venus and the Muses. The 
 fascination of sex and loveliness was again joined to 
 that of celestial dignity ; 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 which were 
 enshrined in their minds. It would not be difficult 
 to show that in politics the same rule holds good.
 
 26 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 un- 
 meaning badge, or the most insignificant name, than 
 for the most important principle. 
 yV From these considerations, we infer that no poet, 
 who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for the 
 want of which Milton has been blamed, would escape 
 a disgraceful failure. Still, however, there was an- 
 other 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 pro- 
 duce no illusion, when it is employed to represent 
 that which is at once perceived to be incongruous 
 and absurd. Mi lton wrote in an_a ge of p hilosophers 
 and theolo giajis. It was necessary, therefore, for him 
 to abstain from giving such a shock to their under- 
 standings as might break the charm which it was his 
 object to throw over their imaginations. This is the 
 real explanation of the indistinctness and inconsist- 
 ency with which he has often been reproached. Dr. 
 Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely neces- 
 sary that the spirit should be clothed with material 
 forms. "But," says he, "the poet should have 
 secured the consistency 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 fully 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 impossible for the
 
 MILTON. 2J 
 
 poet to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial 
 system. He therefore took his stand on the debat- 
 able ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He 
 has, doubtless, by so doing, laid himself open to the 
 charge of inconsistency. But, though p hilosophical ly 
 i n the wro ng, we cannot but believe that he was 
 po etically in the rig ht. This task, which almost any 
 other writer would have found impracticable, was 
 easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed 
 of communicating his meaning circuitously through 
 a long succession of associated ideas, and of intimat- 
 ing more than he expressed, enabled him to disguise 
 those incongruities which he could not avoid. 
 
 Poetry which relates to the beings of another world 
 ought to be at once mysterious and pictu resque. 
 That of Milton is so. That of Daiv te_Js_nJclirresflue 
 i ndeed beyond any that was ever writte n. Its effect 
 approaches 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 accu- 
 racy of description necessary. 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 daemo ns 
 without any emotion of unearthly awe. We could, 
 like Don Juan, ask them to supper, and eat heartily 
 in their company. Dante's angels are good men with 
 wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly executioners. 
 His dead men are merely living men in strange situa- 
 tions. The scene which passes between the poet and 
 Farinata is justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in the 
 burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have
 
 28 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 been at an auto da fe. Nothing can be more touch- 
 ing than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice. 
 Yet what is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with 
 sweet austere composure, the lover for whose affec- 
 tion she is 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 wonder- 
 ful creations. They are not metaphysical abstrac- 
 tions. They are not wicked men. They are not 
 ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of 
 the f ee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They have 
 just enough in common with human nature to be 
 intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, 
 like their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblance 
 to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimen- 
 sions, and veiled in mysterious gloom. 
 
 Perhaps the gods and daemons of ^Eschylus may 
 best bear a comparison with the angels and devils of 
 Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we have 
 remarked, something of the Oriental character ; and 
 the same peculiarity 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 colossal. The legends of 
 ^Eschylus seem to harmonize less with the fragrant 
 groves and graceful porticoes in which his country- 
 men paid their vows to the God of Light and God- 
 dess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque 
 labyrinths of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined 
 her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows 
 down to her seven-headed idols. His favorite gods
 
 MILTON. 29 
 
 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 inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations 
 of this class stands Prometheus, half fie nd, half re- 
 deemeiV-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 the same impatience of ccmtrolj_the 
 same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In 
 both" characters also are mingled, though in very dif- 
 ferent proportions, some kind and generous feelings. 
 Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. 
 He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy pos- 
 ture : 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 tor- 
 turer in his hands, and that the hour of his release 
 will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another 
 sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is vic- 
 torious over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies 
 which cannot be conceived without horror, he delib - 
 erate ^ resol ves^ ^jmjjj^ygiTjejxin^s- Against the sword 
 of Michael, against the thunder ofjehovah, against 
 tne naming lake, and__the_ marl burning with Ijoffi* 
 fire, a gainst the pros pect of~ali~eteraity r I ol r unin- 
 termitted misery, his spirit bears up unbroken,,^, 
 resting on its own innate energies, requiring no 
 support from anything external, nor even 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
 
 30 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 from their moral qualities. They are not egotists. They 
 rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. 
 They have nothing in common with those modern 
 
 fjM- 1 beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the 
 
 ^^7 compassion of the inexperienced by exposing the 
 
 * nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it would 
 
 be difficult to name two writers whose works have 
 
 been more completely, though undesignedly, 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- 
 cern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling 
 with misery. There is perhaps no worj^ii_th£_wQrld 
 so deeply and uni formly 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 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 con- 
 solation and every pleasure into its own nature. It 
 resembled that noxio us Sardinian soil of which the 
 intense bitterness is said to havelSeen perceptible 
 evenTxiTtsTToney. His mind was, in the noble lan- 
 guage of the Hebrew poet, < ; a land of darkness, as 
 darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness.' 1 
 The gloom of his characters discolors all the passions 
 of men, and all the face of nature, 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 eye, 
 the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip, and
 
 MILTON. 31 
 
 doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too 
 sensitive to be happy. 
 
 Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; 
 and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition 
 and in 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 ^**f^ 
 the evil to come ; some had carried into foreign cli- 
 mates their unconquerable hatred of oppression ; some 
 were pining in dungeons ; and some had poured forth 
 their blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scrib- 
 blers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts 
 of a pandar 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, and reel- 
 ing in obscene dances. Amidst these that fair Muse 
 was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, 
 spotless, and serene, to be chattered at, and pointed 
 at, and grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs and 
 Godlins. If ever despondency and asperity could be 
 excused in any man, they might have been excused 
 in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame ^^ 
 every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, npr__ ^-* 
 age, nor penury, noVBoTiiestic afrlictions, nor political *^* 
 ~3isappom^ 
 
 ^e^ectfha^pow er to disturb hi s seda^ajKLmajestjc 
 ^tienqeT" 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
 
 32 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 was when, on the eve of great events, he returned 
 from his travels, in the 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 in- 
 cident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, 
 he retired to his hovel to die. 
 
 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 disappointment, he adorned it with all that 
 is most lovely 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 the coolness of shady foun- 
 tains. His conception of love unites all the volupt- 
 uousness 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. Nooks 
 and dells, beautiful as fairy -land, are embosomed in its 
 most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and 
 myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche. 
 
 Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton 
 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 un- 
 derstood their nature. They have no epigrammatic 
 point. There is none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in 
 the thought, none of the hard and brilliant enamel 
 of Petrarch in the style. They are simple but majestic
 
 MILTON. 33 
 
 records of the feelings of the poet ; as little tricked out 
 for the public eye as his diary would have been. A 
 victory, an expected attack upon the city, a momen- 
 tary 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 themselves into verse. The 
 unity of sentiment and severity of style which char- 
 acterize 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. 
 
 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 excep- 
 tion, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to 
 which we know not where to look for a parallel. It 
 would, 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 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 in the history of mankind, at the very crisis of the 
 great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, lib- 
 erty 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
 
 34 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 on the same 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 thou- 
 sand years, and which, from one end of Europe to the 
 other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts 
 of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppress- 
 ors with an unwonted fear. 
 
 Of those principles, then struggling for their infant 
 existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent 
 literary champion. We need not say how much we 
 admire his public conduct. But we cannot disguise 
 from ourselves that a large portion of his countrymen 
 still think it unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, has 
 been more 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 complained so bitterly. Though they were 
 the conquerors, their enemies were the painters. As a 
 body, the Roundheads had done their utmost to decry 
 and ruin literature ; 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 charm- 
 ing narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of 
 the Parliament is good ; but it breaks off at the most in- 
 teresting 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 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.
 
 MILTON. 35 
 
 The former is not only ably written and full of valuable 
 information, but has also an air of dignity and sincer- 
 ity which makes even the prejudices and errors with 
 which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose 
 fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading 
 public are still contented to take their opinions, hated 
 religion so much that he hated liberty for having been 
 allied with religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyr- 
 anny with the dexterity of an advocate while affecting 
 the impartiality of a judge. 
 
 The public conduct of Milton must be approved or 
 condemned according as the resistance of the people 
 to Charles the First shall appear to be justifiable or 
 criminal. We shall therefore make no apology for 
 dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that inter- 
 esting and most important question. We shall not 
 argue it on general grounds. We shall not recur to 
 those primary principles 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 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 confidently affirm, that / 
 every reason which can be urged in favor of the Revo- 
 lution 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 
 sovereign than his son. He was not, in name and 
 profession, a Papist ; we say in name and profession,
 
 36 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 because 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 authority, a weak preference of form to sub- 
 stance, a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous 
 veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a 
 merciless intolerance. This, however, we waive. We 
 will concede that Charles was a good Protestant ; but 
 we say that his Protestantism does not make the slight- 
 est 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 
 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 . I n every 
 venerable precedent they pass by what is essential, 
 and take only what is accidental : they keep out of 
 sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imita- 
 tion all that is defective. If, in any part of any great 
 example, there be anything unsound, these flesh-flies 
 detect it with an 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 proto- 
 type, that 
 
 " Their labor must be to pervert that 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 expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn recognition of 
 popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for 
 nothing with them. One sect there was, which, from
 
 MILTON. 37 
 
 unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought necessary 
 to keep under close restraint. One part of the empire 
 there was so 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 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 transpor- 
 tation, under the alias of Legitimacy. But mention 
 the miseries of Ireland. Then William is a hero. 
 Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great men. Then 
 the Revolution is a glorious era. The very same 
 persons who, in this country, never omit an oppor- 
 tunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite slander 
 respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner 
 crossed St. George's Channel than they begin to fill 
 their bumpers to the glorious 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 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 Revolution was essen- 
 tially a Protestant Revolution. 
 
 But this certainly was not the case ; nor can any 
 person who has acquired more knowledge of the
 
 38 . LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 history of those times than is to be found in Gold- 
 smith's Abridgment believe that, if James had held 
 his own religious opinions without wishing to make 
 proselytes, or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he 
 had contented himself with exerting only his con- 
 stitutional influence for that purpose, the Prince of 
 Orange would ever have been invited over. Our 
 ancestors, we suppose, knew 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 Catholic ; but they 
 excluded Catholics from the crown, because they 
 thought them likely to be tyrants. The ground on 
 which thev, in their famous resolution, declared the 
 throne vacant, was this, " that James had broken 
 the fundamental laws of the kingdom. " Every man, 
 therefore, who approves of the Revolution of 1688 
 must hold that the breach of fundamental laws on 
 the part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The 
 question, then, is this : Had Charles the First broken 
 the fundamental laws of England ? 
 
 No person can answer in the negative, unless he 
 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 conduct of Charles, 
 from his accession to the meeting of the Long Par- 
 liament, had been a continued course of oppression 
 and treachery. Let those who applaud the Revolu- 
 tion, and condemn the Rebellion, mention one act 
 of James the Second to which a parallel is not to 
 be found in the history of his father. Let them lay
 
 MILTON. 39 
 
 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 
 violated. He had, according to the testimony of 
 his own friends, usurped the functions of the legis- 
 lature, raised taxes without the consent of parliament, 
 and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal 
 and vexatious manner. Not a single session of parlia- 
 ment had passed without some unconstitutional attack 
 on the freedom of debate ; the right of petition was 
 grossly violated ; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant 
 fines, and unwarranted imprisonments, were griev- 
 ances of daily occurrence. If these things do not 
 justify resistance, the Revolution was treason; if 
 they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable. 
 
 But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures ? 
 Why, after the King had consented to so many re- 
 forms, 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 given up. The Star Chamber had 
 been abolished. Provision had been made for the 
 frequent convocation and secure deliberation of parlia- 
 ments. Why not pursue an end confessedly good by 
 peaceable and regular means ? We recur again to the 
 analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven 
 from the throne ? Why was he not retained upon 
 conditions ? He too had offered to call a free parlia- 
 ment and to submit to its decision all the matters in 
 dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our fore- 
 fathers, who preferred a revolution, a disputed succes- 
 sion, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of foreign 
 and intestine war, a standing army, and a national 
 debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and
 
 40 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 proved tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the 
 same principle and is entitled to the same praise. 
 They 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 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 
 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. 
 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 arbitrary measures which he had bound 
 himself to abandon, 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 
 r ights which were theirs by a double claim, by 
 immemorial inheritance and by recent purchase, in- 
 fringed by the 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 Roi le vent f Were they again to 
 advance their money on pledges which had been for-
 
 MILTON. 41 
 
 feited 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 ceremony, and then to take their depar- 
 ture, till, after ten years more of fraud and oppression, 
 their prince should again require a supply, and again 
 repay it with a perjury ? They were compelled to 
 choose whether they would trust a tyrant or con- 
 quer him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly, up^' 
 
 The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other {] 
 malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is f ^M 
 produced, generally decline all controversy about the -fc 
 
 facts, and content themselves with calling testimony rf 
 to character. He had so many private virtues ! And 
 had James the Second no private virtues ? Was 
 Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves 
 being judges, destitute of private virtues ? And what, \^,u/v 
 after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles ? A 
 religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, 
 and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of y. 
 
 the ordinary household decencies which half the ^ 
 
 tombstones in England claim for those who lie be- 
 es <-xtL 
 
 neath them. A good father ! A good husband ! 
 Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecu- 
 tion, tyranny, and falsehood! 
 
 We charge him with having broken his coronation ^j^ 
 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 little son on his knee and kissed him ! We cen- 
 sure him for having violated the articles of the Petition 
 of Right, after having, for good and valuable considera- 
 tion, promised to observe them ; and we are informed
 
 42 LITER AR Y ESS A VS. 
 
 that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock ) 
 in the morning ! 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. 
 
 For ourselves, we own that we do not understand 
 the common phrase, a go od man, but a bad king. 
 We can as easily conceive a good man and an unnat- 
 ural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. 
 We cannot, in estimating the character of an individ- 
 ual, leave out of 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. 
 
 We cannot refrain from adding a few words respect- 
 ing 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 
 predecessors. If he violated their privileges, it was 
 because 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 discreditable in a historical work as it 
 would be admirable in a forensic address. The 
 answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had 
 assented to the PetitiorTof 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. 43 
 
 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 
 simplest statement is the strongest. 
 
 The enemies of the parliament, indeed, rarely 
 choose to take issue on the great points of the ques- 
 tion. They content themselves with exposing some 
 of the crimes and follies to which public commotions 
 necessarily 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 ; 
 soldiers revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry ; 
 upstarts, enriched by the public plunder taking pos- & 
 session of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees (r**- 
 of the old gentry ; boys smashing the beautiful win- 
 dows of cathedrals ; Quakers riding naked through 
 the market-place ; Fifth-monarch v men shouting for 
 King Jesus ; 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, 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 nature of the Devil of ) ¥J X 
 tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves. 
 Are the miseries of continued possession less horrible 
 than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism ?
 
 44 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 produces no pernicious effects on the 
 intellectual and moral character of a nation. We 
 deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. 
 
 eit the more violent the outrages, the more assured 
 ; feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence 
 of those outrages will always be proportioned to the 
 ferocity and ignorance of the people ; and the ferocity 
 c 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 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 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 sub- 
 mission. 
 
 It is the character of such revolutions that we always 
 see the worst of them at first. Till men have been 
 some time free, they know not how to use their free- 
 dom. The natives of wine countries are generally 
 sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemper- 
 ance abounds. A newly liberated people may be 
 compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine 
 or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such 
 a situation first find themselves able to indulge with-
 
 MILTON. 45 
 
 out restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, 
 nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, how- 
 ever, 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 their own 
 country. In the same manner, the final and perma- 
 nent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and 
 mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious 
 crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the 
 most clear, d ogmatism on points th e most mysterious. 
 It is just at 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 comfortless rooms, the frightful 
 irregularity of the whole appearance ; and then ask in 
 scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to 
 be found. If such miserable sophism s were to prevail, 
 there would never be a good house or a good govern- 
 ment in the world. 
 
 Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some 
 mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear 
 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 pro- 
 tected her, 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 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
 
 46 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 happy are those who, having dared to receive her in 
 hej^degraded_and frightful shape, shall at length be re- 
 warded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory! 
 
 There is only one cure for the evils which newly 
 L [acquired freedom produces ; and that cure is freedom. 
 When a prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear 
 the light of day : he is unable to discriminate colors, 
 or recognize 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 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 opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each 
 other. The scattered elements of truth cease to con- 
 tend, and begin to coalesce. 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 resolved not to go into the water till 
 he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty 
 till they become wise and good in slavery, they may 
 indeed wait forever. 
 i>uX^ r * Therefore it is that wp decidedly approve of the con- 
 duct of Milton and the other wise and good men who, 
 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 blameable excesses of that time. The 
 favorite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct
 
 MILTON. 47 
 
 which he pursued with regard to the execution of the 
 King. Of that celebrated proceeding we by no means 
 approve. Still we must say, in justice to the many 
 eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice 
 more particularly to the eminent person who defended 
 it, that nothing can be more absurd than the imputa- 
 tions which, for the last hundred and sixty years, it 
 has been the fashion to cast upon the Regicides. 
 We have, throughout, abstained from appealing to 
 first principle s. We will not appeal to them now. 
 We recur again to the parallel case of the Revolu- 
 tion. What essential distinction can be drawn be- 
 tween 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^no^ wron g. If so, James was as 
 innocent alTCharles could have been. The minister 
 only ought to be responsible for the acts of the 
 Sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jeffer ie s and 
 retain James ? The person of a King is sacred. 
 Was the person of James considered sacred at the 
 Boyne ? To discharge cannon against an army in \ 
 which a King is known to be posted is to approach J 
 pretty near to regicide. Charles, too, it should always 
 be remembered, was put to death by men who had 
 been exasperated 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 him in his palace, and 3 -A 
 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
 
 48 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his 
 adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, \vere_his 
 nephew a nd 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 our King and Governor, can, on the thirtieth 
 Qf janu ary, contrive to be afraid that the blood of the 
 RoyaTMartyr may be visited on themselves and their 
 children. 
 
 We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of 
 Charles ; not because the constitution exempts the 
 King from responsibility, for we know that all such 
 maxims, however excellent, have their exceptions ; nor 
 because we feel any peculiar interest in his character, 
 for we think that his sentence describes him with per- 
 fect justice as "a tyrant, a tr aitor, a murderer, a nd_a_ 
 public enemy ; " but ^Because we are convinced that 
 the measure was most injurious to the cause of free- 
 dom. He whom it removed was a captive and a 
 hostage : his heir, to whom the allegiance of every 
 Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The 
 Presbyterians could never have been perfectly recon- 
 ciled to the father : they had no such rooted enmity to 
 the son. The great body of the people, also, contem- 
 plated that proceeding with feelings which, however 
 unreasonable, no government could safely venture to 
 outrage. 
 
 But though we think the conduct of the Regicides 
 blameable, that of Milton appears to us in a very dif- 
 ferent light. The deed was done. It could not be S s ^ 
 undone. The evil was incurred; and the object was 
 to render it as small as possible. We censure the
 
 MILTON. 49 
 
 chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular 
 opinion ; but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to 
 change that opinion. The very feeling which would 
 have restrained us from committing 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 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 Salmasi us 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., 1 ' gives it all its fame with 
 the present generation. In that age the state of 
 things was different. It was not then fully under- 
 stood how vast an interval separates the mere classi- 
 cal scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can 
 it be doubted that a treatise which, bearing the name 
 of so eminent a critic, attacked the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of all free governments, must, if suffered to 
 remain unanswered, have produced a most pernicious 
 effect on the public mind. 
 
 We wish to add a few words relative to another sub- 
 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 the country was then placed were extraordi- 
 nary. The j^mhition of Oliver was of no vulvar kind. 
 He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He
 
 50 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 at first fought sincerely and manfully for the parlia- 
 ment, and never deserted it, till it had deserted its 
 duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he 
 found that the few members who remained after so 
 many deaths, secessions, 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 . 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 himself he demanded 
 indeed the first place in the commonwealth ; but with 
 powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadt- 
 holder or an American president . He gave the par- 
 liament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and 
 left to it the whole legislative authority, not 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 the opportunities which 
 he had of aggrandizing himself be fairly considered, 
 he will not lose by comparison with Washington or 
 Boliy_a.r. Had his moderation been met with corre- 
 sponding moderation, there is no reason to think that 
 he would have overstepped the line which he had traced 
 for himself. But when he found that his parliaments 
 questioned the 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.
 
 MILTON. 51 
 
 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 circumstances, though we admire, in common with 
 all men of all parties, the ability and energy of his 
 splendid administration, we are not pleading for arbi- 
 trary and lawless power, even in his hands. We know 
 that a good constitution is infinitely better than the 
 best despot. But we suspect, that at the time of 
 which we speak the violence 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 man can doubt who fairly 
 compares the events of the protectorate with those of 
 the thirty years which succeeded it, the^darkest and 
 most disgracefuMn the English annals. Cromwell 
 was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, 
 the foundations of an admirable system. Never be- 
 fore had religious liberty and the freedom of discus- 
 sion 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 rebel- 
 lion provoked the resentment of the l iberal jrn d mag- 
 nanimous usurp er. The institutions which he had 
 established, as set down in the Instrument of Govern- 
 ment, and the Humble Petition and Advice, were 
 excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed 
 from the theory of these institutions. But, had he 
 lived a few years longer, it is probable that his insti- 
 tutions would have survived him, and that his arbi- 
 trary practice would have died with him. His power
 
 52 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It 
 was upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little, 
 therefore, was to be dreaded from a second protector, 
 unless he w r as also a second Oliver Cromwell. The 
 events which followed his decease are the most com- 
 plete vindication of those who exerted themselves to 
 uphold his authority. His death dissolved the whole 
 frame of society. The army rose against the parlia- 
 ment, 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. Without casting 
 one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation 
 for the future, they threw down their freedom at the 
 eet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. 
 
 Then came those days, never jobe recalled witho ut 
 a 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 people, sank into a viceroy of France, 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 government had just ability 
 enough to deceive, and just religion enough to perse- 
 cute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of 
 every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Marana- 
 tha of every fawning dean. In every high place, 
 worship was paid to Charles and James. Belial and 
 Moloch ; and England propitiated those obscene and 
 cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest
 
 MILTON. 53 
 
 children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace; 
 to disgrace, till_ the race accursed of God and m an! 
 was a second time driven forth, to wander on the 
 face of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking 
 of the head to the nations. ■ 
 
 Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made 
 on the public character of Milton, apply to him only i 
 
 as one of a large body. W e shall proceed to notice , 
 some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from 
 his contemporaries. And, for that purpose, jt is neg j 
 essary 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 side. In days of public com- 
 motion, every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended 
 by a crowd of camp-followers, an useless and heartless *>- ' 
 rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope 
 of picking up something under its protection, but 
 desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exter- 
 minate it after defeat. England, at the time of whip-h 
 we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish poll 
 ticians, who transferred their support to every govern 
 ment as it rose, who kissed the hand of the King in 
 1640, and spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with 
 equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in West- 
 minster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged 
 at Tyburn, who dined on calves 1 heao^oxstuckup oak- 
 branches, as circumstances altered, without the slight- 
 est shame or repugnance. These we leave out of 
 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 
 remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world
 
 54 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts 
 of their character lie on the surface. He that runs 
 may read them ; nor have there been wanting atten- 
 tive and malicious observers to point them out. For 
 many years after the Restoration, they were the theme 
 of unmeasured invective and derision. They were 
 exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and 
 of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage 
 were most licentious. 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 aban- 
 doned, without reserve, to the 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 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 
 learnt. And he who approaches this subject should 
 carefully guard against the influence of that potent 
 ridicule which has already misled so many excellent 
 writers. 
 
 " Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio 
 Che mortali perigli in se contiene : 
 Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
 Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." 
 
 Those who roused the people to resistance, who 
 directed their measures through a long series of event- 
 ful years, who formed, out of the most unpromising 
 materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen,
 
 MILTON. 55 
 
 who 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 fa- 
 natics. Most 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 elegance 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 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 
 superior beings and eternal interests. Not content 
 with acknowledging, 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 great end of existence. They 
 rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage 
 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 brightness, and to com- 
 mune with him face to face. Hence originated their 
 contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference 
 between the greatest and the meanest of mankind
 
 56 jP^y/ ' LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 K 
 
 seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless 
 interval which separated the whole race from him on 
 whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. 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 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 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 themselves rich 
 in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more 
 sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier 
 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 be- 
 longed, on whose slightest action the spirits of light 
 and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had 
 been destined, 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 politicians ascribe to earthly causes, 
 had been ordained on his account. For his sake 
 empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For 
 his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the 
 pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. 
 He had been wrested by no common deliverer from 
 the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed 
 
 ilXvftf^
 
 MILTON. 57 
 
 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. 
 
 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 prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker : 
 but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his 
 devotional retirement, 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 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 council, 
 or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous work- 
 ings 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 
 laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh 
 who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the 
 field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and 
 military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immu- 
 tability 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 tranquil on 
 every other. One overpowering sentiment had sub-
 
 * 
 
 58 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 jected 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. 
 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 
 corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue 
 unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. 
 They went 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 or lot in human infirmities, in- 
 sensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to 
 be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by 
 any barrier. 
 
 Such we believe to have been the character of the 
 Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their man- 
 ners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic 
 habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds 
 was often 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 Dunstans and their De Monforts, their 
 Dominies and their Escobars. Yet, when all circum- 
 stances are taken into consideration, we do not hesi- 
 tate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, 
 and an useful body. 
 
 The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty 
 mainly because it was the cause of religion. There 
 was another party, by no means numerous, but dis- 
 tinguished by learning and ability, which acted with
 
 MILTON. 59 
 
 them on very different principles. We speak of those 
 whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, 
 men who were, in the phraseology of that time, doubt- 
 ing Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to reli- 
 gious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. 
 Heated by the study of ancient literature, they set up 
 their country as their idol, and proposed to them- 
 selves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. 
 They seem to have borne some resemblance to the 
 Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it is not 
 very easy to draw the line of distinction between 
 them and their devout associates, whose 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 antag- 
 onists, 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 associates by excesses which, 
 under the stricter discipline of 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 tyr- 
 anny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with com- 
 placency on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. 
 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, dangling courtiers, bowing at every
 
 60 LITERARY ESSAYS, 
 
 step, and simpering at every word. They were not 
 mere machines for destruction, dressed up in uniforms, 
 caned into skill, intoxicated into valor, defending 
 without love, destroying without hatred. There was 
 a freedom in their subserviency, a nobleness in their 
 very degradation. The sentiment of individual inde- 
 pendence was strong within them. They were indeed 
 misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compas- 
 sion and romantic honor, the prejudices of childhood, 
 and the venerable names of history, threw over them 
 a spell potent as that of Duessa ; and, like the Red- 
 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 political question. 
 It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant 
 church that they fought, but for the old banner 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. Though nothing could be 
 more erroneous than their political opinions, they 
 possessed, in a far greater degree than their adversa- 
 ries, those qualities which are the grace of private 
 life. With many of the vices of the Round Table, 
 they had also many of its virtues, courtesy, gen- 
 erosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for women. 
 They had far more both of profound and of polit£ 
 learning than the Puritans. Their manners were 
 more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their 
 tastes more elegant, and 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 freethinker. He was not a Royalist.
 
 MILTON. 6 1 
 
 In his character the noblest qualities of every party 
 were combined in harmonious union. From the par- 
 liament and from the court, from the conventicle and 
 from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepul- 
 chral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christ- 
 mas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected 
 and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while 
 it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by 
 which those finer elements were denied. 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 acquired their contempt of external circumstances, 
 their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible reso- 
 lution. But not the coolest skeptic or the most pro- 
 fane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion 
 of their frantic 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 orna- 
 mental qualities which were almost entirely monopo- 
 lized 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 chival- 
 rous delicacy of honor and love. Though his opinions 
 were democratic, his tastes and his associations were 
 such as harmonize best with monarchy and aristoc- 
 racy. 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 all the pleasures 
 of fascination ; but was not fascinated. He listened to
 
 62 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 the song of the Syrens ; 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 sweetness. The allusions 
 which captivated his 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 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 in- 
 consistency which, more than anything else, raises his 
 character in our estimation, because it shows how many 
 private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, in order to 
 do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is 
 the very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart re- 
 lents : but his hand is firm. He does nought in hate, 
 but all in honor. He kisses the beautiful deceiver 
 before he destroys her. 
 
 That from which the public character of Milton 
 derives its great and peculiar splendor, still remains 
 to be mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow 
 a forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted 
 himself in conjunction 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 own. Thousands and tens of thousands 
 among his contemporaries raised their voices against 
 Ship-money and the Star-chamber. But there were 
 few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of 
 moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which 
 would result from the liberty of the press and the
 
 MILTON. 63 
 
 unfettered exercise of private 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 the dominion of prej- 
 udice as well as from that of Charles. He knew that 
 those who, with the best intentions, overlooked these 
 schemes of reform, and contented themselves with 
 pulling down the King and imprisoning the malig- 
 nants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own 
 poem, who, in their eagerness to disperse the train 
 of the sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating the 
 captive. They thought only of conquering when they 
 should have thought of disenchanting. 
 
 " Oh, he 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 
 Bound in strong 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 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 those whom they had vanquished, 
 were hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore 
 joined the Independents, 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 object, he attacked the licensing 
 system, in that sublime treatise which every states-
 
 64 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 man Lhould 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 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 
 debasing sentiments more effectually, he always 
 selected for 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 incomparable 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 bearing 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 the hardihood with which 
 he maintained them. He, in general, left to others the 
 credit of expounding and defending the popular parts 
 of his religious and political creed. He took his own 
 stand upon those which the great body of his country- 
 men reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. 
 He stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked 
 the prevailing systems of education. 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 contrarius evehor orbi."
 
 MILTON. 65 
 
 It is to be regretted that the prose writings of 
 Milton 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 language. They abound 
 with passages compared with which the finest dec- 
 lamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They 
 are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff 
 with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier 
 books of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever 
 risen higher than in those parts of his controversial 
 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." 
 
 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 Icono- 
 clast, and to point out some of those magnificent 
 passages 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 
 ourselves away from the subject. The days immedi- 
 ately 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 festival, we be found lingering near his 
 shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering 
 which we bring to it. While this book lies on our 
 table, we seem to be contemporaries of the writer. 
 We are transported a hundred and fifty years back.
 
 66 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his 
 small lodging; that we see him sitting at 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 
 his glory and his affliction. We image to ourselves 
 the breathless silence in which we should listen to 
 his slightest word, the passionate veneration with 
 which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep 
 upon it, the earnestness with which we should en- 
 deavor to console 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 El wood, the privilege of reading Homer 
 to him, or of taking down 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 idoliz- 
 ing either the living 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 Boswell- 
 ism. But there are a few characters which have stood 
 the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have 
 been tried in the furnace 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 visi- 
 bly stamped with the image and superscription of the 
 Most High. These great men we trust that we know
 
 MILTON. 67 
 
 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 celestial fruits and 
 flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent 
 down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, and 
 which were distinguished from the productions of 
 other soils, not only by superior bloom and sweet- 
 ness, 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 either the life or the writings of the great 
 poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not 
 indeed the sublime works with which his genius has 
 enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he 
 labored for the public good, the fortitude with which 
 he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain 
 with which he looked down on temptations and dan- 
 gers, 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.
 
 "Nil s.f. 
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 
 
 I 63I-I70O. 
 
 The occasion of the essay on Dryden, printed in 
 the Edinburgh Review, January, 1828, was the publi- 
 cation of The Poetical Works of John Dryden, in two 
 volumes. The essay has a peculiar value in that it 
 sets forth very clearly Macaulay's views on the subject 
 of literary criticism. The reader is thereby enabled 
 to find in narrow compass both the theory and the 
 practice. Dryden, too, is made an occasion for a re- 
 iteration of Macaulay's pet doctrine concerning the 
 decay of poetic fancy caused by the progress of civili- 
 zation. The claim that the " creative faculty and 
 the critical faculty cannot exist together in their 
 highest perfection " is explained and defended by the 
 familiar argument first advanced in the essay on Mil- 
 ton. Curious readers may find the literature on the 
 subject by consulting Gay ley and Scott's Introduction 
 to the Study of Literary Criticism. 
 
 {Edinburgh Review, January, 1828.) 
 
 The public voice has assigned to Dryden the first 
 place in the second rank of our poets, — no mean 
 station in a table of intellectual precedency so rich in 
 illustrious names. It is allowed that, even of the few 
 who were his superiors in genius, none has exercised 
 a more extensive or permanent influence on the na- 
 tional habits of thought and expression. His life 
 was commensurate with the period during which a 
 great revolution in the public taste was effected ; and 
 68
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 69 
 
 in that revolution he played the part of Cromwell. 
 By unscrupulously taking the lead in its wildest ex- 
 cesses, he obtained the absolute guidance of it. By 
 trampling on laws, he acquired the authority of a 
 legislator. By signalizing himself as the most daring 
 and irreverent of rebels, he raised himself to the dig- 
 nity of a recognized prince. He commenced his 
 career by the most frantic outrages. He terminated 
 it in the repose of established sovereignty, — the 
 author of a new code, the root of a new dynasty. 
 
 Of Dryden, however, as of almost every man who 
 has been distinguished either in the literary or in the 
 political world, it may be said that the course which 
 he pursued, and the effect which he produced, de- 
 pended less on his personal qualities than on the cir- 
 cumstances in which he was placed. Those who 
 have read history with discrimination know the fallacy 
 of those pane gyrics and invectives which represent 
 individuals as effecting great "moral and intellectual 
 revolutions, subverting established systems, and im- 
 printing a new character on their age. The difference 
 between one man and another is by no means so great 
 as the superstitious crowd supposes. But the same 
 feelings which in ancient Rome produced the apoth - 
 eosis s>i a popular emperor, and in modern Rome 
 the canonization of a devout prelate, led men to cher- 
 ish an illusion which furnishes them with something 
 to adore. By a law of association, from the operation 
 of which even minds the most strictly regulated by 
 reason are not wholly exempt, misery disposes us to 
 hatred, and happiness to love, although there may be 
 no person to whom our misery or our happiness can 
 be ascribed. The peevishness of an invalid vents 
 itself even on those who alleviate his pain. The
 
 JO LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 good humor of a man elated by success often displays it- 
 self towards enemies. In the same manner, the feelings 
 of pleasure and admiration, to which the contempla- 
 tion of great events gives birth, make an object where 
 they do not find it. Thus, nations descend to the 
 absurdities of Egyptian idolatry, and worship stocks 
 and reptiles — Sacheverells and Wilkeses. They even 
 fall prostrate before a deity to which they have them- 
 selves given the form which commands their venera- 
 tion, and which, unless fashioned by them, would 
 have remained a shapeless block. They persuade 
 themselves that they are the creatures of what they 
 have themselves created. For, in fact, it is the age 
 that forms the man, not the man that forms the age. 
 Great minds do indeed re-act on the society which has 
 made them what they are ; but they only pay with 
 interest what they have received. We extol Bacon 
 and sneer at Aquinas. But, if their situations had 
 been changed, Bacon might have been the Angelical 
 Doctor, the most subtle Aristotelian of the schools ; 
 the Dominican might have led forth the sciences 
 from their house of bondage. If Luther had been 
 born in the tenth century, he would have effected no 
 reformation. If he had never been born at all, it is 
 evident that the sixteenth century could not have 
 elapsed without a great schism in the church. Vol- 
 taire, in the days of Louis the Fourteenth, would prob- 
 ably have been, like most of the literary men of that 
 time, a zealous Jansenist, eminent among the defenders 
 of efficacious grace, a bitter assailant of the lax moral- 
 ity of the Jesuits and the unreasonable decisions of 
 the Sorbonne. If Pascal had entered on his literary 
 career when intelligence was more general, and abuses 
 at the same time more flagrant, when the church was
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. J\ 
 
 polluted by the Iscariot Dubois, the court disgraced by 
 the orgies of Canillac, and the nation sacrificed to 
 the juggles of Law, if he had lived to see a dynasty 
 of harlots, an empty treasury and a crowded harem, 
 an army formidable only to those whom it should 
 have protected, a priesthood just religious enough to 
 be intolerant, he might possibly, like every man of 
 genius in France, have imbibed extravagant prejudices 
 against monarchy and Christianity. The wit which 
 blasted the sophisms of Escobar — the impassioned 
 eloquence which defended the sisters of Port Royal 
 — the intellectual hardihood which was not beaten 
 down even by Papal authority — might have raised 
 him to the Patriarchate of the Philosophical Church. 
 It was long disputed whether the honor of inventing 
 the method of Fluxions belonged to Newton or to 
 Leibnitz. It is now generally allowed that these 
 great men made the same discovery at the same time. 
 Mathematical science, indeed, had then reached such 
 a point that, if neither of them had ever existed, the 
 principle must inevitably have occurred to some per- 
 son within a few years. So in our own time the doc- 
 trine of rent, now universally received by political 
 economists, was propounded, almost at the same mo- 
 ment, by two writers unconnected with each other. 
 Preceding speculators had long been blundering round 
 about it ; and it could not possibly have been missed 
 much longer by the most heedless inquirer. We are 
 inclined to think that, with respect to every great ad- 
 dition which has been made to the stock of human 
 knowledge, the case has been similar; that without 
 Copernicus we should have been Copernicans, — that 
 without Columbus America would have been discov- 
 ered, — that without Locke we should have possessed
 
 72 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 a just theory of the origin of human ideas. So- 
 ciety indeed has its great men and its little men, as 
 the earth has its mountains and its valleys. But 
 the inequalities of intellect, like the inequalities of the 
 surface of our globe, bear so small a proportion to the 
 mass, that, in calculating its great revolutions, they 
 may safely be neglected." The sun illuminates tne 
 hills, while it is still below the horizon ; and truth is 
 discovered by the highest minds a little before it be- 
 comes manifest to the multitucletj This is the extent 
 of their superiority. They are the first to catch and re- 
 flect a light, which, without their assistance, must, in a 
 short time, be visible to those who lie far beneath them. 
 
 The same remark will apply equally to the fine arts. 
 The laws on which depend the progress and decline of 
 poetry, painting, and sculpture, operate with little less 
 certainty than those which regulate the periodical re- 
 turns of heat and cold, of fertility and barrenness. 
 Those who seem to lead the public taste are. in gen- 
 eral, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is 
 spontaneously pursuing. Without a just apprehension 
 of the laws to which we have alluded, the merits and 
 defects of Dryden can be but imperfectly understood. 
 We will, therefore, state what we conceive them to be. 
 
 The ages in which the master-pieces of imagination 
 have been produced have by no means been those in 
 which taste has been most correct. It seems that the 
 creative faculty, and the critical faculty, cannot exist 
 together in their highest perfection. The causes of 
 this phenomenon it is not difficult to assign. 
 
 It is true that the man who is best able to take a 
 machine to pieces, and who most clearly comprehends 
 the manner in which all its wheels and springs con- 
 duce to its general effect, will be the man most com-
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 73 
 
 petent to form another machine of similar power. In 
 all the branches of physical and moral science which 
 admit of perfect analysis, he who can resolve will be 
 able to combine. But the analysis which criticism can 
 effect of poetry is necessarily imperfect. One element 
 must forever elude its researches ; and that is the very 
 element by which poetry is poetry. In the description 
 of nature, for example, a judicious reader will easily 
 detect an incongruous image. But he will find it im- 
 possible to explain in what consists the art of a writer 
 who, in a few words, brings some spot before him so 
 vividly that he shall know it as if he had lived there 
 from childhood ; while another, employing the same 
 materials, the same verdure, the same water, and the 
 same flowers, committing no inaccuracy, introducing 
 nothing which can be positively pronounced superflu- 
 ous, omitting nothing which can be positively pro- 
 nounced necessary, shall produce no more effect than 
 an advertisement of a capital residence and a desirable 
 pleasure-ground. To take another example : the great 
 features of the character of Hotspur are obvious to the 
 most superficial reader. We at once perceive that his 
 courage is splendid, his thirst of glory intense, his 
 animal spirits high, his temper careless, arbitrary, and ] 
 petulant ; that he indulges his own humor without car- 
 ing whose feelings he may wound, or whose enmity he J 
 may provoke by his levity. Thus far criticism will go. 
 But something is still wanting. A man might have all 
 those qualities and every other quality which the most 
 minute examiner can introduce into his catalogue 
 of the virtues and faults of Hotspur, and yet he 
 would not be Hotspur. Almost everything that 
 we have said of him applies equally to Falcon- 
 bridge. Yet in the mouth of Falconbridge most of
 
 74 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 his speeches would seem out of place. In real life this 
 perpetually occurs. We are sensible of wide differences 
 between men whom, if we were required to describe 
 them, we should describe in almost the same terms. 
 If we were attempting to draw elaborate characters 
 of them, we should scarcely be able to point out any 
 strong distinction ; yet we approach them with feelings 
 altogether dissimilar. We cannot conceive of them 
 as using the expressions or the gestures of each other. 
 Let us suppose that a zoologist should attempt to give 
 an account of some animal, a porcupine for instance, 
 to people who had never seen it. The porcupine, he 
 might say, is of the genus mammalia, and the order 
 glires. There are whiskers on its face : it is two feet 
 long ; it has four toes before, five behind, two fore 
 teeth, and eight grinders. Its body is covered with hair 
 and quills. And, when all this had been said, would any 
 one of the auditors have formed a just idea of a porcu- 
 pine ? Would any two of them have formed the same 
 idea? There might exist innumerable races of ani- 
 mals, possessing all the characteristics which have 
 been mentioned, yet altogether unlike to each other. 
 What the description of our naturalist is to a real por- 
 cupine, the remarks of criticism are to the images of 
 poetry. What it so imperfectly decomposes it cannot 
 perfectly re-construct. It is evidently as impossible to 
 produce an Othello or a Macbeth by reversing an 
 analytical process so defective, as it would be for an 
 anatomist to form a living man out of the fragments 
 of his dissecting-room. In both cases the vital prin- 
 ciple eludes the finest instruments, and vanishes in the 
 very instant in which its seat is touched. Hence those 
 who, trusting to their critical skill, attempt to write 
 poems give us, not images of things, but catalogues of
 
 JOHN DRY DEN. 75 
 
 qualities. Their characters are allegories ; not good 
 men and bad men, but cardinal virtues and deadly 
 sins. We seem to have fallen among the acquaint- 
 ances of our old friend Christian ; sometimes we meet 
 Mistrust and Timorous ; sometimes Mr. Hategood and 
 Mr. Love-lust ; and then again Prudence, Piety, and 
 Charity. 
 
 That critical discernment is not sufficient to make 
 men poets, is generally allowed. Why it should keep 
 them from becoming poets, is not perhaps equally 
 "evident : but the fact is, that poetry requires not an 
 examining but a believing frame of mind. Those feel 
 it most, and write it best, who forget that it is a work 
 of art ; to whom its imitations, like the realities from 
 which they are taken, are subjects, not for connois- 
 seurship, but for tears and laughter, resentment and 
 affection ; who are too much under the influence of 
 the illusion to admire the genius which has produced 
 it ; who are too much frightened for Ulysses in the 
 cave of Polyphemus to care whether the pun about 
 Outis be good or bad ; who forget that such a person 
 as SHakspeare ever existed, while they weep and curse 
 with Lear. It is by giving faith to the creations of 
 the imagination that a man becomes a poet. It is by 
 treating those creations as deceptions, and by resolv- 
 ing them, as nearly as possible, into their elements, 
 that he becomes a critic. In the moment in which 
 the skill of the artist is perceived, the spell of the art 
 is broken. 
 
 These considerations account for the absurdities 
 into which the greatest writers have fallen, when they 
 have attempted to give general rules for composition, 
 or to pronounce judgment on the works of others. 
 They are unaccustomed to analyze what they feel ;
 
 ?6 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 they, therefore, perpetually refer their emotions to 
 causes which have not in the slightest degree tended 
 to produce them. They feel pleasure in reading a 
 book. They never consider that this pleasure may 
 be the effect of ideas which some unmeaning expres- 
 sion, striking on the first link of a chain of associa- 
 tions, may have called up in their own minds — that 
 they have themselves furnished to the author the 
 beauties which they admire. 
 
 Cervantes is the delight of all classes of readers. 
 Every school-boy thumbs to pieces the most wretched 
 translations of his romance, and knows the lantern 
 jaws of the Knight Errant, and the broad cheeks of 
 the Squire, as well as the faces of his own playfel- 
 lows. The most experienced and fastidious judges 
 are amazed at the perfection of that art which extracts 
 inextinguishable laughter from the greatest of human 
 calamities without once violating the reverence due 
 to it ; at that discriminating delicacy of touch which 
 makes a character exquisitely ridiculous, without im- 
 pairing its worth, its grace, or its dignity. In Don 
 Quixote are several dissertations on the principles of 
 poetic and dramatic writing. No passages in the 
 whole work exhibit stronger marks of labor and 
 attention ; and no passages in any work with which 
 we are acquainted are more worthless and puerile. 
 In our time they would scarcely obtain admittance 
 into the literary department of the Morning Post. 
 Every reader of the Divine Comedy must be struck 
 by the veneration which Dante expresses for writers 
 far inferior to himself. He will not lift up his eyes 
 from the ground in the presence of Brunetto. all 
 whose works are not worth the worst of his own 
 hundred cantos. He does not venture to walk in the
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. JJ 
 
 same line with the bombastic Statius. His admira- 
 tion of Virgil is absolute idolatry. If indeed it had 
 been excited by the elegant, splendid, and harmoni- 
 ous diction of the Roman poet, it would not have been 
 altogether unreasonable ; but it is rather as an author- 
 ity on all points of philosophy, than as a work of 
 imagination, that he values the ^neid. The most 
 trivial passages he regards as oracles of the highest 
 authority, and of the most recondite meaning. He 
 describes his conductor as the sea of all wisdom — the 
 sun which heals every disordered sight. As he judged 
 of Virgil, the Italians of the fourteenth century judged 
 of him ; they were proud of him ; they praised him ; 
 they struck medals bearing his head ; they quarrelled 
 for the honor of possessing his remains ; they main- 
 tained professors to expound his writings. But what 
 they admired was not that mighty imagination which 
 called a new world into existence, and made all its 
 sights and sounds familiar to the eye and ear of the 
 mind. They said little of those awful and lovely 
 creations on which later critics delight to dwell — 
 Farinata lifting his haughty and tranquil brow from 
 his couch of everlasting fire — the lion-like repose of 
 Sordello — or the light which shone from the celestial 
 smile of Beatrice. They extolled their great poet for 
 his smattering of ancient literature and history ; for 
 his logic and his divinity ; for his absurd physics, and 
 his more absurd metaphysics ; for everything but 
 that in which he pre-eminently excelled. Like the* 
 fool in the story, who ruined his dwelling by digging 
 for gold, which, as he had dreamed, was concealed 
 under its foundations, they laid waste one of the 
 noblest works of human genius, by seeking in it for 
 buried treasures of wisdom which existed only in theii 

 
 78 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 own wild reveries. The finest passages were little 
 valued till they had been debased into some mon- 
 strous allegory. Louder applause was given to the 
 lecture on fate and free-will, or to the ridiculous 
 astronomical theories, than to those tremendous lines 
 which disclose the secrets of the tower of hunger, or 
 to that half-told tale of guilty love, so passionate and 
 so full of tears. 
 
 We do not mean to say that the contemporaries of 
 Dante read with less emotion than their descendants 
 of Ugolino groping among the wasted corpses of his 
 children, or of Francesca starting at the tremulous 
 kiss and dropping the fatal volume. Far from it. 
 We believe that they admired these things l|B?than 
 ourselves, but that they felt them more. We should 
 perhaps say that they felt them too much to admire 
 them. The progress of a nation from barbarism 
 to civilization produces a change similar to that which 
 takes place during the progress of an individual from 
 infancy to mature age. What man does not remem- 
 ber with regret the first time that he read Robin- 
 son Crusoe ? Then, indeed, he was unable to 
 appreciate the powers of the writer ; or, rather, he 
 neither knew nor cared whether the book had a 
 writer at all. He probably thought it not half so fine 
 as some rant of Macpherson about dark-browed 
 Foldath, and white-bosomed Strinadona. He now 
 values Fingal and Temora only as showing with how 
 little evidence a story may be believed, and with 
 how little merit a book may be popular. Of the 
 romance of Defoe he entertains the highest opinion. 
 He perceives the hand of a master in ten thousand 
 touches which formerly he passed by without notice. 
 But, though he understands the merits of the narrative
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 79 
 
 better than formerly, he is far less interested by it. 
 Xury and Friday, and pretty Poll, the boat with the 
 shoulder-of-mutton sail, and the canoe which could 
 not be brought down to the water edge, the tent 
 with its hedge and ladders, the preserve of kids, and 
 the den where the goat died, can never again be to 
 him the realities which they were. The days when 
 his favorite volume set him upon making wheel-bar- 
 rows and chairs, upon digging caves and fencing huts 
 in the garden, can never return. Such is the law 
 of our nature. Our judgment ripens ; our imagina- 
 tion decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers or 
 the spring of life and the fruits of its autumn, the 
 pleasures of close investigation and those of agreeable 
 error. We cannot sit at once in the front of the 
 stage and behind the scenes. We cannot be under 
 the illusion of the spectacle, while we are watching 
 the movements of the ropes and pulleys which 
 dispose it. 
 
 The chapter in which Fielding describes the behav- 
 ior of Partridge at the theatre affords so complete 
 an illustration of our proposition, that we cannot 
 refrain from quoting some part of it. 
 
 " Partridge gave that credit to Mr. Garrick which he had 
 denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling that his 
 knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him what was 
 the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the 
 stage ? — ' Oh, la, sir,' said he, ' I perceive now it is what you 
 told me. I am not afraid of anything, for I know it is but a 
 play; and if it was really a ghost, it could do one no harm at 
 such a distance and in so much company ; and yet, if I was 
 frightened, I am not the only person.' — ' Why, who,' cries Jones, 
 ' dost thou take to be such a coward here besides thyself ? ' 
 — ' Nay, you may call me a coward if you will ; but if that 
 little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw
 
 80 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 any man frightened in my life.' * * * He sat with his eyes 
 fixed partly on the ghost and partly on Hamlet, and with his 
 mouth open ; the same passions which succeeded each other 
 in Hamlet, succeeding likewise in him. * * * 
 
 " Little more worth remembering occurred during the play, 
 at the end of which Jones asked him which of the players he 
 liked best. To this he answered, with some appearance of 
 indignation at the question, 'The King, without doubt.' — 
 ' Indeed, Mr. Partridge,' says Mrs. Miller, ' you are not of 
 the same opinion with the town ; for they are all agreed that 
 Hamlet is acted by the best player who was ever on the stage.' 
 ' He the best player ! ' cries Partridge, with a contemptuous 
 sneer; ' why I could act as well as he myself. I am sure, if I 
 had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same man- 
 ner, and done just as he did. And then, to be sure, in that 
 scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, where 
 you told me he acted so fine, why, any man, that is, any good 
 man that had such a mother, would have done exactly the 
 same. I know you are only joking with me; but indeed, 
 madam, though I never was at a play in London, yet I have 
 seen acting before in the country, and the King, for my money ; 
 he speaks all his words distinctly, and half as loud again as 
 the other. Anybody may see he is an actor.' " 
 
 In this excellent passage Partridge is represented 
 as a very bad theatrical critic. But none of those 
 who laugh at him possess the tithe of his sensibility 
 to theatrical excellence. He admires in the wrong 
 place ; but he trembles in the right place. It is in- 
 deed because he is so much excited by the acting ol 
 Garrick, that he ranks him below the strutting, mouth- 
 ing performer, who personates the King. So, we 
 have heard it said that, in some parts of Spain and 
 Portugal, an actor who should represent a depraved 
 character finely, instead of calling down the applauses 
 of the audience, is hissed and pelted without mercy. 
 It would be the same in England, if we, for one 
 moment, thought that Shylock or Iago was standing
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 8 1 
 
 before us. While the dramatic art was in its infancy 
 at Athens, it produced similar effects on the ardent 
 and imaginative spectators. It is said that they 
 blamed yEschylus for frightening them into fits with 
 his Furies. Herodotus tells us that, when Phrynichus 
 produced his tragedy on the fall of Miletus, they fined 
 him in a penalty of a thousand drachmas for torturing 
 their feelings by so pathetic an exhibition. They did 
 not regard him as a great artist, but merely as a man 
 who had given them pain. When they awoke from 
 the distressing illusion, they treated the author of it as 
 they would have treated a messenger who should have 
 brought them fatal and alarming tidings which turned 
 out to be false. In the same manner, a child screams 
 with terror at the sight of a person in an ugly mask. 
 He has perhaps seen the mask put on. But his imag- 
 ination is too strong for his reason ; and he entreats 
 that it may be taken off. 
 
 We should act in the same manner if the grief and 
 horror produced in us by works of the imagination 
 amounted to real torture. But in us these emotions 
 are comparatively languid. They rarely affect our ap- 
 petite or our sleep. They leave us sufficiently at ease 
 to trace them to their causes, and to estimate the pow- 
 ers which produce them. Our attention is speedily 
 diverted from the images which call forth our tears to 
 the art by which those images have been selected 
 and combined. We applaud the genius of the writer. 
 We. .applaud our own sagacity and sensibility; and 
 we_are comforted. 
 
 Yet, though we think that in the progress of nations 
 towards refinement the reasoning powers are improved 
 at the expense of the imagination, we acknowledge 
 that to this rule there are many apparent exceptions.
 
 82 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 We are not, however, quite satisfied that they are 
 more than apparent. Men reasoned better, for ex- 
 ample, in the time of Elizabeth than in the time of 
 Egbert ; and they also wrote better poetry. But we 
 must distinguish between poetry as a mental act, and 
 poetry as a species of composition. If we take it in 
 the latter sense, its excellence depends, not solely on 
 the vigor of the imagination, but partly also on the 
 instruments which the imagination employs. Within 
 certain limits, therefore, poetry may be improving 
 while the poetical faculty is decaying. The vividness 
 of the picture presented to the reader is not neces- 
 sarily proportioned to the vividness of the prototype 
 which exists in the mind of the writer. In the other 
 arts we see this clearly. Should a man, gifted by 
 nature with all the genius of Canova, attempt to carve 
 a statue without instruction as to the management of 
 his chisel, or attention to the anatomy of the human 
 body, he would produce something compared with 
 which the Highlander at the door of a snufT shop 
 would deserve admiration. If an uninitiated Raphael 
 were to attempt a painting, it would be a mere daub ; 
 indeed, the connoisseurs say that the early works of 
 Raphael are little better. Yet, who can attribute this 
 to want of imagination ? Who can doubt that the 
 youth of that great artist was passed amidst an ideal 
 world of beautiful and majestic forms ? Or, who will 
 attribute the difference which appears between his 
 first rude essays and his magnificent Transfiguration 
 to a change in the constitution of his mind? In 
 poetry, as in painting and sculpture, it is necessary 
 that the imitator should be well acquainted with that 
 which he undertakes to imitate, and expert in the 
 mechanical part of his art. Genius will not furnish
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 83 
 
 him with a vocabulary : it will not teach him what 
 word most exactly corresponds to his idea, and will 
 most fully convey it to others : it will not make him a 
 great descriptive poet, till he has looked with attention 
 on the face of nature ; or a great dramatist, till he 
 has felt and witnessed much of the influence of the 
 passions. Information and experience are, therefore, 
 necessary ; not for the purpose of strengthening the 
 imagination, which is never so strong as in people 
 incapable of reasoning — savages, children, madmen, 
 and dreamers ; but for the purpose of enabling the 
 artist to communicate his conceptions to others. 
 
 In a barbarous age the imagination exercises a des- 
 potic power. So strong is the perception of what is 
 unreal that it often overpowers all the passions of the 
 mind and all the sensations of the body. At first, 
 indeed, the phantasm remains undivulged, a hidden 
 treasure, a wordless poetry, an invisible painting, a 
 silent music, a dream of which the pains and pleas- 
 ures exist to the dreamer alone, a bitterness which the 
 heart only knoweth, a joy with which a stranger inter- 
 meddleth not. The machinery, by which ideas are to 
 be conveyed from one person to another, is as yet 
 rude and defective. Between mind and mind there is S ' v\ 
 a great gulf. The imitative arts do not exist, or are 
 In their lowest state. But the actions of men amply 
 prove that the faculty which gives birth to those arts 
 is morbidly active. It is not yet the inspiration of 
 poets and sculptors ; but it is the amusement of the day, 
 the terror of the night, the fertile source of wild super- 
 stitions. It turns the clouds into gigantic shapes, 
 and the winds into doleful voices. The belief which 
 springs from it is more absolute and undoubting than 
 any which can be derived from evidence. It resem-
 
 84 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 bles the faith which we repose in our own sensations. 
 Thus, the Arab, when covered with wounds, saw 
 nothing but the dark eyes and the green kerchief of 
 a beckoning Houri. The northern warrior laughed 
 in the pangs of death when he thought of the mead of 
 Valhalla. 
 
 The first works of the imagination are, as we have 
 said, poor and rude, not from the want of genius, but 
 from the want of materials. Phidias could have done 
 nothing with an old tree and a fish-bone, or Homer 
 with the language of New Holland. 
 
 Yet the effect of these early performances, imperfect 
 as they must necessarily be, is immense. All deficien- 
 cies are supplied by the susceptibility of those to whom 
 they are addressed. We all know what pleasure a 
 wooden doll, which may be bought for sixpence, will 
 afford to a little girl. She will require no other com- 
 pany. She will nurse it, dress it, and talk to it all 
 day. No grown-up man takes half so much delight 
 in one of the incomparable babies of Chantrey. In 
 the same manner, savages are more affected by the 
 rude compositions of their bards than nations more 
 advanced in civilization by the greatest masterpieces 
 of poetry. 
 
 In process of time, the instruments by which the 
 imagination works are brought to perfection. Men 
 have not more imagination than their rude ancestors. 
 We strongly suspect that they have much less. But 
 they produce better works of imagination. Thus, up 
 to a certain period, the diminution of the poetical 
 powers is far more than compensated by the improve- 
 ment of all the appliances and means of which those 
 powers stand in need. Then comes the short period' 
 of splendid and consummate excellence. And then,
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 85 
 
 from causes against which it is vain to struggle, poetry 
 begins to decline. The progress of language, which 
 was at first favorable, becomes fatal to it, and, instead 
 of compensating for the decay of the imagination, 
 accelerates that decay, and renders it more obvious. 
 When the adventurer in the Arabian tale anointed 
 one of his eyes with the contents of the magical box, 
 all the riches of the earth, however widely dispersed, 
 however sacredly concealed, became visible to him. 
 But, when he tried the experiment on both eyes, he 
 was struck with blindness. What the enchanted elixir 
 was to the sight of the body, language is to the sight 
 of the imagination. At first it calls up a world of 
 glorious illusions ; but, when it becomes too copious, 
 it altogether destroys the visual power. 
 
 As the development of the mind proceeds, symbols, 
 instead of being employed to convey images, are sub- 
 stituted for them. Civilized men think as they trade, 
 not in kind, but by means of a circulating medium. 
 In these circumstances, the sciences improve rapidly, 
 and criticism among the rest ; but poetry, in the high- 
 est sense of the word, disappears. Then comes the 
 dotage of the fine arts, a second childhood, as feeble 
 as the former, and far more hopeless. This is the 
 age of critical poetry, of poetry by courtesy, of poetry 
 to which the memory, the judgment, and the wit con- 
 tribute far more than the imagination. We readily 
 allow that many works of this description are excel- 
 lent ; we will not contend with those who think them 
 more valuable than the great poems of an earlier 
 period. We only maintain that they belong to differ- 
 ent species of composition, and are produced by a 
 different faculty. 
 
 It is some consolation to reflect that this critical
 
 86 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 school of poetry improves as the science of criticism 
 improves ; and that the science of criticism, like every 
 other science, is constantly tending towards perfec- 
 tion. As experiments are multiplied, principles are 
 better understood. 
 
 In some countries, in our own, for example, there 
 has been an interval between the downfall of the 
 creative school and the rise of the critical, a period 
 during which imagination has been in its decrepitude, 
 and taste in its infancy. Such a revolutionary inter- 
 regnum as this will be deformed by every species of 
 extravagance. 
 
 The first victory of good taste is over the bombast 
 and conceits which deform such times as these. But 
 criticism is still in a very imperfect state. What is 
 accidental is for a long time confounded with what is 
 essential. General theories are drawn from detached 
 facts. How many hours the action of a play may be 
 allowed to occupy, — how many similes an Epic Poet 
 may introduce into his first book, — whether a piece, 
 which is acknowledged to have a beginning and an 
 end, may not be without a middle, and other questions 
 as puerile as these, formerly occupied the attention of 
 men of letters in France, and even in this country. 
 Poets, in such circumstances as these, exhibit all the 
 narrowness and feebleness of the criticism by which 
 their manner has been fashioned. From outrageous 
 absurdity they are preserved indeed by their timidity. 
 But they perpetually sacrifice nature and reason to 
 arbitrary canons of taste. In their eagerness to avoid 
 the mala prohibita of a foolish code, they are perpetu- 
 ally rushing on the mala in se. Their great prede- 
 cessors, it is true, were as bad critics as themselves, 
 or perhaps worse ; but those predecessors, as we have
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 87 
 
 attempted to show, were inspired by a faculty inde- 
 pendent of criticism, and, therefore, wrote well while 
 they judged ill. 
 
 In time men begin to take more rational and com- 
 prehensive views of literature. The analysis of poetry, 
 which, as we have remarked, must at best be imper- 
 fect, approaches nearer and nearer to exactness. The 
 merits of the wonderful models of former times are 
 justly appreciated. The frigid productions of a later 
 age are rated at no more than their proper value. 
 Pleasing and ingenious imitations of the manner of 
 the great masters appear. Poetry has a partial re- 
 vival, a St. Martin's Summer, which, after a period 
 of dreariness and decay, agreeably reminds us of the 
 splendor of its June. A second harvest is gathered 
 in ; though, growing on a spent soil, it has not the 
 heart of the former. Thus, in the present age, Monti 1 
 has successfully imitated the style of Dante ; and 
 something of the Elizabethan inspiration has been 
 caught by several eminent countrymen of our own. 
 But never will Italy produce another Inferno, or Eng- 
 land another Hamlet. We look on the beauties of 
 the modern imitations with feelings similar to those 
 with which we see flowers disposed in vases, to orna- 
 ment the drawing-rooms of a capital. We doubtless 
 regard them with pleasure, with greater pleasure, per- 
 haps, because, in the midst of a place ungenial to 
 them, they remind us of the distant spots on which 
 they flourish in spontaneous exuberance. But we 
 miss the sap, the freshness, and the bloom. Or, if we 
 may borrow another illustration from Queen Sche- 
 herezade, we would compare the writers of this school 
 to the jewellers who were employed to complete the 
 unfinished window of the palace of Aladdin. What-
 
 88 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 ever skill or cost could do was done. Palace and 
 bazaar were ransacked for precious stones. Yet the 
 artists, with all their dexterity, with all their assiduity, 
 and with all their vast means, were unable to produce 
 anything comparable to the wonders which a spirit of 
 a higher order had wrought in a single night. 
 
 The history of every literature with which we are 
 acquainted confirms, we think, the principles which 
 we have laid down. In Greece we see the imagina- 
 tive school of poetry gradually fading into the critical. 
 ^Eschylus and Pindar were succeeded by Sophocles, 
 Sophocles by Euripides, Euripides by the Alexandrian 
 versifiers. Of these last, Theocritus alone has left 
 compositions which deserve to be read. The splen- 
 dor and grotesque fairyland of the Old Comedy, rich 
 with such gorgeous hues, peopled with such fantastic 
 shapes, and vocal alternately with the sweetest peals 
 of music and the loudest bursts of elvish laughter, 
 disappeared forever. The masterpieces of the New 
 Comedy are known to us by Latin translations of 
 extraordinary merit. From these translations, and 
 from the expressions of the ancient critics, it is clear 
 that the original compositions were distinguished by 
 grace and sweetness, that they sparkled with wit, 
 and abounded with pleasing sentiment ; but that the 
 creative power was gone. Julius Caesar called Ter^~1 
 ence a half Menander, — a sure proof that Alenander j 
 was not a quarter Aristophanes. 
 
 The literature of the Romans was merely a contin- 
 uation of the literature of the Greeks. The pupils 
 started from the point at which their masters had, 
 in the course of many generations, arrived. They 
 thus almost wholly missed the period of original in- 
 vention. The only Latin poets whose writings ex-
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 89 
 
 hibit much vigor of imagination are Lucretius and 
 Catullus. The Augustan age produced nothing 
 equal to their finer passages. 
 
 In France, that licensed jester, whose jingling cap 
 and motley coat concealed more genius than ever/// 
 mustered in the saloon of Ninon or of Madame Ge'of-'' I 
 frin, was succeeded by writers as decorous and as tire- 
 some as gentlemen-ushers. 
 
 The poetry of Italy and of Spain has undergone 
 the same change. But nowhere has the revolution 
 been more complete and violent than in England. 
 The same person, who, when a boy, had clapped his 
 thrilling hands at the first representation of the Tem- 
 pest might, without attaining to a marvellous lon- 
 gevity, have lived to read the earlier works of Prior 
 and Addison. The change, we believe, must, sooner 
 or later, have taken place. But its progress was ac- 
 celerated, and its character modified, by the politi- 
 cal occurrences of the times, and particularly by two 
 events, the closing of the theatres under the com- 
 monwealth, and the restoration of the House of 
 Stuart. 
 
 We have said that the critical and poetical faculties 
 are not only distinct, but almost incompatible. The 
 state of our literature during the reigns of Elizabeth 
 and James the First is a strong confirmation of this 
 remark. The greatest works of imagination that the 
 world has ever seen were produced at that period. 
 The national taste, in the mean time, was to the last J 
 degree detestable. Alliterations, puns, antithetical 
 forms of expression lavishly employed where no cor- 
 responding opposition existed between the thoughts 
 expressed, strained allegories, pedantic allusions, 
 everything, in short, quaint and affected, in matter
 
 90 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 and manner, made up what was then considered as 
 fine writing. The eloquence of the bar, the pulpit, 
 and the council-board was deformed by conceits 
 which would have disgraced the rhyming shepherds 
 of an Italian academy. The king quibbled on the 
 throne. We might, indeed, console ourselves by re- 
 flecting that his majesty was a fool. But the chan- 
 cellor quibbled in concert from the wool-sack ; and 
 the chancellor was Francis Bacon. It is needless to 
 mention Sidney and the whole tribe of Euphuists ; for 
 Shakspeare himself, the greatest poet that ever lived, 
 falls into the same fault whenever he means to be 
 particularly fine. While he abandons himself to the 
 impulse of his imagination, his compositions are not 
 only the sweetest and the most sublime, but also the 
 most faultless, that the world has ever seen. But, as 
 soon as his critical powers come into play, he sinks to 
 the level of Cowley ; or rather he does ill what Cow- 
 ley did well. All that is bad in his works is bad elab- 
 orately, and of malice aforethought. The only thing 
 wanting to make them perfect was, that he should 
 never have troubled himself with thinking whether 
 they were good or not. Like the angels in Milton, 
 he sinks '"with compulsion and laborious flight/ 1 
 His natural tendency is upwards. That he may soar, 
 it is only necessary that he should not struggle to fall. 
 He resembles an American Cacique who, possessing 
 in unmeasured abundance the metals which in pol- 
 ished societies are esteemed the most precious, was 
 utterly unconscious of their value, and gave up treas- 
 ures more valuable than the imperial crowns of other 
 countries, to secure some gaudy and far-fetched but 
 worthless bauble, a plated button, or a necklace of 
 colored glass.
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 9 1 
 
 We have attempted to show that, as knowledge is 
 extended and as the reason develops itself, the imi- 
 tative arts decay. We should, therefore, expect that 
 the corruption of poetry would commence in the edu- 
 cated classes of society. And this, in fact, is almost 
 'constantly the case. The few great works of imag- 
 ination which appear in a critical age are, almost 
 without exception, the works of uneducated men. 
 Thus, at a time when persons of quality translated 
 French romances, and when the universities cele- 
 brated royal deaths in verses about tritons and fauns, 
 a preaching tinker produced the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 And thus a ploughman startled a generation which 
 had thought Hayley and Beattie great poets, with the 
 adventures of Tarn CTShanter. Even in the latter 
 part of the reign of Elizabeth the fashionable poetry 
 had degenerated. It retained few vestiges of the 
 imagination of earlier times. It had not yet been 
 subjected to the rules of good taste. Affectation had 
 completely tainted madrigals and sonnets. The gro- 
 tesque conceits and the tuneless numbers of Donne 
 were, in the time of James, the favorite models of 
 composition at Whitehall and at the Temple. . But, 
 ihoygk-tlie literature of the Court was in its decay, 
 jthe literature of the people was in its perfection. 
 The Muses had taken sanctuary in the theatres, the 
 haunts of a class whose taste was not better than that 
 of the Right Honorables and singular good Lords 
 who admired metaphysical love-verses, but whose 
 imagination retained all its freshness and vigor; 
 whose censure and approbation might be erroneously 
 bestowed, but whose tears and laughter were never in 
 the wrong. The infection which had tainted lyric 
 and didactic poetry had but slightly and partially
 
 92 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 touched the drama. While the noble and the learned 
 were comparing eyes to burning-glasses, and tears to 
 terrestrial globes, coyness to an enthymeme, absence 
 to a pair of compasses, and an unrequited passion to 
 the fortieth remainder-man in an entail, Juliet leaning 
 from the balcony, and Miranda smiling over the 
 chess-board, sent home many spectators, as kind and 
 simple-hearted as the master and mistress of Fletch- 
 er's Ralpho, to cry themselves to sleep. 
 
 No species of fiction is so delightful to us as the 
 old English drama. Even its inferior productions 
 possess a charm not to be found in any other kind of 
 poetry. It is the most lucid mirror that ever was 
 held up to nature. The creations of the great drama- 
 tists of Athens produce the effect of magnificent 
 sculptures, conceived by a mighty imagination, pol- 
 ished with the utmost delicacy, embodying ideas of 
 ineffable majesty and beauty, but cold, pale, and rigid, 
 with no bloom on the cheek, and no speculation in 
 the eye. In all the draperies, the figures, and the 
 faces, in the lovers and the tyrants, the Bacchanals 
 and the Furies, there is the same marble chillness 
 and deadness. Most of the characters of the French 
 stage resemble the waxen gentlemen and ladies in 
 the window of a perfumer, rouged, curled, and bedi- 
 zened, but fixed in such stiff attitudes, and staring 
 with eyes expressive of such utter unmeaningness, 
 that they cannot produce an illusion for a single 
 moment. In the English plays alone is to be found 
 the warmth, the mellowness, and the reality of paint- 
 ing. We know the minds of the men and women, as 
 we know the faces of the men and women of Vandyke. 
 
 The excellence of these works is in a great measure 
 the result of two peculiarities, which the critics of the
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 93 
 
 French school consider as defects, — from the mix- 
 ture of tragedy and comedy, and from the length and 
 extent of the action. The former is necessary to 
 render the drama a just representation of a world in 
 which the laughers and the weepers are perpetually 
 jostling each other, — in which every event has its 
 serious and ludicrous side. The latter enables us to 
 form an intimate acquaintance with characters with 
 which we could not possibly become familiar during 
 the few hours to which the unities restrict the poet. 
 In this respect, the works of Shakspeare, in particu- 
 lar, are miracles of art. In a piece which may be 
 read aloud in three hours, we see a character gradu- 
 ally unfold all its recesses to us. We see it change 
 with the change of circumstances. The petulant 
 youth rises into the politic and warlike sovereign. 
 The profuse and courteous philanthropist sours into a 
 hater and scorner of his kind. The tyrant is altered, 
 by the chastening of affliction, into a pensive moral- 
 ist. The veteran general, distinguished by coolness, 
 sagacity, and self-command, sinks under a conflict 
 between love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as 
 the grave. The brave and loyal subject passes, step 
 by step, to the extremities of human depravity. We 
 trace his progress, from the first dawnings of unlawful 
 ambition to the cynical melancholy of his impenitent 
 remorse. Yet, in these pieces, there are no unnatural 
 transitions. Nothing is omitted : nothing is crowded- 
 Great as are the changes, narrow as is the compass 
 within which they are exhibited, they shock us as 
 little as the gradual alterations of those familiar faces 
 which we see every evening and every morning. The 
 magical skill of the poet resembles that of the Dervise 
 in the Spectator, who condensed all the events of
 
 94 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 seven years into the single moment during which the 
 king held his head under the water. 
 
 It is deserving of remark, that, at the time of 
 which we speak, the plays even of men not eminently 
 distinguished by genius, — such, for example, as Jon- 
 son, — were far superior to the best works of imagi- 
 nation in other departments. Therefore, though 
 we conceive that, from causes which we have already 
 investigated, our poetry must necessarily have 
 declined, we think that, unless its fate had been 
 accelerated by external attacks, it might have en- 
 joyed an euthanasia, that genius might have been 
 kept alive by the drama till its place could, in some 
 degree, be supplied by taste, — that there would have 
 been scarcely any interval between the age of sub- 
 lime invention and that of agreeable imitation. 
 The works of Shakspeare, which were not appreci- 
 ated with any degree of justice before the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, might then have been the 
 recognized standards of excellence during the latter 
 part of the seventeenth ; and he and the great Eliza- 
 bethan writers might have been almost immediately 
 succeeded by a generation of poets similar to those 
 who adorn our own times. 
 
 But the Puritans drove imagination from its last 
 asylum. They prohibited theatrical representations, 
 and stigmatized the whole race of dramatists as 
 enemies of morality and religion. Much that is 
 objectionable may be found in the writers whom they 
 reprobated ; but whether they took the best measures 
 for stopping the evil appears to us very doubtful, and 
 must, we think, have appeared doubtful to them- 
 selves, when, after the lapse of a few years, they 
 saw the unclean spirit whom they had cast out return
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 95 
 
 to his old haunts, with seven others fouler than 
 himself. 
 
 By the extinction of the drama, the fashionable 
 school of poetry — a school without truth of senti- 
 ment or harmony of versification, — without the 
 powers of an earlier, or the correctness of a later age 
 — was left to enjoy undisputed ascendency. A vi- 
 cious ingenuity, a morbid quickness to perceive resem- 
 blances and analogies between things apparently 
 heterogeneous, constituted almost its only claim to 
 admiration. Suckling was dead. Milton was ab- 
 sorbed in political and theological controversy. If 
 Waller differed from the Cowleian sect of writers, he 
 differed for the worse. He had as little poetry as 
 they, and much less wit ; nor is the languor of his 
 verses less offensive than the ruggedness of theirs. 
 In Dedham alone the faint dawn of a better manner 
 was discernible. 
 
 But, low as was the state of our poetry during the 
 civil war and the Protectorate, a still deeper fall was 
 at hand. Hitherto our literature had been idiomatic. 
 In mind as in situation we had been islanders. The 
 revolutions in our taste, like the revolutions in our 
 government, had been settled without the interfer- 
 ence of strangers. Had this state of things con- 
 tinued, the same just principles of reasoning which, 
 about this time, were applied with unprecedented 
 success to every part of philosophy would soon have 
 conducted our ancestors to a sounder code of criticism. 
 There were already strong signs of improvement. 
 Our prose had at length worked itself clear from those 
 quaint conceits which still deformed almost every 
 metrical composition. The parliamentary debates, 
 and the diplomatic correspondence of that eventful
 
 g6 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 period, had contributed much to this reform. In such 
 bustling times, it was absolutely necessary to speak 
 and write to the purpose. The absurdities of Puri- 
 tanism had, perhaps, done more. At the time when 
 that odious style, which deforms the writings of Hall 
 and of Lord Bacon, was almost universal, had 
 appeared that stupendous work, the English Bible, — 
 a book which, if everything else in our language 
 should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole 
 extent of its beauty and power. The respect which 
 the translators felt for the original prevented them 
 from adding any of the hideous decorations then in 
 fashion. The ground-work of the version, indeed, 
 was of an earlier age. The familiarity with which the 
 Puritans, on almost every occasion, used the Scrip- 
 tural phrases was no doubt very ridiculous ; but it 
 produced good effects. It was a cant ; but it drove 
 out a cant far more offensive. 
 
 The highest kind of poetry is, in a great measure, 
 independent of those circumstances which regulate 
 the style of composition in prose. But with that 
 inferior species of poetry which succeeds to it the 
 case is widely different. In a few years, the good 
 sense and good taste which had weeded out affecta- 
 tion from moral and political treatises would, in the 
 natural course of things, have effected a similar re- 
 form in the sonnet and the ode. The rigor of the 
 victorious sectaries had relaxed. A dominant relig- 
 ion is never ascetic. The Government connived at 
 theatrical representations. The influence of Shak- 
 speare was once more felt. But darker days were 
 approaching. A foreign yoke was to be imposed on 
 our literature. Charles, surrounded by the compan- 
 ions of his long exile, returned to govern a nation
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. g? 
 
 which ought never to have cast him out or never to 
 have received him back. Every year which he had 
 passed among strangers had rendered him more unfit 
 to rule his countrymen. In France he had seen the 
 refractory magistracy humbled, and royal prerogative, 
 though exercised by a foreign priest in the name of 
 a child, victorious over all opposition. This spectacle 
 naturally gratified a prince to whose family the oppo- 
 sition of parliaments had been so fatal. Politeness was 
 his solitary good quality. The insults which he had 
 suffered in Scotland had taught him to prize it. The 
 effeminacy and apathy of his disposition fitted him 
 to excel in it. The elegance and vivacity of the 
 French manners fascinated him. With the political 
 maxims and the social habits of his favorite people, 
 he adopted their taste in composition and, when 
 seated on the throne, soon rendered it fashionable 
 partly by direct patronage, but still more by that con- 
 temptible policy which, for a time, made England 
 the last of the nations, and raised Louis the Four- 
 teenth to a height of power and fame, such as no 
 French sovereign had ever before attained. 
 
 It was to please Charles that rhyme was first intro- 
 duced into our plays. Thus, a rising blow, which 
 would at any time have been mortal, was dealt to the 
 English Drama, then just recovering from its languish- 
 ing condition. Two detestable manners, the indige- 
 nous and the imported, were now in a state of alternate 
 conflict and amalgamation. The bombastic meanness 
 of the new style was blended with the ingenious 
 absurdity of the old ; and the mixture produced some- 
 thing which the world had never before seen, and 
 which, we hope, it will never see again, — something, 
 by the side of which the worst nonsense of all other
 
 98 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 ages appears to advantage, — something, which those 
 who have attempted to caricature it have, against 
 their will, been forced to flatter, — of which the trag- 
 edy of Bayes is a very favorable specimen. What 
 Lord Dorset observed to Edward Howard might 
 have been addressed to almost all his contempo- 
 
 " As skilful divers to the bottom fall 
 Swifter than those who cannot swim at all ; 
 So, in this way of writing without thinking, 
 Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking." 
 
 From this reproach some clever men of the world 
 must be excepted, and among them Dorset himself. 
 Though by no means great poets, or even good versi- 
 fiers, they always wrote with meaning, and sometimes 
 with wit. Nothing indeed more strongly shows to 
 what a miserable state literature had fallen, than the 
 immense superiority which the occasional rhymes, care- 
 lessly thrown on paper by men of this class, possess 
 over the elaborate productions of almost all the pro- 
 fessed authors. The reigning taste was so bad, that 
 the success of a writer was in inverse proportion to 
 his labor, and to his desire of excellence. An excep- 
 tion must be made for Butler, who had as much wit 
 and learning as Cowley, and who knew, what Cowley 
 never knew, how to use them. A great command of 
 good homely English distinguishes him still more 
 from the other writers of the time. As for Gondibert, 
 those may criticise it who can read it. Imagination 
 was extinct. Taste was depraved. Poetry, driven 
 from palaces, colleges, and theatres, had found an 
 asylum in the obscure dwelling where a Great Man, 
 born out of due season, in disgrace, penury, pain,
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 99 
 
 and blindness, still kept uncontaminated a character 
 and a genius worthy of a better age. 
 
 Everything about Milton is wonderful ; but nothing 
 is so wonderful as that, in an age so unfavorable to 
 poetry, he should have produced the greatest of 
 modern epic poems. We are not sure that this is 
 not in some degree to be attributed to his want of 
 sight. The imagination is notoriously most active 
 when the external world is shut out. In sleep its 
 illusions are perfect. They produce all the effect 
 of realities. In darkness its visions are always more 
 distinct than in the light. Every person who amuses 
 himself with what is called building castles in the air 
 must have experienced this. We know artists who, 
 before they attempt to draw a face from memory, 
 close their eyes, that they may recall a more perfect 
 image of the features and the expression. We are 
 therefore inclined to believe that the genius of Milton 
 may have been preserved from the influence of times 
 so unfavorable to it by his infirmity. Be this as it 
 may, his works at first enjoyed a very small share of 
 popularity. To be neglected by his contemporaries 
 was the penalty which he paid for surpassing them. 
 His great poem was not generally studied or admired 
 till writers far inferior to him had, by obsequiously 
 cringing to the public taste, acquired sufficient favor 
 to reform it. 
 
 Of these, Dryden was the most eminent. Amidst 
 the crowd of authors who, during the earlier years 
 of Charles the Second, courted notoriety by every 
 species of absurdity and affectation, he speedily 
 became conspicuous. No man exercised so much 
 influence on the age. The reason is obvious. On 
 no man did the age exercise so much influence. He
 
 IOO LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 was perhaps the greatest of those whom we have 
 designated as the critical poets ; and his literary 
 career exhibited on a reduced scale the whole history 
 of the school to which he belonged, — the rudeness 
 and extravagance of its infancy, — the propriety, the 
 grace, the dignified good sense, the temperate splen- 
 dor of its maturity. His imagination was torpid, till 
 it was awakened by his judgment. He began with 
 quaint parallels and empty mouthing. He gradually 
 acquired the energy of the satirist, the gravity of the 
 moralist, the rapture of the lyric poet. The revolution 
 through which English literature has been passing, from 
 the time of Cowley to that of Scott, may be seen in 
 miniature within the compass of his volumes. 
 
 His life divides itself into two parts. There is some 
 debatable ground on the common frontier ; but the 
 line may be drawn with tolerable accuracy. The 
 year 1678 is that on which we should be inclined to 
 fix as the date of a great change in his manner. 
 During the preceding period appeared some of his 
 courtly panegyrics, — his Annus Mirabilis and most 
 of his plays : indeed all his rhyming tragedies. To 
 the subsequent period belong his best dramas, — All 
 for Love, The Spanish Friar, and Sebastian, — his 
 satires, his translations, his didactic poems, his fables, 
 and his odes. 
 
 Of the small pieces which were presented to chan- 
 cellors and princes it would scarcely be fair to speak. 
 The greatest advantage which the Fine Arts derive 
 from the extension of knowledge is that the patron- 
 age of individuals becomes unnecessary. Some writers 
 still affect to regret the age of patronage. None but 
 bad writers have reason to regret it. It is always an 
 age of general ignorance. Where ten thousand readers
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. IOI 
 
 are eager for the appearance of a book, a small contri- 
 bution from each makes up a splendid remuneration 
 for the author. Where literature is a luxury, confined 
 to few, each of them must pay high. If the Empress 
 Catherine, for example, wanted an epic poem, she must 
 have wholly supported the poet ; — just as, in a remote 
 country village, a man who wants a muttonchop is 
 sometimes forced to take the whole sheep — a thing 
 which never happens where the demand is large. But 
 men who pay largely for the gratification of their taste 
 will expect to have it united with some gratification to 
 their vanity. Flattery is carried to a shameless extent ; 
 and the habit of flattery almost inevitably introduces 
 a false taste into composition. Its language is made 
 up of hyperbolical commonplaces, — offensive from 
 their triteness, — still more offensive from their extrav- 
 agance. In no school is the trick of overstepping the 
 modesty of nature so speedily acquired. The writer, 
 accustomed to find exaggeration acceptable and neces- 
 sary on one subject, uses it on all. It is not strange, 
 therefore, that the early panegyrical verses of Dryden 
 should be made up of meanness and bombast. They 
 abound with the conceits which his immediate prede- 
 cessors had brought into fashion. But his language 
 and his versification were already far superior to theirs. 
 The Annus Mirabilis shows great command of 
 expression, and a fine ear for heroic rhyme. Here 
 its merits end. Not only has it no claim to be called 
 poetry, but it seems to be the work of a man who could 
 never, by any possibility, write poetry. Its affected 
 similes are the best part of it. Gaudy weeds present 
 a more encouraging spectacle than utter barrenness. 
 There is scarcely a single stanza in this long work tc 
 which the imagination seems to have contributed any-
 
 102 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 thing. It is produced, not by creation, but by con- 
 struction. It is made up, not of pictures, but of 
 inferences. We will give a single instance, and 
 certainly a favorable instance, — a quatrain which 
 Johnson has praised. Dryden is describing the 
 sea-fight with the Dutch : 
 
 " Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball ; 
 And now their odors armed against them fly. 
 Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall, 
 And some by aromatic splinters die." 
 
 The poet should place his readers, as nearly as possi- 
 ble, in the situation of the sufferers or the spectators. 
 His narration ought to produce feelings similar to 
 those which would be excited by the event itself. Is 
 this the case here ? Who, in a sea-fight, ever thought 
 of the price of the china which beats out the brains 
 of a sailor ; or of the odor of the splinter which 
 shatters his leg ? It is not by an act of the imagina- 
 tion, at once calling up the scene before the interior 
 eye, but by painful meditation, — by turning the sub- 
 ject round and round, — by tracing out facts into 
 remote consequences, — that these incongruous topics 
 are introduced into the description. Homer, it is true, 
 perpetually uses epithets which are not peculiarly 
 appropriate. Achilles is the swift-footed, when he 
 is sitting still. Ulysses is the much-enduring, when 
 he has nothing to endure. Every spear casts a long 
 shadow, every ox has crooked horns, and every woman 
 a high bosom, though these particulars may be quite 
 beside the purpose. In our old ballads a similar prac- 
 tice prevails. The gold is always red, and the ladies 
 always gay, though nothing whatever may depend on 
 the hue of the gold, or the temper of the ladies. But
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. IO3 
 
 these adjectives are mere customary additions. They 
 merge in the substantives to which they are attached. 
 If they at all color the idea, it is with a tinge so slight 
 as in no respect to alter the general effect. In the 
 passage which we have quoted from Dryden the case 
 is very different. Preciously and aromatic divert our 
 whole attention to themselves, and dissolve the image 
 of the battle in a moment. The whole poem reminds 
 us of Lucan, and of the worst parts of Lucan, — the 
 sea-fight in the Bay of Marseilles, for example. The 
 description of the two fleets during the night is per- 
 haps the only passage which ought to be exempted 
 from this censure. If it was from the Annus Mirab- 
 ilis that Milton formed his opinion, when he pro- 
 nounced Dryden a good rhymer but no poet, he 
 certainly judged correctly. But Dryden was, as we 
 have said, one of those writers in whom the period of 
 imagination does not precede, but follow, the period 
 of observation and reflection. 
 
 His plays, his rhyming plays in particular, are 
 admirable subjects for those who wish to study the 
 morbid anatomy of the drama. He was utterly desti- 
 tute of the power of exhibiting real human beings. 
 Even in the far inferior talent of composing characters 
 out of those elements into which the imperfect pro- 
 cess of our reason can resolve them, he was very defi- 
 cient. His men are not even good personifications ; 
 they are not well-assorted assemblages of qualities. 
 Now and then, indeed, he seizes a very coarse and 
 marked distinction, and gives us, not a likeness, but 
 a strong caricature, in which a single peculiarity is 
 protruded, and everything else neglected ; like the 
 Marquis of Granby at an inn-door, whom we know by 
 nothing but his baldness ; or Wilkes, who is Wilkes
 
 104 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 only in his squint. These are the best specimens of 
 his skill. For most of his pictures seem, like Turkey 
 carpets, to have been expressly designed not to resem- 
 ble anything in the heavens above, in the earth be- 
 neath, or in the waters under the earth. 
 
 The latter manner he practises most frequently in 
 his tragedies, the former in his comedies. The comic 
 characters are, without mixture, loathsome and despi- 
 cable. The men of Etherege and Vanbrugh are bad 
 enough. Those of Smollett are perhaps worse. But 
 they do not approach to the Seladons, the Wildbloods, 
 the Woodalls, and the Rhodophils of Dryden. The 
 vices of these last are set off by a certain fierce, hard 
 impudence, to which we know nothing comparable. 
 Their love is the appetite of beasts ; their friendship 
 the confederacy of knaves. The ladies seem to have 
 been expressly created to form helps meet for such 
 gentlemen. In deceiving and insulting their old 
 fathers they do not perhaps exceed the license which, 
 by immemorial prescription, has been allowed to 
 heroines. But they also cheat at cards, rob strong 
 boxes, put up their favors to auction, betray their 
 friends, abuse their rivals in the style of Billingsgate, 
 and invite their lovers in the language of the Piazza. 
 These, it must be remembered, are not the valets and 
 waiting-women, the Mascarilles and Nerines, but the 
 recognized heroes and heroines, who appear as the 
 representatives of good society, and who, at the end 
 of the fifth act, marry and live very happily ever after. 
 The sensuality, baseness, and malice of their natures 
 is unredeemed by any quality of a different descrip- 
 tion, — by any touch of kindness, — or even by any 
 honest burst of hearty hatred and revenge. We are 
 in a world where there is no humanity, no veracity, no
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 105 
 
 sense of shame, — a world for which any good-natured 
 man would gladly take in exchange the society of 
 Milton's devils. But, as soon as we enter the regions 
 of Tragedy, we find a great change. There is no lack 
 of fine sentiment there. Metastasio is surpassed in 
 his own department. Scuderi is out-scuderied. We 
 are introduced to people whose proceedings we can 
 trace to no motive, — of whose feelings we can form 
 no more idea than of a sixth sense. We have left a 
 race of creatures, whose love is as delicate and affec- 
 tionate as the passion which an alderman feels for a 
 turtle. We find ourselves among beings whose love 
 is a purely disinterested emotion, — a loyalty extend- 
 ing to passive obedience, — a religion, like that of the 
 OujetjstSj_unsupported by any sanction of hope or 
 tear. We see nothing but despotism without power, 
 and sacrifices without compensation. 
 
 We will give a few instances. In Aurengzebe, 
 Arimant, governor of Agra, falls in love with his 
 prisoner Indamora. She rejects his suit with scorn ; 
 but assures him that she shall make great use of her 
 power over him. He threatens to be angry. She 
 answers, very coolly : 
 
 " Do not ; your anger, like your love, is vain : 
 Whene'er I please, you must be pleased again. 
 Knowing what power I have your will to bend, 
 I'll use it; for I need just such a friend." 
 
 This is no idle menace. She soon brings a letter 
 addressed to his rival, — orders him to read it, — asks 
 him whether he thinks it sufficiently tender, — and 
 finally commands him to carry it himself. Such tyr- 
 anny as this, it may be thought, would justify resist- 
 ance. Arimant does indeed venture to remonstrate :
 
 106 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 " This fatal paper rather let me tear, 
 Than, like Bellerophon, my sentence bear." 
 
 The answer of the lady is incomparable : 
 
 " You may ; but 'twill not be your best advice ; 
 'Twill only give me pains of writing twice. 
 You know you must obey me, soon or late. 
 Why should you vainly struggle with your fate ? " 
 
 Poor Arimant seems to be of the same opinion. He 
 mutters something about fate and free-will, and walks 
 off with the billet-doux. 
 
 In the Indian Emperor, Montezuma presents Alme- 
 ria with a garland as a token of his love, and offers to 
 make her his queen. She replies : 
 
 " I take this garland, not as given by you; 
 But as my merit's and my beauty's due ; 
 As for the crown which you, my slave, possess, 
 To share it with you would but make me less." 
 
 In return for such proofs of tenderness as these, her 
 admirer consents to murder his two sons and a benefac- 
 tor to whom he feels the warmest gratitude. Lyndar- 
 axa, in the Conquest of Granada, assumes the same 
 lofty tone with Abdelmelech. He complains that she 
 smiles upon his rival : 
 
 " Lynd. And when did I my power so far resign, 
 
 That you should regulate each look of mine ? 
 Abdel. Then, when you gave your love, you gave that power. 
 Lynd. 'Twas during pleasure — 'tis revoked this hour. 
 Abdel. I'll hate you, and this visit is my last. 
 Lynd. Do, if you can : you know I hold you fast." 
 
 That these passages violate all historical propriety, 
 that sentiments to which nothing similar was ever even 
 affected except by the cavaliers of Europe, are trans- 
 ferred to Mexico and Agra, is a light accusation. We
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. IO/ 
 
 have no objection to a conventional world, an Illyrian 
 puritan, or a Bohemian seaport. While the faces are 
 good, we care little about the background. Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds says that the curtains and hangings in 
 a historical painting ought to be, not velvet or cot- 
 ton, but merely drapery. The same principle should 
 be applied to poetry and romance. The truth of 
 character is the first object ; the truth of place and 
 time is to be considered only in the second place. 
 Puff himself could tell the actor to turn out his toes, 
 and remind him that Keeper Hatton was a great 
 dancer. We wish that, in our time, a writer of a very 
 different order from Puff had not too often forgotten 
 human nature in the niceties of upholstery, millinery, 
 and cookery. 
 
 We blame Dryden, not because the persons of his 
 dramas are not Moors or Americans, but because they 
 are not men and women ; not because love, such as 
 he represents it, could not exist in a harem or in a 
 wigwam, but because it could not exist anywhere. As 
 is the love of his heroes such are all their other 
 emotions. All their qualities, their courage, their 
 generosity, their pride, are on the same colossal scale. 
 Justice and prudence are virtues which can exist only 
 in a moderate degree, and which change their nature 
 and their name if pushed to excess. Of justice and 
 prudence, therefore, Dryden leaves his favorites des- 
 titute. He did not care to give them what he could 
 not give without measure. The tyrants and ruffians 
 are merely the heroes altered by a few touches, similar 
 to those which transformed the honest face of Sir 
 Roger de Coverley into the Saracen's head. Through 
 the grin and frown the original features are still 
 perceptible.
 
 \ 08 LZTEKAX Y ESSA VS. 
 
 It is in the tragi-comedies that these absurdities 
 strike us most. The two races of men, or rather the 
 angels and the baboons, are there presented to us 
 together. We meet in one scene with nothing but 
 gross, selfish, unblushing, lying libertines of both 
 sexes, who, as a punishment, we suppose, for their 
 depravity, are condemned to talk nothing but prose. 
 But, as soon as we meet with people who speak in 
 verse, we know that we are in society which would 
 have enraptured the Cathos and Madelon of Moliere, 
 in society for which Oroondates would have too 
 little of the lover, and Clelia too much of the 
 coquette. 
 
 As Dryden was unable to render his plays interest- 
 ing by means of that which is the peculiar and appro- 
 priate excellence of the drama, it was necessary that 
 he should find some substitute for it. In his come- 
 dies he supplied its place, sometimes by wit, but more 
 frequently by intrigue, by disguises, mistakes of per- 
 sons, dialogues at cross purposes, hairbreadth escapes, 
 perplexing concealments, and surprising disclosures. 
 He thus succeeded at least in making these pieces 
 very amusing. 
 
 In his tragedies he trusted, and not altogether with- 
 out reason, to his diction and his versification. It 
 was on this account, in all probability, that he so 
 eagerly adopted, and so reluctantly abandoned, the 
 practice of rhyming in his plays. What is unnatural 
 appears less unnatural in that species of verse than in 
 lines which approach more nearly to common conver- 
 sation ; and in the management of the heroic couplet 
 Dryden has never been equalled. It is unnecessary 
 to urge any arguments against a fashion now univer- 
 sally condemned. But it is worthy of observation, that, 

 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 109 
 
 though Dryden was deficient in that talent which 
 blank verse exhibits to the greatest advantage, and 
 was certainly the best writer of heroic rhyme in our 
 language, yet the plays which have, from the time of 
 their first appearance, been considered as his best, 
 are in blank verse. No experiment can be more 
 decisive. 
 
 It must be allowed that the worst even of the 
 rhyming tragedies contains good description and 
 magnificent rhetoric. But, even when we forget that 
 they are plays, and, passing by their dramatic impro- 
 prieties, consider them with reference to the language, 
 we are perpetually disgusted by passages which it is 
 difficult to conceive how any author could have writ- 
 ten, or any audience have tolerated, rants in which 
 the raving violence of the manner forms a strange 
 contrast with the abject tameness of the thought. The 
 author laid the whole fault on the audience, and 
 declared that, when he wrote them, he considered 
 them bad enough to please. This defence is un- 
 worthy of a man of genius, and, after all, is no defence. 
 Otway pleased without rant ; and so might Dryden 
 have done, if he had possessed the powers of Otway. 
 The fact is, that he had a tendency to bombast, 
 which, though subsequently corrected by time and 
 thought, was never wholly removed, and which showed 
 itself in performances not designed to please the rude 
 mob of the theatre. 
 
 Some indulgent critics have represented this fail- 
 ing as an indication of genius, as the profusion of 
 unlimited wealth, the wantonness of exuberant vigor. 
 To us it seems to bear a nearer affinity to the tawdri- 
 ness of poverty, or the spasms and convulsions of 
 weakness. Dryden surely had not more imagination
 
 110 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 than Homer. Dante, or Milton, who never fall into this 
 vice. The swelling diction of /Eschylus and Isaiah re- 
 sembles that of Almanzor and Maximin no more than 
 the tumidity of a muscle resembles the tumidity of a 
 boil. The former is symptomatic of health and strength, 
 the latter of debility and disease. If ever Shakspeare 
 rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him 
 along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along, — 
 when his mind is for a moment jaded, — when, as was 
 said of Euripides, he resembles a lion, who exxites his 
 own fury by lashing himself with his tail. What hap- 
 pened to Shakspeare from the occasional suspension of 
 his powers happened to Dryden from constant impo- 
 tence. He, like his confederate Lee, had judgment 
 enough to appreciate the great poets of the preceding 
 age, but not judgment enough to shun competition 
 with them. He felt and admired their wild and dar- 
 ing sublimity. That it belonged to another age than 
 that in which he lived and required other talents than 
 those which he possessed, that, in aspiring to emulate 
 it, he was wasting, in a hopeless attempt, powers 
 which might render him pre-eminent in a different 
 career, was a lesson which he did not learn till late. 
 As those knavish enthusiasts, the French prophets, 
 courted inspiration by mimicking the writhings, swoon- 
 ings, and gaspings which they considered as its symp- 
 toms, he attempted, by affecting fits of poetical fury, 
 to bring on a real paroxysm ; and, like them, he got 
 nothing but his distortions for his pains. 
 
 Horace very happily compares those who, in his 
 time, imitated Pindar to the youth who attempted to 
 fly to heaven on waxen wings, and who experienced 
 so fatal and ignominious a fall. His own admi- 
 rable good sense preserved him from this error, and
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. Ill 
 
 taught him to cultivate a style in which excellence was 
 within his reach. Dryden had not the same self- 
 knowledge. He saw that the greatest poets were 
 never so successful as when they rushed beyond the 
 ordinary bounds, and that some inexplicable good for- 
 tune preserved them from tripping even when they 
 staggered on the brink of nonsense. He did not per- 
 ceive that they were guided and sustained by a power 
 denied to himself. They wrote from the dictation of 
 the imagination ; and they found a response in the 
 imaginations of others. He, on the contrary, sat 
 down to work himself, by reflection and argument, 
 into a deliberate wildness, a rational frenzy. 
 
 In looking over the admirable designs which accom- 
 pany the Faust, we have always been much struck by 
 one which represents the wizard and the tempter rid- 
 ing at full speed. The daemon sits on his furious 
 horse as heedlessly as if he were reposing on a chair. 
 That he should keep his saddle in such a posture, 
 would seem impossible to any who did not know that 
 he was secure in the privileges of a superhuman nature. 
 The attitude of Faust, on the contrary, is the perfec- 
 tion of horsemanship. Poets of the first order might 
 safely write as desperately as Mephistophiles rode. 
 But Dryden, though admitted to communion with 
 higher spirits, though armed with a portion of their 
 power, and intrusted with some of their secrets, was 
 of another race. What they might securely venture 
 to do, it was madness in him to attempt. It was 
 necessary that taste and critical science should sup- 
 ply his deficiencies. 
 
 We will give a few examples. Nothing can be 
 finer than the description of Hector at the Grecian 
 wall :
 
 1 1 2 LITERAR Y ESS A YS. 
 
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 Nu/crl 007; d.7d\avTos virwiria ■ XdfXTre 8e x a ^ K V 
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 Uon]Tas kakxvvro 7ru\as ' Aavaioi 8' i(p6(3Tjdev 
 N?)as d^d y\acpvpds ' tifiaSos 8' dXtacrros irvx^V- 
 
 What daring expressions! Yet how significant! 
 How picturesque ! Hector seems to rise up in his 
 strength and fury. The gloom of night in his 
 frown, — the fire burning in his eyes, — the javelins 
 and the blazing armor, — the mighty rush through the 
 gates and down the battlements, — the trampling and 
 the infinite roar of the multitude, — everything is with 
 us ; everything is real. 
 
 Dryden has described a very similar event in Maxi- 
 min, and has done his best to be sublime, as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " There with a forest of their darts he strove, 
 And stood like Capaneus defying Jove; 
 With his broad sword the boldest beating down, 
 Till Fate grew pale, lest he should win the town, 
 And turned the iron leaves of its dark book 
 To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook." 
 
 How exquisite is the imagery of the fairy songs in 
 the Tempest and in the Midsummer Night's Dream ; 
 Ariel riding through the twilight on the bat, or sucking 
 in the bells of flowers with the bee ; or the little bower- 
 women of Titania, driving the spiders from the couch 
 of the Queen ! Dryden truly said, that 
 
 " Shakspeare's magic could not copied be : 
 Within that circle none durst walk but he."
 
 JOHN DR YD EN. 1 1 3 
 
 It would have been well if he had not himself dared 
 to step within the enchanted line, and drawn on him- 
 self a fate similar to that which, according to the old 
 superstition, punished such presumptuous interference. 
 The following lines are parts of the song of his 
 fairies : 
 
 " Merry, merry, merry, we sail from the East, 
 Half-tippled at a rainbow feast. 
 In the bright moonshine, while winds whistle loud, 
 Tivy, tivy, tivy, we mount and we fly, 
 All racking along in a downy white cloud; 
 And lest our leap from the sky prove too far, 
 We slide on the back of a new falling star, 
 And drop from above 
 In a jelly of love." 
 
 These are very favorable instances. Those who wish 
 for a bad one may read the dying speeches of Maxi- 
 min, and may compare them with the last scenes of 
 Othello and Lear. 
 
 If Dryden had died before the expiration of the 
 first of the periods into which we have divided his 
 literary life, he would have left a reputation, at best, 
 little higher than that of Lee or Davenant. He would 
 have been known only to men of letters ; and by them 
 he would have been mentioned as a writer who threw 
 away, on subjects which he was incompetent to treat, 
 powers which, judiciously employed, might have raised 
 him to eminence ; whose diction and whose numbers 
 had sometimes very high merit ; but all whose works 
 were blemished by a false taste, and by errors of gross 
 negligence. A few of his prologues and epilogues 
 might perhaps still have been remembered and quoted. 
 In these little pieces he early showed all the powers 
 which afterwards rendered him the greatest of modern
 
 114 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 satirists. But, during the latter part of his life, he 
 gradually abandoned the drama. His plays appeared 
 at longer intervals. He renounced rhyme in tragedy. 
 His language became less turgid — his characters less 
 exaggerated. He did not indeed produce correct 
 representations of human nature ; but he ceased to 
 daub such monstrous chimeras as those which abound 
 in his earlier pieces. Here and there passages occur 
 worthy of the best ages of the British stage. The 
 style which the drama requires changes with every 
 change of character and situation. He who can vary 
 his manner to suit the variation is the great drama- 
 tist : but he who excels in one manner only will, when 
 ' /*riat manner happens to be appropriate, appear to be 
 \* a great dramatist: as the hands of a watch which 
 */ does not go point right once in the twelve hours. 
 y Sometimes there is a scene of solemn debate. This 
 
 a mere rhetorician may write as well as the greatest 
 tragedian that ever lived. We confess that to us the 
 speech of Sempronius in Cato seems very nearly as 
 good as ShaTcs^e^fe^cotrW^Have made it. But when 
 the senate breaks up, and we find that the lovers and 
 their mistresses, the hero, the villain, and the deputy- 
 villain, all continue to* harangue in the same style, we 
 perceive the difference between a man who can write 
 a play and a man who can write a speech. In the 
 same manner, wit, a talent for description, or a talent 
 for narration, may, for a time, pass for dramatic genius. 
 Dryden was an incomparable reasoner in verse. He 
 was conscious of his power ; he was proud of it ; and 
 the authors of the Rehearsal justly charged him with 
 abusing it. His warriors and princesses are fond of 
 discussing points of amorous casuistry, such as would 
 have delighted a Parliament of Love. They fre-
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. I I 5 
 
 quently go still deeper, and speculate on philosophical 
 necessity and the origin of evil. 
 
 There were, however, some occasions which abso- 
 lutely required this peculiar talent. Then Dryden 
 was indeed at home. All his best scenes are of this 
 description. They are all between men ; for the 
 heroes of Dryden, like many other gentlemen, can 
 never talk sense when ladies are in company. They 
 are all intended to exhibit the empire of reason 
 over violent passion. We have two interlocutors, 
 the one eager and impassioned, the other high, cool, 
 and judicious. The composed and rational character 
 gradually acquires the ascendency. His fierce com- 
 panion is first inflamed to rage by his reproaches, then 
 overawed by his equanimity, convinced by his argu- 
 ments, and soothed by his persuasions. This is the 
 case in the scene between Hector and Troilus, in that 
 between Antony and Ventidius, and in that between 
 Sebastian and Dorax. Nothing of the same kind 
 in Shakspeare is equal to them, except the quarrel 
 between Brutus and Cassius, which is worth them all 
 three. 
 
 Some years before his death, Dryden altogether 
 ceased to write for the stage. He had turned his 
 powers in a new direction, with success the most 
 splendid and decisive. His taste had gradually 
 awakened his creative faculties. The first rank in 
 poetry was beyond his reach ; but he challenged and 
 secured the most honorable place in the second. His 
 imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It 
 enabled him to run, though not to soar. When he 
 attempted the highest flights, he became ridiculous; 
 but, while he remained in a lower region, he out- 
 stripped all competitors.
 
 1 16 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 All his natural and all his acquired powers fitted him 
 to found a good critical school of poetry. Indeed, he 
 carried his reforms too far for his age. After his death, 
 our literature retrograded : and a century was neces- 
 sary to bring it back to the point at which he left it. 
 The general soundness and healthfullness of his mental 
 constitution, his information of vast superficies though 
 of small volume, his wit scarcely inferior to that of the 
 most distinguished followers of Donne, his eloquence, 
 grave, deliberate, and commanding, could not save 
 him from disgraceful failure as a rival of Shakspeare, 
 but raised him far above the level of Boileau. His 
 I command of language was immense. With him died 
 the secret of the old poetical diction of England, — 
 the art of producing rich effects by familiar words. In 
 the following century, it was as completely lost as the 
 Gothic method of painting glass, and was but poorly 
 supplied by the laborious and tessellated imitations 
 of Mason and Gray. On the other hand, he was 
 the first writer under whose skilful management the 
 scientific vocabulary fell into natural and pleasing 
 verse. In this department, he succeeded as completely 
 as his contemporary Gibbons succeeded in the similar 
 enterprise of carving the most delicate flowers from 
 heart of oak. The toughest and most knotty parts 
 of language became ductile at his touch. His versi- 
 fication in the same manner, while it gave the first 
 model of that neatness and precision which the fol- 
 lowing generation esteemed so highly, exhibited, at 
 the same time, the last examples of nobleness, free- 
 dom, variety of pause, and cadence. His tragedies in 
 rhyme, however worthless in themselves, had at least 
 served the purpose of nonsense-verses ; they had 
 taught him all the arts of melody which the heroic
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 1 17 
 
 couplet admits. For bombast, his prevailing vice, his 
 new subjects gave little opportunity ; his better taste 
 gradually discarded it. 
 
 He possessed, as we have said, in a pre-eminent 
 degree, the power of reasoning in verse ; and this 
 power was now peculiarly useful to him. His logic 
 is by no means uniformly sound. On points of criti- 
 cism, he always reasons ingeniously ; and, when he 
 is disposed to be honest, correctly. But the theo- 
 logical and political questions which he undertook to 
 treat in verse were precisely those which he under- 
 stood least. His arguments, therefore, are often 
 worthless. But the manner in which they are stated 
 is beyond all praise. The style is transparent. The 
 topics follow each other in the happiest order. The 
 objections are drawn up in such a manner that 
 the whole fire of the reply may be brought to bear 
 on them. The circumlocutions which are substituted 
 for technical phrases are clear, neat, and exact. The 
 illustrations at once adorn and elucidate the reason- 
 ing. The sparkling epigrams of Cowley, and the 
 simple garrulity of the burlesque poets of Italy, are 
 alternately employed, in the happiest manner, to give 
 effect to what is obvious, or clearness to what is 
 obscure. 
 
 His literary creed was catholic, even to latitudina- 
 rianism ; not from any want of acuteness, but from 
 a disposition to be easily satisfied. He was quick to 
 discern the smallest glimpse of merit ; he was indul- 
 gent even to gross improprieties, when accompanied 
 by any redeeming talent. When he said a severe 
 thing, it was to serve a temporary purpose, — to sup- 
 port an argument or to tease a rival. Never was so 
 able a critic so free from fastidiousness. He loved
 
 7 
 
 I 1 8 LITER AR Y ESSA YS. 
 
 the old poets, especially Shakspeare. He admireci 
 the ingenuity which Donne and Cowley had so wildly 
 abused. He did justice, amidst the general silence, 
 to the memory of Milton. He praised to the skies 
 the school-boy lines of Addison. Always looking on 
 the fair side of every object, he admired extravagance 
 on account of the invention which he supposed it to 
 indicate ; he excused affectation in favor of wit ; he 
 tolerated even tameness for the sake of the correct- 
 ness which was its concomitant. 
 
 It was probably to this turn of mind, rather than 
 to the more disgraceful causes which Johnson has 
 assigned, that we are to attribute the exaggeration 
 which disfigures the panegyrics of Dryden. No 
 writer, it must be owned, has carried the flattery of 
 dedication to a greater length. But this was not, we 
 suspect, merely interested servility : it was the over- 
 flowing of a mind singularly disposed to admiration, 
 — of a mind which diminished vices, and magnified 
 virtues and obligations. The most adulatory of his 
 addresses is that in which he dedicates the State of 
 Innocence to Mary of Modena. Johnson thinks it 
 strange that any man should use such language with- 
 out self-detestation. But he has not remarked that 
 to the very same work is prefixed an eulogium on 
 Milton, which certainly could not have been accept- 
 able at the court of Charles the Second . Many years 
 later, when Whig principles were in a great measure 
 triumphant, Sprat refused to admit a monument of 
 John Philips into Westminster Abbey — because, in 
 the epitaph, the name of Milton incidentally occurred. 
 The walls of his church, he declared, should not be 
 polluted by the name of a republican ! Dryden was 
 attached, both by principle and interest, to the Court.
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 1 1 
 
 But nothing could deaden his sensibility to excel- 
 lence. We are unwilling to accuse him severely, 
 because the same disposition, which prompted him 
 to pay so generous a tribute to the memory of a poet 
 whom his patron detested, hurried him into extrava- 
 gance when he described a princess distinguished by 
 the splendor of her beauty and the graciousness of 
 her manners. 
 
 This is an amiable temper ; but it is not the temper 
 of great men. Where there is elevation of character 
 there will be fastidiousness. It is only in novels and 
 on tombstones that we meet with people who are 
 indulgent to the faults of others, and unmerciful to 
 their own ; and Dryden, at all events, was not one of 
 these paragons. His charity was extended most 
 liberally to others ; but it certainly began at home. 
 In taste he was by no means deficient. His critical 
 works are, beyond all comparison, superior to any 
 which had, till then, appeared in England. They 
 were generally intended as apologies for his own poems, 
 rather than as expositions of general principles ; he, 
 therefore, often attempts to deceive the reader by 
 sophistry which could scarcely have deceived himself. 
 His dicta are the dicta, not of a judge, but of an 
 advocate — often of an advocate in an unsound 
 cause. Yet, in the very act of misrepresenting the 
 laws of composition, he shows how well he under- 
 stands them. But he was perpetually acting against 
 his better knowledge. His sins were sins against 
 light. He trusted that what was bad would be par- 
 doned for the sake of what was good. What was 
 good he took pains to make better. He was not like 
 most persons who rise to eminence, dissatisfied even 
 with his best productions. He had set up no un-
 
 120 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 attainable standard of perfection, the contemplation 
 of which might at once improve and mortify him. 
 His path was not attended by an unapproachable 
 mirage of excellence, forever receding, and forever 
 pursued. He was not disgusted by the negligence 
 of others ; and he extended the same toleration to 
 himself. His mind was of a slovenly character, — 
 fond of splendor, but indifferent to neatness. Hence 
 most of his writings exhibit the sluttish magnificence 
 of a Russian noble, all vermin and diamonds, dirty 
 linen and inestimable sables. Those faults which 
 spring from affectation, time and thought in a great 
 measure removed from his poems. But his careless- 
 ness he retained to the last. If towards the close of 
 his life he less frequently went wrong from negligence, 
 it was only because long habits of composition ren- 
 dered it more easy to go right. In his best pieces we 
 find false rhymes, — triplets, in which the third line 
 appears to be a mere intruder, and, while it breaks 
 the music, adds nothing to the meaning, — gigantic 
 Alexandrines of fourteen and sixteen syllables, and 
 truncated verses for which he never troubled himself 
 to find a termination or a partner. 
 
 Such are the beauties and the faults which may be 
 found in profusion throughout the later works of 
 Dryden. A more just and complete estimate of his 
 natural and acquired powers — of the merits of his 
 style and of its blemishes — may be formed from the 
 Hind and Panther than from any of his other writ- 
 ings. As a didactic poem, it is far superior to the 
 Religio Laici. The satirical parts, particularly the 
 character of Burnet, are scarcely inferior to the best 
 passages in Absalom and Achitophel. There are, 
 moreover, occasional touches of a tenderness which
 
 JOHN DRYDEN 121 
 
 affects us more, because it is decent, rational, and 
 manly, and reminds us of the best scenes in his trage- 
 dies. His versification sinks and swells in happy 
 unison with the subject ; and his wealth of language 
 seems to be unlimited. Yet, the carelessness with 
 which he has constructed his plot, and the innumera- 
 ble inconsistencies into which he is every moment 
 falling, detract much from the pleasure which such 
 various excellence affords. 
 
 In Absalom and Achitophel he hit upon a new and 
 rich vein which he worked with signal success. The 
 ancient satirists were the subjects of a despotic gov- 
 ernment. They were compelled to abstain from politi- 
 cal topics, and to confine their attention to the frailties 
 of private life. They might, indeed, sometimes ven- 
 ture to take liberties with public men, 
 
 " Quorum Flaminia tegitur cinis atque Latina." 
 
 Thus Juvenal immortalized the obsequious senators 
 who met to decide the fate of the memorable turbot. 
 His fourth satire frequently reminds us of the great 
 political poem of Dryden ; but it was not written till 
 Domitian had fallen : and it wants something of the 
 peculiar flavor which belongs to contemporary invec- 
 tive alone. His anger has stood so long that, though 
 the body is not impaired, the effervescence, the first 
 cream, is gone. Boileau lay under similar restraints ; 
 and, if he had been free from all restraint, would have 
 been no match for our countryman. 
 
 The advantages which Dryden derived from the 
 nature of his subject he improved to the very utmost. 
 His manner is almost perfect. The style of Horace 
 and Boileau is fit only for light subjects. The French- 
 man did indeed attempt to turn the theological reason-
 
 122 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 ings of the Provincial Letters into verse, but with very 
 indifferent success. The glitter of Pope is cold. The 
 ardor of Persius is without brilliancy. Magnificent 
 versification and ingenious combinations rarely har- 
 monize with the expression of deep feeling. In Juve : 
 nal and Dryden alone we have the sparkle and the 
 heat together. Those great satirists succeeded in 
 communicating the fervor of their feelings to mate- 
 rials the most incombustible, and kindled the whole 
 mass into a blaze, at once dazzling and destructive. 
 We cannot, indeed, think, without regret, of the part 
 which so eminent a writer as Dryden took in the dis- 
 putes of that period. There was, no doubt, madness 
 and wickedness on both sides. But there was liberty 
 on the one, and despotism on the other. On this 
 point, however, we will not dwell. At Talavera the 
 English and French troops for a moment suspended 
 their conflict, to drink of a stream which flowed be- 
 tween them. The shells were passed across from 
 enemy to enemy without apprehension or molesta- 
 tion. We, in the same manner, would rather assist 
 our political adversaries to drink with us of that foun- 
 tain of intellectual pleasure, which should be the com- 
 mon refreshment of both parties, than disturb and 
 pollute it with the ha yock of unseasonable hostilities. 
 Macflecnoe is inferior to Absalom and Achitophel, 
 only in the subject. In the execution it is even supe- 
 rior. But the greatest work of Dryden was the last, 
 the Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day. It is the master- 
 piece of the second class of poetry, and ranks but just 
 below the great models of the first. It reminds us of 
 the Pedasus of Achilles, 
 
 6s, nai dvrjTos eon ewed einrois adavaToioi.
 
 JOHN DRYDEN 1 23 
 
 By comparing it with the impotent ravings of the 
 heroic tragedies, we may measure the progress which 
 the mind of Dryden had made. He had learned to 
 avoid a too audacious competition with higher natures, 
 to keep at a distance from the verge of bombast or 
 nonsense, to venture on no expression which did not 
 convey a distinct idea to his own mind. There is 
 none of that " darkness visible " style of which he had 
 formerly affected, and in which the greatest poets only 
 can succeed. Everything is definite, significant, and 
 picturesque. His early writings resemble the gigan- 
 tic works of those Chinese gardeners who attempt 
 to rival nature herself, to form cataracts of terrific 
 height and sound, to raise precipitous ridges of moun- 
 tains, and to imitate in artificial plantations the 
 vastness and the gloom of some primeval forest. 
 This manner he abandoned ; nor did he ever adopt 
 the Dutch taste which Pope affected, the trim par- 
 terres, and the rectangular walks. He rather resem- 
 bled our Kents and Browns, who imitating the great 
 features of landscape without emulating them, con- 
 sulting the genius of the place, assisting nature and 
 carefully disguising their art, produced, not a Cha- 
 mouni or a Niagara, but a Stowe or a Hagley. 
 
 We are, on the whole, inclined to regret that 
 Dryden did not accomplish his purpose of writing an 
 epic poem. It certainly would not have been a work 
 of the highest rank. It would not have rivalled the 
 Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Paradise Lost ; but it 
 would have been superior to the productions of Apol- 
 lonius, Lucan, or Statius, and not inferior to the 
 Jerusalem Delivered. It would probably have been a 
 vigorous narrative, animated with something of the 
 spirit of the old romances, enriched with much splen-
 
 124 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 did description, and interspersed with fine declama- 
 tions and disquisitions. The danger of Dryden would 
 have been from aiming too high ; from dwelling too 
 much, for example, on his angels of kingdoms, and 
 attempting a competition with that great writer who 
 in his own time had so incomparably succeeded in 
 representing to us the sights and sounds of another 
 world. To Milton, and to Milton alone, belonged 
 the secrets of the great deep, the beach of sulphur, the 
 ocean of fire, the palaces of the fallen dominations, 
 glimmering through the everlasting shade, the silent 
 wilderness of verdure and fragrance where armed 
 angels kept watch over the sleep of the first lovers, 
 the portico of diamond, the sea of jasper, the sapphire 
 pavement empurpled with celestial roses, and the infi- 
 nite ranks of the Cherubim, blazing with adamant and 
 gold. The council, the tournament, the procession, 
 the crowded cathedral, the camp, the guard-room, the 
 chase, were the proper scenes for Dryden. 
 
 But we have not space to pass in review all the works 
 which Dryden wrote. We, therefore, will not specu- 
 late longer on those which he might possibly have 
 written. He may, on the whole, be pronounced to 
 have been a man possessed of splendid talents, which 
 he often abused, and of a sound judgment the ad- 
 monitions of which he often neglected ; a man who 
 succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, 
 but who, in that department, succeeded pre-emi- 
 nently ; and who, with a more independent spirit, 
 a more anxious desire of excellence, and more 
 respect for himself, would, in his own walk, have 
 attained to absolute perfection.
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 1672-1719. 
 
 Macaulay's studies had been especially devoted to 
 the political and literary history of the reigns of 
 William III., of Anne and of George I. Of this 
 field he was the acknowledged master. When the Life 
 of foseph Addison by Miss Lucy Aikin appeared, the 
 editors of the Edinburgh Reviezu, to which Macaulay 
 had long been a contributor, applied to him for a 
 review of the book. Miss Aikin's work had been 
 poorly done, and there was but little that a reviewer 
 could commend. Possibly its chief virtue is that it 
 furnished the occasion of Macaulay's masterly essay. 
 In June, 1843, ne wrote to Napier, the editor of the 
 Review, as follows : " I mistrust my own judgment 
 of what I write so much, that I shall not be at all 
 surprised if both you and the public think my paper 
 on Addison a failure ; but I own I am partial to 
 it. . . . I am truly vexed to find Miss Aikin's 
 book so very bad that it is impossible for us, with due 
 regard to our own character, to praise it. All that 
 I can do is to speak civilly of her writings generally, 
 and to express regret that she should have been 
 nodding. I have found, I will venture to say, not 
 less than forty gross blunders as to matter of fact 
 in the first volume. ... I shall not again under- 
 take to review any lady's book until I know how it 
 is executed. 11 
 
 "5
 
 126 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 1 
 
 (Edinburgh Review, July, 1843.) 
 
 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 opinion we dissent. We admit, indeed, that in 
 a country which boasts of many female writers, 
 eminently qualified by their talents and acquire- 
 ments to influence the public mind, it would be of 
 most pernicious consequence that inaccurate history 
 or unsound philosophy should be suffered 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 suc- 
 cessfully 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.' 2 
 
 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 
 privileges we hold to be this, that such writers, when, 
 either from the unlucky choice of a subject, or from 
 
 1 The Life of Joseph Addison, By Lucy Aikin. 2 vols. 8 vo 
 London, 1843. 
 
 J Orlando Furioso, xlv. 68.
 
 ADDISON. 127 
 
 the indolence 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, but shall merely be 
 reminded by a gentle touch, like that with which 
 the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming 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 
 truth is, that she is not well acquainted with her sub- 
 ject. No person who is not familiar with the political 
 and literary 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 reproach 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 Shakspeare and Raleigh, than with 
 Congreve and Prior ; and is far more at home among 
 the ruffs and 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 the age of Addison, 
 because she had determined to write about it. The 
 consequence is that she has had to describe men and 
 things without having either a correct or a vivid idea 
 of them, and that she has often fallen into 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 edition of 
 this work may probably be required. If so, we hope 
 that every paragraph will be revised, and that every
 
 128 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, 
 however, that this feeling will not betray us into that 
 abject idolatry 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 but a man. All his powers can- 
 not 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 com- 
 positions which do not rise above mediocrity, some 
 heroic poems hardly equal to ParnelPs, 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 litera- 
 ture, in which many eminent writers have distinguished 
 themselves, he has had no equal ; and this may with 
 strict justice be said of Addison. 
 
 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, wor- 
 shipped him nightly, in his favorite temple at Button's. 
 But, 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 un- 
 doubtedly be detected in his character ; but the more 
 carefully it is examined, the more will it appear, to use 
 the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the noble
 
 ADDISON. 129 
 
 parts, free from all taint of perfidy, 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. But the 
 just harmony of qualities, the exact temper between 
 the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observ- 
 ance 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, 
 and about whose conduct we possess equally full 
 information. 
 
 His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, 
 who, though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, 
 made some figure in the world, and occupies with 
 credit two folio pages in the Biographia Britannica. 
 Lancelot was sent up, as a poor scholar, from West- 
 moreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of 
 the Commonwealth, made some progress in learning, 
 became, like most of his fellow students, a violent 
 Royalist, lampooned the heads of 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 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 Dun- 
 kirk was sold to France, he lost his employment. But 
 Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as 
 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
 
 130 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 soldiers within the wall or by the Moors without it. 
 One advantage the chaplain had. He ei. ,oyed 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 England, after some years of banish- 
 ment, he published an interesting volume on the 
 Polity and Religion of Barbary, and another on the 
 Hebrew Customs and the State of Rabbinical learn- 
 ing. He rose to eminence in his profession, and 
 became one of the royal chaplains, a Doctor of Divin- 
 ity, 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 gov- 
 ernment by strenuously opposing, in the Convocation 
 of 1689. the liberal policy of William and Tillotson. 
 
 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 
 popularly related about his boyish tricks do not har- 
 monize very well with what we know of his riper 
 years. There remains a tradition that he was the 
 ringleader in a barring out, and another tradition 
 that he ran away from school and hid himself in a 
 wood, where he fed on berries 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 gen- 
 tlest and most modest of men. 
 
 We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's 
 pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigor-
 
 ADDISON. 1 3 1 
 
 ously and successfully. At fifteen he was not only fit 
 for the university, but carried thither a classical taste 
 and a stock of learning which would have done honor 
 to 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 versifica- 
 tion were already 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 Magda- 
 lene College. That great and opulent 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 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 man- 
 date : the Fellows who, in conformity with their oaths, 
 had refused 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 retribution speedily came. The intruders were 
 ejected : the venerable House was again inhabited by 
 its old inmates : learning flourished under the rule of 
 the wise and virtuous Hough ; and with learning was 
 united a mild and liberal spirit too often wanting in 
 the princely colleges of Oxford. In consequence of 
 the troubles through which the society had passed, 
 there had been no valid election of new members
 
 132 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was 
 twice the ordinary number of vacancies ; 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 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 was under the elms which fringe the 
 meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It is said, 
 and is highly probable, that he was distinguished 
 among his fellow-students by the delicacy of his feel- 
 ings, by the shyness of his manners, and by the 
 assiduity with which he often prolonged 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 composi- 
 tions, and expressed their sorrow that no copy of 
 exercises so remarkable had been preserved. 
 
 It is proper, however, to remark that Miss Aikin 
 has committed the error, very pardonable in a lady, 
 of overrating Addison's classical attainments. In 
 one department of learning, indeed, his proficiency 
 was such as it is hardly possible to overrate. His 
 knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and 
 Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was sin- 
 gularly exact and profound. He understood them 
 thoroughly, entered into their spirit, and had the 
 finest and most discriminating perception of all their 
 peculiarities of style and melody ; nay, he copied their 
 manner with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think,
 
 ADDISON 133 
 
 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 is clear that Addison's serious attention during his 
 residence at the university was almost entirely con- 
 centrated 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 have attained more than an ordi- 
 nary 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, 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 
 advert to a few of the facts on which our judgment is 
 grounded. 
 
 Great praise is due to the Notes which Addison 
 appended to his version of the second and third 
 books of the Metamorphoses. Yet those notes, while 
 they show 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, Statius, and Claudian ; but they contain not 
 a single illustration drawn from the Greek poets. 
 Now, if, in the whole compass of Latin literature, 
 there be a passage which stands in need of illustra- 
 tion drawn from the Greek poets, it is the story of 
 Pentheus in the third book of the Metamorphoses. 
 Ovid was indebted for that story to Euripides and 
 Theocritus, both of whom he has sometimes followed
 
 134 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 
 quotations happily introduced ; but scarcely one of 
 those quotations is in prose. He draws more illustra- 
 tions from Ausonius and Manilius than from Cicero. 
 Even his notions of the political and military affairs of 
 the Romans seem to be derived from poets and poet- 
 asters. Spots made memorable by events which have 
 changed 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 authentic narrative of Polyb- 
 ius, not the picturesque narrative 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 Com- 
 mentaries, or of those letters to Atticus which so 
 forcibly express the alternations of hope and fear in 
 a sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only authority 
 for the events of the civil war is Lucan. 
 
 All the best ancient works of art at Rome and 
 Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, 
 without recalling one single verse of Pindar, of Callim- 
 achus, or of the Attic dramatists ; but they brought 
 to his recollection innumerable passages of Horace, 
 Juvenal, Statius and Ovid. 
 
 The same may be said of the Treatise on Medals. 
 In that pleasing work we find about three hundred
 
 ADDISON. 135 
 
 passages extracted with great judgment from the 
 Roman poets ; but we do not recollect a single pas- 
 sage taken from any Roman orator or historian ; and 
 we are confident that not a line is quoted from any 
 Greek writer. 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 supe- 
 rior, to those of Rome. 
 
 If it were necessary to find any further proof that 
 Addison's classical knowledge was confined within 
 narrow 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 his- 
 torical questions which he is under the necessity of 
 examining in that Essay. He is, therefore, left com- 
 pletely in the dark ; and it is melancholy to see how 
 helplessly he gropes his way from blunder to blunder. 
 He assigns, as grounds for his religious belief, stories 
 as absurd as that of the Cock-Lane ghost, and forg- 
 eries as rank as Ireland's Vortigern, puts faith in the 
 lie about the Thundering Legion, is convinced that 
 Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the 
 gods, and pronounces the letter of Agbarus King of 
 Edessa to be a record of great authority. Nor were 
 these errors the effects of superstition ; for to super- 
 stition Addison was by no means prone. The truth 
 is that he was writing about what he did not under- 
 stand. 
 
 Miss Aikin has discovered a letter from which it 
 appears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he 
 was one of the several writers whom the booksellers 
 engaged to make an English version of Herodotus ; 
 and she infers that he must have been a good Greek
 
 I36 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 scholar. We can allow very little weight to this 
 argument, when we consider that his fellow-laborers 
 were to have been Boyle and Blackmore. Boyle is 
 remembered chiefly as the nominal author of the 
 worst book on Greek history and philology that ever 
 was printed ; and this book, bad as it is, Boyle was 
 unable to produce without help. Of Blackmore's 
 attainments in the ancient tongues, it may be suffi- 
 cient 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 
 Addison were of as much service to him as if they 
 had been more extensive. The world generally gives 
 its admiration, not to the man who does what nobody 
 else even attempts to do, but to the man who does 
 best what multitudes do well. Bentley was so immeas- 
 urably superior to all the other scholars of his time 
 that few among them could discover his superiority. 
 But the accomplishment in which Addison excelled 
 his contemporaries was then, as it is now. highly valued 
 and assiduously cultivated at all English seats of learn- 
 ing. Everybody 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 imitated Virgil. His lines on 
 the Barometer and the Bowling Green were applauded 
 by hundreds, to whom the Dissertation on the Epis- 
 tles of Phalaris was as unintelligible as the hiero- 
 glyphics on an obelisk. 
 
 Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are 
 common to all Addison's Latin poems. Our favorite
 
 ADDISON. I37 
 
 piece is the Battle of the Cranes and Pigmies ; 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 
 steal a hint ; and he certainly owed as little to his 
 predecessors as any modern writer. Yet we cannot 
 help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps uncon- 
 sciously, one of the happiest touches in his Voyages 
 to Lilliput from Addison's verses. Let our readers 
 judge. 
 
 " The Emperor, 11 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. 1 ' 
 
 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." 
 
 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 of English verse. He addressed some 
 complimentary lines to Dryden, who, after many tri- 
 umphs and many reverses, had at length reached a 
 secure and lonely eminence among the literary men of 
 that age. Dryden appears to have been much grati- 
 fied by the young scholar's praise ; and an interchange 
 of civilities and good offices followed. Addison was 
 probably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and 
 was certainly presented by Congreve to Charles Mon-
 
 138 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 tague, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 
 leader of the Whig party in the House of Commons. 
 
 At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote 
 himself 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 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 heroic couplet was then the favorite measure. 
 The art of arranging w r ords in that measure, so that 
 the lines may 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 sense enough to learn. But, 
 like other mechanical arts, it was gradually improved 
 by means of many experiments and many failures. It 
 was reserved for Pope to discover the trick, to make 
 himself complete master of it, and to teach it to every- 
 body else. From the time when his Pastorals ap- 
 peared, heroic versification became matter of rule and 
 compass ; and, before long, all artists were on a level. 
 Hundreds of dunces who never blundered on one happy 
 thought or expression were able to write reams of 
 couplets which, as far as euphony was concerned, 
 could not be distinguished from those of Pope himself, 
 and which very clever writers of the reign of Charles 
 the Second, Rochester, for example, or Marvel, or Old- 
 ham, would have contemplated with admiring despair. 
 
 Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very small 
 man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, had learned
 
 ADDISON. 1 39 
 
 how to manufacture decasyllable verses, and poured 
 them forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all 
 as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as 
 the blocks which have passed through Mr. Brunei's 
 mill in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic 
 couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an un- 
 practised hand with a blunt hatchet. Take as a 
 specimen his translation of a celebrated passage in 
 the ^Eneid : 
 
 " 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 un- 
 limited abundance. We take the first lines on which 
 we open in his version of Tasso. They are neither 
 better nor worse than the rest : 
 
 " 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
 
 140 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 rhymer who 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 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 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 the yEneid, 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 com- 
 parison with the version of the fourth Georgic, by 
 " the most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford.'' 1 "After 
 his bees,' 1 added Dryden, " my latter swarm is scarcely 
 worth the hiving. 1 ' 
 
 The time had now arrived when it was necessary for 
 Addison to choose a calling. Everything seemed to 
 point his course towards the clerical profession. His 
 habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His col- 
 lege had large ecclesiastical preferment in its gift, and 
 boasts that it has given at least one bishop to almost 
 every see 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 inten- 
 tion was to take orders. But Charles Montague inter-
 
 ADDISON. 141 
 
 fered. Montague had first brought himself into notice 
 by verses, well timed and not contemptibly written, 
 but never, we think, rising above mediocrity. For- 
 tunately for himself and for his country, he early 
 quitted poetry, in which he could never have attained a 
 rank as high as that of Dorset or Rochester, and turned 
 his mind to official and parliamentary business. It is 
 written that the ingenious person who undertook to 
 instruct Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, in the art of 
 flying, ascended an eminence, waved his wings, sprang 
 into the air, and instantly dropped into the lake. But 
 it is added that the wings, which were unable to sup- 
 port 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 poeti- 
 cal invention, he altogether failed ; but, as soon as he V s 
 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 ; 
 but he showed that fondness not by wearying the pub- 
 lic with his own feeble performances, but by discover- 
 ing and encouraging literary excellence in others. A 
 crowd of wits and poets, who would easily have van- 
 quished him as a competitor, revered him as a judge 
 and a patron. In his plans for the encouragement 
 of learning, he was cordially supported 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 desirous to enlist youths 
 of high intellectual quajifi cations in the public ser 
 
 vJ
 
 142 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 vice. The Revolution had altered the whole system 
 of government. Before that event the press had been 
 controlled by censors, and the Parliament had sat 
 only two months in eight years. Now the press was 
 free, and had begun to exercise unprecedented influ- 
 ence 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 con- 
 juncture, it was natural that literary and oratorical 
 talents should 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 interest and of gratitude. 
 
 It is remarkable that in a neighboring country, we 
 have recently seen similar effects follow from similar 
 causes. The revolution of July, 1830, established 
 representative government in France. The men of 
 letters 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, Histo- 
 rians, Journalists, Poets. The influence of the liter- 
 ary class in England, during the generations 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 aristocracy of a 
 very different kind. France had no Somersets and 
 Shrewsburies to keep down her Addisons and Priors. 
 
 It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just 
 completed his twenty-seventh year, that the course of 
 his life was finally determined. Both the great chiefs
 
 ADDISON. I43 
 
 of 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 dedi- 
 cated to 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 employ him in the service of the crown 
 abroad. But an intimate knowledge of the French 
 language was a qualification indispensable to a diplo- 
 matist ; and this qualification Addison had not ac- 
 quired. 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 was procured 
 for him by the interest of the Lord Chancellor. 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 
 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 
 adventurers, who, destitute of every liberal art and 
 sentiment, at once pillaged and disgraced the coun- 
 try which they 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 will never do it any other 
 injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it."
 
 144 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 This interference was successful; and, in the sum- 
 mer of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by his pen- 
 sion, and still retaining his fellowship, quitted his 
 beloved Oxford, 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 ap- 
 pointed Ambassador to the Court of France. The 
 Countess, a Whig and a toast, was probably as 
 gracious as her lord ; for Addison long retained an 
 agreeable recollection of the impression which she 
 at this time made on him, and, in some lively lines 
 written on 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. 
 
 Lewis the Fourteenth was at this time expiating the 
 vices of his youth by a devotion which had no root 
 in reason, and bore no fruit of charity. The servile 
 literature of France had changed its character to suit 
 the changed character of the prince. No book ap- 
 peared that had not an air of sanctity. Racine, who 
 was just dead, had passed the close of his life in 
 writing sacred dramas ; and Dacier was seeking for 
 the Athanasian mysteries in Plato. Addison de- 
 scribed this state of things in a short but lively 
 and graceful letter to Montague. Another letter, 
 written about the same time to the Lord Chancellor, 
 conveyed the strongest assurances of gratitude and 
 attachment. "The only return I can make to your 
 Lordship," said Addison, " will be to apply myself 
 entirely to my business. 11 With this view he quitted 
 Paris and repaired to Blois, a place where it was sup-
 
 ADDISON. I45 
 
 posed that the French language was spoken in its 
 highest purity, and where not a single Englishman 
 could be found. Here he passed some months pleas- 
 antly 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, 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-students, had always been re- 
 markably shy and silent, was not likely to be loquacious 
 in a foreign tongue and among foreign companions. 
 But it is clear from Addison'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 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 an account, in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two 
 highly interesting conversations, one with Malbranche, 
 the other with Boileau. Malbranche expressed great 
 partiality for the English, and extolled the genius ot 
 Newton, but shook his head when Hobbes was men- 
 tioned, 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 let- 
 ter, the circumstances of his introduction to Boileau. 
 Boileau, having survived the friends and rivals of his 
 youth, old, deaf, and melancholy, lived in retirement, 
 seldom went either to Court or to the Academy, and
 
 I46 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 was almost inaccessible 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 warmth of their patriotism, have 
 asserted that this ignorance must have been affected. 
 We own that we see no ground for such a supposi- 
 tion. English literature was to the French of the 
 age of Lewis the Fourteenth 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 Wi eland was one of the first wits and 
 poets, and Lessin&_ beyond _all disput e, the first critic 
 in_ Europe . Boileau knew just as "Itttie abouF^the 
 
 'aradise Lost, and about Absalom and Achitophel ; 
 
 >ut he had read Addison's Latin poems, and admired 
 them greatly. They had given him, he 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,' 1 says he, " is better known 
 of Boileau than that he had an injudicious and peevish 
 contempt of modern Latin ; and therefore his profes- 
 sion of regard was probably the effect of his civility 
 rather than approbation." Now, nothing is better 
 known of Boileau than that he was singularly sparing 
 of compliments. We do not remember that either 
 friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise 
 on 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 Lewis the Fourteenth firmly and 
 even rudely, that his Majesty knew nothing about
 
 ADDISON. I47 
 
 poetry, and admired verses which 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 syco- 
 phant for the first and last time ? Nor was Boileau's 
 contempt of modern Latin either injudicious or pee- 
 vish. 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 cen- 
 turies confirmed his opinion? Boileau also thought 
 it probable that, in the best modern Latin, a writer 
 of the Augustan 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 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, writ- 
 ing French, and nothing but French, during more 
 than half a century, after unlearning his mother 
 tongue in order to learn French, after living familiarly 
 during many years with French associates, could not, 
 to the last, compose in French, without imminent 
 risk of committing some mistake which would 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, 
 in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a London appren- 
 tice would laugh? But does it follow, because we
 
 148 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 think thus, that we can find nothing to admire in the 
 noble alcaics of Gray, or in the playful elegiacs of 
 Vincent Bourne? Surely not. Nor was Boileau so 
 ignorant or tasteless as to be incapable of appreciat- 
 ing good modern Latin. In the very letter to which 
 Johnson alludes, Boileau says — " Ne croyez pas pour- 
 tant que je veuille par la blamer les vers Latins que 
 vous ufavez envoyes d\in 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 example, 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 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 
 which Boileau bestowed on the Machince Gesticalantes, 
 and the Gerano-Pyg?nceo?nachia, was sincere. He cer- 
 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 
 Jiearer thought, incomparably well. Boileau had un-
 
 ADD T SON. I49 
 
 -f 
 doubtedly some of the qualities of a great critic. He 
 wanted imagination ; but he had strong sense. His 
 literary code was formed on narrow principles ; but in 
 applying it, he showed great judgment and penetration v 
 In mere style, abstracted from the ideas of which style 
 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 think, to discover in the Spectator and the Guar- 
 dian, traces of the influence, in part salutary and in part 
 pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had on the mind 
 of Addison. 
 
 While Addison was at Paris, an event took place 
 which made that capital a disagreeable residence for 
 an Englishman 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 engagements, both with Great Britain 
 and with 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 herself in a situation at once 
 degrading and perilous. The people of France, not 
 presaging the calamities by which they were destined 
 to expiate the perfidy of their sovereign, went mad 
 with pride and delight. Every man looked as if a 
 great estate had just been left him. "The French 
 conversation," says Addison, " begins to grow insup- 
 portable ; that which was before the vainest nation in 
 the world is now worse than ever. 1 ' Sick of the arro- 
 gant exultation of the Parisians, and probably foresee
 
 I 50 LITERAR Y ESS A YS. 
 
 ing that the peace between France and England could 
 not be of long duration, he set off for Italy. 
 
 In December, 1700, 1 he embarked at Marseilles. 
 As he glided along the Ligurian coast, he was 
 delighted by the sight of myrtles and olive trees, 
 which retained their verdure under the winter solstice. 
 Soon, however, he encountered one of the black storms 
 of the Mediterranean. 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 meantime, fortified himself against the terrors 
 of death with 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. O Lord ! " which was long after published in 
 the Spectator. After some days of discomfort and 
 danger. Addison was glad 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 onher_j3ook of 
 Gold, .Addison made a short ^tay^ HlTadmired the 
 narrow streets overhung by long lines of towering 
 palaces, the walls rich with frescoes, the gorgeous 
 temple of the Annunciation, and the tapestries whereon 
 were recorded the long glories of the House of Doria. 
 Thence he hastened to Milan, where he contemplated 
 the Gothic magnificence of the cathedral with more 
 wonder than pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus 
 
 1 It is strange that Addison should, in the first line of his travels, 
 have misdated his departure from Marseilles by a whole year, and still 
 more strange that this slip of the pen, which throws the whole narrative 
 into inextricable confusion, should have been repeated in a succession 
 of editions, and never detected by Tickell or by Hurd.
 
 ADDISON. I 5 1 
 
 tvhile 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 gayest season of the year, in 
 the midst of masques, 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 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 Plutarch and a 
 Tasso before him ; and, in this position, he pronounced 
 a soliloquy before he struck the blow. We are sur- 
 prised that so remarkable a circumstance as this should 
 have escaped the notice of all Addison's biographers. 
 There cannot, we conceive, be the smallest 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 
 acts before he returned to England. 
 
 On his way from Venice to Rome, 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, 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 published an account of it. 
 Addison could not suppress a good-natured smile at
 
 152 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 the simple manners and institutions 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 and spiritual 
 tyranny was scarcely less desolate than the uncleared 
 wilds of America. 
 
 At Rome 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 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 Government distinguished by 
 its enmity to the Church of Rome, 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 difficult to 
 behave in such a manner as to give offence neither 
 to his patrons in England, nor to those among whom 
 he resided. W T hatever 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, per- 
 haps, 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 any great convulsion of nature ; but,
 
 ADDISON. 153 
 
 strange to say. their existence was a secret even to 
 artists and antiquaries. Though situated within a 
 few hours 1 journey of a great capital, where Salvator 
 had not long before painted, and where Vico was 
 then lecturing, those noble 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, ex- 
 plored the tunnel of Posilipo, and wandered among 
 the vines and almond trees of Capreae. But neither 
 the wonders of nature, nor those of art, could so 
 occupy his attention as to prevent him from noticing, 
 though cursorily, 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. Even Castile and Aragon were 
 sunk in wretchedness. Yet, compared with the Italian 
 dependencies of the Spanish crown, Castile and Aragon 
 might be called prosperous. It is clear that all the 
 observations which Addison made in Italy tended to 
 confirm him in the 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 Tory foxhunter asks what travelling 
 is good for, except to teach a man to jabber French, 
 and to talk against passive obedience. 
 
 From Naples, Addison returned to Rome by sea, 
 along the coast which his favorite Virgil had cele- 
 brated. The felucca passed the headland where the 
 oar and trumpet were placed by the Trojan adven- 
 turers 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
 
 I 5 4 LITER A R Y ESS A VS. 
 
 when it met the eyes of /Eneas. From the ruined 
 port 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 
 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 him to breathe unhurt 
 in tainted air, he was thinking of the August and 
 September which he had passed at Rome. 
 
 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 north- 
 ward, passed through Sienna, and for a moment for- 
 got his prejudices in favor of classic architecture as 
 he looked on the magnificent cathedral. At Florence 
 he spent some days with the Duke of Shrewsbury, 
 who, cloyed with the pleasures of ambition, and impa- 
 tient of its pains, fearing both parties, and loving 
 neither, had determined to hide in an Italian retreat 
 talents and accomplishments 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 pleasantly ; and we can 
 easily believe it. For Addison was a delightful com- 
 panion when he was at his ease ; and the Duke, though 
 he seldom forgot that he was a Talbot, had the invalu- 
 able 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 to those of the Vatican. He then pursued his 
 journey through a country in which the ravages of the
 
 ADDISON. 1 5 5 
 
 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 tRe 
 Rhaetian Alps, to dispute with Catinat the rich plain 
 of Lombardy. The faithless ruler of Savoy was still 
 reckoned among the allies of Lewis. England had 
 not yet actually declared war against France ; but 
 Manchester had left Paris ; and the negotiations which 
 produced the Grand Alliance against the House of 
 Bourbon were in progress. Under such circumstances, 
 it was desirable for an English traveller to reach neu- 
 tral ground without delay. Addison resolved to cross 
 Mont Cenis. It was December; and the road was 
 very different from that which now reminds the stran- 
 ger of the power and genius of Napoleon. The win- 
 ter, 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 the Divine goodness had warmed 
 the hoary Alpine hills. 
 
 It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he 
 composed 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 considered by those to whom it is known as in any 
 perceptible degree heightening Addison's fame. It is, 
 however, decidedly superior to any English composi- 
 tion which he had previously published. Nay, we 
 think it quite as good as any poem in heroic metre 
 which appeared during the interval between the death 
 of Dryden and the publication of the Essay on Criti- 
 cism. It contains passages as good as the second- 
 rate passages of Pope, and would have added to the 
 reputation of Parnell or Prior.
 
 156 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of 
 the Epistle, it undoubtedly does honor to the prin- 
 ciples and spirit of the author. Halifax had 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 had dismissed 
 the impeachment, had, 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 distinguished Addison from all 
 the other public men of those stormy times. 
 
 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 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 honorable functions, when all his pros- 
 pects were for a time darkened by the death of Will- 
 iam the Third. 
 
 Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, 
 political, 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 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 exertions. He became 
 tutor to a young English traveller, and appears tc
 
 ADDISON. 157 
 
 have rambled with his pupil over a great part of Swit- 
 zerland 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 manuscript, and gave just praise to the grace 
 of the style, and to the learning and ingenuity evinced 
 by the quotations. 
 
 From Germany Addison repaired to Holland, where 
 he learned the melancholy news of his fathers death. 
 After passing some months in the United Provinces, he 
 returned about the close of the year 1703 to England. 
 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. 
 
 Addison was, during some months after his return 
 from the Continent, hard pressed by pecuniary diffi- 
 culties. 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 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 attached to the prerogative and 
 to the Church ; and among 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 the country clergymen 
 had fully expected that the policy of these ministers 
 would be directly opposed to that which had been 
 almost constantly followed by William ; that the landed 
 interest would be favored at the expense of trade ; that 
 no addition would be made to the funded debt ; that
 
 158 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 the privileges conceded to Dissenters by the late King 
 would 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 Gov- 
 ernment would avoid close connections with foreign 
 powers, and, above all, with Holland. 
 
 But the country gentlemen and country clergymen 
 were fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The 
 prejudices and passions which raged without control 
 in the 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 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 foreign policy of the Whigs were 
 adopted, it was impossible to abstain from adopting 
 also their financial policy. The natural consequences 
 followed. The rigid Tories were alienated from the 
 Government. The votes of the Whigs became neces- 
 sary to it. The votes of the Whigs could be secured 
 only by further concessions : and further concessions 
 the Queen was induced to make. 
 
 At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of par- 
 ties 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 Marlborough 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, Cowper, were not in
 
 ADDISON. 1 59 
 
 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 coalition 
 was inevitable, nay, that it was already half formed. 
 Such, or nearly such, was the state of things when 
 tidings arrived of the great battle fought at Blenheim 
 on the 13th August, 1704. By the Whigs the news 
 was hailed with transports of joy and pride. No 
 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 Tories was very differ- 
 ent. They could not indeed, without 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 victorious general 
 and his friends. 
 
 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 litera- 
 ture 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 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.
 
 l6o LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 " Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
 And each man mounted on his capering beast ; 
 Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." 
 
 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 in the 
 history of running horses and fighting cocks ; but his 
 acquaintance among the poets was very small. He 
 consulted Halifax ; but Halifax affected to decline 
 the office of adviser. He had, he said, done his best, 
 when he had power, to encourage men whose abilities 
 and acquirements might do honor to their country. 
 Those times were over. Other maxims had pre- 
 vailed. Merit was suffered to pine in 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 sub- 
 ject ; but I will not name him.' 1 Godolphin, who 
 was expert at the soft answer which turneth away 
 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 
 meantime the services of a man such as Halifax had 
 described 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 Minister should apply in the most courteous 
 manner to Addison himself; and this Godolphin 
 promised to do. 
 
 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
 
 ADDISON. l6l 
 
 and Halifax, by a visit from no less a person than the 
 Right Honorable Henry Boyle, then Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, and afterwards Lord Carleton. This 
 high-born minister had been sent by the Lord Treas- 
 urer as ambassador to the needy poet. Addison 
 readily undertook the proposed 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, who was delighted with it, and particu- 
 larly with the famous similitude of the Angel. Addi- 
 son was instantly appointed to a Commissionership 
 worth about two hundred pounds a year, and was 
 assured that this appointment was only an earnest 
 of greater favors. 
 
 The Campaign came forth, and was as much ad- 
 mired by the public as by the Minister. It pleases us 
 less on the whole than the Epistle to Halifax. Yet 
 it undoubtedly 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 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, 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, whose leisure had en- 
 abled them to practise military exercises. One such 
 chief, if he were a man of great strength, agility, and 
 courage, would probably be more formidable than
 
 1 62 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 twenty common men ; and the force and dexterity 
 with which he flung his spear might have no incon- 
 siderable share in deciding the event of the day. 
 Such were probably the battles with which Homer 
 was familiar. But Homer 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 represented their 
 martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far sur- 
 passing 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, driving 
 all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking Scaman- 
 der with dead, was only a magnificent exaggeration 
 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 of Thessalian 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 Welling- 
 ton. Bonaparte loved to describe the astonishment 
 with which the Mamelukes looked at his diminutive 
 figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his fel- 
 lows by his bodily strength, and by the skill with 
 which he managed his horse and his sabre, could not 
 believe that a man who was scarcely five feet high, 
 and rode like a butcher, could be the greatest soldier 
 in Europe. 
 
 Homer's description of war had therefore as much
 
 ADDISON. 
 
 I6 3 
 
 truth as poetry requires. But truth was altogether 
 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 inverse 
 the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals 
 of the first order : and his narrative is made up of 
 the hideous 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 into AsdrubaPs side. Fabius slays 
 Thuris and Butes and Maris and Arses, and the long- 
 haired Adherbes, and the gigantic Thylis, and Sapharus 
 and Monaesus, and the trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal 
 runs Perusinus through the groin with a stake, and 
 breaks the backbone of Telesinus 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 dye- 
 ing the Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable 
 a writer as John Philips, the author of the Splen- 
 did Shilling, represented Marlborough as having won 
 the battle of Blenheim merely by strength of muscle 
 and skill in fence. The following lines may serve 
 as an example : 
 
 " Churchill, viewing where 
 The violence of Tallard most prevailed, 
 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
 
 1 64 LITER A R Y ESS A YS. 
 
 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, 
 energy, sagacity, military science. But, above all. the 
 poet extolled the firmness of that mind which, in the 
 midst of confusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined 
 and disposed everything with the serene wisdom of 
 a higher intelligence. 
 
 Here it was that he introduced the famous compari- 
 son of Marlborough to an Angel guiding the whirlwind. 
 We will not dispute the general justice of John- 
 son's remarks on this passage. But we must point 
 out one circumstance which appears to have escaped 
 all the critics. The extraordinary effect which the 
 simile produced when it first appeared, and which 
 to the following generation seemed inexplicable, is 
 doubtless to be chiefly attributed to a line which 
 most readers now regard as a feeble parenthesis, 
 
 " Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia pass'd." 
 
 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 hurricane, had left a dreadful recollec- 
 tion in the minds of all 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
 
 ADDISON. 165 
 
 palace. London and Bristol had presented the 
 appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of fami- 
 lies 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 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- 
 duced by this Narrative was disappointment. The 
 crowd of readers who expected politics and scandal, 
 speculations on the projects of Victor Amadeus, and 
 anecdotes about the jollities of convents and the 
 amours of cardinals and nuns, were confounded by 
 finding that the writer's mind was much more 
 occupied by the war between the Trojans and Rutu- 
 lians 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 Empress 
 Faustina. 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 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 lit- 
 erary tour, may justly be censured on account of its 
 faults of omission. We have already said that,
 
 9 
 
 :i 
 
 1 66 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, it con- 
 tains scarcely any references to the Latin orators and 
 historians. We must add, that it contains little, or 
 rather no information, respecting the history and lit- 
 erature of modern Italy. To the best of our remem- 
 brance, Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch, 
 Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de 1 Medici, or 
 Machiavelli. He coldly tells us that at Ferrara he 
 saw the tomb of Ariosto and that at Venice he 
 heard the gondoliers sing verses of Tasso. But 
 for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far less than for 
 Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apolinaris. The 
 gentle flow of the Ticim 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 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 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 great- 
 est lyric poet of modern times, Vincenzio Filicaja. 
 This is the most remarkable, because 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, 
 I that Addison knew little and cared less, about the 
 Y literature of modern Italy. His favorite models 
 ^were Latin. His favorite critics were French. Half 
 the Tuscan poetry that he had read seemed to him 
 monstrous, and the other half tawdry. 
 
 His Travels were followed by the lively Opera of
 
 ADDISON. 167 
 
 Rosamond. The piece was ill set to music, and there- 
 fore failed on the stage, but it completely succeeded in 
 print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. The smooth- 
 ness 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 couplets to Pope, and blank verse to 
 Rowe, and had employed 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 with complete success. 
 Several passages long retained their popularity, and 
 were daily sung, during 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 becom- 
 ing brighter and brighter. In the spring of 1705 the 
 ministers were freed from the restraint imposed by a 
 House of Commons in which Tories of the most per- 
 verse class had the ascendency. The elections were 
 favorable to the Whigs. The coalition which had been 
 tacitly and 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 following year to carry the decoration of the order of 
 the garter to the Electoral Prince of Hanover, and was 
 accompanied on this honorable mission by Addison, 
 who had just been made Under Secretary of State. The 
 Secretary of State under whom Addison first served 
 was Sir Charles Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was 
 soon dismissed to make room for the most vehement 
 of Whigs, Charles, Earl of Sunderland. In every de- 
 partment of the state, indeed, the High Churchmen
 
 1 68 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 favored by the Queen, who had 
 always been a Tory at heart, and who had now 
 quarrelled with the Duchess of Marlborough, was un- 
 successful. The time was not yet. The Captain Gen- 
 eral was at the height of popularity and glory. The 
 Low Church party had a majority in Parliament. The 
 country squires and rectors, though occasionally utter- 
 ing 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 prosecution of Sa- 
 cheverell. Harley and his adherents were 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 President 
 of the Council, and Wharton Lord Lieutenant of 
 Ireland. 
 
 Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Com- 
 mons which was elected in 1708. But the House of 
 Commons was not the field for him. The bashfulness 
 of his 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 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 out of office,
 
 ADDISON. 169 
 
 must live by his pen, should in a few years become 
 successively Under Secretary of State, Chief Secretary 
 for Ireland, and Secretary of State, without some ora- 
 torical talent. Addison, without high birth, and with 
 little property, rose to a post which Dukes, the heads 
 of the great houses of Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck, 
 have thought it an honor to fill. Without opening his 
 lips in debate, he rose to a post, the highest that Chat- 
 ham or Fox ever reached. And this he did before he 
 had been nine years in Parliament. We must look 
 for the explanation of this seeming miracle to the 
 peculiar circumstances 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 parliamentary proceedings began to be 
 freely reported, literary talents were, to a public man, 
 of much more importance, and oratorical talents of 
 much less importance, 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 superior to the Conduct 
 of the Allies, or to the best numbers of the Freeholder, 
 the circulation of such a tract would be languid indeed 
 when compared with the circulation of every remark- 
 able word uttered in the deliberations of the legisla- 
 ture. A speech made in the House of Commons 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 pam- 
 phleteer. It was not so in the reign of Anne. The best 
 speech could then produce no effect except on those
 
 170 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 who heard it. It was only by means of the press that 
 the opinion of the public without doors could be in- 
 fluenced ; and the opinion of the public without doors 
 could not but be of the highest importance in a country 
 governed by parliaments, 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 Pulteney, the Pitt and 
 Fox of an earlier period, had not done half of what 
 was necessary, when they sat down amidst the acclama- 
 tions of the House of Commons. They had still to 
 plead their cause before the country, and this 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 these two great chiefs 
 of parties. Pulteney. when leader of the Opposition, 
 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 assist- 
 ance then was to the contending parties. St. John 
 was, certainly, 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 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 high, if he had not
 
 ADDISON. I71 
 
 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 
 literary talents was added all the influence which 
 arises from character. The world, always ready to 
 think the worst of needy political adventurers, was 
 forced to make one exception. Restlessness, vio- 
 lence, audacity, laxity of principle, are the vices ordi- 
 narily attributed to that class of men. But faction 
 itself could not deny that 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 indi- 
 cated a fine sense of the becoming ; that, in the 
 utmost heat of controversy, his zeal was tempered 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. 
 
 He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men 
 of his time ; and much of his popularity he owed, 
 we believe, to that very timidity which his friends 
 lamented. That timidity often prevented him from 
 exhibiting his talents to the best advantage. But it 
 propitiated Nemesis. It averted that enemy which 
 would otherwise have been excited by fame so splen- 
 did, and by so rapid an elevation. No man is so 
 great a favorite with the public as he who is at once 
 an object of admiration, of respect, and of pity ; and 
 such were the feelings which Addison inspired. 
 Those who enjoyed the privilege of hearing his famil-
 
 172 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 iar 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 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 animosity 
 against the Whigs, could not but confess to Stella 
 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 
 Addison was at once the most polite, and the most 
 mirthful, that could be imagined ; that it was Ter- 
 ence and Catullus 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 attention of every hearer. 
 Nor were Addison's great colloquial powers more 
 admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart 
 which appeared in his conversation. At the same 
 time, it would be too much to say that he was wholly 
 devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable 
 from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one 
 habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, 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 
 leer, 11 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 
 Spectator's dialogue with the politician who is so
 
 ADDISON. 1 73 
 
 zealous for the honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are excel- 
 lent specimens of this innocent mischief. 
 
 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 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, 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, 1 ' he used to say, u as real conversa- 
 tion, but between two persons. 1 ' 
 
 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 
 convivial excess. Such excess was in that age re- 
 garded, 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 char- 
 acter of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck 
 is seen on a white ground ; and almost all the biog- 
 raphers 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.
 
 174 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we 
 must ascribe another fault which generally arises irom 
 a very different cause. He became a little too fond 
 of seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of 
 admirers, to 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 that saw through and through 
 men, it was the eye of Addison. But with the keen- 
 est 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 company ; he was 
 grateful for their devoted attachment ; and he loaded 
 them with benefits. Their veneration for him ap- 
 pears to have exceeded that with which Johnson was 
 regarded by Bos well, or Warburton by Hurd. It was 
 not in the power of adulation to turn such a head, or 
 deprave such a heart, as Addison's. But 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. 
 
 One member of this little society was Eustace 
 Budgell, a young Templer 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 prosper- 
 ous and honorable, if the life of his cousin had been 
 prolonged. But, when the master was laid in the 
 grave, the disciple broke loose from all restraint, 
 descended rapidly from one degree of vice and misery
 
 ADDISON. 175 
 
 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, to the last, 
 the wretched man, gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, 
 as he was, retained his affection and veneration for 
 Addison, and recorded those feelings in the last lines 
 which he traced before he hid himself from infamy 
 under London Bridge. 
 
 Another of Addison's favorite companions was 
 Ambrose Philips, a good Whig and a middling poet, 
 who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species 
 of composition which has been called, after his name, 
 Namby Pamby. But the most remarkable members 
 of the little 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 widely. Steele had left college with- 
 out 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 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 inculcating what was 
 right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, 
 he was a man of piety and honor ; in practice 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 mor- 
 alists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him,
 
 176 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 the great, procured a 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, 1 708, to have amounted 
 to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary transactions 
 probably 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. 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 he has earned hardly, and 
 lent with great inconvenience to himself, for the pur- 
 pose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered 
 with insane profusion. We will illustrate our mean- 
 ing 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 most benevo- 
 lent of human beings ; yet he takes in execution, 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 pleading pov- 
 erty as an excuse for not paying just debts, has been 
 buying fine jewelry, and setting up a coach. No per- 
 son who is well acquainted with Steele's life and cor- 
 respondence can doubt that he behaved quite as ill to
 
 ADDISON. 177 
 
 Addison as Booth was accused of behaving to Dr. 
 Harrison. The real history, we have little doubt, 
 was something like this : — A letter comes to Addi- 
 son, imploring help in pathetic terms, promising refor- 
 mation 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 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 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 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, 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. 
 
 At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord Lieu- 
 tenant of Ireland, and appointed Addison Chief Sec- 
 retary. Addison was consequently under the necessity 
 of quitting London for Dublin. Besides the chief 
 secretaryship, which was then worth about two thou- 
 sand pounds a year, he obtained a patent appointing
 
 I ?8 LITER AR Y ESS A VS. 
 
 him keeper of the Irish Records for life, with a salary 
 of three or four hundred a year. Budgell accom- 
 panied his cousin in the capacity of private Secretary. 
 
 Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but 
 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 
 gentleness and delicacy. Many parts of the Irish 
 administration 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 diligence and integrity gained the friendship of 
 all the most 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 sessions his name frequently occurs. Some of the 
 entries appear to indicate that he so far overcame his 
 timidity as to make speeches. Nor is this by any 
 means improbable ; for the Irish 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 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. 
 
 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 perform-
 
 ADDISON. 1 79 
 
 ances which, though highly respectable, were not 
 built for duration, and which would, if he had pro- 
 duced nothing 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, agreeably written, but not indi- 
 cating any extraordinary powers of mind. These 
 works showed him to be a man 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 Eng- 
 lish language. 
 
 In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary proj- 
 ect, of which he was far indeed from foreseeing the 
 consequences. 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 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 to foreign intelligence earlier and more authen- 
 tic than was in those times within the reach of an 
 ordinary newswriter. 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 post left London for the coun- 
 try, which were, in that generation, the Tuesdays, 
 Thursdays, and Saturdays. It was to contain the 
 foreign news, accounts of theatrical representations, 
 and the literary gossip of Will's and of the Grecian. 
 It was also to contain remarks on the fashionable
 
 I So LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 topics of the day, compliments to beauties, pasquin- 
 ades on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular 
 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 intelligence he drew from the best sources. 
 He knew the town, and had paid dear for his knowl- 
 edge. 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 and not incorrect; and, 
 though his wit and humor were of no high order, his 
 gay animal spirits imparted to his compositions an 
 air of vivacity which ordinary readers 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 pleas- 
 ant small drink, if not kept too long, or carried too 
 far. 
 
 Isaac BickerstafF, Esquire, Astrologer, was an im- 
 aginary person, almost as well known in that age as 
 Air. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift 
 had 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. BickerstafF had rejoined in a second pamphlet 
 still more diverting than the first. All the wits had 
 combined to keep up the joke, and the town was long 
 in convulsions of laughter. Steele determined to 
 employ the name, which this controversy had made 
 popular; and, in 1709. it was announced that Isaac 
 BickerstafF, Esquire, Astrologer, was about to publish 
 a paper called the Tatler. 
 
 Addison had not been consulted about this scheme :
 
 ADDISON. l8l 
 
 but as soon as he heard of it he determined to give 
 his assistance. The effect of that assistance cannot 
 be better described than in Steele's own words. "I 
 fared,"' he said, " like a distressed prince who calls in 
 a powerful neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my 
 auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I could 
 not subsist without dependence on him.'" "The 
 paper/ 1 he says elsewhere. " was advanced indeed. 
 It was raised to a greater thing than I intended it." 
 
 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 the least precious part of his 
 treasures, and had hitherto contented himself with 
 producing sometimes copper and sometimes lead, in- 
 termingled with a little silver. All at once, and by 
 mere accident, he had lighted on an inexhaustible 
 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 English language been written with such sweet- 
 ness, grace, and facility. But this was the smallest 
 part of Addison's praise. Had he clothed his 
 thoughts in the half French style of Horace Wal- 
 pole, 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 all faults of man- 
 ner. As a moral satirist he stands unrivalled. 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.
 
 1 82 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior 
 to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of Cowley con- 
 tains so many happy analogies as are crowded into 
 the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller ; and we would under- 
 take to collect from the Spectators as great a number 
 of ingenious illustrations as can be found in Hudibras. 
 The still higher faculty of invention Addison pos- 
 sessed in still larger measure. The numerous fic- 
 tions, 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 his metrical compositions give 
 him no claim. As an observer of life, of manner, 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, 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 Shakspeare or Cervantes. 
 
 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 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 pecul- 
 iar pleasantry is to compare it with the pleasantry of 
 some other great satirists. The three most eminent 
 masters of the art of ridicule during the eighteenth 
 century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Vol-
 
 ADDISON. 183 
 
 taire. Which of the three had the greatest power of 
 moving laughter may be questioned. But each of 
 them, within his own domain, was supreme. 
 
 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, but 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 in- 
 vincible gravity, and even sourness of aspect, and 
 gives utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous 
 fancies, with the air of a man reading the commina- 
 tion service. 
 
 "The manner of Addison is as remote from that of 
 Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs 
 out 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 pecul- 
 iarly his own, a look of demure serenity, disturbed 
 only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost imper- 
 ceptible elevation of the brow, an almost impercepti- 
 ble curl of the lip. His tone is never that either of a 
 Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. It is that of a gentle- 
 man, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous 
 is constantly tempered by good nature and good 
 breeding. 
 
 We own that the humor of Addison is, in our 
 opinion, of a more delicate flavor than the humor of 
 either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is cer- 
 tain, that both Swift and Voltaire have been success- 
 fully mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to
 
 1 84 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 mimic Addison. The 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 Arbuthnofs satirical works which we, at 
 least, cannot distinguish from Swift's best writing. 
 But of the many eminent men who have made Addi- 
 son their model, though several have copied his mere 
 diction with happy effect, none have been able to 
 catch the tone of his pleasantry. In the World, in 
 the Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the Lounger, there 
 are numerous papers written in obvious imitation of 
 his Tatlers and Spectators. Most of these papers 
 have some 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 
 masters of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, the 
 moral purity, which we find even in his merriment. 
 Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into mis- 
 anthropy, characterizes the works of Swift. The 
 nature of Voltaire was, indeed, not inhuman ; but he 
 venerated nothing. 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 chattering. The 
 mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles ; 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, their mirth 
 must surely be none other than the mirth of Addison ;
 
 ADDISON. 185 
 
 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 
 ever been associated by Addison with any degrading 
 idea. His humanity is without a parallel in literary 
 history. The highest proof of virtue is to possess 
 boundless power without abusing it. No kind of 
 power is more formidable than the power of making 
 men ridiculous ; 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 character, nay, that it would be 
 difficult, if not impossible, 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 men, not superior to him in 
 genius, wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de 
 Pompignan. He was a politician ; he was the best 
 writer of his party ; he lived in times of fierce excite- 
 ment, in times when persons of high character and 
 station stooped to scurrility such as 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 moral- 
 ity it is difficult to speak too highly. It is true, that, 
 when 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 Etherege and Wycherley, might
 
 1 86 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 be called decency. Yet there still lingered in the pub- 
 lic mind a pernicious notion that there was some con- 
 nection between genius and profligacy, between the 
 domestic virtues and the sullen formality of the Puri- 
 tans. 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 might be found in 
 company with wit more sparkling than the wit of 
 Congreve, and with humor richer than the humor of 
 Vanbrngh. So effectually, indeed, did he retort on 
 vice the mockery which had recently been directed 
 against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation 
 of decency has always been considered among us as 
 the mark of a fool. And this revolution, the greatest 
 and most salutary ever effected by any satirist, he 
 accomplished, be it remembered, without Avriting one 
 personal lampoon. 
 
 In the early contributions of Addison to the Tat- 
 ler 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 admire Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Polit- 
 ical Upholsterer. The proceedings of the Court of 
 Honor, the Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the 
 Frozen Words, the Memoirs of the Shilling, are excel- 
 lent specimens of that ingenious and lively species of 
 fiction in which Addison 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. 
 
 During the session of Parliament which commenced
 
 ADDISON. 187 
 
 in November, 1709, and which the impeachment of 
 Sacheverell has made memorable, Addison appears to 
 have resided in London. The Tatler was now more 
 popular than any periodical paper had ever been ; 
 and his connection 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 the best that any five of 
 them are more valuable than all the two hundred num- 
 bers 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 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 Parlia- 
 ment ; and, engaged as she was in a war on the event 
 of which her own Crown was staked, she could not ven- 
 ture to disgrace a great and successful general. But 
 at length, in the year 17 10, the causes which had re- 
 strained her from showing her aversion to the Low 
 Church party ceased to operate. The trial of Sachev- 
 erell produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely 
 less violent than the outbreaks which we can our- 
 selves remember in 1820, and in 1831. The country 
 gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rabble 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, the Tories would have a majority. 
 The services of Marlborough had been so splendid 
 .that they were no longer necessary. The Queen's 
 throne was secure from all attacks on the part of 
 Lewis. Indeed, it seemed much more likely that the
 
 1 88 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 English and German armies would divide the spoils 
 of Versailles and Mjirji than that a Marshal of France 
 would bring back the Pretender to St. James's. 
 The Queen, acting by the advice of Harley, deter- 
 mined 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 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 surprised by a 
 letter from Anne, which directed him to break his 
 white staff. Even after this event, the irresolution 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- 
 lently in favor of the High Church party. That party, 
 feeble in the late House of Commons, was now irresis- 
 tible. 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 appalled even him who had roused and un- 
 chained 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 administered the government with 
 more energy, ability, and moderation ; and their suc- 
 cess had been proportioned to their wisdom. They 
 had saved Holland and Germany. They had hum- 
 bled France. They had, as it seemed, all but torn 
 Spain from the house of Bourbon. They had made
 
 ADDISON. 189 
 
 England the first power in Europe. At home they 
 had united England and Scotland. They had re- 
 spected the rights of conscience and the liberty of 
 the subjects. They retired, leaving their country at 
 the height of prosperity 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 colonies, or against the govern- 
 ment which sent a gallant army to perish in the 
 ditches of Walcheren. 1 
 
 None of the Whigs suffered more in the general 
 wreck than Addison. He had just sustained some 
 heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which we are 
 imperfectly informed, when his Secretaryship was 
 taken from him. He had reason to believe that he 
 should also be deprived of the small Irish office which 
 he held by patent. He had just resigned his Fellow- 
 ship. 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 the phrase of the 
 romances which were then fashionable, permitted to 
 hope. But Mr. Addison, the ingenious writer, and 
 Mr. Addison, the Chief Secretary, were, in her lady- 
 ship's opinion, two very different persons. All these 
 calamities united, however, could not disturb the 
 serene cheerfulness of a mind conscious of innocence, 
 and rich in its own wealth. He told his friends, with 
 smiling resignation, that they ought to admire his 
 philosophy, 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 good as ever. 
 
 He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which
 
 190 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 
 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 : n The Tories carry it among the 
 new 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 
 Addison is the more honorable to him, because it had 
 not been purchased by any concession on his part. 
 During the general election he published a political 
 Journal entitled the Whig Examiner. 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 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 antagonist. " He might well rejoice,*' says Johnson, 
 •• at the death of that which he could not have killed. 1 ' 
 " On no occasion," he adds, ' ; was the genius of Addi- 
 son more vigorously exerted, and on none did the 
 superiority of his powers more evidently appear.' 1 
 
 The only use which Addison appears to have made 
 of 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 2 decided part in poli- 
 tics. But the case of Steele and Ambrose Philips was 
 different. For Philips, Addison even condescended 
 tc solicit, with what success we have not ascertained.
 
 ADDISON. 191 
 
 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 Stamp Office, on an implied under- 
 standing 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 
 politics, 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 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 gener- 
 ally regarded 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, .171 1, appeared the last Tatler. At the 
 begining of March following appeared the first of an 
 incomparable series of papers, containing observations 
 on life and literature by an imaginary Spectator. 
 
 The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by 
 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 
 passing a studious youth at the university, has trav- 
 elled on classic ground, and has bestowed much atten- 
 tion on curious 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
 
 192 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 smoked with the philosophers of the Grecian, and has 
 mingled with the parsons at Child's, and with the poli- 
 ticians 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- But an insurmountable bashfulness pre- 
 vents him from 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 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 Roger 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. Ever)- valuable 
 essay in the series may be read with pleasure sepa- 
 rately ; yet the five or six hundred essays form a whole, 
 and a whole which has the interest of a novel. It 
 must be remembered, too, that at that time no novel, 
 giving a lively and powerful picture of the common life 
 and manners of England, had appeared. Richardson 
 was working as a compositor. Fielding was robbing 
 birds 1 nests. Smollett was not yet born. The nar- 
 rative, therefore, which connects together the Specta- 
 tor's Essays, gave to our ancestors their first taste of 
 an exquisite and untried 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
 
 ADDISON. 193 
 
 worthy baronet always calls Prince Eugene, goes 
 with the Spectator on the water to Spring Gardens, 
 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 when the Distressed Mother is 
 acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to 
 Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old 
 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 functions. 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 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 consid- 
 ered not only as the greatest of the English essayists, 
 but as the forerunner of the great English novelists. 
 
 We say this of Addison alone ; for Addison is the 
 Spectator. About three sevenths of the work aje^. 
 his ; and it is no exaggeration to say, that his worst 
 essay is as good as the best essay of any of his coadju- 
 tors. His best essays approach near to absolute per- 
 fection ; nor is their excellence more wonderful than 
 their variety. His invention never seems to flag; 
 nor is he ever under the necessity of repeating him- 
 self, or of wearing out a subject. There are no dregs 
 in his wine. He regales us after the fashion of that
 
 194 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 prodigal nabob who held that 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 ingenious 
 as Lucian's Auction of Lives ; on the Tuesday an 
 Eastern apologue, as richly colored as the Tales of 
 Scherezade ; on the Wednesday, a character de- 
 scribed with the skill of a La Bruyere ; on the Thurs- 
 day, a scene from common life, equal to the best 
 chapters in the Vicar of Wakefield ; on the Friday, 
 some sly Horatian pleasantry 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. 
 
 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,' v 
 the two 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. 1 
 
 The least valuable of Addison's contributions to 
 the 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. The best of them were 
 
 1 Nos. 26, 329, 69, 317, 159, 343, 517. These papers are all in the 
 first seven volumes. The eighth must be considered as a separate 
 work.
 
 ADDISON. 195 
 
 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 ballads were 
 regarded, and showed the scoffers that the same gold 
 which, burnished and polished, gives lustre to the 
 /Eneid and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the 
 rude dross of Chevy Chace. 
 
 It is not strange that the success of the Spectator 
 should have been such as no similar work has ever 
 obtained. 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 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 morning with the bphga 
 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 vol- 
 ume were immediately taken off, and new editions 
 were called for. It must be remembered 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 doubtless more than one knight of the shire 
 whose country seat did not contain ten books, receipt
 
 196 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 books and books on farriery included. In these cir- 
 cumstances, the sale of the Spectator must be con- 
 sidered as indicating a popularity quite as great as 
 that of the most successful works of Sir Walter 
 Scott and Mr. Dickens in our own time. 
 
 At the close of 171 2 the Spectator ceased to appear. 
 It was probably felt that the short-faced gentleman 
 and his club had been long enough before the town ; 
 and that it was time to withdraw them, and to re- 
 place them by a new set of characters. In a few 
 weeks the first number of the Guardian was published. 
 But the Guardian was unfortunate both in its birth 
 and in its death. It began in dulness and disappeared 
 in a tempest of faction. The original plan was bad. 
 Addison contributed nothing till sixty-six numbers 
 had appeared ; and it was then impossible to make 
 the Guardian what the Spectator had been. Nestor 
 Ironside and the Miss Lizards 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 
 during the first two months of its existence, is a ques- 
 tion which has puzzled the editors and biographers, 
 but which seems to us to admit of a very easy solu- 
 tion. He was then engaged in bringing his 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 sensitive nature shrank from the risk of a public 
 and shameful failure ; and. though all who saw the 
 manuscript were loud in praise, some thought it pos- 
 sible that an audience might become impatient even 
 of very good rhetoric, and advised Addison to print
 
 ADDISON. I97 
 
 the play without 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 discover some analogy 
 between the followers of Caesar and the Tories, be- 
 tween Sempronius and the apostate Whigs, between 
 Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties of Rome, 
 and the band of patriots who still stood firm round 
 Halifax and Wharton. 
 
 Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury 
 Lane theatre, without stipulating for any advantage 
 to himself. They, therefore, thought themselves 
 bound to 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 Duch- 
 ess on the birthday ; and Cato wore a wig worth fifty 
 guineas. The prologue was written by Pope, and is 
 undoubtedly a dignified and spirited composition. 
 The part of the hero was excellently played by Booth. 
 Steele undertook to pack a house. The boxes 
 were in a blaze with the stars of the Peers in Oppo- 
 sition. The pit was crowded with attentive 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 powerful body of auxiliaries from the city, warm 
 men and true Whigs, but better known at Jonathan's 
 and Garraway^ 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, profound reverence for law and prescription, 
 and abhorrence both of popular insurrections and of
 
 I98 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 standing armies, to appropriate to themselves reflec- 
 tions thrown on the great military chief and dema- 
 gogue, who, with the support of the legions and of 
 the common people, subverted all the ancient institu- 
 tions of his country. Accordingly, every 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 unanimous 
 applause. 
 
 The delight and admiration of the town were 
 described by the Guardian in terms which we might 
 attribute to partiality, were it not that the Examiner, 
 the organ of the Ministry, held similar language. 
 The Tories, indeed, found much to sneer at in the 
 conduct of their 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 to hiss at a play, 
 and incurred some ridicule by making the hypocriti- 
 cal Sempronius their favorite, and by giving to his 
 insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed 
 on the temperate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, too, 
 who had the incredible effrontery to applaud 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 zealous Whig, was severely and not unreasonably 
 censured as ignoble and out of place. But Addison 
 was described, even by the bitterest Tory writers, as a 
 gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose friendship many
 
 ADDISON. 199 
 
 persons of both parties were happy, and whose name 
 ought not to be mixed up with factious squabbles. 
 
 Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig 
 party was disturbed, the most severe and happy was 
 Bolingbroke'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 so well against a perpetual Dicta- 
 tor. 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 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 at Oxford, and there, 
 before an audience which retained an affectionate 
 remembrance of Addison's accomplishments and vir- 
 tues, his tragedy was enacted during several days. 
 The gownsmen began to besiege the theatre in the 
 forenoon, and by one in the afternoon all 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 of Elizabeth, or even with the productions of 
 Schiller's manhood, 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
 
 200 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 Saul ; but, we think not below Cinan, and certainly 
 above any other English 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 may, we have little 
 doubt that Cato did as much as the Tatlers, Specta- 
 tors, and Freeholders united, to raise Addison's fame 
 among his contemporaries. 
 
 The modesty and good nature of the successful 
 dramatist had tamed even the malignity of faction. 
 But 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 coarse- 
 ness and asperity. Addison neither defended him- 
 self 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 infirmities and 
 eccentricities which excite laughter ; and Addison's 
 power of turning either an absurd book or an absurd 
 man into ridicule was unrivalled. Addison, however, 
 serenely conscious of his superiority, looked with pity 
 on his assailant, whose temper, naturally irritable 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 insincerity. Pope was only twenty-five. But his 
 powers had expanded to their full maturity ; and his 
 best poem, the Rape of the Lock, had recently been
 
 ADDISON. 201 
 
 published. Of his genius. Addison had always ex- 
 pressed high admiration. But Addison had early dis- 
 cerned, what might indeed have been discerned by 
 an eye less penetrating than his, that the diminutive, 
 crooked, sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on 
 society for the unkindness of nature. In the Spectator, 
 the Essay on Criticism had been praised with cordial 
 warmth ; but a gentle hint had been added, that the 
 writer of so excellent a poem would have done well 
 to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, though evi- 
 dently 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 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 appearance of 
 the Remarks on Cato gave the irritable 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. tp_ 
 the straight path. He published, accordingly, the 
 Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis. But Pope 
 had mistaken his powers. He was a great master of 
 invective and sarcasm ; he could dissect a character 
 in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithe- 
 sis : but of dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. 
 If he had 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, instead of biting, should take to
 
 202 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 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, 1 ' says the old woman ; 
 " I'll fetch change. 1 ' This is not exactly the pleas- 
 antry of Addison. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Addison saw through 
 his 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 him harm. Gifted with incom- 
 parable powers of ridicule, he had never, even in 
 self-defence, used those powers inhumanly or uncour- 
 teously ; and he was not disposed to let others make 
 his fame and his interests a pretext under which they 
 might commit outrages from which he had himself 
 constantly abstained. He accordingly declared that 
 he had no concern in the Narrative, that he disap- 
 proved 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 inclined to 
 ascribe the hatred with which he ever after regarded 
 Addison. 
 
 In September, 17 13, the Guardian ceased to appear. 
 Steele had gone mad about politics. A general elec- 
 tion had just taken place : he had been chosen mem- 
 ber for Stockbridge ; and he fully expected to play a 
 first part in Parliament. The immense success of the
 
 ADDISON. 203 
 
 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 of his friend. His spirits, 
 always violent, were now excited by vanity, ambition, 
 and faction, to such a pitch that he every day com- 
 mitted some offence against good sense and good 
 taste. All the discreet and moderate members of his 
 own party regretted and condemned his 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 has determined to go on, and that any advice 
 I may give him in this particular will have no weight 
 with him." 
 
 Steele set up a political paper called the English- 
 man, 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 he gave himself at the first meeting of the new 
 Parliament, 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 exercise 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 held in the public 
 estimation. 
 
 Addison about this time conceived the design of 
 adding an eighth volume to the Spectator. In June, 
 1 7 14, the first number of the new series appeared, and 
 during about six months three papers were published
 
 204 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 weekly. Nothing can be more striking than the con- 
 trast between the Englishman and the eighth volume 
 of the Spectator, between Steele without Addison and 
 Addison without Steele. The Englishman is forgot- 
 ten, the eighth volume of the Spectator contains, per- 
 haps, the 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 administra- 
 tion of public affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It 
 found the Tory party distracted by internal feuds, and 
 unprepared for any great effort. Harley had just been 
 disgraced. Bolingbroke, it was supposed, would be 
 the chief minister. But the Queen was on her death- 
 bed before the white staff had been given, and her 
 last public act was to deliver it with a feeble hand to 
 the Duke of Shrewsbury. The emergency produced 
 a coalition between all sections of public men who 
 were attached to the Protestant succession. George 
 the First was proclaimed without opposition. A 
 Council, in which the leading Whigs had seats, took 
 the direction of affairs till the new King should arrive. 
 The first act of the Lords Justices was to appoint 
 Addison their secretary. 
 
 There is an idle tradition that he was directed to 
 prepare a letter to the King, that he could not satisfy 
 himself as to the style of this composition, and that 
 me 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, whose knowledge of these times 
 was unequalled, that Addison never, in any official
 
 ADDISON. 205 
 
 document, affected wit or eloquence, and that his de- 
 spatches are, without exception, remarkable for unpre- 
 tending simplicity. Everybody who knows with what 
 ease Addison's finest essays were produced must be 
 convinced that, if well-turned phrases had been 
 wanted, he would have had no difficulty in finding 
 them. We are, however, inclined to believe, that 
 the story is not absolutely without a foundation. It 
 may well be that Addison did not know, till he had 
 consulted experienced clerks who remembered the 
 times when William the Third was absent on the Con- 
 tinent, 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 John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, 1 
 for example, would, in similar circumstances, be found I 
 quite as ignorant. Every office has some little mys- 
 teries which the dullest man may learn with a little 
 attention, and which the greatest man cannot possibly 
 know by 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 com- 
 munication is to be registered, and another is not. 
 One sentence must 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 instructions on points like these ; 
 and we do not doubt that Addison required such in- 
 struction when he became, for the first time, Secretary 
 to the Lords Justices. 
 
 George the First took possession of his kingdom 
 without opposition. A new ministry was formed, and 
 a new Parliament favorable to the Whigs chosen.
 
 206 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 Sunderland was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ire- 
 land ; and Addison again went to Dublin as Chief 
 Secretary. 
 
 At Dublin Swift resided ; and there was much 
 speculation about the way in which the Dean and the 
 Secretary would behave towards each other. The 
 relations 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^ Whig ministry was in power, the visits 
 of Swift to London and the official residence of Addi- 
 son in Ireland had given them opportunities of know- 
 ing each other. They were the two shrewdest ob- 
 servers of their age. But their observations on each 
 other had led them to favorable conclusions. Swift 
 did full justice to the rare powers of conversation 
 which were latent under the bashful 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. 
 The Whig statesmen loaded Addison with solid bene- 
 fits. They praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and 
 did nothing more for him. His profession laid him 
 under a difficulty. In the state they could not promote 
 him ; and they had reason to fear that, by bestow- 
 ing preferment 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 used man, sacrificed honor and consistency to
 
 ADDISON. 207 
 
 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 sup- 
 posed. The dislike with which the Queen and the 
 heads of the Church regarded him was insurmount- 
 able ; and it was with the greatest difficulty that he 
 obtained an ecclesiastical dignity of no great value, 
 on condition of fixing his residence in a country which 
 he detested. 
 
 Difference of political opinion had produced, not 
 indeed a quarrel, but a coldness between Swift and 
 Addison. 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. 
 
 *E7xe<x 5' dWrjXoji' dXe<Jop.eda ko.1 3l 5p.iXov 
 HoWol fxev yap ifxoi Tp&es kXcitoI t eTriicovpoi, 
 JfLreiveiv, op K€ deos ye irbprj xai irocral taxelw, 
 UoXXol 5 aft croi, 'Axauu, evalpep.ev, 6v /ce dtivrjai. 
 
 It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and 
 insulted nobody, should not have calumniated or in- 
 sulted Swift. But it is remarkable that Swift, to whom 
 neither genius nor virtue was sacred, and who generally 
 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 liber- 
 ties of the people, and in Ireland the dominion of the 
 Protestant 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 armed servants. Many whom he had formerly
 
 208 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 men whose fidelity to their party was 
 suspected, to hold no intercourse with political oppo- 
 nents ; but that one who had been a steady 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 cruelly wounded spirit of 
 Swift ; and the two great satirists resumed their habits 
 of friendly intercourse. 
 
 Those associates of Addison whose political opin- 
 ions agreed with his shared his good fortune. He took 
 Tickell with him to Ireland. He procured for Budgell 
 a lucrative place in the same kingdom. Ambrose 
 Philips was provided for in England. Steele had in- 
 jured himself so much by his eccentricity and perverse- 
 ness, that he obtained but a very small part of what 
 he thought his due. He was, however, knighted ; he 
 had a place in the household ; and he subsequently 
 received other marks of favor from the court. 
 
 Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 171 5 
 he quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the Board of 
 Trade. In the same year his comedy of the Drum- 
 mer was brought on the stage. The name of the 
 author was not announced ; the piece was coldly re- 
 ceived ; and some critics have expressed a doubt 
 whether it were really Addison's. To us the evidence 
 both external and internal, seems decisive. It is not 
 in Addison's best manner; but it contains numerous 
 passages which no other writer known to us could have 
 produced. It was again performed after Addison's
 
 ADDISON. 209 
 
 death, and, being known to be his, was loudly 
 applauded. 
 
 Towards the close of the year 171 5, while the 
 Rebellion was still raging in Scotland, Addison pub- 
 lished 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 Somers, and certainly no satirical papers 
 superior to those in which the Tory foxhunter is 
 introduced. This character is the original of Squire 
 Western, and is drawn with all Fielding's force, and 
 with a delicacy of which Fielding was altogether des- 
 titute. As none of Addison's works exhibit stronger 
 marks of his genius 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 the excitement of civil war cannot 
 hurry into unseemly violence. Oxford, it was well 
 known, was then the stronghold of Toryism. The 
 High Street had been repeatedly lined with bayonets 
 in order to keep down the disaffected gownsmen ; and 
 traitors pursued by the messengers of the Government 
 had been concealed in the garrets of several colleges. 
 Yet the admonition which, even under such circum- 
 stances, Addison addressed to the University, is singu- 
 larly gentle, respectful, and even affectionate. Indeed, 
 he could not find it in his heart to deal harshly even 
 with imaginary persons. His foxhunter, 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 Freeholder was 
 excellently written, complained that the ministry played
 
 2IO LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 on a lute when it was necessary to blow the trumpet. 
 He accordingly determined to execute a flourish after 
 his own fashion, and tried to rouse the public spirit of 
 the nation by means of a paper called the Town Talk, 
 which is now as utterly forgotten as his Englishman, 
 as his Crisis, as his Letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridge, 
 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 
 appeared, the estrangement of Pope and Addison 
 became complete. Addison had from the first seen 
 that Pope was false and malevolent. Pope had dis- 
 covered that Addison was jealous. The discovery 
 was made in a strange manner. Pope had written 
 the Rape of the Lock, in two cantos, without super- 
 natural 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 Rosicrusian 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 trying to mend it. 
 Pope afterwards declared that this insidious 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 Addison's advice was bad ? And if Addi- 
 son's advice was bad. does it necessarily follow that 
 it was given from bad motives ? If a friend were to
 
 ADDISON. 2 1 1 
 
 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 our best to dissuade him from run- 
 ning 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 cer- 
 tainly think it the height of 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 suc- 
 cessful work of imagination has been produced, it 
 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 in- 
 stance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso recast his 
 Jerusalem. Akenside recast his Pleasures of the 
 Imagination, and his Epistle to Curio. Pope him- 
 self, emboldened no doubt by the success with which 
 he had expanded and remodelled the Rape of the 
 Lock, made the same experiment on the Dunciad. 
 All these attempts failed. Who was to foresee that 
 Pope would, once in his life, be 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 Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe not to take so 
 unpromising a subject as Faust. Hume tried to dis- 
 suade Robertson 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 risk-
 
 212 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 ing a representation. But Scott, Goethe, Robertson^ 
 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 1 71 5, while he was engaged in translating the 
 Iliad, he met Addison at a coffee-house. Philips 
 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 diffi- 
 culty which he wished to explain. " Tickell," he 
 said, " translated some 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. 11 Pope made a civil reply, 
 and begged that his second book might have the 
 advantage of Addison's revision. Addison readily 
 agreed, looked over the second book, and sent it 
 back with warm commendations. 
 
 TickelTs version of the first book appeared soon 
 after this conversation. In the preface, all rivalry 
 was earnestly disclaimed. Tickell declared that he 
 should not go on with the Iliad. That enterprise he 
 should leave to powers which he admitted to be supe- 
 rior to his own. His only view, he said, in publish- 
 ing this specimen was to bespeak the favor of the 
 public to a translation of the Odyssey, in which he 
 had made some progress. 
 
 Addison, and Addison^ devoted followers, pro- 
 nounced 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 rivals can be said to have translated 
 the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word translation be used
 
 ADDISON. 213 
 
 in the sense which it bears in the Midsummer Night's 
 Dream. When Bottom makes his appearance with 
 an ass's head instead of his own, Peter Quince ex- 
 claims, " Bless thee ! Bottom, bless thee ! thou art 
 translated." In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers 
 of either Pope or Tickell may very properly ex- 
 claim, a Bless thee ! Homer ; thou art translated 
 indeed. 1 ' 
 
 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 fancied, 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 repu- 
 tation was to be depreciated. The subscription, on 
 which rested his hopes of a competency, was to be 
 defeated. With this view Addison had made a rival 
 translation ; Tickell had consented 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 abso- 
 lutely none. 
 
 Was there any internal evidence which proved 
 Addison 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 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 dis- 
 covered, they would be sufficiently accounted for by
 
 214 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 supposing Addison to have corrected his friend's 
 lines, as he owned that he had done. 
 
 Is there anything in the character of the accused 
 persons 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 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. Had he been indeed a man meanly jealous 
 of fame, and capable of stooping to base and wicked 
 arts for the purpose 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 : 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 
 seems to us highly improbable. That Addison should 
 have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly 
 improbable. 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 intercourse tends to prove that it was not 
 the intercourse of two accomplices in crime. These 
 are some of the lines in which Tickell poured forth 
 his sorrow over the coffin of Addison : 
 
 " Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
 A task well suited to thy gentle mind ? 
 Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend,
 
 ADDISON. 2 1 5 
 
 To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. 
 When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, 
 When pain distresses, or when 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 shall part us more." 
 
 In what words, we should like to know, did this 
 guardian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan such 
 as the Editor of the Satirist would hardly dare to pro- 
 pose to the Editor of the Age? 
 
 We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation 
 which he knew to be false. We have not the small- 
 est doubt that he believed it to be true ; and the evi- 
 dence 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 and Tickell. He was all stiletto and mask. 
 To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the con- 
 sequences of injury and insult by lying and equivocat- 
 ing, was the habit of his life. He published a lampoon 
 on the Duke of Chandos ; he was taxed with it ; and 
 he lied and 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 himself and abused his 
 enemies under feigned names. He robbed himself of 
 his own letters, and then raised the hue and cry after 
 him. Besides his frauds of malignity, of fear, of inter- 
 est, and of vanity, there were frauds which he seems 
 to have committed from love of fraud alone. He had 
 a habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who
 
 2l6 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 came near him. Whatever his object might be, the 
 indirect road to it was that which he preferred. For 
 Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and 
 veneration as it was in his nature to feel 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 
 this should attribute to others that which he felt 
 within himself. A plain, probable, coherent explana- 
 tion 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 con- 
 vinced that 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 Addi- 
 son 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 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 War- 
 wick, a foolish and vicious lad, who regarded Addison 
 with the feelings with which such lads generally 
 regard their best friends, 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 Pope nor the Earl of
 
 ADDISON. 2 I 7 
 
 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 his prose into the 
 brilliant and 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 humble friends. Of the 
 other imputations which these famous lines are in- 
 tended 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 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 
 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, more than Pope's match ; and he would 
 have been at no loss for topics. A distorted and dis- 
 eased 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. Joseph Surface ; a 
 feeble sickly licentiousness ; an odious love of filthy
 
 2l8 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 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 
 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. 
 Pope, near twenty years later, said that " through the 
 lenity of the government alone he could live with com- 
 fort. 1 ' " Consider, " he exclaimed, "the injury that a 
 man of high rank and credit may do to a private per- 
 son, under penal laws and many other disadvantages. 1 ' 
 It is pleasing to reflect that the only revenge which 
 Addison took was to insert in the Freeholder a warm 
 encomium on the translation of the Iliad, and to 
 exhort all lovers of learning to put down their names 
 as subscribers. There could be no doubt, he said, 
 from the specimens already published, that the mas- 
 terly hand of Pope would do as much for Homer as 
 Dry den had done for Virgil. From that time to the 
 end of his life, he always treated Pope, by Pope's own 
 acknowledgment, with justice. Friendship was, of 
 course, at an end. 
 
 One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to 
 play the ignominious part of talebearer on this occa- 
 sion, may have been his dislike of the marriage which 
 was about to take place between his mother and Addi- 
 son. The 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, occupied at Chelsea, a small
 
 ADDISON. 219 
 
 dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea is 
 now a district of London, and Holland House may be 
 called a town residence. But, in the days of Anne 
 and George the First, milkmaids and sportsmen 
 wandered between green hedges, a ad over fields 
 bright with daisies, from Kensington almost to the 
 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, breaking windows, and rolling women in 
 hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of letters 
 and the practice of virtue. These well-meant exer- 
 tions 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 has been made for 
 flattery, would lead us to believe that she was a fine 
 woman ; and her rank doubtless heightened her attrac- 
 tions. 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 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 singularly evil omen 
 for a swain 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
 
 220 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 brother who 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 neighboring squires, the poetical foxhunter, 
 William Somervile. In August, 1716, the newspapers 
 announced that 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 dis- 
 tinguished in political and literary history than any 
 other private dwelling in England. His portrait still 
 hangs there. The features are pleasing ; the com- 
 plexion is remarkably fair ; but in the expression we 
 trace rather the gentleness of his disposition than the 
 force and keenness of his intellect. 
 
 Not long after his marriage he reached the height 
 of civil greatness. The Whig Government had, dur- 
 ing some time, been torn by internal dissensions. 
 Lord Townshend led one section of the Cabinet, 
 Lord Sunderland the other. At length, in the spring 
 of 171 7, Sunderland triumphed. Townshend retired 
 from office, and was accompanied by Walpole and 
 Cowper. Sunderland proceeded to reconstruct the 
 Ministry; and Addison was 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. 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
 
 ADDISON. 221 
 
 recovered in the autumn ; and his recovery was cele- 
 brated in Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by 
 Vincent 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 discharging the duties of his post. He 
 resigned it, and was succeeded by his friend Craggs, 
 a young man whose natural parts, though little 
 improved by cultivation, were quick and showy, whose 
 graceful person and winning manners had made him 
 generally acceptable in society, and who, if he had 
 lived, would probably have been the most formidable 
 of all the rivals of Walpole. 
 
 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 
 biographers, and have not time to inquire. But it is 
 certain that 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 meditated many works, a tragedy on the 
 death of Socrates, a translation of the Psalms, a 
 treatise on the evidences 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 gradu- 
 ally 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
 
 222 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 early, which has been generally received, and to which 
 we have nothing to oppose, has represented his wife 
 as an arrogant 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 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 Richard 
 Steele had been gradually estranged 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 suffered when it 
 was militant. The Whig leaders took a very different 
 view of his claims. They thought that he had, by his 
 own petulance and folly, brought them as well as him- 
 self 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 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, Under Secretary of State ; while the Editor 
 of the Tatler and Spectator, the author of the Crisis, 
 the member for Stockbridge who had been persecuted 
 for firm adherence to the House of Hanover, was, at 
 near fifty, forced, after many solicitations and com- 
 plaints, to content himself with a share in the patent 
 of Drury Lane theatre. Steele himself says, in his 
 celebrated letter to Congreve, that Addison, by his 
 preference of Tickell, " incurred the warmest resent- 
 ment of other gentlemen ; " and everything seems to
 
 ADDISON. 223 
 
 indicate that, of those resentful gentlemen, Steele was 
 himself one. 
 
 While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he 
 considered as Addison's unkindness, a new cause of 
 quarrel arose. The Whig party, already divided 
 against itself, was rent by a new schism. The cele- 
 brated 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, 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 feel that the motives which induced Sunder- 
 land to frame it were not honorable to him. But we 
 cannot 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 mem- 
 ory of the generation then in the vigor of life, been 
 so grossly abused, that it was still regarded with a 
 jealousy which, when the peculiar situation of the 
 House of Brunswick is considered, may perhaps be 
 called immoderate. The particular 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, 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, 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
 
 224 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 absolute control of the other two, was absurd. But 
 if the number of peers were unlimited, it could not 
 well be denied that the Upper House was under the 
 absolute control of the Crown and the Commons, and 
 was indebted only to their moderation for any power 
 which it might be suffered to retain. 
 
 Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison with 
 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 
 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 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 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. 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 excusa- 
 ble. It has also been repeated by Miss Aikin, who
 
 ADDISON. 225 
 
 has seen the Old Whig, and for whom therefore 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 
 name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that 
 Addison's little Dicky had no more to do with Steele, 
 than Sheridan's little Isaac with Newton. 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 its meaning. Little Dicky was the nick- 
 name 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 Span- 
 ish Friar. 1 
 
 The merited reproof which Steele had received, 
 though softened by some kind and courteous expres- 
 sions, 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 
 
 1 We will transcribe the whole paragraph. How it can ever have 
 been misunderstood is unintelligible to us. 
 
 " But our author's chief concern is for the poor House of Commons, 
 whom he represents as naked and defenceless, when the Crown, by 
 losing this prerogative, would be less able to protect them against the 
 power of a House of Lords. Who forbears laughing when the Span- 
 ish Friar represents little Dicky, under the person of Gomez, insulting 
 the Colonel that was able to fright him out of his wits with a single 
 frown? This Gomez, says he, flew upon him like a dragon, got him 
 down, the Devil being strong in him, and gave him bastinado on 
 bastinado, and buffet on buffet, which the poor Colonel, being pros- 
 trate, suffered with a most Christian patience. The improbability 
 of the fact never fails to raise mirth in the audience; and one may 
 venture to answer for a British House of Commons, if we may guess, 
 from its conduct hitherto, that it will scarce be either so tame or so 
 weak as our author supposes."
 
 226 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 quarrel with an old friend. His complaint had termi- 
 nated 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 
 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 to read them without tears. At the same 
 time he earnestly recommended the interests of 
 Tickell to the care of Craggs. 
 
 Within a few hours of the time at which this dedi- 
 cation was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, who 
 was then living by his wits about town, to come to 
 Holland House. Gay went, and was received with 
 great kindness. To his amazement his forgiveness 
 was implored by the dying man. Poor Gay, the 
 most good-natured and simple of 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 anx- 
 ious to repair. He was in a state of extreme exhaus- 
 tion ; and the parting was doubtless a friendly 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 im- 
 probable. Gay had paid assiduous court to the royal 
 family. But in the Queen's days he had been the 
 eulogist of Bolingbroke, and was still connected with 
 many Tories. It is not strange that Addison, while 
 heated by conflict, should have thought himself justi- 
 fied in obstructing the preferment of one whom he
 
 ADDISON. 227 
 
 might regard as a political enemy. Neither is it 
 strange that, when reviewing his whole life, and ear- 
 nestly scrutinizing all his motives, he should think 
 that he had acted an unkind and ungenerous 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 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 con- 
 science. Is it not then reasonable to infer that, if he 
 had really been guilty of forming a base conspiracy 
 against the fame and fortunes of a rival, he would have 
 expressed some remorse 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 accusation. 
 
 The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. 
 His interview with his son-in-law is universally known. 
 "See, 11 he said, "how a Christian can die. 11 The 
 piety of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful 
 character. The feeling which predominates in all 
 his devotional writings is gratitude. God was to him 
 the all-wise and all-powerful friend who had watched 
 over his cradle with more than maternal tenderness ; 
 who had listened to his cries before they could form 
 themselves into prayer ; who had preserved his youth 
 from the snares of vice ; who had made his cup run 
 over with worldly blessings ; who had doubled the 
 value of those blessings, by bestowing a thankful 
 heart to enjoy them, and dear friends to partake 
 them ; who had rebuked the waves of the Ligurian
 
 228 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 gulf, had purified the autumnal air of the Campagna, 
 and had restrained the avalanches of Mont Cenis. 
 Of the Psalms, his favorite was that which represents 
 the Ruler of all things under the endearing image of 
 a shepherd, whose crook guides the flock safe, through 
 gloomy 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 a love which casteth out fear. 
 He died on the seventeenth of June, 1719. He had 
 just entered on his forty-eighth 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 those Tories who had loved and honored the 
 most accomplished of the Whigs, met the corpse, and 
 led the procession by torchlight, round the shrine of 
 Saint Edward, and the graves of the Plantagenets, 
 to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. On the north 
 side of that Chapel, 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 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 magnificence of Dryden to the tenderness 
 and purity of Cowper. This fine poem was prefixed 
 to a superb edition of Addison's works, which was 
 published, in 1721, by subscription. The names of
 
 ADDISON. 229 
 
 the subscribers proved how widely his fame had been 
 spread. That his countrymen should be eager to 
 possess his writings, even in a 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, of Prince Eugene, of the Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany, of the Dukes of Parma, Modena, and Guas- 
 talla, of the Doge of Genoa, of the Regent Orleans, 
 and of Cardinal Dubois. We ought to add that this 
 edition, though eminently beautiful, is in some im- 
 portant points defective ; nor, indeed, do we yet pos- 
 sess 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 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 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 Everlasting Club, or the Loves of 
 Hilpa and Shalum, just finished for the next day's 
 Spectator, in his hand. Such 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 
 manners. It was due, above all, to the great satirist, 
 who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it,
 
 230 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great 
 social reform, and who reconciled wit and virtue, after 
 a long and disastrous separation, during which wit 
 had been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by 
 fanaticism. 
 
 ° t/ 

 
 JOHN BUNYAN. 
 1628-1688. 
 
 The following essay on Bunyan was contributed tc 
 the Encyclopedia Britannica in May, 1854. Macaula)* 
 at this time had ceased to write for the reviews and 
 periodicals. Mr. Adam Black says that he was in- 
 debted to Macaulay's friendly feeling for these articles, 
 and that he made it a stipulation of his contributing 
 to the Encyclopedia that remuneration should not be 
 so much as mentioned. He had written on Bunyan 
 in 1832. In Margaret Macaulay's journal occurs the 
 following reference to this earlier article : " I am glad 
 Tom has reviewed old John Bunyan. Many are 
 reading it who never read it before. Yesterday, as 
 he was sitting in the Athenaeum, a gentleman called 
 out ' Waiter, is there a copy of the Pilgrim's Progress 
 in the library ? ' As might be expected, there was not.'" 
 The essay here reproduced is one of the best char- 
 acter appreciations that Macaulay ever made, and the 
 literary estimate is not at all inferior to many articles 
 of more words but less sense. 
 
 John Bunyan, the most popular religious writer in 
 the English language, was born at Elstow, about a 
 mile from Bedford, in the year 1628. He may be said 
 to have been born a tinker. The tinkers then formed 
 an hereditary caste, which was held in no high estima- 
 tion. They were generally vagrants and pilferers, and 
 were often confounded with the gypsies, whom in truth 
 they nearly resembled. Bunyan's father was more 
 231
 
 232 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 respectable than most of the tribe. He had a fixed 
 residence, and was able to send his son to a village 
 school where reading and writing were taught. 
 
 The years of John's boyhood were those during 
 which the puritan spirit was in the highest vigor all 
 over England ; and nowhere had that spirit more 
 influence than in Bedfordshire. It is not wonderful, 
 therefore, that a lad to whom nature had given a 
 powerful imagination, and sensibility which amounted 
 to a disease, should have been early haunted by reli- 
 gious terrors. Before he was ten, his sports were 
 interrupted by fits of remorse and despair; and his 
 sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends trying to fly 
 away with him. As he grew older, his mental con- 
 flicts became still more violent. The strong language 
 in which he described them has strangely misled all 
 his biographers except Mr. Southey. It has long 
 been an ordinary practice with pious writers to cite 
 Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural power of 
 divine grace to rescue the human soul from the lowest 
 depths of wickedness. He is called in one book the 
 most notorious of profligates ; in another, the brand 
 plucked from the burning. He is designated in Mr. 
 Ivimey's History of the Baptists as the depraved 
 Bunyan, the wicked tinker of Elstow. Mr. Ryland, 
 a man once of great note among the Dissenters, breaks 
 out into the following rhapsody : " No man of com- 
 mon sense and common integrity can deny that Bun- 
 yan was a practical atheist, a worthless contemptible 
 infidel, a vile rebel to God and goodness, a common 
 profligate, a soul-despising, a soul-murdering, a soul- 
 damning, thoughtless wretch as could exist on the 
 face of the earth. Now be astonished, O heavens, 
 to eternity ! and wonder, O earth and hell ! while time
 
 JOHN BUN VAN. 233 
 
 endures. Behold this very man become a miracle of 
 mercy, a mirror of wisdom, goodness, holiness, truth, 
 and love/ 1 But whoever takes the trouble to examine 
 the evidence will find that the good men who wrote 
 this had been deceived by a phraseology which, as 
 they had been hearing it and using it all their lives, 
 they ought to have understood better. There can- 
 not be a greater mistake than to infer, from the strong 
 expressions in which a devout man bemoans his ex- 
 ceeding sinfulness, that he has led a worse life than 
 his neighbors. Many excellent persons, whose moral 
 character from boyhood to old age has been free from 
 any stain discernible to their fellow-creatures, have, in 
 their autobiographies and diaries, applied to them- 
 selves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe 
 as could be applied to Titus Oates or Mrs. Brown- 
 rigg. It is quite certain that Bunyan was, at eigh- 
 teen, what, in any but the most austerely puritanical 
 circles, would have been considered as a young man 
 of singular gravity and innocence. Indeed, it may be 
 remarked that he, like many other penitents who, in 
 general terms, acknowledged themselves to have been 
 the worst of mankind, fired up and stood vigorously 
 on his defence, whenever any particular charge was 
 brought against him by others. He declares, it is 
 true, that he had let loose the reins on the neck of 
 his lusts, that he had delighted in all transgressions 
 against the divine law, and that he had been the ring- 
 leader of the youth of Elstow in all manner of vice. 
 But, when those who wished him ill accused him of 
 licentious amours, he called on God and the angels to 
 attest his purity. No woman, he said, in heaven, 
 earth, or hell, could charge him with having ever 
 made any improper advances to her. Not only had
 
 234 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 he been strictly faithful to his wife ; but he had, even 
 before his marriage, been perfectly spotless. It does 
 not appear from his own confessions, or from the 
 railings of his enemies, that he ever was drunk in his 
 life. One bad habit he contracted, that of using pro- 
 fane language : but he tells us that a single reproof 
 cured him so effectually that he never offended again. 
 The worst that can be laid to the charge of this poor 
 youth, whom it has been the fashion to represent as 
 the most desperate of reprobates, as a village Roch- 
 ester, is that he had a great liking for some diversions, 
 quite harmless in themselves, but condemned by the 
 rigid precisians among whom he lived, and for whose 
 opinion he had a great respect. The four chief sins 
 of which he was guilty were dancing, ringing the bells 
 of the parish church, playing at tipcat, and reading 
 the History of Sir Bevis of Southampton. A rector 
 of the school of Laud would have held such a young 
 man up to the whole parish as a model. But Bunyan's 
 notions of good and evil had been learned in a very 
 different school ; and he was made miserable by the 
 conflict between his tastes and his scruples. 
 
 When he was about seventeen, the ordinary course 
 of his life was interrupted by an event which gave a 
 lasting color to his thoughts. He enlisted in the 
 parliamentary army, and^ served during the decisive 
 campaign of 1645. All that we know of his military 
 career is that, at the siege of Leicester, one of his 
 comrades, who had taken his post, was killed by a 
 shot from the town. Bunyan ever after considered 
 himself as having been saved from death by the inter- 
 ference of Providence. It may be observed that his 
 imagination was strongly impressed by the glimpse 
 which he had caught of the pomp of war. To the
 
 JOHN BUNYAN. 235 
 
 last he loved to draw his illustrations of sacred things 
 from camps and fortresses, from guns, drums, trum- 
 pets, flags of truce, and regiments arrayed, each under 
 its own banner. His Greatheart, his Captain Boaner- 
 ges, and his Captain Credence, are evidently portraits, 
 of which the originals were among those martial 
 saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's army. 
 In a few months Bunyan returned home and mar- 
 ried. His wife had some pious relations, and brought 
 him as her only portion some pious books. And now 
 his mind, excitable by nature, very imperfectly disci- 
 plined by education, and exposed, without any pro- 
 tection, to the infectious virulence of the enthusiasm 
 which was then epidemic in England, began to be 
 fearfully disordered. In outward things he soon 
 became a strict Pharisee. He was constant in attend- 
 ance at prayers and sermons. His favorite amuse- 
 ments were one after another relinquished, though 
 not without many painful struggles. In the middle 
 of a game of tipcat he paused, and stood staring wildly 
 upwards with his stick in his hand. He had heard a 
 voice asking him whether he would leave his sins and 
 go to heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell ; and he 
 had seen an awful countenance frowning on him from 
 the sky. The odious vice of bell-ringing he re- 
 nounced; but he still for a time ventured to go to the 
 church tower and look on while others pulled the 
 ropes. But soon the thought struck him that, if he 
 persisted in such wickedness, the steeple would fall 
 on his head ; and he fled in terror from the accursed 
 place. To give up dancing on the village green was 
 still harder ; and some months elapsed before he had 
 the fortitude to part with this darling sin. When 
 this last sacrifice had been made, he was, even when
 
 236 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 tried by the maxims of that austere time, faultless. 
 All Elstow talked of him as an eminently pious 
 youth. But his own mind was more unquiet than 
 ever. Having nothing more to do in the way of visi- 
 ble reformation, yet finding in religion no pleasures to 
 supply the place of the juvenile amusements which he 
 had relinquished, he began to apprehend that he lay 
 under some special malediction ; and he was tor- 
 mented by a succession of fantasies which seemed 
 likely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam. 
 
 At one time he took it into his head that all per- 
 sons of Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to 
 make out that he partook of that blood ; but his 
 hopes were speedily destroyed by his father, who 
 seems to have had no ambition to be regarded as a Jew. 
 
 At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange 
 dilemma : " If I have not faith, I am lost ; if I have 
 faith, I can work miracles.'" He was tempted to cry 
 to the puddles between Elstow and Bedford, " Be ye 
 dry, 1 ' and to stake his eternal hopes on the event. 
 
 Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for 
 Bedford and the neighboring villages was past ; that 
 all who were to be saved in that part of England were 
 already converted ; and that he had begun to pray 
 and strive some months too late. 
 
 Then he was harassed by doubts whether the 
 Turks were not in the right, and the Christians in 
 the wrong. Then he was troubled by a maniacal 
 impulse which prompted him to pray to the trees, to 
 a broomstick, to the parish bull. As yet, however, he 
 was only entering the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 
 Soon the darkness grew thicker. Hideous forms 
 floated before him. Sounds of cursing and wailing 
 were in his ears. His way ran through stench and
 
 JOHN BUNYAN. 237 
 
 fire, close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He 
 began to be haunted by a strange curiosity about the 
 unpardonable sin, and by a morbid longing to com- 
 mit it. But the most frightful of all the forms which 
 his disease took was a propensity to utter blasphemy, 
 and especially to renounce his share in the benefits 
 of the redemption. Night and day, in bed, at table, 
 at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were repeating 
 close to his ear the words, " Sell him, Sell him." He 
 struck at the hobgoblins ; he pushed them from him ; 
 but still they were ever at his side. He cried out in 
 answer to them, hour after hour : " Never, never ; not 
 for thousands of worlds, not for thousands." At 
 length, worn out by this long agony, he suffered the 
 fatal words to escape him, "Let him go, if he will." 
 Then his misery became more fearful than ever. He 
 had done what could not be forgiven. He had for- 
 feited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, he 
 had sold his birthright ; and there was no longer any 
 place for repentance. " None," he afterwards wrote, 
 "know the terrors of those days but myself." He 
 has described his sufferings with singular energy, 
 simplicity, and pathos. He envied the brutes ; he 
 envied the very stones in the street, and the tiles on 
 the houses. The sun seemed to withhold its light 
 and warmth from him. His body, though cast in a 
 sturdy mould, and though still in the highest vigor 
 of youth, trembled whole days together with the fear 
 of death and judgment. He fancied that his trem- 
 bling was the sign set on the worst reprobates, the 
 sign which God had put on Cain. The unhappy 
 man's emotion destroyed his power of digestion. He 
 had such pains that he expected to burst asunder like 
 Judas, whom he regarded as his prototype.
 
 238 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 Neither the books which Bunyan read, nor the 
 advisers whom he consulted, were likely to do much 
 good in a case like this. His small library had re- 
 ceived a most unseasonable addition, the account of 
 the lamentable end of Francis Spira. One ancient 
 man of high repute for piety, whom the sufferer 
 consulted, gave an opinion which might well have 
 produced fatal consequences. "I am afraid," said 
 Bunyan, " that I have committed the sin against the 
 Holy Ghost.*'' " Indeed,"' said the old fanatic, " I am 
 afraid that you have. 11 
 
 At length the clouds broke ; the light became 
 clearer and clearer ; and the enthusiast, who had 
 imagined that he was branded with the mark of the 
 first murderer, and destined to the end of the arch 
 traitor, enjoyed peace and a cheerful confidence in 
 the mercy of God. Years elapsed, however, before 
 his nerves, which had been so perilously overstrained, 
 recovered their tone. When he had joined a Baptist 
 society at Bedford, and was for the first time admitted 
 to partake of the Eucharist, it was with difficulty that 
 he could refrain from imprecating destruction on his 
 brethren while the cup was passing from hand to 
 hand. After he had been some time a member of 
 the congregation, he began to preach ; and his ser- 
 mons produced a powerful effect. He was indeed 
 illiterate ; but he spoke to illiterate men. The severe 
 training through which he had passed had given him 
 such an experimental knowledge of all the modes of 
 religious melancholy as he could never have gathered 
 from books ; and his vigorous genius, animated by a 
 fervent spirit of devotion, enabled him, not only to 
 exercise a great influence over the vulgar, but even to 
 extort the half-contemptuous admiration of scholars.
 
 JOHN BUN Y AN. 239 
 
 Yet it was long before he ceased to be tormented by 
 an impulse which urged him to utter words of horri- 
 ble impiety in the pulpit. 
 
 Counter-irritants are of as great use in moral as in 
 physical diseases. It should seem that Bunyan was 
 finally relieved from the internal sufferings which had 
 embittered his life by sharp persecution from without. 
 He had been five years a preacher, when the Restora- 
 tion put it in the power of the Cavalier gentlemen 
 and clergymen all over the country to oppress the 
 Dissenters ; and, of all the Dissenters whose history 
 is known to us, he was perhaps the most hardly treated. 
 In November, 1660, he was flung into Bedford jail; 
 and there he remained, with some intervals of partial 
 and precarious liberty, during twelve years. His per- 
 secutors tried to extort from him a promise that he 
 would abstain from preaching ; but he was convinced 
 that he was divinely set apart and commissioned to 
 be a teacher of righteousness ; and he was fully 
 determined to obey God rather than man. He was 
 brought before several tribunals, laughed at, caressed, 
 reviled, menaced, but in vain. He was facetiously 
 told that he was quite right in thinking that he ought 
 not to hide his gift ; but that his real gift was skill 
 in repairing old kettles. He was compared to Alex- 
 ander the coppersmith. He was told that, if he would 
 give up preaching, he should be instantly liberated. 
 He was warned that, if he persisted in disobeying the 
 law, he would be liable to banishment, and that, if he 
 were found in England after a certain time, his neck 
 would be stretched. His answer was, " If you let me 
 out to-day, I will preach again to-morrow." Year 
 after year he lay patiently in a dungeon, compared 
 with which the worst prison now to be found in the
 
 240 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 island is a palace. His fortitude is the more extraor- 
 dinary, because his domestic feelings were unusually 
 strong. Indeed, he was considered by his stern 
 brethren as somewhat too fond and indulgent a 
 parent. He had several small children, and among 
 them a daughter who was blind, and whom he loved 
 with peculiar tenderness. He could not, he said, bear 
 even to let the wind blow on her ; and now she must 
 suffer cold and hunger ; she must beg ; she must be 
 beaten; "yet," he added, "I must do it.' 1 While he 
 lay in prison he could do nothing in the way of his 
 old trade for the support of his family. He deter- 
 mined, therefore, to take up a new trade. He learned 
 to make long tagged thread laces ; and many thou- 
 sands of these articles were furnished by him to the 
 hawkers. While his hands were thus busied, he had 
 other employment for his mind and his lips. He 
 gave religious instruction to his fellow-captives, and 
 formed from among them a little flock, of which he 
 was himself the pastor. He studied indefatigably the 
 few books which he possessed. His two chief com- 
 panions were the Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs. 
 His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might 
 have been called a living concordance ; and on the 
 margin of his copy of the Book of Martyrs are still 
 legible the ill-spelt lines of doggerel in which he 
 expressed his reverence for the brave sufferers, and 
 his implacable enmity to the mystical Babylon. 
 
 At length he began to write ; and. though it was 
 some time before he discovered where his strength 
 lay. his writings were not unsuccessful. They were 
 coarse, indeed ; but they showed a keen mother wit, 
 a great command of the homely mother tongue, an 
 intimate knowledge of the English Bible, and a vast
 
 JOHN BUNYAN. 24 1 
 
 and dearly bought spiritual experience. They, there- 
 fore, when the corrector of the press had improved 
 the syntax and the spelling, were well received by the 
 humbler class of Dissenters. 
 
 Much of Bunyan's time was spent in controversy. 
 He wrote sharply against the Quakers, whom he 
 seems always to have held in utter abhorrence. It is, 
 however, a remarkable fact that he adopted one of 
 their peculiar fashions : his practice was to write, not 
 November or December, but eleventh month and 
 twelfth month. 
 
 He wrote against the liturgy of the Church of Eng- 
 land. No two things, according to him, had less 
 affinity than the form of prayer and the spirit of 
 prayer. Those, he said with much point, who have 
 most of the spirit of prayer are all to be found in jail ; 
 and those who have most zeal for the form of prayer 
 are all to be found at the alehouse. The doctrinal 
 articles, on the other hand, he warmly praised, and 
 defended against some Arminian clergymen who had 
 signed them. The most acrimonious of all his work:; 
 is his answer to Edward Fowler, afterwards Bishop of 
 Gloucester, an excellent man, but not free from the 
 taint of Pelagianism. 
 
 Bunyan had also a dispute with some of the chiefs 
 of the sect to which he belonged. He doubtless 
 held with perfect sincerity the distinguishing tenet of 
 that sect ; but he did not consider that tenet as one 
 of high importance, and willingly joined in commun- 
 ion with quiet Presbyterians and Independents. The 
 sterner Baptists, therefore, loudly pronounced him a 
 false brother. A controversy arose which long sur- 
 vived the original combatants. In our own time the 
 cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic
 
 242 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 and rhetoric against Kiffin and Danvers was pleaded 
 by Robert Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence such 
 as no polemical writer has ever surpassed. 
 
 During the years which immediately followed the 
 Restoration, Bunyan's confinement seems to have 
 been strict. But. as the passions of 1660 cooled, as 
 the hatred with which the Puritans had been regarded 
 while their reign was recent gave place to pity, he 
 was less and less harshly treated. The distress of 
 his family, and his own patience, courage, and piety 
 softened the hearts of his persecutors. Like his 
 own Christian in the cage, he found protectors even 
 among the crowd of Vanity Fair. The bishop of 
 the diocese, Dr. Barlow, is said to have interceded 
 for him. At length the prisoner was suffered to pass 
 most of his time beyond the walls of the jail, on con- 
 dition, as it should seem, that he remained within 
 the town of Bedford. 
 
 He owed his complete liberation to one of the 
 worst acts of one of the worst governments that Eng- 
 land has ever seen. In 1671 the Cabal was in power. 
 Charles II. had concluded the treaty by which he 
 bound himself to set up the Roman Catholic religion 
 in England. The first step which he took towards 
 that end was to annul, by an unconstitutional exer- 
 cise of his prerogative, all the penal statutes against 
 the Roman Catholics ; and, in order to disguise his 
 real design, he annulled at the same time the penal 
 statutes against Protestant nonconformists. Bunyan 
 was consequently set at large. In the first warmth of 
 his gratitude he published a tract in which he com- 
 pared Charles to that humane and generous Persian 
 king, who, though not himself blessed with the light 
 of the true religion, favored the chosen people, and
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 243 
 
 permitted them, after years of captivity, to rebuild 
 their beloved temple. To candid men, who consider 
 how much Bunyan had suffered, and how little he 
 could guess the secret designs of the court, the unsus- 
 picious thankfulness with which he accepted the 
 precious boon of freedom will not appear to require 
 any apology. 
 
 Before he left his prison he had begun the book 
 which has made his name immortal. The history of that 
 book is remarkable. The author was, as he tells us, 
 writing a treatise, in which he had occasion to speak 
 of the stages of the Christian progress. He com- 
 pared that progress, as many others had compared it, 
 to a pilgrimage. Soon his quick wit discovered in- 
 numerable points of similarity which had escaped his 
 predecessors. Images came crowding on his mind 
 faster than he could put them into words, quagmires 
 and pits, steep hills, dark and horrible glens, soft vales, 
 sunny pastures, a gloomy castle of which the court- 
 yard was strewn with the skulls and bones of murdered 
 prisoners, a town all bustle and splendor, like London 
 on the Lord Mayor's Day, and the narrow path, 
 straight as a rule could make it, running on up hill 
 and down hill, through city and through wilderness, 
 to the Black River and the Shining Gate. He had 
 found out, as most people would have said, by acci- 
 dent, as he would doubtless have said, by the guidance 
 of Providence, where his powers lay. He had no 
 suspicion, indeed, that he was producing a master- 
 piece. He could not guess what place his allegory 
 would occupy in English literature ; for of English 
 literature he knew nothing. Those who suppose 
 him to have studied the Fairy Queen might easily be 
 confuted, if this were the proper place for a detailed
 
 244 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 examination of the passages in which the two allego- 
 ries have been brought to resemble each other. The 
 only work of fiction, in all probability, with which he 
 could compare his pilgrim, was his old favorite, the 
 legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton. He would have 
 thought it a sin to borrow any time from the serious 
 business of his life, from his expositions, his contro- 
 versies, and his lace tags, for the purpose of amusing 
 himself with what he considered merely as a trifle. It 
 was only, he assures us, at spare moments that he 
 returned to the House Beautiful, the Delectable_ 
 Mountains, and the Enchanted Ground. He had no' 
 assistance. Nobody but himself saw a line tilMhe^ 
 whole was complete. He then consulted his "pious 
 friends. Some were pleased. Others were much 
 scandalized. It was a vain story, a mere romance, 
 about giants, and lions, and goblins, and warriors, 
 sometimes fighting with monsters and sometimes 
 regaled by fair ladies in stately palaces. The loose 
 atheistical wits at Will's might write such stuff to 
 divert the painted Jezebels of the court ; but did it 
 become a minister of the gospel to copy the evil fash- 
 ions of the world ? There had been a time when 
 the cant of such fools would have made Bunyan mis- 
 erable. But that time was passed ; and his mind was 
 now in a firm and healthy state. He saw that, in 
 employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness 
 attractive, he was only following the example which 
 every Christian ought to propose to himself; and he 
 determined to print. 
 
 The '-Pilgrim's Progress " stole silently into the 
 world. Not a single copy of the first edition is known 
 to be in existence. The year of publication has not 
 been ascertained. It is probable that, during some
 
 JOHN BUNYAN. 245 
 
 months, the little volume circulated only among poor 
 and obscure sectaries. But soon the irresistible 
 charm of a book which gratified the imagination of 
 the reader with all the action and scenery of a 
 fairy tale, which exercised his ingenuity by setting 
 him to discover a multitude of curious analogies, which 
 interested his feelings for human beings, frail like 
 himself, and struggling with temptations from within 
 and from without, which every moment drew a smile 
 from him by some stroke of quaint yet simple pleas- 
 antry, and nevertheless left on his mind a senti- 
 ment of reverence for God and of sympathy for 
 man, began to produce its effect. In puritanical 
 circles, from which plays and novels were strictly 
 excluded, that effect was such as no work of genius, 
 though it were superior to the Iliad, to Don Quixote, 
 or to Othello, can ever produce on a mind accus- 
 tomed to indulge in literary luxury. In 1678 came 
 forth a second edition with additions ; and then the 
 demand became immense. In the four following 
 years the book was reprinted six times. The eighth 
 edition, which contains the last improvements 
 made by the author, was published in 1682, the 
 ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. The help of the 
 engraver had early been called in ; and tens of thou- 
 sands of children looked with terror and delight on 
 execrable copper-plates, which represented Christian 
 thrusting his sword into Apollyon, or writhing in the 
 grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland, and in some of 
 the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than 
 in his native country. Bunyan has told us, with 
 very pardonable vanity, that in New England his 
 dream was the daily subject of the conversation of 
 thousands, and was thought worthy to appear in the
 
 246 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 most superb binding. He had numerous admirers 
 in Holland, and among the Huguenots of France. 
 With the pleasures, however, he experienced some 
 of the pains of eminence. Knavish booksellers put 
 forth volumes of trash under his name ; and envious 
 scribblers maintained it to be impossible that the 
 poor ignorant tinker should really be the author of 
 the book which was called his. 
 
 He took the best way to confound those who coun- 
 terfeited him and those who slandered him. He 
 continued to work the gold-field which he had dis- 
 covered, and to draw from it new treasures, not indeed 
 with quite such ease and in quite such abundance as 
 when the precious soil was still virgin, but yet with 
 success which left all competition far behind. In 
 1684 appeared the second part of the " Pilgrim's Prog^ 
 ress. 11 It was soon followed by the " Holy War," 
 which, if the •'Pilgrim's Progress " did not exist, 
 would be the best allegory that ever was written. 
 
 Bunyan's place in society was now very different 
 from what it had been. There had been a time when 
 many Dissenting ministers, who could talk Latin and 
 read Greek, had affected to treat him with scorn. But 
 his fame and influence now far exceeded theirs. He 
 had so great an authority among the Baptists that he 
 was popularly called Bishop Bunyan. His episcopal 
 visitations were annual. From Bedford he rode every 
 year to London, and preached there to large and atten- 
 tive congregations. From London he went his circuit 
 through the country, animating the zeal of his brethren, 
 collecting and distributing alms, and making up quar- 
 rels. The magistrates seem in general to have given 
 him little trouble. But there is reason to believe 
 that, in the year 1685, he was in some danger of again
 
 JOHN BUNYAN. 247 
 
 occupying his old quarters in Bedfold jail. In that year 
 the rash and wicked enterprise of Monmouth gave the 
 Government a pretext for prosecuting the Noncon- 
 formists ; and scarcely one eminent divine of the 
 Presbyterian, Independent, or Baptist persuasion 
 remained unmolested. Baxter was in prison: Howe 
 was driven into exile : Henry was arrested. Two 
 eminent Baptists, with whom Bunyan had been 
 engaged in controversy, were in great peril and dis- 
 tress. Danvers was in danger of being hanged ; and 
 Kiffin's grandsons were actually hanged. The tradi- 
 tion is that, during those evil days, Bunyan was forced 
 to disguise himself as a wagoner, and that he preached 
 to his congregation at Bedford in a smock-frock, with 
 a cart-whip in his hand. But soon a great change took 
 place. James the Second was at open war with the 
 church, and found it necessary to court the Dissenters. 
 Some of the creatures of the government tried to 
 secure the aid of Bunyan. They probably knew that 
 he had written in praise of the indulgence of 1672, 
 and therefore hoped that he might be equally pleased 
 with the indulgence of 1687. But fifteen years of 
 thought, observation, and commerce with the world 
 had made him wiser. Nor were the cases exactly 
 parallel. Charles was a professed Protestant : James 
 was a professed Papist. The object of Charles's indul- 
 gence was disguised : the object of James's indulgence 
 was patent. Bunyan was not deceived. He exhorted 
 his hearers to prepare themselves by fasting and prayer 
 for the danger which menaced their civil and religious 
 liberties, and refused even to speak to the courtier who 
 came down to remodel the corporation of Bedford, and 
 who, as was supposed, had it in charge to offer some 
 municipal dignity to the Bishop of the Baptists.
 
 248 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution. In the 
 summer of 1688 he undertook to plead the cause of a 
 son with an angry father, and at length prevailed on 
 the old man not to disinherit the young one. This 
 good work cost the benevolent intercessor his life. 
 He had to ride through heavy rain. He came drenched 
 to his lodgings on Snow Hill, was seized with a violent 
 fever, and died in a few days. He was buried in Bun- 
 hill Fields ; and the spot where he lies is still regarded 
 by the Nonconformists with a feeling which seems 
 scarcely in harmony with the stern spirit of their 
 theology. Many puritans, to whom the respect paid 
 by Roman Catholics to the reliques and tombs of 
 saints seemed childish or sinful, are said to have 
 begged with their dying breath that their coffins 
 might be placed as near as possible to the coffin of 
 the author of the " Pilgrim's Progress." 
 
 The fame of Bunyan during his life, and during the 
 century which followed his death, was indeed great, 
 but was almost entirely confined to religious families 
 of the middle and lower classes. Very seldom was 
 he during that time mentioned with respect by any 
 writer of great literary eminence. Young coupled 
 his prose with the poetry of the wretched D'Urfey. 
 In the Spiritual Quixote, the adventures of Christian 
 are ranked with those of Jack the Giant-Killer and 
 John Hickathrift. Cowper ventured to praise the 
 great allegorist, but did not venture to name him. 
 It is a significant circumstance that, till a recent 
 period, all the numerous editions of the "Pilgrim's 
 Progress " were evidently meant for the cottage and 
 the servants 1 hall. The paper, the printing, the plates 
 were all of the meanest description. In general, 
 when the educated minority and the common people
 
 JOHN BUN VAN 249 
 
 differ about the merit of a book, the opinion of the 
 educated minority finally prevails. The " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " is perhaps the only book about which, 
 after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated mi- 
 nority has come over to the opinion of the common 
 people. 
 
 The attempts which have been made to improve 
 and to imitate this book are not to be numbered. It 
 has been done into verse : it has been done into 
 modern English. "The Pilgrimage of Tender Con- 
 science, 1 ' " The Pilgrimage of Good Intent," " The 
 Pilgrimage of Seek Truth," " The Pilgrimage of The- 
 ophiius," "The Infant Pilgrim," " The Hindoo Pilgrim/' 
 are among the many feeble copies of the great orig- 
 inal. But the peculiar glory of Bunyan is, that those 
 who most hated his doctrines have tried to borrow 
 the help of his genius. A Catholic version of his 
 parable may be seen with the head of the Virgin in 
 the title page. On the other hand, those Antino- 
 mians for whom his Calvinism is not strong enough 
 may study the pilgrimage of Hephzibah, in which 
 nothing will be found which can be construed into 
 an admission of free agency and universal redemption. 
 But the most extraordinary of all the acts of Vandal- 
 ism by which a fine work of art was ever defaced was 
 committed so late as the year 1853. It was deter- 
 mined to transform the " Pilgrim's Progress " into a 
 Tractarian book. The task was not easy: for it was 
 necessary to make the two sacraments the most prom- 
 inent objects in the allegory ; and of all Christian 
 theologians, avowed Quakers excepted, Bunyan was 
 the one in whose system the sacraments held the 
 least prominent place. However, the Wicket Gate 
 became a type of Baptism, and the House Beautiful
 
 250 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 of the Eucharist. The effect of this change is such 
 as assuredly the ingenious person who made it never 
 contemplated. For, as not a single pilgrim passes 
 through the Wicket Gate in infancy, and as Faithful 
 hurries past the House Beautiful without stopping, 
 the lesson which the fable in its altered shape 
 teaches, is that none but adults ought to be baptized, 
 and that the Eucharist may safely be neglected. 
 Nobody would have discovered from the original 
 " Pilgrim's Progress " that the author was not a 
 Paedobaptist. To turn his book into a book against 
 Pasdobaptism was an achievement reserved for an 
 Anglo-Catholic divine. Such blunders must neces- 
 sarily be committed by every man who mutilates parts 
 of a great work, without taking a comprehensive view 
 of the whole. 
 
 /
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 
 
 1728-1774. 
 
 This essay was contributed to the Encyclopedia 
 Brrtannica in February, 1856. It was the last but 
 two of the series which included essays on Atterbury, 
 Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson, and William Pitt. 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith, one of the most pleasing Eng- 
 lish writers of the eighteenth century. He was of a 
 Protestant and Saxon family which had been long 
 settled in Ireland, and which had, like most other Prot- 
 estant and Saxon families, been, in troubled times, 
 harassed and put in fear by the native population. 
 His father, Charles Goldsmith, studied in the reign of 
 Queen Anne at the diocesan school of Elphin, became 
 attached to the daughter of the schoolmaster, married 
 her, took orders, and settled at a place called Pallas 
 in the county of Longford. There he with difficulty 
 supported his wife and children on what he could earn, 
 partly as a curate and partly as a farmer. 
 
 At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born, in November, 
 1728. The spot was then, for all practical purposes, 
 almost as remote from the busy and splendid capital 
 in which his later years were passed, as any clearing 
 in Upper Canada or any sheep-walk in Australasia now 
 is. Even at this day those enthusiasts who venture 
 to make a pilgrimage to the birth-place of the poet, are 
 forced to perform the latter part of their journey on 
 251
 
 252 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 foot. The hamlet lies far from any high road, on a 
 dreary plain which, in wet weather, is often a lake. 
 The lanes would break any jaunting car to pieces ; 
 and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most 
 strongly built wheels cannot be dragged. 
 
 While Oliver was still a child, his father was pre- 
 sented to a living worth about 200/. a year, in the 
 county of Westmeath. The family accordingly quitted 
 their cottage in the wilderness for a spacious house on 
 a frequented road, near the village of Lissoy. Here 
 the boy was taught his letters by a maid-servant, and 
 was sent in his seventh year to a village school kept 
 by an old quartermaster on half-pay, who professed to 
 teach nothing but reading, writing, and arithmetic, but 
 who had an inexhaustible fund of stories about ghosts, 
 banshees, and fairies, about the great Rapparee chiefs, 
 Baldearg O'Donnell and galloping Hogan, and about 
 the exploits of Peterborough and Stanhope, the sur- 
 prise of Monjuich, and the glorious disaster of Bri- 
 huega. This man must have been of the Protestant 
 religion ; but he was of the aboriginal race, and not 
 only spoke the Irish language, but could pour forth 
 unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver early became, 
 and through life continued to be, a passionate admirer 
 of the Irish music, and especially of the compositions 
 of Carolan, some of the last notes of whose harp he 
 heard. It ought to be added that Oliver, though by 
 birth one of the Englishry, and though connected by 
 numerous ties with the Established Church, never 
 showed the least sign of that contemptuous antipathy 
 with which, in his days, the ruling minority in Ireland 
 too generally regarded the subject majority. So far 
 indeed was he from sharing in the opinions and feel- 
 ings of the caste to which he belonged, that he con-
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 253 
 
 ceived an aversion to the Glorious and Immorta. 
 Memory, and, even when George the Third was on 
 the throne, maintained that nothing but the restora- 
 tion of the banished dynasty could save the country. 
 
 From the humble academy kept by the old soldier 
 Goldsmith was removed in his ninth year. He went 
 to several grammar-schools, and acquired some knowl- 
 edge of the ancient languages. His life at this time 
 seems to have been far from happy. He had, as ap- 
 pears from the admirable portrait of him at Knowle, 
 features harsh even to ugliness. The small-pox had 
 set its mark on him with more than usual severity. 
 His stature was small, and his limbs ill put together. 
 Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal 
 defects ; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's 
 appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity 
 and a disposition to blunder which he retained to the 
 last. He became the common butt of boys and mas- 
 ters, was pointed at as a fright in the playground, and 
 flogged as a dunce in the schoolroom. When he had 
 risen to eminence, those who had once derided him 
 ransacked their memory for the events of his early 
 years, and recited repartees and couplets which had 
 dropped from him, and which, though little noticed at 
 the time, were supposed, a quarter of a century later, to 
 indicate the powers which produced the " Vicar of 
 Wakefield " and the " Deserted Village. 1 ' 
 
 In his seventeenth year Oliver went up to Trinity 
 College, Dublin, as a sizar. The sizars paid nothing 
 for food and tuition, and very little for lodging ; but 
 they had to perform some menial services from which 
 they have long been relieved. They swept the 
 court ; they carried up the dinner to the fellows 1 table, 
 and changed the plates and poured out the ale of the
 
 254 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 rulers of the society. Goldsmith was quartered, not 
 alone, in a garret, on the window of which his name, 
 scrawled by himself, is still read with interest. 1 From 
 such garrets many men of less parts than his have 
 made their way to the woolsack or to the episcopal 
 bench. But Goldsmith, while he suffered all the 
 humiliations, threw away all the advantages of his 
 situation. He neglected the studies of the place, 
 stood low at the examinations, was turned down to 
 the bottom of his class for playing the buffoon in the 
 lecture-room, was severely reprimanded for pumping 
 on a constable, and was caned by a brutal tutor for 
 giving a ball in the attic story of the college to some 
 gay youths and damsels from the city. 
 
 While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided 
 between squalid distress and squalid dissipation, his 
 father died, leaving a mere pittance. The youth 
 obtained his bachelor's degree, and left the university. 
 During some time the humble dwelling to which his 
 widowed mother had retired was his home. He was 
 now in his twenty-first year ; it was necessary that he 
 should do something ; and his education seemed to 
 have fitted him to do nothing but to dress himself in 
 gaudy colors, of which he was as fond as a magpie, 
 to take a hand at cards, to sing Irish airs, to play the 
 flute, to angle in summer, and to tell ghost stories by 
 the fire in winter. He tried five or six professions in 
 turn without success. He applied for ordination; 
 but, as he applied in scarlet clothes, he was speedily 
 turned out of the episcopal palace. He then became 
 
 1 The glass on which the name is written has, as we are informed by a 
 writer in Notes and Queries (2d S. ix. p. 91), been inclosed in a frame 
 and deposited in the Manuscript Room of the College Library, where 
 it is still to be seen.
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 255 
 
 tutor in an opulent family, but soon quitted his situa- 
 tion in consequence of a dispute about play. Then 
 he determined to emigrate to America. His relations, 
 with much satisfaction, saw him set out for Cork on a 
 good horse, with thirty pounds in his pocket. But in 
 six weeks he came back on a miserable hack, without 
 a penny, and informed his mother that the ship in 
 which he had taken his passage, having got a fair 
 wind while he was at a party of pleasure, had sailed 
 without him. Then he resolved to study the law. 
 A generous kinsman advanced fifty pounds. With 
 this sum Goldsmith went to Dublin, was enticed into 
 a gaming house, and lost every shilling. He then 
 thought of medicine. A small purse was made up ; 
 and in his twenty-fourth year he was sent to Edin- 
 burgh. At Edinburgh he passed eighteen months in 
 nominal attendance on lectures, and picked up some 
 superficial information about chemistry and natural 
 history. Thence he went to Leyden, still pretending 
 to study physic. He left that celebrated university, 
 the third university at which he had resided, in his 
 twenty-seventh year, without a degree, with the merest 
 smattering of medical knowledge, and with no prop- 
 erty but his clothes and his flute. His flute, however, 
 proved a useful friend. He rambled on foot through 
 Flanders- France, and Switzerland, playing tunes which 
 everywhere set the peasantry dancing, and which 
 often procured for him a supper and a bed. He wan- 
 dered as far as Italy. His musical performances, 
 indeed, were not to the taste of the Italians ; but he 
 contrived to live on the alms which he obtained at 
 the gates of convents. It should, however, be ob- 
 served that the stories which he told about this part 
 ef his life ought to be received with great caution ;
 
 256 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 for strict veracity was never one of his virtues ; and a 
 man who is ordinarily inaccurate in narration is likely 
 to be more than ordinarily inaccurate when he talks 
 about his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, was so 
 regardless of truth as to assert in print that he was 
 present at a most interesting conversation between 
 Voltaire and Fontenelle, and that this conversation 
 took place at Paris. Now it is certain that Voltaire 
 never was within a hundred leagues of Paris during 
 the whole time which Goldsmith passed on the Con- 
 tinent. 
 
 In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a 
 shilling, without a friend, and without a calling. He 
 had, indeed, if his own unsupported evidence may be 
 trusted, obtained from the university of Padua a doc- 
 tor's degree ; but this dignity proved utterly useless 
 to him. In England his flute was not in request : 
 there were no convents ; and he was forced to have 
 recourse to a series of desperate expedients. He 
 turned strolling player ; but his face and figure were 
 ill suited to the boards even of the humblest theatre. 
 He pounded drugs and ran about London with phials 
 for charitable chemists. He joined a swarm of beg- 
 gars, which made its nest in Axe Yard. He was 
 for a time usher of a school, and felt the miseries 
 and humiliations of this situation so keenly that he 
 thought it a promotion to be permitted to earn his 
 bread as a bookseller's hack ; but he soon found the 
 new yoke more galling than the old one, and was glad 
 to become an usher again. He obtained a medical 
 appointment in the service of the East India Com- 
 pany ; but the appointment was speedily revoked. 
 Why it was revoked we are not told. The subject 
 was one on which he never liked to talk. It is
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 257 
 
 probable that he was incompetent to perform the 
 duties of the place. Then he presented himself at 
 Surgeons' Hall for examination, as mate to a naval 
 hospital. Even to so humble a post he was found 
 unequal. By this time the schoolmaster whom he 
 had served for a morsel of food and the third part 
 of a bed was no more. Nothing remained but to 
 return to the lowest drudgery of literature. Gold- 
 smith took a garret in a miserable court, to which 
 he had to climb from the brink of Fleet Ditch by 
 a dizzy ladder of flagstones called Breakneck Steps. 
 The court and the ascent have long disappeared ; 
 but old Londoners will remember both. 1 Here, at 
 thirty, the unlucky adventurer sat down to toil like a 
 galley slave. 
 
 In the succeeding six years he sent to the press 
 some things which have survived and many which 
 have perished. He produced articles for reviews, 
 magazines, and newspapers ; children's books which, 
 bound in gilt paper and adorned with hideous wood- 
 cuts, appeared in the window of the once far-famed 
 shop at the corner of St. Paul's Churchyard ; " An 
 Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe," 
 which, though of little or no value, is still reprinted 
 among his works ; a " Life of Beau Nash," which is 
 not reprinted, though it well deserves to be so ; 2 a 
 
 1 A gentleman, who states that he has known the neighborhood for 
 thirty years, corrects this account, and informs the present publisher 
 that the Breakneck Steps, thirty-two in number, divided into two 
 flights, are still in existence, and that, according to tradition, Gold- 
 smith's house was not on the steps, but was the first house at the 
 head of the court, on the left hand, going from the Old Bailey. See 
 Notes and Queries (2d S. ix. 280). 
 
 2 Mr. Black has pointed out that this is inaccurate : the life of Nash 
 has been twice reprinted ; once in Mr. Prior's edition (vol. iii. p. 249). 
 and once in Mr. Cunningham's edition (vol. iv. p. 35).
 
 258 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 superficial and incorrect, but very readable, " History 
 of England," in a series of letters purporting to be 
 addressed by a nobleman to his son ; and some very 
 lively and amusing " Sketches of London Society," 1 in 
 a series of letters purporting to be addressed by a 
 Chinese traveller to his friends. All these works were 
 anonymous ; but some of them were well known to be 
 Goldsmith's ; and he gradually rose in the estimation 
 of the booksellers for whom he drudged. He was, 
 indeed, a popular writer. For accurate research or 
 grave disquisition he was not qualified by nature or 
 by education. He knew nothing accurately : his read- 
 ing had been desultory ; nor had he meditated deeply 
 on what he had read. He had seen much of the 
 world ; but he had noticed and retained little more 
 of what he had seen than some grotesque incidents 
 and characters which had happened to strike his 
 fancy. But, though his mind was very scantily stored 
 with materials, he used what materials he had in such 
 a way as to produce a wonderful effect. There have 
 been many greater writers ; but perhaps no writer was 
 evermore uniformly agreeable. His style was always 
 pure and easy, and, on proper occasions, pointed and 
 energetic. His narratives were always amusing, his 
 descriptions always picturesque, his humor rich and 
 joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable 
 sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or 
 sportive, there was a certain natural grace and deco- 
 rum, hardly to be expected from a man a great part 
 of whose life had been passed among thieves and beg- 
 gars, street-walkers and merry andrews, in those 
 squalid dens which are the reproach of great capitals. 
 As his name gradually became known, the circle of 
 his acquaintance widened. He was introduced to John
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 259 
 
 son, who was then considered as the first of living Eng- 
 lish writers ; to Reynolds, the first of English painters ; 
 and to Burke, who had not yet entered parliament, 
 but had distinguished himself greatly by his writings 
 and by the eloquence of his conversation. With these 
 eminent men Goldsmith became intimate. In 1763 
 he was one of the nine original members of that cele- 
 brated fraternity which has sometimes been called 
 the Literary Club, but which has always disclaimed 
 that epithet, and still glories in the simple name of 
 The Club. 
 
 By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable 
 dwelling at the top of Breakneck Steps, and had taken 
 chambers in the more civilized region of the Inns of 
 Court. But he was still often reduced to pitiable 
 shifts. Towards the close of 1764 his rent was so 
 long in arrear that his landlady one morning called in 
 the help of a sheriff's officer. The debtor, in great 
 perplexity, despatched a messenger to Johnson ; John- 
 son, always friendly, though often surly, sent back the 
 messenger with a guinea, and promised to follow 
 speedily. He came, and found that Goldsmith had 
 changed the guinea, and was railing at the landlady 
 over a bottle of Madeira. Johnson put the cork into 
 the bottle, and entreated his friend to consider calmly 
 how money was to be procured. Goldsmith said that 
 he had a novel ready for the press. Johnson glanced 
 at the manuscript, saw that there were good things in 
 it, took it to a bookseller, sold it for 60/., and soon re- 
 turned with the money. The rent was paid; and the 
 sheriff's officer withdrew. According to one story, 
 Goldsmith gave his landlady a sharp reprimand for 
 her treatment of him ; according to another, he in- 
 sisted on her joining him in a bowl of punch. Both
 
 26o LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 stories are probably true. The novel which was thus 
 ushered into the world was the " Vicar of Wakefield.' 1 
 
 But, before the " Vicar of Wakefield " appeared in 
 print, came the great crisis of Goldsmith's literary life. 
 In Christmas week, 1764, he published a poem, en- 
 titled the " Traveller.' 1 It was the first work to which 
 he had put his name ; and it at once raised him to the 
 rank of a legitimate English classic. The opinion of 
 the most skilful critics was, that nothing finer had 
 appeared in verse since the fourth book of the " Dun- 
 ciad. 1 ' In one respect the " Traveller " differs from 
 all Goldsmith's other writings. In general, his de- 
 signs were bad, and his execution good. In the 
 " Traveller,' 1 the execution, though deserving of much 
 praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical 
 poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and 
 at the same time so simple. An English wanderer, 
 seated on a crag among the Alps, near the point 
 where three great countries meet, looks down on the 
 boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, re- 
 calls the varieties of scenery, of climate, of government, 
 of religion, of national character, which he has ob- 
 served, and comes to the conclusion, just or unjust, 
 that our happiness depends little on political institu- 
 tions, and much on the temper and regulation of our 
 own minds. 
 
 While the fourth edition of the " Traveller " was on 
 the counters of the booksellers, the " Vicar of Wake- 
 field " appeared, and rapidly obtained a popularity 
 which has lasted down to our own time, and which 
 is likely to last as long as our language. The fable is 
 indeed one of the worst that ever was constructed. 
 It wants, not merely that probability which ought to 
 be found in a tale of common English life, but that
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 26 1 
 
 consistency which ought to be found even in the 
 wildest fiction about witches, giants, and fairies. 
 But the earlier chapters have all the sweetness of 
 pastoral poetry, together with all the vivacity of 
 comedy. Moses and his spectacles, the vicar and 
 his monogamy, the sharper and his cosmogony, the 
 squire proving from Aristotle that relatives are 
 related, Olivia preparing herself for the arduous 
 task of converting a rakish lover by studying the 
 controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, 
 the great ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's 
 amours and Dr. Burdock's verses, and Mr. Burchell 
 with his -'Fudge," have caused as much harmless 
 mirth as has ever been caused by matter packed 
 into so small a number of pages. The latter part 
 of the tale is unworthy of the beginning. As we 
 approach the catastrophe, the absurdities lie thicker 
 and thicker ; and the gleams of pleasantry become 
 rarer and rarer. 
 
 The success which had attended Goldsmith as a 
 novelist emboldened him to try his fortune as a 
 dramatist. He wrote the "Good-natured Man," 
 a piece which had a worse fate than it deserved. 
 Garrick refused to produce it in Drury Lane. It 
 was acted in Covent Garden in 1768, but was coldly 
 received. The author, however, cleared by his 
 benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, no 
 less than 500/., five times as much as he had made 
 by the "Traveller" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" 
 together. The plot of the " Good-natured Man " is, 
 like almost all Goldsmith's plots, very ill constructed. 
 But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous ; much 
 more ludicrous, indeed, than suited the taste of the 
 town at that time. A canting, mawkish play, entitled
 
 262 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 "False Delicacy," had just had an immense run. 
 Sentimentality was all the mode. During some" 
 years, more tears were shed at comedies than at 
 tragedies : and a pleasantry which moved the audi- 
 ence to anything more than a grave smile was repro- 
 bated as low. It is not strange, therefore, that the 
 very best scene in the "Good-natured Man," that 
 in which Miss Richland finds her lover attended by 
 the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in full court dresses, 
 should have been mercilessly hissed, and should have 
 been omitted after the first night. 
 
 In 1770 appeared the ''Deserted Village." In mere 
 diction and versification this celebrated poem is fully 
 equal, perhaps superior, to the " Traveller " ; and it is 
 generally preferred to the " Traveller " by that large 
 class of readers who think, with Bayes in the 
 " Rehearsal, 11 that the only use of a plan is to 
 bring in fine things. More discerning judges, how- 
 ever, while they admire the beauty of the details, 
 are shocked by one unpardonable fault which per- 
 vades the whole. The fault we mean is not that 
 theory about wealth and luxury which has so often 
 been censured by political economists. The theory 
 is indeed false : but the poem, considered merely as 
 a poem, is not necessarily the worse on that account. 
 The finest poem in the Latin language, indeed the 
 finest didactic poem in any language, was writ- 
 ten in defence of the silliest and meanest of all 
 systems of natural and moral philosophy. A poet 
 may easily be pardoned for reasoning ill ; but he 
 cannot be pardoned for describing ill, for observing 
 the world in which he lives so carelessly that his 
 portraits bear no resemblance to the originals, for 
 exhibiting as copies from real life monstrous com-
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 263 
 
 binations of things which never were and never 
 could be found together. What would be thought 
 of a painter who should mix August and January in 
 one landscape, who should introduce a frozen river 
 into a harvest scene ? Would it be a sufficient 
 defence of such a picture to say that every part w?s 
 exquisitely colored, that the green hedges, the apple- 
 trees loaded with fruit, the wagons reeling under the 
 yellow sheaves, and the sunburned reapers wiping their 
 foreheads, were very fine, and that the ice and the 
 boys sliding were also very fine ? To such a picture 
 the "Deserted Village 11 bears a great resemblance. 
 It is made up of incongruous parts. The village in 
 its happy days is a true English village. The village 
 in its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the 
 misery which Goldsmith has brought close together 
 belong to two different countries, and to two differ- 
 ent stages in the progress of society- He had 
 assuredly never seen in his native island such a 
 rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and 
 tranquillity, as his "Auburn. 11 He had assuredly 
 never seen in England all the inhabitants of such 
 a paradise turned out of their homes in one day 
 and forced to emigrate in a body to America. 
 The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the 
 ejectment he had probably seen in Munster ; but, 
 by joining the two, he has produced something 
 which never was and never will be seen in any part 
 of the world. 
 
 In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent 
 Garden with a second play, " She Stoops to Con- 
 quer. 11 The manager was not without great difficulty 
 induced to bring this piece out. The sentimental 
 comedy still reigned ; and Goldsmith's comedies
 
 264 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 were not sentimental. The "Good-natured Man" 
 had been too funny to succeed ; yet the mirth of 
 the " Good-natured Man " was sober when compared 
 with the rich drollery of " She Stoops to Conquer, 1 ' 
 which is, in truth, an incomparable farce in five 
 acts. On this occasion, however, genius triumphed. 
 Pit, boxes, and galleries, were in a constant roar of 
 laughter. If any bigoted admirer of Kelly and Cumber- 
 land ventured to hiss or groan, he was speedily silenced 
 by the general cry of " turn him out, 11 or " throw him 
 over. 11 Two generations have since confirmed the 
 verdict which was pronounced on that night. 
 
 While Goldsmith was writing the " Deserted Village " 
 and " She Stoops to Conquer, 11 he was employed on 
 works of a very different kind, works from which he 
 derived little reputation but much profit. He com- 
 piled for the use of schools a " History of Rome, 1 ' 
 by which he made 300/., a " History of England, 11 by 
 which he made 600/., a " History of Greece, 11 for 
 which he received 250/., a " Natural History, 11 for which 
 the booksellers covenanted to pay him 800 guineas. 
 These works he produced without any elaborate 
 research, by merely selecting, abridging, and trans- 
 lating into his own clear, pure, and flowing language 
 what he found in books well known to the world, but 
 too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. He committed 
 some strange blunders ; for he knew nothing with 
 accuracy. Thus in his "History of England' 1 he 
 tells us that Naseby is in Yorkshire ; nor did he cor- 
 rect this mistake when the book was reprinted. He 
 was very nearly hoaxed into putting into the " History 
 of Greece " an account of a battle between Alexander 
 the Great and Montezuma. In his " Animated Nature " 
 he relates with faith and with perfect gravity, all the
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 26$ 
 
 most absurd lies which he could find in books of 
 travels about gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that 
 preach sermons, nightingales that repeat long con- 
 versations. " If he can tell a horse from a cow," 
 said Johnson, " that is the extent of his knowledge 
 of zoology. " How little Goldsmith was qualified to 
 write about the physical sciences is sufficiently proved 
 by two anecdotes. He on one occasion denied that the 
 sun is longer in the northern than in the southern 
 signs. It was vain to cite the authority of Maupertius. 
 " Maupertius ! " he cried, " I understand those matters 
 better than Maupertius.' 1 On another occasion he, in 
 defiance of the evidence of his own senses, maintained 
 obstinately, and even angrily, that he chewed his din- 
 ner by moving his upper jaw. 
 
 Yet, ignorant a s Goldsmith was, few writers have 
 done more to make the first steps in the laborious 
 road to knowledge easy and pleasant. His compila- 
 tions are widely distinguished from the compilations 
 of ordinary book-makers. He was a great, perhaps 
 an unequalled, master of the arts of selection and 
 condensation. In these respects his histories of 
 Rome and of England, and still more his own abridg- 
 ments of these histories, well deserve to be studied. 
 In general, nothing is less attractive than an epitome ; 
 but the epitomes of Goldsmith, even when most con- 
 cise, are always amusing; and to read them is con- 
 sidered by intelligent children, not as a task, but as a 
 pleasure. 
 
 Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous 
 man. He had the means of living in comfort, and 
 even in what to one who had so often slept in barns 
 and on bulks must have been luxury. His fame was 
 great and was constantly rising. He lived in what
 
 266 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 was intellectually far the best society of the kingdom, 
 in a society in which no talent or accomplishment 
 was wanting, and in which the art of conversation 
 was cultivated with splendid success. There prob- 
 ably were never four talkers more admirable in four 
 different ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk, and 
 Garrick, and Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with 
 all the four. He aspired to share in their colloquial 
 renown ; but never was ambition more unfortunate. 
 It may seem strange that a man who wrote with so 
 much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have 
 been, whenever he took a part in conversation, an 
 empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this point 
 the evidence is overwhelming. So extraordinary was 
 the contrast between Goldsmith's published works 
 and the silly things which he said, that Horace Wal- 
 pole described him as an inspired idiot. "Noll," 
 said Garrick. " wrote like an angel, and talked like 
 poor Pol.'' Chamier declared that it was a hard exer- 
 cise of faith to believe that so foolish a chatterer could 
 have really written the " Traveller." Even Bos well 
 could say, with contemptuous compassion, that he 
 liked very well to hear honest Goldsmith run on. 
 " Yes, sir,'"' said Johnson ; " but he should not like to 
 hear himself. 1 ' Minds differ as rivers differ. There 
 are transparent and sparkling rivers from which it is 
 delightful to drink as they flow ; to such rivers the 
 minds of such men as Burke and Johnson may be 
 compared. But there are rivers of which the water 
 when first drawn is turbid and noisome, but becomes 
 pellucid as crystal, and delicious to the taste, if it be 
 suffered to stand till it has deposited a sediment ; 
 and such a river is a type of the mind of Goldsmith. 
 His first thoughts on every subject were confused
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 267 
 
 even to absurdity ; but they required only a little 
 time to work themselves clear. When he wrote they 
 had that time ; and therefore his readers pronounced 
 him a man of genius : but when he talked he talked 
 nonsense, and made himself the laughing-stock of his 
 hearers. He was painfully sensible of his inferiority in 
 conversation ; he felt every failure keenly ; yet he had 
 not sufficient judgment and self-command to hold his 
 tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were always 
 impelling him to try to do the one thing which he 
 could not do. After every attempt he felt that he 
 had exposed himself, and writhed with shame and 
 vexation ; yet the next moment he began again. 
 
 His associates seem to have regarded him with 
 kindness, which, in spite of their admiration of his 
 writings, was not unmixed with contempt. In truth, 
 there was in his character much to love, but very little 
 to respect. His heart was soft even to weakness ; he 
 was so generous that he quite forgot to be just ; he 
 forgave injuries so readily that he might be said to 
 invite them ; and was so liberal to beggars that he 
 had nothing left for his tailor and his butcher. He 
 was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. 
 One vice of a darker shade was imputed to him, 
 envy. But there is not the least reason to believe 
 that this bad passion, though it sometimes made him 
 wince and utter fretful exclamations, ever impelled 
 him to injure by wicked arts the reputation of any of 
 his rivals. The truth probably is, that he was not 
 more envious, but merely less prudent, than his neigh- 
 bors. His heart was on his lips. All those small 
 jealousies, which are but too common among men of 
 letters, but which a man of letters who is also a man 
 of the world does his best to conceal, Goldsmith
 
 268 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 avowed with the simplicity of a child. When he was 
 envious, instead of affecting indifference, instead of 
 damning with faint praise, instead of doing injuries 
 slyly and in the dark, he told everybody that he was 
 envious. " Do not, pray, do not talk of Johnson in 
 such terms," he said to Boswell ; " you harrow up 
 my very soul." George Steevens and Cumberland 
 were men far too cunning to say such a thing. They 
 would have echoed the praises of the man whom they 
 envied, and then have sent to the newspapers anony- 
 mous libels upon him. Both what was good and 
 what was bad in Goldsmith's character was to his 
 associates a perfect security that he would never com- 
 mit such villainy. He was neither ill-natured enough, 
 nor long-headed enough, to be guilty of any malicious 
 act which required contrivance and disguise. 
 
 Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a 
 man of genius, cruelly treated by the world, and 
 doomed to struggle with difficulties which at last 
 broke his heart. But no representation can be more 
 remote from the truth. He did, indeed, go through 
 much sharp misery before he had done anything con- 
 siderable in literature. But, after his name had ap- 
 peared on the title-page of the " Traveller," he had 
 none but himself to blame for his distresses. His 
 average income, during the last seven years of his 
 life, certainly exceeded 400/. a year ; and 400/. a year 
 ranked, among the incomes of that day, at least as 
 high as 800/. a year would rank at present. A single 
 man living in the Temple with 400/. a year might then 
 be called opulent. Not one in ten of the young gentle- 
 men of good families who were studying the law there 
 had so much. But all the wealth which Lord Clive 
 had brought from Bengal, and Sir Lawrence Dundas
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 269 
 
 from Germany, joined together, would not have suf- 
 ficed for Goldsmith. He spent twice as much as he 
 had. He wore fine clothes, gave dinners of several 
 courses, paid court to venal beauties. He had also, 
 it should be remembered, to the honor of his heart, 
 though not of his head, a guinea, or five, or ten, 
 according to the state of his purse, ready for any 
 tale of distress, true or false. But it was not in dress 
 or feasting, in promiscuous amours or promiscuous 
 charities that his chief expense lay. He had been 
 from boyhood a gambler, and at once the most san- 
 guine and the most unskilful of gamblers. For a 
 time he put off the day of inevitable ruin by tempo- 
 rary expedients. He obtained advances from book- 
 sellers, by promising to execute works which he never 
 began. But at length this source of supply failed. 
 He owed more than 2000/. and he saw no hope of 
 extrication from his embarrassments. His spirits and 
 health gave way. He was attacked by a nervous fever, 
 which he thought himself competent to treat. It would 
 have been happy for him if his medical skill had been 
 appreciated as justly by himself as by others. Not- 
 withstanding the degree which he pretended to have 
 received at Padua, he could procure no patients. " I 
 do not practise, 1 ' he once said ; " I make it a rule to 
 prescribe only for my friends." " Pray, dear Doctor,'' 
 said Beauclerk, "alter your rule; and prescribe only 
 for your enemies." Goldsmith now, in spite of this 
 excellent advice, prescribed for himself. The remedy 
 aggravated the malady. The sick man was induced 
 to call in real physicians ; and they at one time imag- 
 ined that they had cured the disease. Still his weak- 
 ness and restlessness continued. He could get no 
 sleep. He could take no food. "You are worse,''
 
 270 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 said one of his medical attendants, " than you should 
 be from the degree of fever which you have. Is your 
 mind at ease ? " " No, it is not, 1 ' were the last recorded 
 words of Oliver Goldsmith. He died on the third of 
 April, 1774, in his forty-sixth year. He was laid in 
 the churchyard of the Temple ; but the spot was not 
 marked by any inscription, and is now forgotten. 
 The coffin was followed by Burke and Reynolds. 
 Both these great men were sincere mourners. Burke, 
 when he heard of Goldsmith's death, had burst into a 
 flood of tears. Reynolds had been so much moved 
 by the news that he had flung aside his brush and 
 palette for the day. 
 
 A short time after Goldsmith's death, a little poem 
 appeared, which will, as long as our language lasts, 
 associate the names of his two illustrious friends with 
 his own. It has already been mentioned that he some- 
 times felt keenly the sarcasm which his wild blunder- 
 ing talk brought upon him. He was, not long before 
 his last illness, provoked into retaliating. He wisely 
 betook himself to his pen ; and at that weapon he 
 proved himself a match for all his assailants together. 
 Within a small compass he drew with a singularly easy 
 and vigorous pencil the characters of nine or ten of 
 his intimate associates. Though this little work did 
 not receive his last touches, it must always be regarded 
 as a masterpiece. It is impossible, however, not to 
 wish that four or five likenesses w r hich have no inter- 
 est for posterity were wanting to that noble gallery, 
 and that their places were supplied by sketches of 
 Johnson and Gibbon, as happy and vivid as the 
 sketches of Burke and Garrick. 
 
 Some of Goldsmith's friends and admirers honored 
 him with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. Nolle-
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 27 1 
 
 kens was the sculptor ; and Johnson wrote the inscrip- 
 tion. It is much to be lamented that Johnson did not 
 leave to posterity a more durable and a more valuable 
 memorial of his friend. A life of Goldsmith would 
 have been an inestimable addition to the Lives of the 
 Poets. No man appreciated Goldsmith's writings more 
 justly than Johnson: no man was better acquainted 
 with Goldsmith's character and habits ; and no man 
 was more competent to delineate with truth and spirit 
 the peculiarities of a mind in which great powers were 
 found in company with great weaknesses. But the 
 list of poets to whose works Johnson was requested 
 by the booksellers to furnish prefaces ended with 
 Lyttleton, who died in 1773. The line seems to have 
 been drawn expressly for the purpose of excluding the 
 person whose portrait would have most fitly closed the 
 series. Goldsmith, however, has been fortunate in 
 his biographers. Within a few years his life has been 
 written by Mr. Prior, by Mr. Washington Irving, and 
 by Mr. Forster. The diligence of Mr. Prior deserves 
 great praise ; the style of Mr. Washington Irving is 
 always pleasing ; but the highest place must, in jus- 
 tice, be assigned to the eminently interesting work of 
 Mr. Forster.
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 i 709-1 784. 
 
 The essay on Samuel Johnson was written for the 
 Encyclopedia Brifannica, December, 1856, about 
 twenty-five years after Macaulay had treated the same 
 subject in the Edinburgh Review. Both essays are 
 on essentially the same lines of thought, though the 
 latter article, written in the calmer spirit of the author's 
 mature years, is more generous in tone and more chaste 
 in diction. Macaulay could not separate Johnson from 
 Boswell, and both were victims of his determination to 
 prove the famous paradox that the excellence of Bos- 
 welPs Life was due to the badness of the author. In 
 the biographical part of the essay a desire to be fair, 
 possibly even generous, is evident ; but the critical 
 estimate is entirely inadequate. Macaulay could not 
 pierce through the external bark of the great lexicog- 
 rapher. He sees chiefly the coarseness, ill-temper, 
 and gluttony, and is blind to the intensely religious 
 spirit which alone furnishes the point of view from 
 which Johnson can be properly judged. The appre- 
 ciation is confined to the surface, and is therefore 
 somewhat unjust. 
 
 Samuel Johnson, one of the most eminent English 
 writers of the eighteenth century, was the son of 
 Michael Johnson, who was, at the beginning of that 
 century, a magistrate of Lichfield, and a bookseller of 
 great note in the midland counties. Michael's abili- 
 ties and attainments seem to have been considerable. 
 He was so well acquainted with the contents of the 
 
 **** > H <eY ' • . 272
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 273 
 
 volumes which he exposed to sale, that the country 
 rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought 
 him an oracle on points of learning. Between him 
 and the clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious 
 and political sympathy. He was a zealous church- 
 man, and, though he had qualified himself for munici- 
 pal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in 
 possession, was to the last a Jacobite in heart. At 
 his house, a house which is still pointed out to every 
 traveller who visits Lichfield, Samuel was born on the 
 1 8th of September, 1709. In the child, the physical, 
 intellectual, and moral peculiarities which afterwards 
 distinguished the man were plainly discernible ; great 
 muscular strength accompanied by much awkwardness 
 and many infirmities ; great quickness of parts, with 
 a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination ; a 
 kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable 
 temper. He had inherited from his ancestors a scrof- 
 ulous taint, which it was beyond the power of medi- 
 cine to remove. His parents were weak enough to 
 believe that the royal touch was a specific for this 
 malady. In his third year he was taken up to Lon- 
 don, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by 
 the court chaplains, and stroked and presented with 
 a piece of gold by Queen Anne. One of his earliest 
 recollections was that of a stately lady in a diamond 
 stomacher and a long black hood. Her hand was 
 applied in vain. The boy^ features, which were 
 originally noble and not irregular, were distorted by 
 his malady. His cheeks were deeply scarred. He 
 lost for a time the sight of one eye ; and he saw but 
 very imperfectly with the other. But the force of his 
 mind overcame every impediment. Indolent as he 
 was, he acquired knowledge with such ease and
 
 274 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 rapidity that at every school to which he was sent 
 he was soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eigh- 
 teen he resided at home, and was left to his own 
 devices. He learned much at this time, though his 
 studies were without guidance and without plan. He 
 ransacked his father's shelves, dipped into a multitude 
 of books, read what was interesting, and passed over 
 what was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired 
 little or no useful knowledge in such a way : but much 
 that was dull to ordinary lads was interesting to 
 Samuel. He read little Greek; for his proficiency in 
 that language was not such that he could take much 
 pleasure in the masters of Attic poetry and eloquence. 
 But he had left school a good Latinist : and he soon 
 acquired, in the large and miscellaneous library of 
 which he now had the command, an extensive knowl- 
 edge of Latin literature. That Augustan delicacy of 
 taste which is the boast of the great public schools 
 of England he never possessed. But he was early 
 familiar with some classical writers who were quite 
 unknown to the best scholars in the sixth form at 
 Eton. He was peculiarly attracted by the works of 
 the great restorers of learning. Once, while search- 
 ing for some apples, he found a huge folio volume of 
 Petrarch's works. The name excited his curiosity ; 
 and he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, 
 the diction and versification of his own Latin compo- 
 sitions show that he had paid at least as much atten- 
 tion to modern copies from the antique as to the 
 original models. 
 
 While he was thus irregularly educating himself, 
 his family was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old 
 Michael Johnson was much better qualified to pore 
 upon books, and to talk about them, than to trade in
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 275 
 
 them. His business declined ; his debts increased ; 
 it was with difficulty that the daily expenses of his 
 household were defrayed. It was out of his power to 
 support his son at either university : but a wealthy 
 neighbor offered assistance ; and in reliance on prom- 
 ises which proved to be of very little value, Samuel 
 was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When 
 the young scholar presented himself to the rulers of 
 that society, they were amazed not more by his 
 ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the 
 quantity of extensive and curious information which 
 he had picked up during many months of desultory 
 but not unprofitable study. On the first day of his 
 residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Ma- 
 crobius ; and one of the most learned among them 
 declared that he had never known a freshman of equal 
 attainments. 
 
 At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three 
 years. He was poor, even to raggedness ; and his 
 appearance excited a mirth and a pity which were 
 equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was 
 driven from the quadrangle of Christ Church by the 
 sneering looks which the members of that aristocrati- 
 cal society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some 
 charitable person placed a new pair at his door ; but 
 he spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, 
 not servile, but reckless and ungovernable. No 
 opulent gentleman commoner, panting for one-and- 
 twenty, could have treated the academical authorities 
 with more gross disrespect. The needy scholar was 
 generally to be seen under the gate of Pembroke, a 
 gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle 
 of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and 
 dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undis-
 
 276 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 puted ascendency. In every mutiny against the dis- 
 cipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much 
 was pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distin- 
 guished by abilities and acquirements. He had early 
 made himself known by turning Pope^ Messiah into 
 Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not 
 exactly Virgilian ; but the translation found many 
 admirers, and was read with pleasure by Pope him- 
 self. 
 
 The time drew near at which Johnson would, in 
 the ordinary course of things, have become a Bachelor 
 of Arts ; but he was at the end of his resources. 
 Those promises of support on which he had relied 
 had not been kept. His family could do nothing for 
 him. His debts to Oxford tradesmen were small 
 indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the autumn 
 of 1 73 1, he was under the necessity of quitting the 
 university without a degree. In the following winter 
 his father died. The old man left but a pittance ; 
 and of that pittance almost the whole was appropri- 
 ated to the support of his widow. The property to 
 which Samuel succeeded amounted to no more than 
 twenty pounds. 
 
 His life, during the thirty years which followed, 
 was one hard struggle with poverty. The misery of 
 that struggle needed no aggravation, but was aggra- 
 vated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an 
 unsound mind. Before the young man left the 
 university, his hereditary malady had broken forth in 
 a singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable 
 hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been 
 mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane ; and, 
 in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have 
 often been thought grounds sufficient for absolving
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 2/"/ 
 
 felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his 
 gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and 
 sometimes terrified people who did not know him. 
 At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, 
 stoop down and twitch off" a lady's shoe. He would 
 amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a clause 
 of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintel- 
 ligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a 
 great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He 
 would set his heart on touching every post in the 
 streets through which he walked. If by any chance 
 he missed a post, he would go back a hundred yards 
 and repair the omission. Under the influence of his 
 disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his 
 imagination morbidly active. At one time he would 
 stand poring on the town clock without being able to 
 tell the hour. At another, he would distinctly hear 
 his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by 
 his name. But this was not the worst. A deep 
 melancholy took possession of him and gave a dark 
 tinge to all his views of human nature and of human 
 destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven 
 many men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. 
 But he was under no temptation to commit suicide. 
 He was sick of life ; but he was afraid of death ; and 
 he shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded 
 him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found but 
 little comfort during his long and frequent fits of de- 
 jection ; for his religion partook of his own character. 
 The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not 
 in a direct line, or with its own pure splendor. The 
 rays had to struggle through a disturbing medium : 
 they reached him refracted, dulled and discolored by 
 the thick gloom which had settled on his soul ; and,
 
 278 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 though they might be sufficiently clear to guide him, 
 were too dim to cheer him. 
 
 With such infirmities of body and of mind, this 
 celebrated man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight 
 his way through the world. He remained during 
 about five years in the midland counties. At Lich- 
 field, his birth-place and his early home, he had inher- 
 ited some friends and acquired others. He was kindly 
 noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay officer of noble fam- 
 ily, who happened to be quartered there. Gilbert 
 Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the 
 diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning, and 
 knowledge of the world, did himself honor by patron- 
 izing the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, 
 unpolished manners and squalid garb moved many of 
 the petty aristocracy of the neighborhood to laughter 
 or to disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could 
 find no way of earning a livelihood. He became 
 usher of a grammar school in Leicestershire : he 
 resided as a humble companion in the house of a 
 country gentleman; but a life of dependence was 
 insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to 
 Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by liter- 
 ary drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, 
 little noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a 
 Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put forth pro- 
 posals for publishing by subscription the poems of 
 Politian, with notes containing a history of modern 
 Latin verse : but subscriptions did not come in ; and 
 the volume never appeared. 
 
 While leading this vagrant and miserable life, John- 
 son fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs. 
 Elizabeth Porter, a widow who had children as old as 
 himself. To ordinary spectators, the lady appeared
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 279 
 
 to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch 
 thick, dressed in gaudy colors, and fond of exhibiting 
 provincial airs and graces which were not exactly 
 those of the Oueensberrys and Lepels. To John- 
 son, however, whose passions were strong, whose 
 eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from 
 natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been 
 in the same room with a woman of real fashion, his 
 Titty, as he called her, was the most beautiful, grace- 
 ful and accomplished of her sex. That his admira- 
 tion was unfeigned cannot be doubted ; for she was 
 as poor as himself. She accepted, with a readiness 
 which did her little honor, the addresses of a suitor 
 who might have been her son. The marriage, how- 
 ever, in spite of occasional wranglings, proved hap- 
 pier than might have been expected. The lover 
 continued to be under the illusions of the wedding- 
 day till the lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On 
 her monument he placed an inscription extolling the 
 charms of her person and of her manners ; and when, 
 long after her decease, he had occasion to mention 
 her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludicrous, 
 half pathetic, " Pretty creature ! " 
 
 His marriage made it necessary for him to exert 
 himself more strenuously than he had hitherto done. 
 He took a house in the neighborhood of his native 
 town, and advertised for pupils. But eighteen months 
 passed away ; only three pupils came to his academy. 
 Indeed, his appearance was strange, and his temper 
 so violent, that his schoolroom must have resembled 
 an ogre's den. Nor was the tawdry painted grand- 
 mother whom he called his Titty well qualified to 
 make provisions for the comfort of young gentlemen. 
 David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used, many
 
 280 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 years later, to throw the best company of London into 
 convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endearments 
 of this extraordinary pair. 
 
 At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his 
 age, determined to seek his fortune in the capital as 
 a literary adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, 
 three acts of the tragedy of Irene in manuscript, and 
 two or three letters of introduction from his friend 
 Walmesley. 
 
 Never, since literature became a calling in England, 
 had it been a less gainful calling than at the time 
 when Johnson took up his residence in London. In 
 the preceding generation a writer of eminent merit 
 was sure to be munificently rewarded by the govern- 
 ment. The least that he could expect was a pension 
 or a sinecure place ; and, if he showed any aptitude 
 for politics, he might hope to be a member of parlia- 
 ment, a lord of the treasury, an ambassador, a secre- 
 tary of state. It would be easy, on the other hand, 
 to name several writers of the nineteenth century of 
 whom the least successful has received forty thousand 
 pounds from the booksellers. But Johnson entered 
 on his vocation in the most dreary part of the dreary 
 interval which separated two ages of prosperity. 
 Literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage 
 of the great, and had not begun to flourish under the 
 patronage of the public. One man of letters, indeed, 
 Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then considered 
 as a handsome fortune, and lived on a footing of equal- 
 ity with nobles and ministers of state. But this was a 
 solitary exception. Even an author whose reputation 
 was established, and whose works were popular, such 
 an author as Thomson, whose Seasons were in every 
 library, such an author as Fielding, whose Pasquin
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 28 1 
 
 had had a greater run than any drama since the Beg- 
 gar's Opera, was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawn- 
 ing his best coat, the means of dining on tripe at 
 a cook-shop under ground, where he could wipe his 
 hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a New- 
 foundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine 
 what humiliations and privations must have awaited 
 the novice who had still to earn a name. One of the 
 publishers to whom Johnson applied for employment 
 measured with scornful eye that athletic though un- 
 couth frame, and exclaimed, " You had better get 
 a porter's knot, and carry trunks. 1 ' Nor was the 
 advice bad ; for a porter was likely to be as plentifully 
 fed, and as comfortably lodged, as a poet. 
 
 Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson 
 was able to form any literary connection from which 
 he could expect more than bread for the day which 
 was passing over him. He never forgot the gener- 
 osity with which Hervey. who was now residing in 
 London, relieved his wants during this time of trial. 
 " Harry Hervey," said the old philosopher many 
 years later, " was a vicious man ; but he was very kind 
 to me. If you call a dog Hervey I shall love him." 
 At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts 
 which were made more agreeable by contrast. But 
 in general he dined, and thought that he dined well, 
 on six pennyworth of meat, and a pennyworth of 
 bread, at an alehouse near Drury Lane. 
 
 The effect of the privations and sufferings which 
 he endured at this time was discernible to the last 
 in his temper and his deportment. His manners had 
 never been courtly. They now became almost sav- 
 age. Being frequently under the necessity of wearing 
 shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became a perfect
 
 282 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down 
 to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with 
 ravenous greediness. Even to the end of his life, 
 and even at the tables of the great, the sight of food 
 affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey. 
 His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordi- 
 naries and alamode beefshops, was far from delicate. 
 Whenever he was fortunate to have near him a hare 
 that had been kept too long, or meat pie made with 
 rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence 
 that his veins swelled, and the moisture broke out on 
 his forehead. The affronts which his poverty em- 
 boldened stupid and low-minded men to offer to him 
 would have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, 
 but made him rude even to ferocity. Unhappily the 
 insolence which, while it was defensive, was pardon- 
 able, and in some sense respectable, accompanied 
 him into societies where he was treated with courtesy 
 and kindness. He was repeatedly provoked into 
 striking those who had taken liberties with him. All 
 the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain 
 from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, 
 the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who 
 proclaimed everywhere that he had been knocked 
 down by the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff 
 the Harleian Library. 
 
 About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in 
 London, he was fortunate enough to obtain regular 
 employment from Cave, an enterprising and intelli- 
 gent bookseller, who was proprietor and editor of the 
 Gentleman's Magazine. That journal, just enter- 
 ing on the ninth year of its long existence, was the 
 only periodical work in the kingdom which then had 
 what would now be called a large circulation. It was.
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 283 
 
 indeed, the chief source of parliamentary intelligence. 
 It was not then safe, even during recess, to publish 
 an account of the proceedings of either House with- 
 out some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to enter- 
 tain his readers with what he called " Reports of the 
 Debates of the Senate of Lilliput. 11 France was Ble- 
 fuscu ; London was Mildendo; pounds were sprugs ; 
 the Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac Secretary of 
 State ; Lord Hardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad ; and 
 William Pulteney was Wingul Pulnub. To write the 
 speeches was, during several years, the business of 
 Johnson. He was generally furnished with notes, 
 meagre, indeed, and inaccurate, of what had been 
 said ; but sometimes he had to find arguments and 
 eloquence both for the ministry and for the opposi- 
 tion. He was himself a Tory, not from rational con- 
 viction — for his serious opinion was that one form 
 of government was just as good or as bad as another 
 — but from mere passion, such as inflamed the Capu- 
 lets against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman 
 circus against the Greens. In his infancy he had 
 heard so much talk about the villainies of the Whigs, 
 and the dangers of the Church, that he had become 
 a furious partisan when he could scarcely speak. 
 Before he was three he had insisted on being taken 
 to hear Sacheverell preach at Lichfield Cathedral, and 
 had listened to the sermon with as much respect, and 
 probably with as much intelligence, as any Stafford- 
 shire squire in the congregation. The work which had 
 been begun in the nursery had been completed by the 
 university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was 
 one of the most Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The 
 prejudices which he brought up to London were 
 scarcely less absurd than those of his own Tom
 
 284 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 Tempest. Charles II. and James II. were two of the 
 best kings that ever reigned. Laud, a poor creature 
 who never did, said, or wrote anything indicating 
 more than the ordinary capacity of an old woman, 
 was a prodigy of parts and learning over whose tomb 
 Art and Genius still continued to weep. Hampden 
 deserved no more honorable name than that of " the 
 zealot of rebellion. 11 Even the ship money, con- 
 demned not less decidedly by Falkland and Claren- 
 don than by the bitterest Roundheads, Johnson would 
 not pronounce to have been an unconstitutional im- 
 post. Under a government, the mildest that had 
 ever been known in the world — under a government 
 which allowed to the people an unprecedented 
 liberty of speech and action — he fancied that he 
 was a slave ; he assailed the ministry with obloquy 
 which refuted itself, and regretted the lost freedom 
 and happiness of those golden days in which a writer 
 who had taken but one-tenth part of the license 
 allowed to him would have been pilloried, mangled 
 with the shears, whipped at the cart's tail, and flung 
 into a noisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters 
 and stock-jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial 
 parliaments, and continental connections. He long 
 had an aversion to the Scotch, an aversion of which 
 he could not remember the commencement, but 
 which, he owned, had probably originated in his 
 abhorrence of the conduct of the nation during the 
 Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner 
 debates on great party questions were likely to be 
 reported by a man whose judgment was so much dis- 
 ordered by party spirit. A show of fairness was 
 indeed necessary to the prosperity of the Magazine. 
 But Johnson long afterwards owned that, though he
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 285 
 
 had saved appearances, he had taken care that the 
 Whig dogs should not have the best of it ; and, in 
 fact, every passage which has lived, every passage 
 which bears the marks of his higher faculties, is put 
 into the mouth of some member of the opposition. 
 
 A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these 
 obscure labors, he published a work which at once 
 placed him high among the writers of the age. It is 
 probable that what he had suffered during his first 
 year in London had often reminded him of some parts 
 of that noble poem in which Juvenal had described 
 the misery and degradation of a needy man of letters, 
 lodged among the pigeons 1 nests in the tottering 
 garrets which overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's 
 admirable imitations of Horace's Satires and Epistles 
 had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were 
 by many readers thought superior to the originals. 
 What Pope had done for Horace, Johnson aspired to 
 do for Juvenal. The enterprise was bold, and yet 
 judicious, for between Johnson and Juvenal there was 
 much in common, much more certainly than between 
 Pope and Horace. 
 
 Johnson's London appeared without his name in 
 May, 1738. He received only ten guineas for this 
 stately and vigorous poem : but the sale was rapid, and 
 the success complete. A second edition was required 
 within a week. Those small critics who are always 
 desirous to lower established reputations ran about 
 proclaiming that the anonymous satirist was superior 
 to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of litera- 
 ture. It ought to be remembered, to the honor of 
 Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause with 
 which the appearance of a rival genius was welcomed. 
 He made inquiries about the author of London. Such
 
 286 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 a man, he said, could not long be concealed. The 
 name was soon discovered ; and Pope, with great kind- 
 ness, exerted himself to obtain an academical degree 
 and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor 
 young poet. The attempt failed ; and Johnson re- 
 mained a bookseller's hack. 
 
 It does not appear that these two men, the most 
 eminent writer of the generation which was going out, 
 and the most eminent writer of the generation which 
 was coming in, ever saw each other. They lived in 
 very different circles, one surrounded by dukes and 
 earls, the other by starving pamphleteers and index- 
 makers. Among Johnson's associates at this time may 
 be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts were 
 pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with 
 his arms through two holes in his blanket ; who com- 
 posed very respectable sacred poetry when he was 
 sober ; and who was at last run over by a hackney 
 coach when he was drunk: Hoole, surnamed the 
 metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending to his 
 measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the 
 board where he sate cross-legged : and the penitent 
 impostor, George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all 
 day, in a humble lodging, on the folios of Jewish 
 rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged himself at night 
 with literary and theological conversation at an ale- 
 house in the city. But the most remarkable of the 
 persons with whom at this time Johnson consorted 
 was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's 
 apprentice, who had seen life in all its forms, who had 
 feasted among blue ribands in St. James's Square, and 
 had lain with fifty pounds' weight of iron on his legs 
 in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man had, 
 after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 287 
 
 abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. 
 His patrons had been taken away by death, or es- 
 tranged by the riotous profusion with which he squan- 
 dered their bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with 
 which he rejected their advice. He now lived by beg- 
 ging. He dined on venison and champagne whenever 
 he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If 
 his questing had been unsuccessful, he appeased the 
 rage of hunger with some scraps of broken meat, and 
 lay down to rest under the Piazza of Covent Garden 
 in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he 
 could get to the furnace of a glass-house. Yet, in his 
 misery, he was still an agreeable companion. He had 
 an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and 
 brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. He 
 had observed the great men of both parties in hours of 
 careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of opposition 
 without the mask of patriotism, and had heard the 
 prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not 
 over decent. During some months Savage lived in 
 the closest familiarity w r ith Johnson ; and then the 
 friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained 
 in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the 
 West of England, lived there as he had lived every- 
 where, and, in 1743, died, penniless and heart-broken, 
 in Bristol jail. 
 
 Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was 
 strongly excited about his extraordinary character, 
 and his not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him 
 appeared widely different from the catchpenny lives 
 of eminent men which were then a staple article jof 
 manufacture in Grub Street. The style was indeed 
 deficient in ease and variety ; and the writer was evi- 
 dently too partial to the Latin element of our language.
 
 288 LITERARY ESSAYS, 
 
 But the little work, with all its faults, was a master- 
 piece. No finer specimen of literary biography existed 
 in any language, living or dead ; and a discerning critic 
 might have confidently predicted that the author was 
 destined to be the founder of a new school of English 
 eloquence. 
 
 The life of Savage was anonymous ; but it was well 
 known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer. 
 During the three years which followed, he produced 
 no important work ; but he was not, and indeed could 
 not be, idle. The fame of his abilities and learning 
 continued to grow. Warburton pronounced him a 
 man of parts and genius ; and the praise of Warburton 
 was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's reputa- 
 tion that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers com- 
 bined to employ him in the arduous work of preparing 
 a Dictionary of the English language, in two folio 
 volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him 
 was only fifteen hundred guineas : and out of this sum 
 he had to pay several poor men of letters who assisted 
 him in the humbler parts of his task. 
 
 The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to 
 the Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been 
 celebrated for the politeness of his manners, the brill- 
 iancy of his wit, and the delicacy of his taste. He was 
 acknowledged to be the finest speaker in the House 
 of Lords. He had recently governed Ireland, at a 
 momentous conjuncture, with eminent firmness, wis- 
 dom, and humanity : and he had since become Secre- 
 tary of State. He received Johnson's homage with 
 the most winning affability, and requited it with a few 
 guineas, bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, 
 but was by no means desirous to see all his carpets 
 blackened with the London mud, and his soups and
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 289 
 
 wines thrown to right and left over the gowns of fine 
 ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentlemen, by an 
 absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts 
 and uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scare- 
 crow, and ate like a cormorant. During some time 
 Johnson continued to call on his patron, but, after 
 being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship 
 was not at home, took the hint, and ceased to present 
 himself at the inhospitable door. 
 
 Johnson had flattered himself that he should have 
 completed his Dictionary by the end of 1750; but it 
 was not till 1755 tnat ne at length gave his huge 
 volumes to the world. During the seven years which 
 he passed in the drudgery of penning definitions and 
 marking quotations for transcription, he sought for 
 relaxation in literary labor of a more agreeable kind. 
 In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human Wishes, 
 an excellent imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. 
 It is in truth not easy to say whether the palm be- 
 longs to the ancient or to the modern poet. The 
 couplets in which the fall of Wolsey is described, 
 though lofty and sonorous, are feeble when compared 
 with the wonderful lines which bring before us all 
 Rome in tumult on the day of the fall of Sejanus, the 
 laurels on the door-posts, the white bull stalking 
 towards the Capitol, the statues rolling down from 
 their pedestals, the flatterers of the disgraced minister 
 running to see him dragged with a hook through the 
 streets, and to have a kick at his carcase before it is 
 hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in 
 the concluding passage the Christian moralist has not 
 made the most of his advantages, and has fallen 
 decidedly short of the sublimity of his Pagan model. 
 On the other hand, Juvenal's Hannibal must yield to
 
 290 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 Johnson's Charles ; and Johnson's vigorous and pa- 
 thetic enumeration of the miseries of a literary life 
 must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's lamenta- 
 tion over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero. 
 
 For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes 
 Johnson received only fifteen guineas. 
 
 A few days after the publication of this poem, his 
 tragedy, begun many years before, was brought on 
 the stage. His pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, 
 made his appearance on a humble stage in Good- 
 man's Fields, had at once risen to the first place 
 among actors, and was now, after several years of 
 almost uninterrupted success, manager of Drury Lane 
 Theatre. The relation between him and his old pre- 
 ceptor was of a very singular kind. They repelled 
 each other strongly, and yet attracted each other 
 strongly. Nature had made them of very different 
 clay; and circumstances had fully brought out the 
 natural peculiarities of both. Sudden prosperity had 
 turned Garrick's head. Continued adversity had 
 soured Johnson's temper. Johnson saw with more 
 envy than became so great a man the villa, the plate, 
 the china, the Brussels carpet, which the little mimic 
 had got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticula- 
 tions, what wiser men had written ; and the exqui- 
 sitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the 
 thought that, while all the rest of the world was 
 applauding him, he could obtain from one morose 
 cynic, whose opinion it was impossible to despise, 
 scarcely any compliment not acidulated with scorn. 
 Yet the two Lichfield men had so many early recol- 
 lections in common, and sympathized with each other 
 on so many points on which they sympathized with 
 nobody else in the vast population of the capital,
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 29 1 
 
 that, though the master was often provoked by the 
 monkey-like impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil 
 by the bearish rudeness of the master, they remained 
 friends till they were parted by death. Garrick now 
 brought Irene out, with alterations sufficient to dis- 
 please the author, yet not sufficient to make the piece 
 pleasing to the audience. The public, however, lis- 
 tened with little emotion, but with much civility, to 
 five acts of monotonous declamation. After nine rep- 
 resentations the play was withdrawn. It is, indeed, 
 altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even when 
 perused in the closet, will be found hardly worthy of 
 the author. He had not the slightest notion of what 
 blank verse should be. A change in the last syllable 
 of every other line would make the versification of 
 the Vanity of Human Wishes closely resemble the 
 versification of Irene. The poet, however, cleared, 
 by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright 
 of his tragedy, about three hundred pounds, then a 
 great sum in his estimation. 
 
 About a year after the representation of Irene, he 
 began to publish a series of short essays on morals, 
 manners, and literature. This species of composition 
 had been brought into fashion by the success of the 
 Tatler, and by the still more brilliant success of the 
 Spectator. A crowd of small writers had vainly 
 attempted to rival Addison. The Lay Monastery, 
 the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the 
 Champion, and other works of the same kind, had 
 had their short day. None of them had obtained a 
 permanent place in our literature ; and they are now 
 to be found only in the libraries of the curious. At 
 length Johnson undertook the adventure in which so 
 many aspirants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year
 
 292 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 after the appearance of the last number of the Specta- 
 tor appeared the first number of the Rambler. From 
 March 1750 to March 1752, this paper continued to 
 come out every Tuesday and Saturday. 
 
 From the first the Rambler was enthusiastically 
 admired by a few eminent men. Richardson, when 
 only five numbers had appeared, pronounced it equal, 
 if not superior, to the Spectator. Young and Hartley 
 expressed their approbation not less warmly. Bubb 
 Dodington, among whose many faults indifference to 
 the claims of genius and learning cannot be reckoned, 
 solicited the acquaintance of the writer. In conse- 
 quence probably of the good offices of Dodington, 
 who was then the confidential adviser of Prince 
 Frederic, two of his Royal Highness's gentlemen 
 carried a gracious message to the printing office, and 
 ordered seven copies for Leicester House. But these 
 overtures seem to have been very coldly received. 
 Johnson had had enough of the patronage of the 
 great to last him all his life, and was not disposed to 
 haunt any other door as he had haunted the door of 
 Chesterfield. 
 
 By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly 
 received. Though the price of a number was only 
 twopence, the sale did not amount to five hundred. 
 The profits were therefore very small. But as soon 
 as the flying leaves were collected and reprinted they 
 became popular. The author lived to see thirteen 
 thousand copies spread over England alone. Separ- 
 ate editions were published for the Scotch and Irish 
 markets. A large party pronounced the style perfect, 
 so absolutely perfect that in some essays it would be 
 impossible for the writer himself to alter a single word 
 for the better. Another party, not less numerous,
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 293 
 
 vehemently accused him of having corrupted the 
 purity of the English tongue. The best critics ad- 
 mitted that his diction was too monotonous, too 
 obviously artificial, and now and then turgid even to 
 absurdity. But they did justice to the acuteness of 
 his observations on morals and manners, to the con- 
 stant precision and frequent brilliancy of his lan- 
 guage, to the weighty and magnificent eloquence of 
 many serious passages, and to the solemn yet pleas- 
 ing humor of some of the lighter papers. On the 
 question of precedence between Addison and John- 
 son, a question which, seventy years ago, was much 
 disputed, posterity has pronounced a decision from 
 which there is no appeal. Sir Roger, his chaplain 
 and his butler, Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb, 
 the Vision of Mirza, the Journal of the Retired Citi- 
 zen, the Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the 
 Loves of Hilpah and Shalum, the Visit to the Ex- 
 change, and the Visit to the Abbey, are known to 
 everybody. But many men and women, even of 
 highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted with Squire 
 Bluster and Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venustulus, 
 the Allegory of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of 
 the Revolutions of a Garret, and the sad fate of 
 Aningait and Ajut. 
 
 The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy 
 hour. Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the 
 physicians. Three days later she died. She left her 
 husband almost broken-hearted. Many people had 
 been surprised to see a man of his genius and learn- 
 ing stooping to every drudgery, and denying himself 
 almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying 
 a silly, affected old woman with superfluities, which 
 she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his
 
 294 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 affection had been concentrated on her. He had 
 neither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. 
 To him she was beautiful as the Gunnings, and 
 witty as Lady Mary. Her opinion of his writings 
 was more important to him than the voice of the 
 pit of Drury Lane Theatre or the judgment of the 
 Monthly Review. The chief support which had sus- 
 tained him through the most arduous labor of his 
 life was the hope that she would enjoy the fame and 
 profit which he anticipated from his Dictionary. She 
 was gone ; and in the vast labyrinth of streets, 
 peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings, 
 he_was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to set 
 himself, as he expressed it, doggedly to work. After 
 three more laborious years, the Dictionary was at 
 length complete. 
 
 It had been generally supposed that this great 
 work would be dedicated to the eloquent and accom- 
 plished nobleman to whom the prospectus had been 
 addressed. He well knew the value of such a compli- 
 ment : and, therefore, when the day of publication drew 
 near, he exerted himself to soothe, by a show of zeal- 
 ous and at the same time of delicate and judicious 
 kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded. 
 Since the Ramblers had ceased to appear, the town 
 had been entertained by a journal called The World, 
 to which many men of high rank and fashion con- 
 tributed. In two successive numbers of The World 
 the Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase, puffed 
 with wonderful skill. The writings of Johnson were 
 warmly praised. It was proposed that he should be 
 invested with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a 
 Pope, over our language, and that his decisions 
 about the meaning and the spelling of words should
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 295 
 
 be received as final. His two folios, it was said, 
 would of course be bought by everybody who could 
 afford to buy them. It was soon known that these 
 papers were written by Chesterfield. But the just re- 
 sentment of Johnson was not to be so appeased. In 
 a letter written with singular energy and dignity of 
 thought and language, he repelled the tardy advances 
 of his patron. The Dictionary came forth without a 
 dedication. In the preface the author truly declared 
 that he owed nothing to the great, and described the 
 difficulties with which he had been left to struggle so 
 forcibly and pathetically that the ablest and most 
 malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Home 
 Tooke, never could read that passage without tears. 
 
 The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full jus- 
 tice, and something more than justice. The best 
 lexicographer may well be content if his productions 
 are received. by the world with cold esteem. But 
 Johnson's Dictionary was hailed with an enthusiasm 
 such as no similar work has ever excited. It was 
 indeed the first dictionary which could be read with 
 pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness 
 of thought and command of language, and the pas- 
 sages quoted from poets, divines, and philosophers are 
 so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour may always 
 be very agreeably spent in turning over the pages. 
 The faults of the book resolve themselves, for the 
 most part, into one great fault. Johnson was a 
 wretched etymologist. He knew little or nothing of 
 any Teutonic language except English, which indeed, 
 as he wrote it, was scarcely a Teutonic language ; and 
 thus he was absolutely at the mercy of Junius and 
 Skinner. 
 
 The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame,
 
 296 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 added nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen 
 hundred guineas which the booksellers had agreed to 
 pay him had been advanced and spent before the 
 last sheets issued from the press. It is painful to 
 relate that, twice in the course of the year which fol- 
 lowed the publication of this great work, he was 
 arrested and carried to spunging-houses, and that he 
 was twice indebted for his liberty to his excellent 
 friend Richardson. It was still necessary for the 
 man who had been formally saluted by the highest 
 authority as Dictator of the English language to sup- 
 ply h is wants by constant toil. He abridged his 
 Tictionary. He proposed to bring out an edition of 
 Shakspeare by subscription ; and many subscribers 
 sent in their names, and laid down their money ; but 
 he soon found the task so little to his taste that he 
 turned to more attractive employments. He contribu- 
 ted many papers to a new monthly journal, which was 
 called the Literary Magazine. Few of these papers 
 have much interest ; but among them was the very 
 best thing that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of 
 reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the review of 
 Jenyns's Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil. 
 
 In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of 
 a series of essays, entitled The Idler. During two 
 years these essays continued to appear weekly. They 
 were eagerly read, widely circulated, and, indeed, im- 
 pudently pirated, while they were still in the original 
 form, and had a large sale when collected into vol- 
 umes. The Idler may be described as a second part 
 of the Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat 
 weaker than the first part. 
 
 While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his 
 mother, who had accomplished her ninetieth year,
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 297 
 
 died at Lichfield. It was long since he had seen 
 her ; but he had not failed to contribute largely, out 
 of his small means, to her comfort. In order to de- 
 fray the charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts 
 which she had left, he wrote a little book in a single 
 week, and sent off the sheets to the press without read- 
 ing them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for 
 the copyright ; and the purchasers had great cause 
 to be pleased with their bargain ; for the book was 
 Rasselas. 
 
 The success of Rasselas was great, though such 
 ladies as Miss Lydia Languish must have been griev- 
 ously disappointed when they found that the new 
 volume from the circulating library was little more 
 than a dissertation on the author's favorite theme, the 
 Vanity of Human Wishes ; that the Prince of Abys- 
 sinia was without a mistress, and the Princess without 
 a lover ; and that the story set the hero and the hero- 
 ine down exactly where it had taken them up. The 
 style was the subject of much eager controversy. The 
 Monthly Review and the Critical Review took different 
 sides. Many readers pronounced the writer a pompous 
 pedant, who would never use a word of two syllables 
 where it was possible to use a word of six, and who 
 could not make a waiting woman relate her advent- 
 ures without balancing every noun with another noun, 
 and every epithet with another epithet. Another 
 party, not less zealous, cited with delight numerous 
 passages in which weighty meaning was expressed 
 with accuracy and illustrated with splendor. And 
 both the censure and the praise were merited. 
 
 About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the 
 critics ; and yet the faults of the plan might seem 
 to invite severe criticism. Johnson has frequently
 
 29K LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 blamed Shakspeare for neglecting the proprieties of 
 time and place, and for ascribing to one age or nation 
 the manners and opinions of another. Yet Shakspeare 
 has not sinned in this way more grievously than John- 
 son. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are 
 evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth 
 century : for the Europe which Imlac describes is the 
 Europe of the eighteenth century ; and the inmates 
 of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law of 
 gravitation which Newton discovered, and which was 
 not fully received even at Cambridge till the eigh- 
 teenth century. What a real company of Abyssinians 
 would have been may be learned from Bruce's Travels. 
 But Johnson, not content with turning filthy savages, 
 ignorant of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks 
 cut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent 
 and enlightened as himself or his friend Burke, and 
 into ladies as highly accomplished as Mrs. Lennox or 
 Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic system 
 of England to Egypt. Into a land of harems, a land 
 of polygamy, a land where women are married with- 
 out ever being seen, he introduced the flirtations and 
 jealousies of our ball-rooms. In a land where there 
 is boundless liberty of divorce, wedlock is described 
 as the indissoluble compact. " A youth and maiden 
 meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, 
 exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and 
 dream of each other. Such," says Rasselas, "is the 
 common process of marriage. 11 Such it may have 
 been, and may still be, in London, but assuredly not 
 at Cairo. A writer who was guilty of such improprie- 
 ties had little right to blame the poet who made 
 Hector quote Aristotle, and represented Julio Romano 
 as flourishing in the days of the oracle of Delphi.
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 299 
 
 By such exertions as have been described, Johnson 
 supported himself till the year 1762. In that year a 
 great change in his circumstances took place. He 
 had from a child been an enemy of the reigning 
 dynasty. His Jacobite prejudices had been exhibited 
 with little disguise both in his works and in his con- 
 versation. Even in his massy and elaborate Dic- 
 tionary, he had, with a strange want of taste and 
 judgment, inserted bitter and contumelious reflec- 
 tions on the Whig party. The excise, which was 
 a favorite resource of Whig financiers, he had desig- 
 nated as a hateful tax. He had railed against the 
 commissioners of excise in language so coarse that 
 they had seriously thought of prosecuting him. He 
 had with difficulty been prevented from holding up 
 the Lord Privy Seal by name as an example of the 
 meaning of the word " renegade. 1 ' A pension he had 
 defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray his 
 country ; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a 
 stipend to obey a master. It seemed unlikely that 
 the author of these definitions would himself be pen- 
 sioned. But that was a time of wonders. George 
 the Third had ascended the throne ; and had, in the 
 course of a few months, disgusted many of the old 
 friends and conciliated many of the old enemies of 
 his house. The city was becoming mutinous. Oxford 
 was becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentincks were 
 murmuring. Somersets and Wyndhams were hasten- 
 ing to kiss hands. The head of the treasury was now 
 Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have no objec- 
 tion to Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought 
 a patron of men of letters ; and Johnson was one of 
 the most eminent and one of the most needy men of 
 letters in Europe. A pension of three hundred a year
 
 300 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 was graciously offered, and with very little hesitation 
 accepted. 
 
 This event produced a change in Johnson's whole 
 way of life. For the first time since his boyhood he 
 no longer felt the daily goad urging him to the daily 
 toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety 
 and drudgery, to indulge his constitutional indolence, 
 to lie in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit up 
 talking till four in the morning, without fearing either 
 the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer. 
 
 One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to 
 perform. He had received large subscriptions for his 
 promised edition of Shakspeare ; he had lived on those 
 subscriptions during some years ; and he could not 
 without disgrace omit to perform his part of the con- 
 tract. His friends repeatedly exhorted him to make 
 an effort ; and he repeatedly resolved to do so. But, 
 notwithstanding their exhortations and his resolu- 
 tions, month followed month, year followed year, and 
 nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his 
 idleness ; he determined, as often as he received the 
 sacrament, that he would no longer doze away and 
 trifle away his time ; but the spell under which he 
 lay resisted prayer and sacrament. His private notes 
 at this time are made up of self-reproaches. " My 
 indolence, 11 he wrote on Easter eve in 1764, "has 
 sunk into grosser sluggishness. A kind of strange 
 oblivion has overspread me, so that I know not what 
 has become of the last year.* 1 Easter 1765 came, and 
 found him still in the same state. " My time,*' he 
 wrote, " has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a 
 dream that has left nothing behind. My memory 
 grows confused, and I know not how the days pass 
 over me." Happily for his honor, the charm which
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 30I 
 
 held him captive was at length broken by no gentle 
 or friendly hand. He had been weak enough to pay 
 serious attention to a story about a ghost which 
 haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had actually gone 
 himself, with some of his friends, at one in the morn- 
 ing, to St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of 
 receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit. 
 But the spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, 
 remained obstinately silent ; and it soon appeared 
 that a naughty girl of eleven had been amusing 
 herself by making fools of so many philosophers. 
 Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with 
 popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking 
 for some man of established fame and Tory politics 
 to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in three 
 cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked where 
 the book was which had been so long promised and 
 so liberally paid for, and directly accused the great 
 moralist of cheating. This terrible word proved 
 effectual; and in October, 1765, appeared, after a 
 delay of nine years, the new edition of Shakspeare. 
 
 This publication saved Johnson's character for 
 honesty, but added nothing to the fame of his abili- 
 ties and learning. The preface, though it contains 
 some good passages, is not in his best manner. The 
 most valuable notes are those in which he had an 
 opportunity of showing how attentively he had during 
 many years observed human life and human nature. 
 The best specimen is the note on the character of 
 Polonius. Nothing so good is to be found even in 
 Wilhelm Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet. 
 But here praise must end. It would be difficult to 
 name a more slovenly, a more worthless, edition of 
 any great classic. The reader may turn over plaj
 
 302 LITERARY ESSAYS, 
 
 after play without finding one happy conjectural 
 emendation, or one ingenious and satisfactory expla- 
 nation of a passage which had baffled preceding com- 
 mentators. Johnson had. in his Prospectus, told the 
 world that he was peculiarly fitted for the task which 
 he had undertaken, because he had, as a lexicog- 
 rapher, been under the necessity of taking a wider 
 view of the English language than any of his pred- 
 ecessors , That his knowledge of our literature 
 was extensive is indisputable. But, unfortunately, he 
 had altogether neglected that very part of our litera- 
 ture with which it is especially desirable that an 
 editor of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is 
 dangerous to assert a negative. Yet little will be 
 risked by the assertion, that in the two folio volumes 
 of the English Dictionary there is not a single pas- 
 sage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan 
 age. except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben 
 the quotations are few. Johnson might easily, in a 
 few months, have made himself well acquainted with 
 every old play that was extant. But it never seems 
 to have occurred to him that this was a necessary 
 preparation for the work which he had undertaken. 
 He would doubtless have admitted that it would be 
 the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar 
 with the works of .-Eschylus and Euripides to publish 
 an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured to publish 
 an edition of Shakspeare. without having ever in his 
 life, as far as can be discovered, read a single scene of 
 Massinger. Ford. Decker. Webster. Marlowe. Beau- 
 mont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy and 
 scurrilous. Those who most loved and honored him 
 had little to say in praise of the manner in which he 
 had discharged the duty of a commentator. He had,
 
 SAMUEL JOHXSOX. 3C3 
 
 however, acquitted himself of a debt which had long 
 lain heavy on his conscience : and he sank back into 
 the repose from which the sting of satire had roused 
 him. He long continued to live upon the fame which 
 lie had already won. He was honored by the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford with a Doctor's degree, by the 
 Royal Academy with a professorship, and by the 
 Kmg with an interview, in which his Majesty most 
 graciously expressed a hope that so excellent a writer 
 would not cease to write. In the interval, however, 
 between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published only two 
 or three political tracts, the longest of which he could 
 have produced in forty-eight hours, if he had worked 
 as he worked on the Life of Savage and on Rasselas. 
 But. though his pen was now idle, his tongue was 
 active. The influence exercised by his conversation, 
 directly upon those with whom he lived, and indirectly 
 on the whole literary world, was altogether without a 
 parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed of the 
 highest order. He had strong sense, quick discern- 
 ment, wit. humor, immense knowledge of literature 
 and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecc 
 As respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. 
 Every sentence which dropped from his lips was as 
 correct in structure as the most nicely balanced period 
 of the Rambler. But in his talk there were no pom- 
 pous triads, and little more than a fair proportion 01 
 words in osity and ation. All was simplicity, ease, 
 and vigor. He uttered his short, weighty, and pointed 
 sentences with a power of voice and a justness and 
 energy of emphasis, of which the effect was rather 
 increased than diminished by the rollings of his huge 
 form, and by the asthmatic gaspings and puttings in 
 which the peals of his eloquence generally ended.
 
 304 LIT ERA R Y ESSA YS. 
 
 Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to 
 sit down to his desk prevent him from giving instruc- 
 tion or entertainment orally. To discuss questions of 
 taste, of learning, of casuistry, in language so exact 
 and so forcible that it might have been printed with- 
 out the alteration of a word, was to him no exertion, 
 but a pleasure. He loved, as he said, to fold his legs 
 and have his talk out. He was ready to bestow the 
 overflowings of his full mind on anybody who would 
 start a subject, on a fellow-passenger in a stage coach, 
 or on the person who sat at the same table with him 
 in an eating house. But his conversation was nowhere 
 so brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded 
 by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge en- 
 abled them, as he once expressed it, to send him 
 back every ball that he threw. Some of these, in 
 1764, formed themselves into a club, which gradually 
 became a formidable power in the commonwealth of 
 letters. The verdicts pronounced by this conclave 
 on new books were speedily known over all London, 
 and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, 
 or to condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk- 
 maker and the pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this 
 strange when we consider what great and various 
 talents and acquirements met in the little fraternity. 
 Goldsmith was the representative of poetry and light 
 literature, Reynolds of the arts, Burke of political 
 eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, 
 were Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones the 
 greatest linguist of the age. Garrick brought to the 
 meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incom- 
 parable mimicry, and his consummate knowledge of 
 stage effect. Among the most constant attendants 
 were two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 305 
 
 bound together by friendship, but of widely different 
 characters and habits ; Bennet Langton, distinguished 
 by his skill in Greek literature, by the orthodoxy of 
 his opinions, and by the sanctity of his life ; and 
 Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his 
 knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, 
 and his sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a 
 society was not easy. Yet even over such a society 
 Johnson predominated. Burke might indeed have 
 disputed the supremacy to which others were under 
 the necessity of submitting. But Burke, though not 
 generally a very patient listener, was content to take 
 the second part when Johnson was present ; and the 
 club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, is to 
 this day popularly designated as Johnson's Club. 
 
 Among the members of this celebrated body was 
 one to whom it has owed the greater part of its 
 celebrity, yet who was regarded with little respect 
 by his brethren, and had not without difficulty 
 obtained a seat among them. This was James 
 Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an honor- 
 able name and a fair estate. That he was a cox- 
 comb and a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, 
 garrulous, was obvious to all who were acquainted 
 with him. That he could not reason, that he had 
 no wit, no humor, no eloquence, is apparent from 
 his writings. And yet his writings are read beyond 
 the Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and 
 are likely to be read as long as the English exists, 
 either as a living or as a dead language. Nature had 
 made- him a slave and an idolater. His mind resem- 
 bled those creepers which the botanists call parasites, 
 and which can subsist only by clinging round the stems 
 and imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must
 
 306 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 have fastened himself on somebody. He might have 
 fastened himself on Wilkes, and have become the 
 fiercest patriot in the Bill of Rights Society. He 
 might have fastened himself on Whitfield, and have 
 become the loudest field preacher among the Calvin- 
 istic Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened him- 
 self on Johnson. The pair might seem ill matched. 
 For Johnson had early been prejudiced against Bos- 
 well's country. To a man of Johnson's strong under- 
 standing and irritable temper, the silly egotism and 
 adulation of Boswell must have been as teasing as 
 the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated to be 
 questioned ; and Boswell was eternally catechising 
 him on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes pro- 
 pounded such questions as "What would you do, 
 sir, if you were locked up in a tower with a baby ? " 
 Johnson was a water-drinker ; and Boswell was a 
 wine-bibber, and indeed little better than a habitual 
 sot. It was impossible that there should be perfect 
 harmony between two such companions. Indeed, the 
 great man was sometimes provoked into fits of passion 
 in which he said things which the small man, during 
 a few hours, seriously resented. Every quarrel, how- 
 ever, was soon made up. During twenty years the 
 disciple continued to worship the master : the master 
 continued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and 
 to love him. The two friends ordinarily resided at 
 a great distance from each other. Boswell practised 
 in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, and could pay 
 only occasional visits to London. During those visits 
 his chief business was to watch Johnson, to discover 
 all Johnson's habits, to turn the conversation to sub- 
 jects about which Johnson was likely to say some- 
 thing remarkable, and to fill quarto note books with
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 307 
 
 minutes of what Johnson had said. In this way were 
 gathered the materials out of which was afterwards 
 constructed the most interesting biographical work 
 in the world. 
 
 Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed 
 a connection less important indeed to his fame, but 
 much more important to his happiness, than his con- 
 nection with Boswell. Henry Thrale, one of the 
 most opulent brewers in the kingdom, a man of sound 
 and cultivated understanding, rigid principles, and 
 liberal spirit, was married to one of those clever, 
 kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, who 
 were perpetually doing or saying what is not exactly 
 right, but who, do or say what they may, are always 
 agreeable. In 1765 the Thrales became acquainted 
 with Johnson ; and the acquaintance ripened fast into 
 friendship. They were astonished and delighted 
 by the brilliancy of his conversation. They were 
 flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated 
 preferred their house to any other in London. 
 Even the peculiarities which seemed to unfit him for 
 civilized society, his gesticulations, his rollings, his 
 puffings, his mutterings, the strange way in which he 
 put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness with which 
 he devoured his dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits 
 of anger, his frequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, 
 increased the interest which his new associates took 
 in him. For these things were the cruel marks left 
 behind by a life which had been one long conflict 
 with disease and with adversity. In a vulgar hack 
 writer such oddities would have excited only disgust. 
 But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue their effect 
 was to add pity to admiration and esteem. Johnson 
 soon had an apartment at the brewery in Southwark,
 
 308 LITERARY ESSAYS. • 
 
 and a still more pleasant apartment at the villa of his 
 friends on Streatham Common. A large part of ever^ 
 year he passed in those abodes, abodes which must 
 have seemed magnificent and luxurious indeed, when 
 compared with the dens in which he had generally 
 been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived 
 from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale 
 called " the endearing elegance of female friendship." 
 Mrs. Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed him, 
 and, if she sometimes provoked him by her flippancy, 
 made ample amends by listening to his reproofs, with 
 angelic sweetness of temper. When he was diseased 
 in body and in mind, she was the most tender of 
 nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no 
 contrivance that womanly ingenuity, set to work by 
 womanly compassion, could devise, was wanting to 
 his sick room. He requited her kindness by an affec- 
 tion, pure as the affection of a father, yet delicately 
 tinged with a gallantry, which, though awkward, must 
 have been more nattering than the attentions of a 
 crowd of fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete, 
 of Buck and Maccaroni. It should seem that a full 
 half of Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was 
 passed under the roof of the Thrales. He accom- 
 panied the family sometimes to Bath, and sometimes 
 to Brighton, once to Wales, and once to Paris. But 
 he had at the same time a house in one of the narrow 
 and gloomy courts on the north of Fleet Street. In 
 the garret was his library, a large and miscellaneous 
 collection of books, falling to pieces and begrimed 
 with dust. On a lower floor he sometimes, but very 
 rarely, regaled a friend with a plain dinner, a veal pie. 
 or a leg of lamb and spinage, and a rice pudding. 
 Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during his long
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 309 
 
 absences. It was the home of the most extraordi- 
 nary assemblage of inmates that ever was brought 
 together. At the head of the establishment Johnson 
 had placed an old lady named Williams, whose chief 
 recommendations were her blindness and her poverty. 
 But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave 
 an asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, 
 Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had known many 
 years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for 
 the daughter of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another 
 destitute damsel, who was generally addressed as Miss 
 Carmichael, but whom her generous host called Polly. 
 An old quack-doctor named Levett, who bled and 
 dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and re- 
 ceived for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses 
 of gin, and sometimes a little copper, completed this 
 strange menagerie. All these poor creatures were at 
 constant war with each other, and with Johnson's 
 negro servant Frank. Sometimes, indeed, they trans- 
 ferred their hostilities from the servant to the mas- 
 ter, complained that a better table was not kept for 
 them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor 
 was glad to make his escape to Streatham, or to the 
 Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was generally the 
 haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was 
 but too prompt to resent anything which looked like 
 a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of 
 a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from men- 
 dicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to 
 the work-house, insults more provoking than those for 
 which he had knocked down Osborne and bidden de- 
 fiance to Chesterfield. Year after year Mrs. Williams 
 and Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly and Levett, continued to 
 torment him and to live upon him.
 
 3IO LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 The course of life which has been described was 
 interrupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an 
 important event. He had early read an account of 
 the Hebrides, and had been much interested by learn- 
 ing that there was so near him a land peopled by a 
 race which was still as rude and simple as in the 
 middle ages. A wish to become intimately acquainted 
 with a state of society so utterly unlike all that he had 
 ever seen frequently crossed his mind. But it is not 
 probable that his curiosity would have overcome his 
 habitual sluggishness, and his love of the smoke, 
 the mud, and the cries of London, had not Boswell 
 importuned him to attempt the adventure, and offered 
 to be his squire. At length, in August, 1773, Johnson 
 crossed the Highland line, and plunged courageously 
 into what was then considered, by most Englishmen, 
 as a dreary and perilous wilderness. After wander- 
 ing about two months through the Celtic region, some- 
 times in rude boats which did not protect him from 
 the rain, and sometimes on small shaggy ponies which 
 could hardly bear his weight, he returned to his old 
 haunts with a mind full of new images and new theo- 
 ries. During the following year he employed himself 
 in recording his adventures. About the beginning of 
 1775. his Journey to the Hebrides was published, and 
 was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conver- 
 sation in all circles in which any attention w r as paid to 
 literature. The book is still read with pleasure. The 
 narrative is entertaining ; the speculations, whether 
 sound or unsound, are always ingenious ; and the 
 style, though too stiff and pompous, is somewhat 
 easier and more graceful than that of his early writ- 
 ings. His prejudice against the Scotch had at length 
 become little more than matter of jest ; and whatever
 
 SAMUEL JOHNS OAT. 3 1 1 
 
 remained of the old feeling had been effectually re- 
 moved by the kind and respectful hospitality with 
 which he had been received in every part of Scotland. 
 It was, of course, not to be expected that an Oxonian 
 Tory should praise the Presbyterian polity and ritual, 
 or that an eye accustomed to the hedgerows and parks 
 of England should not be struck by the bareness of 
 Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even in censure 
 Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most enlight- 
 ened Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, 
 were well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant 
 Scotchmen were moved to anger by a little unpalata- 
 ble truth which was mingled with much eulogy, and 
 assailed him whom they chose to consider as the enemy 
 of their country with libels much more dishonorable 
 to theii country than anything that he had ever said or 
 written They published paragraphs in the news- 
 papers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, 
 five shilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson for 
 being blear-eyed ; another for being a pensioner ; a 
 third informed the world that one of the Doctor's 
 uncles had been convicted of felony in Scotland, and 
 had found that there was in that country one tree 
 capable of supporting the weight of an Englishman. 
 Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved in the 
 Journey to be an impudent forgery, threatened to take 
 vengeance with a cane. The only effect of this threat 
 was that Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in 
 the most contemptuous terms, and walked about, dur- 
 ing some time, with a cudgel, which, if the impostor 
 had not been too wise to encounter it, would assuredly 
 have descended upon him, to borrow the sublime 
 language of his own epic poem, " like a hammer on 
 the red son of the furnace. 1 '
 
 312 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 Of other assailants Johnson took no notice what- 
 ever. He had early resolved never to be drawn into 
 controversy ; and he adhered to his resolution with 
 a steadfastness which is the more extraordinary, 
 because he was, both intellectually and morally, of 
 the stuff of which controversialists are made. In 
 conversation, he was a singularly eager, acute, and 
 pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good 
 reasons, he had recourse to sophistry ; and, when 
 heated by altercation, he made unsparing use of sar- 
 casm and invective. But when he took his pen in 
 his hand, his whole character seemed to be changed. 
 A hundred bad writers misrepresented him and reviled 
 him ; but not one of the hundred could boast of hav- 
 ing been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or 
 even of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, the Mac- 
 Nicols, and Hendersons, did their best to annoy him, 
 in the hope that he would give them importance by 
 answering them. But the reader will in vain search 
 his works for any allusion to Kenricks, or Campbell, 
 or MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent 
 on vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied 
 him to the combat in a detestable Latin hexameter, 
 
 " Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum." 
 
 But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He 
 had learned, both from his own observation and from 
 literary history, in which he was deeply read, that the 
 place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not 
 by what is written about them, but by what is written 
 in them ; and that an author whose works are likely 
 to live is very unwise if he stoops to wrangle with 
 detractors whose works are certain to die. He always 
 maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 3 1 3 
 
 be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as beaten 
 forward, and which would soon fall if there were only 
 one battledore. No saying was oftener in his mouth 
 than that fine apophthegm of Bentley, that no man 
 was ever written down but by himself. 
 
 Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of 
 the Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none 
 of his envious assailants could have done, and to a 
 certain extent succeeded in writing himself down. 
 The disputes between England and her American 
 colonies had reached a point at which no amicable 
 adjustment was possible. Civil war was evidently 
 impending ; and the ministers seem to have thought 
 that the eloquence of Johnson might with advantage 
 be employed to inflame the nation against the oppo- 
 sition here, and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. 
 He had already written two or three tracts in defence 
 of the foreign and domestic policy of the government ; 
 and those tracts, though hardly worthy of him, were 
 much superior to the crowd of pamphlets which lay 
 on the counters of Almon and Stockdale. But his 
 Taxation No Tyranny was a pitiable failure. The 
 very title was a silly phrase, which can have been 
 recommended to his choice by nothing but a jin- 
 gling alliteration which he ought to have despised. 
 The arguments were such as boys use in debating 
 societies. The pleasantry was as awkward as the 
 gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Bos well was 
 forced to own that, in this unfortunate piece, he could 
 detect no trace of his master's powers. The general 
 opinion was that the strong faculties which had pro- 
 duced the Dictionary and the Rambler were beginning 
 to feel the effect of time and of disease, and that the old 
 man would best consult his credit by writing no more.
 
 314 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, 
 not because his mind was less vigorous than when he 
 wrote Rasselas in the evenings of a week, but because 
 he had foolishly chosen, or suffered others to choose 
 for him, a subject such as he would at no time have 
 been competent to treat. He was in no sense a 
 statesman. He never willingly read or thought or 
 talked about affairs of State. He loved biography, 
 literary history, the history of manners ; but political 
 history was positively distasteful to him. The ques- 
 tion at issue between the colonies and the mother 
 country was a question about which he had really 
 nothing to say. He failed, therefore, as the greatest 
 men must fail when they attempt to do that for which 
 they are unfit ; as Burke would have failed if Burke 
 had tried to write comedies like those of Sheridan ; 
 as Reynolds would have failed if Reynolds had tried 
 to paint landscapes like those of Wilson. Happily, 
 Johnson soon had an opportunity of proving most 
 signally that his failure was not to be ascribed to 
 intellectual decay. 
 
 On Easter Eve, 1777, some persons, deputed by a 
 meeting which consisted of forty of the first book- 
 sellers in London, called upon him. Though he had 
 some scruples about doing business at that season, 
 he received his visitors with much civility. They 
 came to inform him that a new edition of the English 
 poets, from Cowley downwards, was in contemplation, 
 and to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. 
 He readily undertook the task, a task for which he 
 was pre-eminently qualified. His knowledge of the 
 literary history of England since the Restoration was 
 unrivalled. That knowledge he had derived partly 
 from books, and partly from sources which had long
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 3 I 5 
 
 been closed ; from old Grub Street traditions ; from 
 the talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers 
 who had long been lying in parish vaults ; from the 
 recollections of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, who 
 had conversed with the wits of Button ; Cibber, who 
 had mutilated the plays of two generations of drama- 
 tists ; Orrery, who had been admitted to the society 
 of Swift ; and Savage, who had rendered services of 
 no very honorable kind to Pope. The biographer 
 therefore sate down to his task with a mind full of 
 matter. He had at first intended to give only a para- 
 graph to every minor poet, and only four or five pages 
 to the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and 
 criticism overflowed the narrow channel. The work, 
 which was originally meant to consist only of a few 
 sheets, swelled into ten volumes, small volumes, it is 
 true, and not closely printed. The first four appeared 
 in 1779, the remaining six in 1781. 
 
 The Lives of the Poets, are, on the whole, the best 
 of Johnson's works. The narratives are as enter- 
 taining as any novel. The remarks on life and on 
 human nature are eminently shrewd and profound. 
 The criticisms are often excellent, and, even when 
 grossly and provokingly unjust, well deserve to be 
 studied. For, however erroneous they may be, they 
 are never silly. They are the judgments of a mind 
 trammelled by prejudice and deficient in sensibility, 
 but vigorous and acute. They therefore generally 
 contain a portion of valuable truth which deserves to 
 be separated from the alloy ; and, at the very worst, 
 they mean something, a praise to which much of what 
 is called criticism in our time has no pretensions. 
 
 Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had 
 appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that Life,
 
 316 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 will turn to the other lives will be struck by the dif- 
 ference of style. Since Johnson had been at ease in 
 his circumstances he had written little and had talked 
 much. When, therefore, he, after the lapse of years, 
 resumed his pen, the mannerism which he had con- 
 tracted while he was in the constant habit of elaborate 
 composition was less perceptible than formerly ; and 
 his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it 
 had formerly wanted. The improvement may be dis- 
 cerned by a skilful critic in the Journey to the Hebrides, 
 and in the Lives of the Poets is so obvious that it can- 
 not escape the notice of the most careless reader. 
 
 Among the lives the best are perhaps those of 
 Cowley, Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, 
 beyond all doubt, that of Gray. 
 
 This great work at once became popular. There 
 was, indeed, much just and much unjust censure : but 
 even those who were loudest in blame were attracted 
 by the book in spite of themselves. Malone com- 
 puted the gains of the publishers at five or six thou- 
 sand pounds. But the writer was very poorly remu- 
 nerated. Intending at first to write very short pref- 
 aces, he had stipulated for only two hundred guineas. 
 The booksellers, when they saw how far his perform- 
 ance had surpassed his promise, added only another 
 hundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he did not de- 
 spise, nor affect to despise, money, and though his 
 strong sense and long experience ought to have quali- 
 fied him to protect his own interests, seems to have 
 been singularly unskilful and unlucky in his literary 
 bargains. He was generally reputed the first English 
 writer of his time. Yet several writers of his time 
 sold their copyrights for sums such as he never ven- 
 tured to ask. To give a single instance, Robertson
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 317 
 
 received four thousand five hundred pounds for the 
 History of Charles V. ; and it is no disrespect to the 
 memory of Robertson to say that the History of 
 Charles V. is both a less valuable and a less amusing 
 book than the Lives of the Poets. 
 
 Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The 
 infirmities of age were coming fast upon him. That 
 inevitable event of which he never thought without 
 horror was brought near to him ; and his whole life 
 was darkened by the shadow of death. He had often 
 to pay the cruel price of longevity. Every year he 
 lost what could never be replaced. The strange 
 dependents to whom he had given shelter, and to 
 whom, iri spite of their faults, he was strongly attached 
 by habit, dropped off one by one ; and, in the silence of 
 his home, he regretted even the noise of their scold- 
 ing matches. The kind and generous Thrale was no 
 more ; and it would have been well if his wife had 
 been laid beside him. But she survived to be the 
 laughing-stock of those who had envied her, and to 
 draw from the eyes of the old man who had loved her 
 beyond anything in the world tears far more bitter 
 than he would have shed over her grave. With some 
 estimable and many agreeable qualities, she was not 
 made to be independent. The control of a mind 
 more steadfast than her own was necessary to her 
 respectability. While she was restrained by her 
 husband, a man of sense and -firmness, indulgent to 
 her taste in trifles, but always the undisputed master 
 of his house, her worst offences had been impertinent 
 jokes, white lies, and short fits of pettishness ending 
 in sunny good humor. But he was gone ; and she 
 was left an opulent widow of forty, with strong sensi- 
 bility, volatile fancy, and slender judgment. She
 
 318 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 soon fell in love with a music-master from Brescia, 
 in whom nobody but herself could discover anything 
 to admire. Her pride, and perhaps some better feel- 
 ings, struggled hard against this degrading passion. 
 But the struggle irritated her nerves, soured her tem- 
 per, and at length endangered her health. Conscious 
 that her choice was one which Johnson could not 
 approve, she became desirous to escape from his 
 inspection. Her manner towards him changed. She 
 was sometimes cold and sometimes petulant. She did 
 not conceal her joy when he left Streatham ; she 
 never pressed him to return ; and, if he came unbid- 
 den, she received him in a manner which convinced 
 him that he was no longer a welcome guest. He took 
 the very intelligible hints which she gave. He read, 
 for the last time, a chapter of the Greek Testament 
 in the library which had been formed by himself. In 
 a solemn and tender prayer he commended the house 
 and its inmates to the Divine protection, and, with 
 emotions which choked his voice and convulsed his 
 powerful frame, left forever that beloved home for the 
 gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet Street, where 
 the few and evil days which still remained to him 
 were to run out. Here, in June, 1783, he had a para- 
 lytic stroke, from which, however, he recovered, and 
 which does not appear to have at all impaired his 
 intellectual faculties. But other maladies came thick 
 upon him. His asthma tormented him day and 
 night. Dropsical symptoms made their appearance. 
 While sinking under a complication of diseases, he 
 heard that the woman whose friendship had been the 
 chief happiness of sixteen years of his life had married 
 an Italian fiddler ; that all London was crying shame 
 upon her ; and that the newspapers and magazines
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 319 
 
 were filled with allusions to the Ephesian matron, 
 and the two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently 
 said that he would try to forget her existence. He 
 never uttered her name. Every memorial of her 
 which met his eye he flung into the fire. She mean- 
 while fled from the laughter and hisses of her coun- 
 trymen and countrywomen to a land where she was 
 unknown, hastened across Mount Cenis, and learned, 
 while passing a merry Christmas of concerts and lem- 
 onade parties at Milan, that the great man with whose 
 name hers is inseparably associated had ceased to 
 exist. 
 
 He had, in spite of much mental and bodily afflic- 
 tion, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described 
 in that fine but gloomy paper which closes the series 
 of his Idlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his 
 last hour drew near. He fancied that he should be 
 able to draw his breath more easily in a southern cli- 
 mate, and would probably have set out for Rome and 
 Naples, but for his fear of the expense of the journey. 
 That expense, indeed, he had the means of defray- 
 ing ; for he had laid up about two thousand pounds, 
 the fruit of labors which had made the fortune of 
 several publishers. But he was unwilling to break in 
 upon this hoard ; and he seems to have wished even 
 to keep its existence a secret. Some of his friends 
 hoped that the government might be induced to 
 increase his pension to six hundred pounds a year: 
 but this hope was disappointed ; and he resolved to 
 stand one English winter more. That winter was his 
 last. His legs grew weaker ; his breath grew shorter ; 
 the fatal water gathered fast, in spite of incisions which 
 he, courageous against pain, but timid against death, 
 urged his surgeons to make deeper and deeper.
 
 320 LITERARY ESSAYS. 
 
 Though the tender care which had mitigated his 
 sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham 
 was withdrawn, he was not left desolate. The ablest 
 physicians and surgeons attended him, and refused to 
 accept fees from him. Burke parted from him with 
 deep emotion. Wyndham sat much in the sick-room, 
 arranged the pillows, and sent his own servant to 
 watch a night by the bed. Frances Burney, whom 
 the old man had cherished with fatherly kindness, 
 stood weeping at the door; while Langton. whose 
 piety eminently qualified him to be an adviser and 
 comforter at such a time, received the last pressure 
 of his friend's hand within. When at length the 
 moment, dreaded through so many years, came close, 
 the dark cloud passed away from Johnson's mind. 
 His temper became unusually patient and gentle ; he 
 ceased to think with terror of death, and of that which 
 lies beyond death ; and he spoke much of the mercy 
 of God, and of the propitiation of Christ. In this 
 serene frame of mind he died on the 13th of Decem- 
 ber, 1784. He was laid, a week later, in Westminster 
 Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he had been 
 the historian, — Cowley and Denham, Dryden and 
 Congreve, Gay, Prior, and Addison. 
 
 Since his death the popularity of his works — the 
 Lives of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human 
 Wishes, excepted — has greatly diminished. His Dic- 
 tionary has been altered by editors till it can scarcely 
 be called his. An allusion to his Rambler or his 
 Idler is not readily apprehended in literary circles. 
 The fame even of Rasselas has grown somewhat dim. 
 But, though the celebrity of the writings may have 
 declined, the celebrity of the writer, strange to say, is 
 as great as ever. Boswell's book has done for him
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 32 I 
 
 more than the best of his own books could do. The 
 memory of other authors is kept alive by their works. 
 But the memory of Johnson keeps many of his works 
 alive. The old philosopher is still among us in the 
 brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt which 
 ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, 
 drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger 
 and swallowing his tea in oceans. No human being 
 who has been more than seventy years in the grave 
 is so well known to us. And it is but just to say that 
 our intimate acquaintance with what he would himself 
 have called the anfractuosities of his intellect and of 
 his temper serves only to strengthen our conviction 
 that he was both a great and a good man. 
 
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