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in a boy's theme. As this edition, however, has been a standard one, the American publisher has perhaps wisely made it the basis of the present; and his choice of an editor is amply justified by the admirable notes appended to the text. The American editor's extensive classical and historical knowledge has enabled him to supply omissions, to explain incongruities, and to illustrate, by reference to the times of Addison, the significance and point of many of his allusions. In these handsome volumes, we have, in addition to the more familiar writings of the author, "The Old Whig," never before included in his works; and to make this more intelligible, Steele's "Plebeian," to which it is a reply, is added. Both of these series of papers are very rare. Johnson had never seen

them. All the letters of Addison that could be discovered have also been collected; and thus we have, for the first time, in a single work, the entire published writings of this favorite British classic. The volumes are neatly printed, but, not being of uniform size, are somewhat inconvenient, and the engraved portrait is unworthy of the work; though in all other respects the edition reflects the highest credit on the judgment of the publisher and the literary skill of the editor.

The new edition of the Spectator, named at the head of this article, is one of the best specimens of typography that has lately appeared; and the work supplies a desideratum, there having been previously no handsome edition of this standard periodical in the book-market. We are gratified to record these instances of good taste and conservative enterprise; and the ready sale which both works have found is a hopeful sign of the times, and evinces a general integrity of appreciation in relation to what is truly excellent in English literature, which should rebuke the less graceful and more piquant school of writers at present so much in vogue.

The tranquil and religious atmosphere of an English parsonage chastened the early days of Addison; and although a few traditions indicate that he was given to youthful pranks, it is evident that the tenor of his character was remarkably thoughtful and reserved. During his ten years' residence at Oxford, he was a devoted and versatile student, and it is to the discipline of classical acquirements that we owe the fastid

ious correctness of his style. The mastery he obtained over the Latin tongue revealed to him the nice relations between thought and language; and he wrote English with the simplicity, directness, and grace which still render the Spectator a model of prose composition. Seldom has merely correct and tasteful verse, however, been so lucrative as it proved to him. His Latin poems first secured his election to Magda len College; his translations of a part of the Georgics, and their inscription to Dryden, drew from that veteran author the warmest recognition; his poem to King William obtained for him the patronage of Lord Somers, Keeper of the Great Seal, to whom it was addressed; his poetical epistle to Montagu from Italy was but the graceful acknowledgment of the Chancellor's agency in procuring him a pension of three hundred pounds; his poem of "The Campaign," written at the request of Lord Godolphin, to celebrate the victory of Hochstadt, gained him the office of Commissioner of Appeals; and thenceforth we find him appointed to successive and profitable offices, from that of Keeper of the Records in Birmingham's Tower, to that of Secretary of State, from which he retired with a pension of fifteen hundred pounds. Besides official visits to Hanover and Ireland, soon after his literary qualifications had won him the patronage of Halifax, he made a tour abroad, remained several months at Blois to perfect himself in French, mingled with the best circles of Paris, Rome, and Geneva, and surveyed the historical scenes of the Italian peninsula with the eyes of a scholar. These opportunities to study mankind and to observe nature were not lost upon Addison. He was ever on the alert for an original specimen of humanity, and interested by natural phenomena, as well as cognizant of local associations derived from a thorough knowledge of Roman authors. We can imagine no culture more favorable to the literary enterprise in which he subsequently engaged, than this solid basis of classical learning, followed by travel on the Continent, where entirely new phases of scenery, opinions, and society were freely revealed to his intelligent curiosity, and succeeded by an official career that brought him into responsible contact with the realities of life. Thus enriched by his lessons of experience and disciplined by

accurate study, when Addison first sent over from Ireland a contribution to his friend Steele's Tatler, he unconsciously opened a vein destined to yield intellectual refreshment to all who read his vernacular language, and to ally his name to the most agreeable and useful experiment in modern literature.

Never did the art of writing prove a greater personal blessing than to Addison. His knowledge, wit, and taste were not at his oral command, except in the society of intimate friends; the presence of strangers destroyed his self-possession, and as a public speaker he failed through constitutional diffidence. Yet no one excelled him in genial and suggestive conversation. The fluency and richness of his colloquial powers were alike remarkable; but the world knew him only as a respectable poet and scholar and a faithful civic officer, until the Spectator inaugurated that peculiar kind of literature which seemed expressly made to give scope to such a nature as his. There he talked on paper in association with an imaginary club, and under an anonymous signature. No curious eyes made his tongue falter; no pert sarcasm brought a flush to his cheek. In the calm exercise of his benign fancy and wise criticism, he made his daily comments upon the fashion, literature, and characters of the day, with all the playful freedom of coffee-house discussion, united to the thoughtful style of private meditation. Thus his sensitive mind had full expression, while his native modesty was spared; and the Spéctator was his confessional, where he uttered his thoughts candidly in the ear of the public, without being awed by its obvious presence. Taste, and not enthusiasm, inspired Addison; hence his slender claim to the title of a poet. His rhymes, even when faultless and the vehicles of noble thoughts, rarely glow with sentiment; they are usually studied, graceful, correct, but devoid of poetic significance; and yet, owing to the dearth of poetry in his day and the partialities incident to friendship and to faction, Addison enjoyed an extensive reputation as a poet. There are beautiful turns of expression in his "Letter from Italy," - usually considered the best of his occasional poems; the famous simile of the angel and some animated rhetoric redeem "The Campaign" from entire mediocrity; and scholars will find numerous instances of felici

tous rendering into English verse, in his translations. Yet these incidental merits do not give Addison any rank in the highest department of literature to readers familiar with Burns and Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth. He was an eloquent rhymer, but no legitimate votary of the Muse. It is the dy ing soliloquy of "Cato" alone that now survives; and yet few English tragedies, of modern date, were introduced with such eclat or attended by more tributary offerings. Pope, Steele, and Dr. Young sounded its praises in verse; the Whig party espoused it as a classic embodiment of liberal principles; and its production has been called the grand climacteric of Addison's reputation. On the night of its first representation, we are told that the author "wandered behind the scenes with restless and unappeasable solicitude." So far as immediate success may be deemed a test of ability, he had reason to be satisfied with the result. The play was acted at London and Oxford, for many nights, with great applause. "Cato," writes Pope," was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours." What revolutions in public taste have since occurred; and how difficult is it to reconcile the admiration this drama excited with the subsequent appreciation of Shakespeare! Even as a classic play, how inferior in beauty of diction, grandeur of sentiment, and richness of metaphor, to the Grecian theme which the lamented Talfourd vitalized with Christian sentiment and arrayed in all the charms of poetic art! Neither the fifty guineas that Bolingbroke presented to the actor who personated Cato, nor the Prologue of Pope, could buoy up this lifeless, though scholarly performance, on the tide of fame. The whole career of Addison as a writer of verse yields new evidence of the inefficacy of erudition, taste, and even a sense of the beautiful, and good literary judgment, where poetry is the object. There must be a divine instinct, a fervor of soul, "an idea dearer than self," or the mechanism of verse is alone produced.

Addison was not a man of ardent feelings. The emotional in his nature was checked and chilled by prudence, by discipline, and by reflection. We can discover but one native sentiment that glowed in his heart to a degree which justified its poetical expression, and that is devotion. Compare

his hymns-evidently the overflowing of gratitude, trust, and veneration with his frigid drama and his political verses. There is a genuine and a memorable earnestness in these religious odes. They were the offspring of his experience, prompted by actual states of mind, and accordingly they still find a place in our worship and linger in our memories. "The earliest compositions that I recollect taking any pleas ure in," says Burns in a letter to Dr. More, "were "The Vision of Mirza,' and a rhyme of Addison's, beginning' How are thy servants blest, O Lord!' I particularly remember one halfstanza, which was music to my boyish ear:

"For though in dreadful whirls we hung

High on the broken wave."

The hymn referred to was suggested by the writer's providential escape during a fearful storm encountered on the coast of Italy.

An able critic remarks, that the love scenes are the worst in "Cato"; and there is no rhymer of the time who exhibits so little interest in the tender passion. In "The Drummer" and "Rosamond" there are indications of a playful invention and fanciful zest, which, like the most characteristic passages of the Spectator, evince that Addison's best vein was the humorous and the colloquial. In this his individuality appears, and the man shines through the scholar and courtier. We forget such prosaic lines as

"But I've already troubled you too long,"

with which he closes his "Letter from Italy," and think of him in the more vivid phase of a kindly censor and delightful companion.

The "Dialogues on Medals" is the most characteristic of Addison's works prior to the Spectator. The subject, by its classical associations, elicited his scholarship and gratified his taste. Regarding "medallic history " as "a kind of printing before the art was invented," he points out the emblematic and suggestive meaning of coins with tact and discrimination, and illustrates the details of numerous medals by reference to the Latin poets. In the style we recognize those agreeable turns of thought and graces of language which soon VOL. LXXIX. - NO. 164. 9

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