CHAPTER VI. ADDISON; BILTON HIS RESIDENCE. DESCRIPTION OF IT.- ADDISON'S DAUGHTER, CHARLOTTE; HER DEFICIENCIES. —ADDISON'S LIFE AND ITS ERRORS. -THE FACILITY WITH WHICH HE PENNED HIS ESSAYS.-HIS STRICTURES ON WOMEN. AFRA BEHN; HER IMMORALITY, HER PLAYS, AND HER LETTERS. ADDISON'S ANSWER TO A LADY'S ADVANCES. HIS MERITS AS A HIS REFINED TASTE AND LOVE OF NATURE. WRITER. DR. JOHNSON'S ADDISON'S HOUSE AT BILTON. 137 CHAPTER VI. THE lovers of Addison's memory might, until about the beginning of the present century, have been gratified by knowing that his name was still heard as the proprietor of the village of Bilton, near Rugby. On quitting that scholastic town, you pass over a modern bridge composed of three circular arches, by which the river Avon is spanned. As you proceed, the river is still in view, winding along a rich valley until you reach the village of Newbold; here beautiful prospects, extending over the cultured fields and woods, and substantial farmsteads, for which Warwickshire is noted, arrest the attention. In the distance is the spire of Bilton church; the house in which Addison lived is about half a mile from the river Avon. In Ireland's time, the house, gabled at one end, and standing in a woody park, was just in the same state as when Addison possessed it. There had been exteriorly no change; within, there was the furniture which he used, the three paintings of himself at various eras of his life; that of his friend, Secretary Craggs; and some pictures by Vandyck and other masters, which he had purchased. The servant could next point out to you Addison's Walk; it is a beautiful alley formed by Spanish chestnuts and by oaks, running in a straight line. Here the great essayist-for in nothing else was he great-used to spend his morning, enjoying the unbroken 138 THE SPANISH OAKS. walk so convenient for contemplation, and so greatly resembling the walks in Magdalen Garden, Oxford, which still bear his name. Then the Spanish oaks had a tender claim upon the memory of this man of reserved nature. One of the friends he most loved was Craggs (descended, according to the Duchess of Marlborough, from a footman), and Craggs had brought him from Spain the acorns where those oaks grew; and the oaks were new in the country. Then pass we into a hermitage in this walk, embellished with an inscription of verses à la Addison—if not Addison's; as his, however, they were read with respect by Ireland, who, when he was at Bilton, was permitted to see the aged daughter of the Countess of Warwick and of Addison, born only a year before her father's death, too soon to be to him the companion, the solace and stay in life which he wanted. To her, Bilton, for which Addison, in conjunction with his brother, Gulstone Addison, had paid ten thousand pounds, had descended. A tradition long existed that Addison had left a large trunk full of manuscripts to his daughter, not to be opened until after her death. Subsequently, however, to that event, no such papers were ever forthcoming. At Bilton, Addison had at length leisure to reflect on a life more useful than happy. Nature had, it is true, endowed this good man with a sweet, patient, equable temper: but, like most reserved men, when he did suffer it was inwardly, and the effects of some disappointments show themselves in pernicious habits which are the doom of happiness. We can, however, easily imagine what Addison was to the friends whom he loved to assemble in the depths of the country, as Bilton was then considered. 'He was,' says Sir Richard Steele (in his dedication of Addison's play of the Drummer') 'above all men in that talent called humour, and enjoyed it in such perfection, that I have often reflected after a night spent with him apart THE PLAY OF CATO. 139 from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more exquisite and delightful than any other man ever possessed.' Chequered, indeed, had Addison's career proved; yet, on the whole, his reflections, as he paced up and down the Spanish oak and chestnut avenue, must have led to the conclusion that the son of a clergyman of moderate means, rising to be Secretary of State, had not done ill in his gene ration. Then what wonderful success as a dramatist had he not to recall ; and it was, perhaps, the most exulting of all triumphs in those days when the stage was almost as influential in politics as the House of Commons; and Addison might remember how the Queen had commanded him to dedicate the play to her, but that he dared not do it because the Duchess of Marlborough, Queen Sarah, had allowed him to dedicate it to her. Yet Cato' is but a fine dialogue on liberty; as a tragedy it wants character, action, and passion; even Pope reluctantly wrote to Sir William Turnbull that in poetical affairs he was himself obliged to turn admirer instead of practitioner -a confession strange for Pope to make. Cato,' he adds, 'was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet, what the author once said of another, may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion— Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost, And factions strive who shall applaud him most.' Then came to Addison that review of one's life which every one makes from time to time. The remembrance of the wasp Dennis, the chief hero of the Dunciad, must have been revived with the gratifying recollection that, whilst Pope and |