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not have pleased the skilful eye of Mr. Mac-| fifty guineas, for defending the cause of liberty ready. Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace; so well against a perpetual dictator. Marcia's hoop was worthy of a duchess 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 opposition. The pit was crowded with attentive and friendly listeners from the inns of court and the literary coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, governor 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 Garrowy's than in the haunts of wits and critics.

These precautions were quite superfluous. The tories, as a body, regarded Addison with no unkind feelings. Nor was it for their interest,-professing, as they did, profound reverence for law and prescription, and abhorrence both of popular insurrections and of standing armies-to appropriate to themselves reflections thrown on the great military chief and demagogue, who, with the support of the legions and of the common people, subverted all the ancient institutions of his country. Accordingly, every shout that was raised by the members of the Kit-Cat was re-echoed by the high churchmen of the October; and the curtain at Jength fell amidst thunders of unanimous applause.

nents.

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 oppoSteele 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 hypocritical Sempronius their favourite, 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 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

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 act at Oxford, and there, before an au. dience which retained an affectionate remembrance of Addison's accomplishments and virtues, his tragedy was acted 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 extraordinary 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, Zaire, or Saul, but, we think, not below Cinna; and certai ly above any other English tragedy of the sam, 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, Spectators, and Freeholders united, to raise Addison's fame among his contempo raries.

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 coarseness and asperity. But Addison neither defended himself nor retaliated. On many points he had an excellent defence; and nothing would have been easier than to retaliate; for Dennis had written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies: he had, moreover, a larger share than most men of those infirmities and eccentrici ties 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 su periority, 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 favour there was one distinguished by talents above the rest, and distinguished, we fear, not less by malignity and insincerity. Pope was only twenty-five. But his powers

"The long sway of the Duke of Marlborough," says Miss Aikin, "was here glanced at." Under favour, if Bolingbroke had meant no more than this, his sarcasm would have been pointless. The allusion was to the attempt which Marlborough had made to convert the captain-generalship into a patent office, to be held by him self for life. The patent was stopped by Lord Cowper.

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which the leading whigs had seats, took the | favourable conclusions. Swift did fall justice direction of affairs till the new king should to the rare powers of conversation which were arrive. The first act of the lords justices was to appoint Addison their secretary.

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 benefits. They praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and did nothing more for him. His profession laid them under a difficulty. In the state they could not promote him; and they had reason to fear that, by bestowing 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 honour and consistency to revenge; joined the tories, and became their most formi

that his old friends were less to blame than he had supposed. The dislike with which the queen and the heads of the church regarded him was insurmountable; and it was with the greatest difficulty that he obtained an ecclesiastical dignity of no great value, on condition of fixing his residence in a country which he detested.

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 the lords justices called 1 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 document, affected wit or eloquence; and that his despatches are, without exception, remarkable for unpretending 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, how-dable champion. He soon found, however, ever, 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 was absent on the Continent, in what form a letter from the council of regency to the king ought to be drawn. We think it very likely that the ablest statesmen of our time, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, for example, would, in similar circumstances, be found quite as ignorant. Every office has some little mysteries which the dullest man may learn with a little attention, and which the greatest man cannot possibly know by intuition. One paper must be signed by the chief of the department, another by his deputy. To a third the royal sign-manual is necessary. One communication is to be registered, and another is not. One sentence must be in black ink and another in red ink. If the ablest secretary for Ireland were moved to the India board, if the ablest president of the India board were moved to the War Office, he would require instruction on points like these; and we do not doubt that Addison required such instruction 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 favourable to the whigs chosen. Sunderland was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, 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's whig ministry was in power, the visits of Swift to London and the official residence of Addison in Ireland had given them opportunities of knowing each other. They were the two shrewdest observers of their age. But their observations on each other had led them to

Difference of political opinion had produced, not, indeed, a quarrel, but a coolness 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.

Εγχεα δ' αλλήλων ἀλεώμεθα καὶ δί ὁμίλου·
Πολλοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἐμοὶ Τρῶες κλειτοί τ' επίκουροι,
Κτείνειν, δν κε θεός γε πόρῃ καὶ ποσσὶ κιχείω,
Πολλοὶ δ' αὖ σοὶ ̓Αχαιοὶ, ἐναίρεμεν, δν κε δύνηαι.

It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and insulted nobody, should not have calumniated or insulted 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 Eng. land the liberties 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 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. But he answered with admirable spirit, that it might be necessary for men whose fidelity to their party was suspected to hold no intercourse with political opponents; 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

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