glory from the autumnal landscape.
In the end of 1712 the Spectator, which had circulated at one time to the extent of 4000 copies a-day, was discontinued, and in a few weeks the Guardian supplied its place. It was two months ere Addison began to write, and during that time it was flippantly dull; but when he appeared its character changed, and his contributions to the new periodical were quite as good as the best of his Spectators.
In April 1713 his "Cato" was acted with immense success, and in circumstances so well known that they need not be detailed at length. Pope wrote the prologue; Booth enacted the hero; Steele packed the house; peers, both Tory and Whig, crowded the boxes; claps of applause were echoed back from High Churchmen to the members of the "Kit-Cat Club;" Bolingbroke sent fifty guineas, during the progress of the play, to Booth for defending the cause of liberty against a perpetual dictator, (Marlborough;) and with the exception of growling Dennis, everybody was in raptures. The play has long found its level. It has passages of power and thoughts of beauty, but it has one radical fault—formality. Mandeville described Addison as a parson in a tie-wig. "Cato" is a parson without the tie-wig; an intolerable mixture of the patriot and the pedant. Few would now give one of the Spectator's little papers about Sir Roger de Coverley for a century of Catos.
In September 1713 the Guardian stopped; but in June 1714 Addison, now separated from Steele, who was carrying on a political paper called the Englishman, added an eighth volume to the Spectator. Its contents are more uniformly serious than those of the first seven volumes, and it contains, besides Addison's matchless papers, some only inferior to these, especially four by Mr. Grove, a dissenting minister in Taunton. It is recorded in "Boswell" that Baretti having, on the Continent, met with Grove's paper on "Novelty," it quickened his curiosity to visit Britain, for he thought, if such were the lighter periodical essays of our authors, their productions on more weighty occasions must be wonderful indeed!
When George I. succeeded to the throne, Addison's fortunes began to improve. A Council having been appointed to manage matters till the King arrived, Addison was chosen their secretary; and afterwards he went over again to Ireland in his old capacity, Sunderland being now Lord-Lieutenant. Here, much as he differed from Swift in politics, he resumed his intimacy with him—an intimacy, considering the dispositions of the two men, singular, as though a lamb and a flayed bear were to form an alliance. In 1715 our poet returned to England, and obtained a seat at the Board of Trade. Early in the year he brought out, anonymously, on the stage his comedy of the "Drummer," which was coldly received. And towards the close of it, he commenced a very clever periodical called the Freeholder. We only met with this series a few years ago, but can assure our readers that some of the most delectable bits of Addison are to be found in it. There is a Tory fox-hunter yet riding along there, whom we would advise you to join if you would enjoy one of the richest treats of humour; and there is a Jacobite army still on its way to Preston, the only danger connected with approaching which, is lest you be killed with laughter.
Shortly after occurred his famous quarrel with Pope, to which we have already referred in our life of that poet, and do not intend to recur. Next year Addison's long courtship came to a successful close. He wedded the Dowager Warwick, went to reside at Holland-house, and became miserable for life. She was a proud, imperious woman, who, instead of seeking to wean Addison from his convivial habits, (if such habits in any excessive measure were his,) drove him deeper into the slough by her bitter words and haughty carriage. The tavern, which had formerly been his occasional resort, became now his nightly refuge. In 1717 he received his highest civil honour, being made Secretary of State under Lord Sunderland; but, as usual, the slave soon appeared in the chariot. His health began to break down, and asthma soon obliged him to resign his office, on receiving a retiring pension of £1500 a-year. Next Steele and he, having taken opposite sides in politics, got engaged in a paper war—Steele in the Plebeian, and Addison in the Old Whig; and personalities of a disagreeable kind passed between the two friends. In the meantime Addison was dying fast. Dropsy had supervened on asthma, and the help of physicians was vain. He prepared himself, like a man and a Christian, to meet the last stern foe. He sent for Gay and asked his forgiveness for some act of unkindness he had done him. Gay granted it, although utterly ignorant of what the offence had been. He had probably, on account of his Toryism, been deprived, through Addison's means, of some preferment. He entrusted his works to the care of Tickell, and dedicated them to Craggs, his successor in the secretaryship, in a touching and beautiful letter, written a few days before his death. He called, it is said, the young Earl of Warwick, his wife's son, a very dissipated young man, and of unsettled religious principles, to his bedside, and said, "I have sent for you that you may see how a Christian can die." He breathed his last on the 17th June 1709, forty-seven years old, and leaving one child, a daughter, who died, at an advanced age, at Bilton, Warwickshire, in 1797. His funeral took place, at dead of night, in Westminster Abbey, Bishop Atterbury meeting the procession and reading the service by torch-light. He was laid beside his friend Montague, and in a few months his successor, Craggs, was laid beside him. Nearly a century elapsed ere the present monument was erected over his dust. Tickell wrote a fine poem to his memory; and a splendid edition of his works was published by subscription in 1721.
Addison was cut off in the prime of life, and interrupted in some literary undertakings and projects of great pith and moment. He had written a portion of a treatise on the "Evidences of Christianity," and was meditating some works, such as a "Metrical Version of the Psalms" and a tragedy on the history of Socrates, still more suitable to his cast of mind.
We have already indicated our opinion alike of Addison's character and genius, but must be permitted a few closing remarks. Both partook of the feminine type. He was an amiable and highly gifted, rather than a strong or great man. His shrinking timidity of temperament, his singular modesty of manners, his quiet, sly power of humorous yet kindly observation, his minute style of criticism, even the peculiar cast of his piety, all served to stamp the lady-man. In taciturnity alone he bore the sex no resemblance. And hence it is that Campbell in poetry, and Addison in prose, are, or were, the great favourites of female readers. He had many weaknesses, but, as in the character of woman, they appeared beautiful, and cognate to his gentle nature. His fear of giving offence was one of the most prominent of these. In his writings and in his life, he seems always treading on thin ice. Pope said truly of him—
"He hints a fault, and hesitates dislike."
But this was not owing to malice, but to the bashful good nature which distinguished him. It is true, too, that he hints a beauty, and hesitates in his expressions of love. He says himself the finest things, and then blushes as if detected in a crime; or he praises an obvious and colossal merit in another, and then starts at the sound himself had made. His encomiums resemble the evening talk of lovers, being low, sweet, and trembling. Were we to speak of Addison phrenologically, we should say that, next to veneration, wit, and ideality, his principal faculties were caution and secretiveness. He was cautious to the brink of cowardice. We fancy him in a considerable fright in the storm on the Ligurian Gulf, amidst the exhalations of the unhealthy Campagna, and while the avalanches of the Alps—"the thunderbolts of snow"—were falling around him. We know that he walked about behind the scenes perspiring with agitation while the fate of "Cato" was still undecided. Had it failed, Addison never could, as Dr. Johnson, when asked how he felt after "Irene" was damned, have replied, "Like the Monument." We know, too, that he sought to soothe the fury and stroke down the angry bristles of John Dennis. To call the author of the "Campaign" a coward were going too far; but he felt, we believe, more of a martial glow while writing it in his Haymarket garret than had he mingled in the fray. And as to his secretiveness, his still, deep, scarce-rippling stream of humour, his habit, commemorated by Swift, when he found any man invincibly wrong, of flattering his opinions by acquiescence, and sinking him yet deeper in absurdity; even the fact that no word is found more frequently in his writings than "secret" ("secret joy," "secret satisfaction," "secret solace," are phrases constantly occurring,) prove that, whatever else he had possessed of the female character, the title of the play, "A Wonder—a Woman keeps a Secret," had been no paradox in reference to him.
Having
