His translations, so far as I have compared them, want the 156 exactness of a scholar1. That he understood his authors cannot be doubted; but his versions will not teach others to understand them, being too licentiously paraphrastical. They are, however, for the most part smooth and easy, and, what is the first excellence of a translator, such as may be read with pleasure by those who do not know the originals. His poetry is polished and pure: the product of a mind too 157 judicious to commit faults, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excellence. He has sometimes a striking line, or a shining paragraph; but in the whole he is warm rather than fervid, and shews more dexterity than strength. He was, however, one of our earliest examples of correctness 3. The versification which he had learned from Dryden he debased 158 rather than refined. His rhymes are often dissonant: in his Georgick he admits broken lines. He uses both triplets and alexandrines, but triplets more frequently in his translations than his other works. The mere structure of verses seems never to have engaged much of his care. But his lines are very smooth in Rosamond, and too smooth in Cato. Addison is now to be considered as a critick; a name which 159 the present generation is scarcely willing to allow him. His criticism is condemned as tentative or experimental rather than scientifick, and he is considered as deciding by taste rather than by principles. It is not uncommon for those who have grown wise by the 160 1 Works, i. 10, 38, 83-139. * 'Addison seemed to value himself more upon his poetry than upon his prose, though he wrote the latter with such particular ease, fluency and happiness.' POPE, Spence's Anec. p. 257. 36 'Roscommon is perhaps the only correct writer in verse before Addison.' Ante, Roscommon, 24. For Prior's correctness see post, PRIOR, 70, and for Pope's, post, POPE, 30. For De Quincey's attack on this doctrine of correctness' see his Works, xv. 141, and for Macaulay's attack see his Essays, i. 304. ington, in his Misc. Writings, i. 3, shows that there is a legitimate and intelligible sense in which Pope may be said to have especially earned LIVES OF POETS. II Con L the praise of correctness.' Works, i. 10. He probably introduced them 'in order to hinder the ear from being tired with the same continued modulation of voice.' For this reason he writes, 'I do not dislike the speeches in our English tragedy that close with an hemistic, or half verse.' The Spectator, No. 39. See ante, COWLEY, 198. 5 See ante, ADDISON, 125, for Warburton's criticism. Johnson is answering also Hurd in his Notes on the Epistle to Augustus, 1. 210. Hurd's Works, 1811, vol. i. 395. Mr. Courthope, in his Addison, p. 181, says of him, that 'finding English taste in hopeless confusion, he left it in admirable order.' 161 162 labour of others to add a little of their own, and overlook their masters'. Addison is now despised by some who perhaps would never have seen his defects, but by the lights which he afforded them. That he always wrote as he would think it necessary to write now cannot be affirmed; his instructions were such as the character of his readers made proper. That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk was in his time rarely to be found". Men not professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and in the female world any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured 3.. His purpose was to infuse literary curiosity by gentle and unsuspected conveyance into the gay, the idle, and the wealthy; he therefore presented knowledge in the most alluring form, not lofty and austere, but accessible and familiar. When he shewed them their defects, he shewed them likewise that they might be easily supplied. His attempt succeeded; enquiry was awakened, and comprehension expanded. An emulation of intellectual elegance was excited, and from his time to our own life has been gradually exalted, and conversation purified and enlarged. Dryden had not many years before scattered criticism over his Prefaces with very little parcimony; but, though he sometimes condescended to be somewhat familiar, his manner was in general too scholastick for those who had yet their rudiments to learn, and found it not easy to understand their master. His observations were framed rather for those that were learning to write, than for those that read only to talk. An instructor like Addison was now wanting, whose remarks being superficial, might be easily understood, and being just might prepare the mind for more attainments. Had he presented Paradise Lost to the publick with all the pomp of system and severity of science, the criticism would perhaps have been admired, I * Ante, DRYDEN, 197. 3 Ante, MILTON, 135; post, BLACKMORE, 9. Swift wrote in Jan. 1735-6: -The ladies in general are extremely mended both in writing and reading since I was young.' Mrs. Delany's Auto., &c., i. 551. Ante, DRYDEN, 198. Johnson in his Dictionary only gives parsimony. 5Addison himself has been so unsuccessful in enumerating the words with which Milton has enriched our language as, perhaps, not to have named one of which Milton was the author.' JOHNSON, Proposals for printing the Works of Shakespeare, 1756, Works, v. 98. For the enumeration see The Spectator, No. 285. and the poem still have been neglected'; but by the blandishments of gentleness and facility he has made Milton an universal favourite, with whom readers of every class think it necessary to be pleased 2. He descended now and then to lower disquisitions; and by a 163 serious display of the beauties of Chevy Chase exposed himself to the ridicule of 'Wagstaff,' who bestowed a like pompous character on Tom Thumb*; and to the contempt of Dennis, who, considering the fundamental position of his criticism, that Chevy Chase pleases, and ought to please, because it is natural, observes 'that there is a way of deviating from nature, by bombast or tumour, which soars above nature, and enlarges images beyond their real bulk; by affectation, which forsakes nature in quest of something unsuitable; and by imbecility, which degrades nature by faintness and diminution, by obscuring its appearances and weakening its effects. In Chevy Chase there is not much of either bombast or In the first edition, 'he would perhaps have been admired and the book still have been neglected.' 2 Ante, MILTON, 137. 'In its silent progression, even after it had been recommended by the popular papers of Addison, many years elapsed before any symptom appeared that it had influenced the national taste.' T. WARTON, Milton's Poems, &c., 1785, p. 589. The criticisms had no appreciable effect at the time on the demand for Milton's poetry. The ninth edition of Paradise Lost was published in 1711, and the tenth in 1719. Between 1720-30 five editions of his Poetical Works appeared.' MASSON'S Milton, vi. 787. C. P. Moritz, a young Prussian, travelling in England in 1782, wrote: -'Certain it is that the English classical authors are read more generally, beyond all comparison, than the German, which in general are read only by the learned, or, at most, by the middle class of people. The English national authors are in all hands. My landlady, who is only a tailor's wife, reads her Milton.' Travels in England, 1886, p. 34. De Quincey expands Johnson's words, and at the same time, without acknowledging that he is borrowing from him, censures him. Works, 1863, vi. Preface, p. 11. 3 In The Spectator, Nos. 70, 74. In No. 85 he describes the 'most exquisite pleasure' given him by 'the old ballad of The Two Children in the Wood. A Comment upon the History of Tom Thumb. 'Wagstaffe's' Works, 1726, p. 1. See ante, PHILIPS, 31 n. 3. 5'An ordinary song or ballad that is the delight of the common people cannot fail to please all such readers as are not unqualified for the entertainment by their affectation or ignorance; and the reason is plain, because the same paintings of nature which recommend it to the most ordinary reader will appear beautiful to the most refined.' The Spectator, No. 70. "[For Dennis's contempt of Chevy Chase see Remarks upon Cato, p. 5, where he speaks of Addison as 'so merrily in the wrong as to take pains to reconcile us to the old doggerel of Chevy Chase and the Three Children (sic) and to put Impotence and Imbecility upon us for simplicity'; see also Of Simplicity in Poetical Composition in Remarks on the 70th Spectator, Dennis's Orig. Letters, 1721, i. 176 and passim.] 164 165 166 affectation; but there is chill and lifeless imbecility'. The story cannot possibly be told in a manner that shall make less impression on the mind 2. Before the profound observers of the present race repose too securely on the consciousness of their superiority to Addison, let them consider his Remarks on Ovid3, in which may be found specimens of criticism sufficiently subtle and refined; let them peruse likewise his Essays on Wit and on The Pleasures of Imagination, in which he founds art on the base of nature, and draws the principles of invention from dispositions inherent in the mind of man with skill and elegance, such as his contemners will not easily attain *. As a describer of life and manners he must be allowed to stand perhaps the first of the first rank. His humour, which, as Steele observes, is peculiar to himself, is so happily diffused as to give the grace of novelty to domestick scenes and daily occurrences. He never 'outsteps the modesty of nature',' nor raises merriment or wonder by the violation of truth. His figures neither divert by distortion, nor amaze by aggravation. He copies life with so much fidelity that he can be hardly said to invent; yet his exhibitions have an air so much original that it is difficult to suppose them not merely the product of imagination. As a teacher of wisdom he may be confidently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthusiastick or superstitious': he ''Earl Percy's lamentation over his enemy is generous, beautiful, and passionate; I must only caution the reader not to let the simplicity of the style, which one may well pardon in so old a poet, prejudice him against the greatness of the thought.' ADDISON, The Spectator, No. 70. • Windham records that Johnson said: Chevy Chase pleased the vulgar, but did not satisfy the learned; it did not fill a mind capable of thinking strongly. The merit of Shakespeare was such as the ignorant could take in, and the learned add nothing to.' John. Letters, ii. 440. 3 Works, i. 139. 4 Ante, ADDISON, 80. Macaulay wrote in 1843 : 'The papers on The Pleasures of the Imagination are certainly very ingenious and pleasingly written, but there has been so much progress, since Addison's time, in the philosophy of taste that, if I were to send a reader to those papers now, he would be disappointed.' Macvey Napier Corres. p. 430. 5 He was above all men in that talent we call humour.' Addison's Works, v. 151. That you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.' Hamlet, iii. 2. 21. 7 'There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.... Devotion, when it does not lie under the check of reason, is very apt to degenerate into enthusiasm.... Most of the sects that fall short of the Church of England have in them strong tinctures of enthusiasm, as the Roman Catholic religion is one huge overgrown body of childish and idle superstitions. . . . Nothing is so appears neither weakly credulous nor wantonly sceptical; his morality is neither dangerously lax, nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy and all the cogency of argument are employed to recommend to the reader his real interest, the care of pleasing the Author of his being. Truth is shewn sometimes as the phantom of a vision, sometimes appears half-veiled in an allegory, sometimes attracts regard in the robes of fancy, and sometimes steps forth in the confidence of reason 3. She wears a thousand dresses, and in all is pleasing. 'Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet".' His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave sub- 167 jects not formal, on light occasions not groveling; pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaboration; always equable, and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour. It was apparently his principal endeavour to avoid all harsh- 168 ness and severity of diction; he is therefore sometimes verbose in his transitions and connections, and sometimes descends too much to the language of conversation: yet if his language had been less idiomatical it might have lost somewhat of its genuine Anglicism. What he attempted, he performed; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetick; he is never rapid, glorious in the eyes of mankind and ornamental to human nature... as a strong, steady, masculine piety; but enthusiasm and superstition are the weaknesses of human reason, that expose us to the scorn and derision of infidels, and sink us even below the beasts that perish.' ADDISON, The Spectator, No. 201. Of which the most beautiful is The Visions of Mirza. The Spectator, No. 159. 2 The virtue which we gather from a fable or an allegory is like the health we get by hunting; as we are engaged in an agreeable pursuit that draws us on with pleasure, and makes us insensible of the fatigues that accompany it.' ADDISON, The Tatler, No. 147. |