3 4 carried his family to his new residence, and, I believe, placed him for some time, probably not long, under Mr. Shaw, then master of the school at Lichfield, father of the late Dr. Peter Shaw'. Of this interval his biographers have given no account, and I know it only from a story of a barring-out, told me when I was a boy by Andrew Corbet of Shropshire, who had heard it from Mr. Pigot his uncle. The practice of barring-out3 was a savage license, practised in many schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took possession of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade their master defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose that on such occasions the master would do more than laugh, yet, if tradition may be credited, he often struggled hard to force or surprise the garrison. The master, when Pigot was a school-boy, was barred-out at Lichfield, and the whole operation, as he said, was planned and conducted by Addison. To judge better of the probability of this story, I have enquired when he was sent to the Chartreux'; but, as he was not one of those who enjoyed the Founder's benefaction, there is no account preserved of his admission. At the school of the Chartreux, to which he was removed either from that of Salisbury or Lichfield, he pursued his juvenile studies under the care of Dr. Ellis 5, and contracted that intimacy with Sir Richard Steele', which their joint labours have so effectually recorded'. 4 Johnson generally calls the Charter-house' the Chartreux.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 124; John. Letters, ii. 207, 213. Tickell does the same. Addison's Works, Preface, p. 3. Evelyn (Diary, i. 337) in 1657 calls it the Charter-House, and so does Swift in 1710. Works, ii. 23. 5 Dr. Welbore Ellis, afterwards successively Bishop of Kildare and Meath, was Steele's tutor at Oxford, not at the Charterhouse. Austin Dobson's Selections from Steele, 1896, Introd. p. xii. Steele, in the Preface to The Tatler, vol. iv, describes Addison as 'one with whom he has lived in an intimacy from childhood.' 7 Steele wrote of him in The Spectator, No. 555-'1 remember when Of this memorable friendship the greater praise must be given 5 to Steele. It is not hard to love those from whom nothing can be feared, and Addison never considered Steele as a rival; but Steele lived, as he confesses, under an habitual subjection to the predominating genius of Addison, whom he always mentioned with reverence and treated with obsequiousness 2. Addison, who knew his own dignity, could not always forbear 6 to shew it by playing a little upon his admirer; but he was in no danger of retort: his jests were endured without resistance or resentment 3. But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose 7 imprudence of generosity or vanity of profusion kept him always incurably necessitous, upon some pressing exigence in an evil hour borrowed an hundred pounds of his friend, probably without much purpose of repayment 5; but Addison, who seems to have had other notions of a hundred pounds, grew impatient of delay, and reclaimed his loan by an execution. Steele felt with great My Genius is rebuked.' Macbeth, iii. 1. 55. 2 In the Preface to vol. iv of The Tatler, he says that Addison's assistance was given with such force of genius, humour, wit and learning, that I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid; I was undone by my auxiliary.' Fielding, in A Journey from this World to the Next, ch. viii (Works, 1821, iv. 360), describes how 'a very merry spirit, one Dick Steele, embraced Addison, and told him he had been the greatest man upon Spence's Anec. p. 197. 4 Whiston records that meeting Steele one day at Button's, he accosted him thus:-""They say, Sir Richard, you have been making a speech in the House of Commons for the South Sea Directors." He replied, They do say so." Το which I answered, "How does this agree with your former writings against that scheme?" His rejoinder was this: "Mr. Whiston, you can walk on foot, and I cannot." Memoirs, ed. 1749, p. 304. Steele, however, never hesitated to sacrifice office to duty. 9 5 'Dr. Johnson has now and then borrowed a shilling of me; and when I asked for it again, seemed to be rather out of humour. A droll little circumstance once occurred: as if he meant to reprimand my minute exactness as a creditor, he thus addressed me:-"Boswell, lend me sixpence-not to be repaid." Boswell's Johnson, iv. 191. 8 9 10 11 sensibility the obduracy of his creditor; but with emotions of sorrow rather than of anger '. In 1687 he was entered into Queen's College in Oxford, where, in 1689, the accidental perusal of some Latin verses gained him the patronage of Dr. Lancaster, afterwards provost of Queen's College; by whose recommendation he was elected into Magdalen College as a Demy, a term by which that society denominates those which are elsewhere called Scholars; young men who partake of the founder's benefaction and succeed in their order to vacant fellowships". Here he continued to cultivate poetry and criticism3, and grew first eminent by his Latin compositions, which are indeed entitled to particular praise. He has not confined himself to the imitation of any ancient author, but has formed his style from the general language, such as a diligent perusal of the productions of different ages happened to supply. His Latin compositions seem to have had much of his fondness; for he collected a second volume of the Musa Anglicana, perhaps for a convenient receptacle, in which all his Latin pieces are inserted, and where his Poem on the Peace 5 has the first place. He afterwards presented the collection to Boileau, who from that time 'conceived,' says Tickell, 'an opinion of the English genius for poetry". Nothing is better known of Boileau than that he had an injudicious and peevish contempt of modern Latin, and therefore his profession of regard was probably the effect of his civility rather than approbation. Three of his Latin poems are upon subjects on which perhaps he would not have ventured to have written in his own language: moderns, he writes:-'N.B. Il est dit dans les Anecdotes littéraires, t. ii. page 27, qu’Addison, ayant fait présent de ses ouvrages à Despréaux [Boileau], celui-ci lui répondit qu'il n'aurait jamais écrit contre Perrault, s'il eût vu de si excellentes pièces d'un moderne. Comment peut-on imprimer un tel mensonge? Boileau ne savait pas un mot d'anglais, aucun Français n'étudiait alors cette langue.' Euvres, xvii. 140. 'See his Fragment d'un autre Dialogue, where he ridicules the modern writers of Latin verse. Euvres, ed. 1747, iii. 55. The Battle of the Pigmies and Cranes', The Barometer, and A Bowling-green3. When the matter is low or scanty a dead language, in which nothing is mean because nothing is familiar, affords great conveniences; and by the sonorous magnificence of Roman syllables the writer conceals penury of thought and want of novelty, often from the reader, and often from himself. In his twenty-second year he first shewed his power of English 12 poetry by some verses addressed to Dryden'; and soon afterwards published a translation of the greater part of the Fourth Georgick upon Bees 5; after which, says Dryden, 'my latter swarm is hardly worth the hiving ".' About the same time he composed the arguments prefixed to 13 the several books of Dryden's Virgil'; and produced an Essay on the Georgicks, juvenile, superficial, and uninstructive, without much either of the scholar's learning or the critick's penetration. His next paper of verses contained a character of the principal 14 English poets, inscribed to Henry Sacheverell, who was then, if not a poet, a writer of verses, as is shewn by his version of a small part of Virgil's Georgicks published in the Miscellanies 1o, * Πυγμαίο-Γερανομαχία, sive Proelium inter Pygmaeos et Grues commissum, Works, i. 239. 2 Barometri Descriptio, ib. i. 237. Sphaeristerium, ib. i. 246. ♦ Ib. i. 2. Dated 'Mag. Coll. Oxon. June 2, 1693. The Author's Age, 22' (see ante, ADDISON, I n. 2). 5 lb. i. 10. First printed in Dryden's Fourth Miscellany, 1694, p. 58. Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, ii. 123. 'Not one of the six volumes of the Miscellany is without some pieces of Virgilian translation.' CONINGTON, Misc. Writings, i. 155. After his Bees my latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving.' DRYDEN, Works, xv. 193. 7 Ante, DRYDEN, 305. 8 Works, i. 154. Virgil he speaks of as 'the greatest poet. lb. p. 161. This Essay is prefixed by Dryden to his Georgicks. Works, xiv. 12. Addison 'desired to have his name concealed' as the author. Ib. p. 229. An Account of the Greatest English Poets. To Mr. H. S. Ap. 3, 1694,' Dryden's Misc. (1694), iv. ΤΟ 317; Works, i. 22; ante, HALIFAX, II; post, ADDISON, 128. Sacheverell became a Demy in 1689. He is included in Jacob's Poet. Reg. ii. 171, where it is said 'he was chamber-fellow with Addison.' ΤΟ Dryden's Third Misc. 1693, p. 413. 'The first volume of the collection of poems known as Dryden's Miscellanies was published in 1684; the second, entitled Sylvae, or the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies, in 1685; the third, entitled Examen Poeticum, in 1693; and the fourth, called The Annual Miscellany, in 1694. The two remaining volumes were issued after Dryden's deathin 1703 [1704] and 1708 [1709]. In 1716 Jacob Tonson, the proprietor, published a new edition, which differs very much from the former collection.' Malone's Dryden, iii. 25. See post, POPE, 33. 'The Miscellany poems are horribly licentious. They are sometimes collections from antiquity, and often the worst parts of the worst poets.' JEREMY COLLIER, A Short View,&c., 3rd ed. p. 55. Gay, in his Epistle to Lintot, 15 16 and a Latin encomium on queen Mary in the Musa Anglicanæ1. These verses exhibit all the fondness of friendship; but on one side or the other friendship was afterwards too weak for the malignity of faction 3. 2 In this poem is a very confident and discriminative character of Spenser, whose work he had then never read *. So little sometimes is criticism the effect of judgement. It is necessary to inform the reader that about this time he was introduced by Congreve to Montague, then Chancellor of the Exchequer 5 : Addison was then learning the trade of a courtier, and subjoined Montague as a poetical name to those of Cowley and of Dryden ❝. By the influence of Mr. Montague, concurring, according to Tickell, with his natural modesty, he was diverted from his original design of entering into holy orders'. Montague alleged twice throws the accent in Miscel- Eng. Poets, xxxvi. 219. 1 Ed. 1741, ii. 153. Ante, CowLEY, 143; post, PRIOR, 8; A. PHILIPS, I. 2 Afterwards' is not in the first edition. 3 Ante, DRYDEN, 109. Sacheverell shows himself a strong Whig in his verses. Addressing William III he begins: 'At tu lapsuri, Princeps, spes unica regni.' In 1710, in The Whig-Examiner, No. 4, Addison describes him as having, in divinity, hit the sublime in nonsense.' Works, iv. 386. 4 Johnson gives Spence (Anec. p. 50) as his authority, who reports Pope as saying :—' I have heard Mr. Addison say that he never read Spenser till fifteen years after he wrote it.' Of The Faerie Queene Addison writes:'But now the mystic tale that pleased of yore Can charm an understanding age no more.' Works, i. 23. In The Spectator, No. 183, he calls it' that admirable work.' See also post, ADDISON, 128. Of greater truths I'll now prepare to tell, And so at once, dear friend and muse, farewell.' I know no poet of his eminence who would have made verse rhyme with success. Steele, in his Dedication to Congreve, mentions 'the warm instances Lord Halifax made to the head of the College not to insist upon Mr. Addison's going into holy orders.' Works, v. 150. In the Vice President's Register, Magdalen College, appears the following entry :- Aug. 17, 1699, concessa est Mr. Addison ab iis quorum intererat dispensatio ne teneatur sacris ordinibus initiari.' According to Tickell he was strongly importuned |