APPENDIX U (PAGE 121) Johnson's authority is Spence's Anec. pp. 49, 50. 'I have been informed that Addison was so extremely nice in polishing his prose compositions that when almost a whole impression of a Spectator was worked off, he would stop the press to insert a new preposition or conjunction.' J. WARTON, Essay on Pope, i. 149. ' Mr. Richard Nutt, one of the first printers of The Tatler, remembers that the press was stopped, and not seldom, but not by Addison, or for the sake of inserting some new prepositions or conjunctions; it was stopped, he said, for want of copy.' J. NICHOLS, The Tatler, 1789, ii. 265 n. Nichols quotes an advertisement to No. 77:-'Having these moon-shining nights been much taken up with my astronomical observations, I could not attend to the press so carefully as I ought, by which means more than ordinary errata have crept into my writings, even to the making of false English.' Ib. p. 263. Nichols adds that, if there were errata in Addison's papers, 'he never failed to rectify them' in his next paper. As it was Steele who, in the case of The Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, 'delivered the papers immediately to the press' (so Nutt reported), Nichols disbelieves Warton's story. Ib. p. 265. See also ib. iii. 297. For an example of Addison's polishing his sentences see Courthope's Addison, p. 189. APPENDIX X (PAGE 123) 'Oct. 31, 1710. I dined with Mr. Addison and Dick Stuart; a treat of Addison's. They were half fuddled, but not I; for I mixed water with my wine.' SWIFT, Works, ii. 63. On the following Nov. 18 Steele in The Tatler, No. 252, described Addison :-'A gentleman who has an inexhaustible source of wit to entertain the curious, the grave, the humorous and the frolic. . . . Yet in a coffee-house... he appears rather dull than sprightly. You can seldom get him to a tavern, but when once he is arrived to his pint, and begins to look about and like his company, you admire a thousand things in him which before lay buried.... He tells us a story, serious or comical, with as much delicacy of humour as Cervantes himself.' Berkeley says of the first performance of Cato:-'I was present with Mr. Addison and two or three more friends in a side box, where we had a table, and two or three flasks of Burgundy, and Champagne, with which the author (who is a very sober man) thought it necessary to support his spirits, and indeed it was a pleasant refreshment to us all between the acts.' Hist. MSS. Com. vii. App. p. 238. Dr. J. Hoadly described 'a Whig meeting, at the Trumpet in Shoe Lane,' attended by his father the bishop, 'where Sir Richard [Steele] in his zeal, rather exposed himself, having the double duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the memory of King William, it being November 4, as to drink his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose phlegmatic constitution was hardly warmed for society by the time Steele was not fit for it.' Montgomery's Steele, ii. 159. 'Tonson,' so Nichols was told, 'boasted of paying his court by inventing excuses for requesting a glass of Barbadoes water, in order to furnish the Secretary [Addison] with an apology for indulging his own inclination.' The Tatler, 1789, iv. 332 n. In The Spectator, No. 569, Addison attacks drunkenness. See ante, DRYDEN, 152 m., for Dryden's drinking with him. Thackeray wrote of him:-'A better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine-why we could scarcely have found a fault with him, and could not have liked him as we do.' Eng. Humourists, ed. Phelps, p. 82. APPENDIX Y (PAGE 144) The following is Addison's 'parallel of the Princes and Gods.' 'Great Pan, who wont to chase the fair, And loved the spreading oak, was there; And mighty Mars, for war renowned, Her twisted threads; the web she strung, Reclining on a funeral urn, Her short-lived darling son to mourn. The last was he whose thunder slew That from a hundred hills allied In impious leagues their king defied.' Works, i. 230. The allusions are to Charles II-his mistresses and the oak in which he hid; James II and his abdication; William III and his wars; Mary II, childless and fond of women's work; Anne, married to Prince George, mourning over her last child, the Duke of Gloucester; and George I conquering the Highland rebels. Opposite this parallel Macaulay has written on the margin (Addison's Works, 1746, ii. 129; ante, ADDISON, 76 n.):—'Wonderfully ingenious ! Neither Cowley nor Butler ever surpassed, I do not remember that they ever equalled it.' [Macaulay made these notes at Calcutta in 1835. Unfortunately, being written in pencil, they show signs of fading.] HUGHES' OHN HUGHES, the son of a citizen of London and of 1 JOHN Anne Burgess, of an ancient family in Wiltshire, was born at Marlborough, July 29, 16772. He was educated at a private school; and though his advances in literature are in the Biographia very ostentatiously displayed, the name of his master is somewhat ungratefully concealed 3. 6 At nineteen he drew the plan of a tragedy, and paraphrased 2 rather too diffusely the ode of Horace which begins Integer Vitæ. To poetry he added the science of Musick, in which he seems to have attained considerable skill, together with the practice of design or rudiments of painting. His studies did not withdraw him wholly from business, nor 3 did business hinder him from study 5. He had a place in the office of ordnance, and was secretary to several commissions for purchasing lands necessary to secure the royal docks at Chatham and Portsmouth; yet found time to acquaint himself with modern languages. In 1697 he published a poem on The Peace of Ryswick', and 4 in 1699 another piece, called The Court of Neptune, on the return of king William, which he addressed to Mr. Montague, the general patron of the followers of the Muses. The same year he produced a song on the duke of Gloucester's birth-day9. of writing with great success; and about this time shewed his knowledge of human nature by an Essay on the Pleasure of being deceived. In 1702 he published, on the death of king William, a Pindarick ode called The House of Nassau, and wrote another paraphrase on the Otium Divos of Horace 3. 6 In 1703 his Ode on Musick was performed at Stationers' Hall; and he wrote afterwards six cantatas, which were set to musick by the greatest masters of that time, and seem intended to oppose or exclude the Italian opera, an exotick and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated and always has prevailed'. 7 His reputation was now so far advanced that the publick began to pay reverence to his name, and he was solicited to prefix a preface to the translation of Boccalini, a writer whose satirical vein cost him his life in Italy; but who never, I believe, found many readers in this country, even though introduced by such powerful recommendation. 8 He translated Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead, and his version was perhaps read at that time, but is now neglected; for by a book not necessary, and owing its reputation wholly to its turn of diction, little notice can be gained but from those who can enjoy the graces of the original. To the dialogues of Fontenelle he added two composed by himself; and, though not only an honest but a pious man, dedicated his work to the earl of Poems on Several Occasions with Some Select Essays in Prose, 1735, i. 256. [At the end of the Essay the date, 1701, is given. Ib. p. 264.] For Pindarick Odes • Ib. p. 37. see ante, COWLEY, 124. 3 HORACE, Odes, ii. 16; Eng. Poets, xxxi. 103. 4 lb. p. 142. 'It was the custom of this time for almost every rhymer to try his hand in an Ode on St. Cecilia; we find many despicable rhapsodies, so called, in Tonson's Miscellanies! J. WARTON, Essay on Pope, i. 51. See ante, DRYDEN, 150; post, CONGREVE, 39; POPE, 320. 5 'Master'in the Lives is a mistake for 'masters.' 'His pieces,' writes Duncombe (Hughes Corres. Preface, p. 7), 'were set by Dr. Pepusch, Mr. Galliard, Mr. Handel and other great masters. The six cantatas were all set by Pepusch.' Eng. Poets, xxxi. III. Wharton'. He judged skilfully enough of his own interest, for Wharton, when he went lord lieutenant to Ireland, offered to take Hughes with him, and establish him; but Hughes, having hopes or promises from another man in power of some provision more suitable to his inclination, declined Wharton's offer and obtained nothing from the other". He translated the Miser of Molière 3, which he never offered 9 to the Stage; and occasionally amused himself with making versions of favourite scenes in other plays. Being now received as a wit among the wits he paid his 10 contributions to literary undertakings, and assisted both The Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian. In 1712 he translated Vertot's History of the Revolution of Portugal5; produced an Ode to the Creator of the World, from [occasioned by the Fragments of Orpheus; and brought upon the Stage an opera called Calypso and Telemachus, intended to shew that the English language might be very happily adapted to musick. This was impudently opposed by those who were employed in the Italian opera; and, what cannot be told without indignation, the intruders had such interest with the duke of Shrewsbury, then lord Chamberlain, who had married an Italian, as to obtain an obstruction of the profits, though not an inhibition of the performance 8. There was at this time a project formed by Tonson for a trans- 11 lation of the Pharsalia by several hands, and Hughes englished 'Ante, ADDISON, 30. 2 Biog. Brit. p. 2702; Hughes Corres. Preface, p. 10. 3 Le Misanthrope. Of L'Avare he translated but the first act. 4 For The Lay Monastery, which, when Steele abruptly dropped The Guardian,' Hughes and Blackmore started, see post, BLACKMORE, 26, and Addison's Works, v. 411, 414. s Addison, this same year, quoted Vertot in The Spectator, No. 349. Gibbon describes him as an author whose works are read with the same pleasure as romances, to which in other respects they bear too much resemblance.' Misc. Works, v. 389. 6 Eng. Poets, xxxi. 187. The Ode and its ingenious author' are mentioned in The Spectator, No. 554. See also Spectator, No. 537, and Hughes's Poems, 1735, Pref. p. 19. 7 Swift wrote to Stella on Aug. 2, 1711: The Duchess of Shrewsbury asked the Secretary, was not that Dr. Dr. and she could not say my name in English, but said Dr. Presto, which is Italian for Swift.' Swift's Works, ii. 312. 'She was descended by the mother's side from Robert, Earl of Leicester, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth.' Ib. n. 8 The Italians obtained from the Duke an order either to act at common prices, or not to act at all.' Biog. Brit. p. 2704. Addison, in The Spectator, No. 405, says 'the town is highly obliged to Signor Nicolini, the greatest performer in dramatic music that is now living, for that generous approbation he lately gave to an opera of our own country [Calypso and Telemachus].' |