M J^. Jak'^yn. THE WORKS JOSEPH ADDISON, THE WHOLE CONTENTS OF BP. KURD'S EDITION, WITH LETTERS AND OTHER PIECES NOT FOUND IN ANY PREVIOUS COLLECTION ; AND MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON HIS LIFE AND WORKS. EDITED, WITH OEITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES, BY GEORGE WASHINGTON GREENE. " Fio whiter page than Addison remaina, He from the taste obscene reclaims our j'outh, And sets the passions on the side of truth ; Forms the soft bosom witn tne gentlest art. And pours eaoh koinan virtue thro' the heart," — Ton. IW SIX ^OL'UMBi NEW YORK: DERBV 4 JAGKSON, 119 NASSATT ST. 1858. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, Bt GEO, P. PUTNAM & CO., to the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the SoutJier* District of New-York. JAt, w ^ <^ / / : ■ *^ . . / TABLE OF CONTENTS. Pagr Editor's Preface, ......... vi' Maoaulat, on the Life and Writings of Addison, . . xiii Notice of Hukd .... 1 Notice and Extracts prefixed to Kurd's Edition, . . 2 Inscription to Addison (by Hurd), • • • • . 8 Addison's Dedication to Craqqs, ..«••. 5 Tickell's Preface, ........ ^ *J To THE Earl of Warwick, 19 Translations, . 23 Introductory Remarks to the Translations, ... 24 Translation of Virgil's Fourth Georgic, . .25 Milton's Stile Imitated in a Translation out of the Third ^neid, 39 Horace. Ode IH. Book III., 44 Ovid's Metamorphoses. — Story of Phaeton, .... 49 Phaeton's Sisters transformed into Trees, . . . . 61 Transformation of Cycnus into a Swan, .... 68 The Story of Calisto, 66 1? TABLE OFCONTENTS, Pagk. The Story of Coronis, and Birth of iEsculapius, . . 70 Ocyrrhoc transformed to a Man, 74 Transformation of Battus to a Touch-Stone, . . . 76 The Story of Aglauros, transformed into a Statue, . . 77 Europa's Rape, 82 Book III. — Story of Cadmus, 85 Transformation of Actceon, 91 Birth of Bacchus, ........ 96 Transformation of Tiresias, .... .98 Transformation of Echo, 99 Story of Narcissus, . 101 Story of Pentheus, ... .106 The Mariners ti-ansformed to Dolphins, . . . 107 Death of Pentheus, .112 Book IV. — Story of Salmaeis and Hermaphroditus, . . 114 Notes on tlie Stories from Ovid, . . . . .119 Poems on Several Occ^vsions, 137 Introductory Remarks, 138 To Mr. Dryden, i;,'.( An Account of the Greatest English Poets, . . . .141 Lines to the King. Presented to the Lord Keeper, . . 14.8 To the King 160 Letter fi*om Italy 100 The Campaign, 170 mlbckllaneous poems, 107 Translation of Psalm XXIII 199 Hymn. — When all Thy Mercies, ....'. 200 Divine Ode. — ^The Spacious Firmament, etc., . . . 202 Divine Ode, made by a Gentleman on the conclusion of his Travels 203 Hyum. — When rising from the Bed of Death, . . 206 TABLE OF CONTENTS. V Paor Song for St. Cecilia's Day, . .... 207 To Sir Godfrey Kneller .210 The Countess of Manchester at Paris, .... 214 Song. — My Love was fickle once, 214 Imitation of our English Lyrics, 216 Prologue to the Tender Husband, . . . . . 21*7 Epilogue to the British Enchanters, 218 Epilogue to the Distressed Mother, 219 Dramas, . 221 Rosamond, 223 Introductory Remarks to Rosamond 225 Tickell's Verses to the Author of Rosamond, . . . 227 - The Drummer, 265 ■•^ Introductory Remarks to the Drummer, .... 266 Steele's Epistle Dedicatory to Mr. Congreve, . . 267 To the Countess of Warwi<'.k on her Marriage, . . 283 Preface to the Drummer . 285 Epilogue, 362 Cato, 366 Introductory Remarks to Cato 369 Verses to the Author of the Tragedy of Cato, . , . 376 Prologue, by Mr. Pope, 386 Epilogue, by Dr. Garth, . . . . . . . 462 To the Princess of Wales, with the Tragedy of Cato, . . 464 POEMATA, . , 467 Introductory Remarks, 468 Honoratissimo Viro Carolo Montagu, ... 471 Pax Gulielmi Auspiciis Europre Reddita, 1697, . . 473 Barometri Descriptio, .... . . 479 Prailium inter Pygmseos et Grues Commissum, . . 4S1 Resunectio Delineatu ad Alttu' * IMn-d. Oxon, . . 4*7 TABLE OF CONTENTS. ?AGB. Sphseristerium, 491 Ad D. D. Hannes, Insignissimum Medicam et Poetam, 493 Machinse Gesticulantes, 496 Ad Insignissimum Virum D. Tho. Bumettum, Sacra Theoriss TelluriB Autorem, 4t>8 PREFACE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. Few men have been more careful of their liteiary rep- atation than Addison. The last words that he \\rote for tlie public eye, were a dedication of his works to his friend Mr. Craggs. At the same time he gave Tickell particular directions about collecting and publishing them, justly feel- ing that there was nothing in them which he could look back upon with regret, even from his death-bed. Two years afterwards, the first edition appeared in four hand- some quartos, with an engraving from Kneller's portrait, an emblematical vignette^ and a full list of subscribers. Tickell undoubtedly meant to do justice to the memory of his patron, but his jealousy of Steele prevented him from calhng Addison's earliest and most intimate friend to his assistance, and with the exception of the papers from the Tatler, which were pointed out by Steele at Addison's request, there is nothing in this edition which any other editor might not have done equally well. The only ineditcd pieces were the Dialogues on Medals and the Treatise of \ Vlll PEFACE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. the Christian religion. The Drummer was omitted, much to Steele's mortification, who immediately republished it with many bitter complaints of the editor's carelessness and malignity. But if Tickell did less than he might have done for the illustration of Addison's life and writings, he paid a noble tribute to his virtues in the ^ verses to the Earl of Warwick,' which still continues, what Goldsmith pronounced it to be, nearly a hundred years ago, ' one of the finest elegies in our language.' Many years passed before another edition appeared. Meanwhile Steele died without fulfilling his promise of making up for TickelFs omissions ; Tickell himself added nothing to his original edition ; and all the members of that ' little senate,' each of whom might have told us many things we should have been glad to know, passed away one by one, leaving us as much in the dark concerning some of the most interesting events of Addison's literary life, as if he had passed all his days among men who had no preten- sions to scholarship. Particular works were reiDrinted from time to time ; the Spectator oftenest of all ; the letter from Italy retaining its place in miscellanies and collections; and Cato never completely losing its hold upon the stage. Finally the whole works were republished by Baskerville, with that typographical elegance which has given his edi- tions so high a value for the lovers of handsome books ; and again in London in 1804 ; but merely as reprints of the original edition of 1721. "At last Bishop Hard, resting a wliile from polemics and his Boswcllian contemplation of Warburton, betook PREFACE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. IX himself to a serious study of the great master of Enghsh prose. No two men could have been more unlike than Addison and Hurd. Addison mild, genial and indepen- dent ; Hurd bitter, irascible and cringing ; the one raising himself to the highest rank by the force of talent, without the sacrifice of a friendship or a principle ; the other mak- ing his way by subtle serviHty, and eagerly grasping at every means of promotion. Still Hurd possessed some qualifications for , his task. He was an admirer of good writing, and though cold, was not deficient in taste. He came with the feelings of a gram- marian of the old school, to weigh words and start ques- tions of syntax ; and Addison furnishes abundant materials for both. It is amusing to see with what a tone the learned prelate pronounces sentence upon offending particles, and how rigorously he keeps sense and sentiment out of sight. Now and then, it is true, he betrays an indistinct con- sciousness that thgre is something more in his text than mere specimens of style ; but most of his raptures are re- served for some happy construction or a word of pecu- Har elegance. It is of no use to ask for the explanation of an histoiical allusion, for he has none to give you. Manners and customs he passes by as though they had no bearing upon the subject ; and leaves you to deal with proper names as if every body could be his own biographical dictionary. Still his notes are not without their value for the mi- nute study of language. You may read them as you do Blair's ' critical examination,' and find yourself strength- ened in verbal criticism ; and though it is impossible not X PREFACE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. to feel tliat when the Bishop of Worcester took up his pen to commentate Addison, he ought to have taken a wider range ; yet within the Hmits which he set himself the task is well done, and his commentary will always find its place in a variorum. A little before Hurd began his grammatical commen- tary, a writer of vastly higher qualifications announced his intention of giving a new edition of Addison. This was Beattie, who had made the Spectator his model in prose, and who sympathized, both in prose and in verse, with the classic taste of his master. Unfortunately this design was never fully carried out ; other occupations and ill health compelling him to confine himself to a reprint and occa- sional commentary of the miscellaneous pieces. And it will ever continue a matter of surprise, that while Swift and Dryden found an editor like Scott ; and Pope; already so loaded down with commentation, reappeared in two rival editions, no one should have felt thaj the best service that could be rendered to the cause of virtue and pure taste, would be an accurate edition of Addison. The present edition, without pretending to contain all that might be done for the illustration of this eminent, writer, claims to be, in some respects, superior to all its predecessors. The poems, which were carelessly thrown together in former editions, without any regard to their subject or their relative importance, have been accurately arranged, and, where the occasion required it, illustrated by notes. Several of Addison's finest poems were origi- nally published in the Guardian and S^^ctator : these are PREFACE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. XI now placed under their proper heads. Portions of his cor- respondence, always the most faithful picture of a great man's heart, have heen inserted at various times in diflPer- ent publications, particularly in the Addisoniana and in le life of Addison by Miss Aikin. These are now care- fully collected and classed, as they deserve to be, among his works. The political tracts have been classed mth the purely political essays .; and the " Old Whig," which was omitted in all the other editions, is given in this in its pro- per place. Many of Addison's writings originally possessed a local and temporary interest, which they have not only lost for the modern reader, but have lost with it somewhat of that charm which arises from a familiarity with the names and circumstances to which they allude. As far as notes can revive it, it is hoped that the charm is in some measure restored in the present edition. The original orthography had been modernized by Hurd, whose system will be found, with a few exceptions, to correspond to the" best usage of the present day. The American editor has not felt himself at liberty to reduce it to any cisatlantic standard. A list of the principal editions of Addison will be found in the fifth volume. New- York, August 16, 1853. LIFE AND WKITINGS OF ADDISON.^ BY THOMAS BABIN&TOIf MAOAULAT. To Addison we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleep- ing a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, however, that this feeling will not betray us into that abject idolatry which we have often had occasion to reprehend in others, and which seldom fails to make both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot be equally developed ; nor can we expect from him perfect self-knowledge. We need not, therefore, hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some compositions that do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic poem's hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticisms as superficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to say of a writer, that, in a high department of literature, in which many eminent writers have distinguished themselves, he has had no equal; and this may with strict justice be said of Addison. As a man he may not have deserved the adoration which he received from those, who, bewitched by his fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts of life to his generous and delicate friendship, worshipped him nightly in his favorite temple at Button's. But, after full inquiry and impartial reflection, we have long been convinced, that he deserved as much love and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of our infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in his 1 In selecting a critical review of the life and writings of Addison, tiiere could be no liesi- tation in giving the preference to Macaulay's celebrated essay, one of the most elaborate of bis brilliaii t collection. The introductorj' paragraph, which refiM-s especially to Misa Alkln'i life of Addison, has been omitted.— G. liy LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. character ; but the more carefully it is examined, the more will it ap- ;ar, to use the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the no-ble parts — free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy. Men may easily be named in whom some particular good dis- position has been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just har- mony of qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observance of cverj^ law, not only of moral recti- tude, but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all men who have been tried by equally full information. His father was the R^iverend Lancelot Addison, who, though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some figure in the world, and occupies with credit two folio pages in the " Biographia Britannica." Lancelot was sent up, as a poor scholar, from Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of the Commonwealth ; made some progress in learning ; became, like most of his fellow-students, a violent royalist ; lampooned the heads of the university, and was forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. When he had left college, he earned an humble subsistence by reading the liturgy of the fallen church to the families of those sturdy squires whose manor-houses were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. After the restoration, his royalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was sold to France, he lost his employment. But Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as part of the marriage portion of the Infanta Catliarine ; and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was sent. A more mise- rable situation can hardly be conceived. It was diflicult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were more tormented by the heats or by the rains ; by the soldiers within the wall or the Moors without it. One advantage the chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity of studying the history and manners of the Jews and Mohammedans j and of this opportunit}"- he appears to have made excellent use. On his return to England, after some years of banishment, he published an in- teresting volume on the polity and religion of Barbary j and another on the Hebrew customs, and the state of rabbinical lei^rning. He rose to eminence in his profession, and became one of the royal chaplains, a doctor of divinity, archdeacon of Salisbury and dean of Litchfield. It is said that he would have been made a bishop after the Revolution, if he had not given offence to the government by strenuously opposing the convocation of 1G89, the liberal policy of William and Tillotson. In 1G72, not long after Dr. Addison's return from Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's cliildhood we know little. He learned his rudiments at schools in his father's neighborhood, and was then sent LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XV to the Charter House. The anecdotes which are popularly related about his boyish tricks do not harmonize very well with what we know of his riper years. There remains a tradition that* he was the ringleader in a barring-out ; and another tradition that he ran away from school, and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on berries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long search he was discovered and brought home. If these stories be true, it would be curious to know by what moral dis- cipline so mutinous and enterprising a lad was transformed into the gen- tlest and most modest of men. We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigorously and successfully. At fifteen he was not only fit for the university, but carried thither a classical taste, and a stock of learning which would have done honor to a master of arts. He was entered at Queen's College, Oxford ; but he had not been many months there, when some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, dean of Magdalene College. The young scholar's diction and versification were already such as veteran professors might envy. Dr. Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such promise; nor was an opportunity long wanting. The Revolution had just taken place ; and nowhere had it been hailed with more delight than at Mag- dalene College. That great and opulent corporation had been treated by James, and by his chancellor, with an insolence and injustice which, even in such a prince and in such a minister, may justly excite amaze- ment; and which had done more than even the prosecution of the bishops to alienate the Church of England from the throne. A presi- dent, duly elected, had been violently expelled from his dwelling. A papist had been set over the society by a royal mandate : the Fellows, who, in conformity with their oaths, refused to submit to this usurper had been driven forth from their quiet cloisters and gardens, to die of want or to live on charity. But the day of redress and retribution speedily camei The intruders were ejected ; the venerable house was again inhabited by its old inmates : learning flourished under the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough ; and with learning was united a mild and liberal spirit, too often wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. In consequence of the troubles through which the society had passed, there had been no election of new members during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was twice the ordinary number of vacancies ; and thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young friend^dmit tance ta the advantages of a foundation then generally esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. At Magdalene, Addison resided during ten years. He was, at first. XVI LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. one of those scholars who are called demies ; but was subse 3[uetitly elected a fellow/ His college is still proud of his name ; his portrait still hangs in the hall ; and strangers are still told that his favorite walk was under the elms which fringe the meadow on the banks of th© CherwelL' It is said, and is highly probable, that he was distinguished among his fellow-students by the delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his manners, and by the assiduity with which he often. prolonged his studies far into the night. It is certain that his reputation for abili- ty and learning stood high. Many years later the ancient doctors of Magdalene continued to talk in their common room of boyish composi- tions, and expressed their sorrow that no copy of exercises so remarka- ble had been preserved. It is proper, however, to remark, that Miss Aikin has committed the error, very pardonable in a lady, of overrating Addison's classical at- tainments. In one department of learning, indeed, his proficiency was such as it is hardly possible to overrate. His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound. He understood them thoroughly, entered into their spirit, and had the finest and most discriminating perception of all their peculiarities of style and melody ; nay, he copied their manner with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think, all their British imitators who had preceded him, Buchanan and Milton alone excepted. This is high praise ; and be3-ond this we cannot with justice go. It is clear that Addison's serious attention, during his residence at the university, was almost entirely concentrated on Latin poetry ; and that, if he did not wholly neglect other provinces of ancient literature, he vouchsafed to them only a cursory glance. He does not appear to have attained more than an ordinary acquaintance with the political and moral writers of Home ; nor was his own Latin prose by any mea^ ^ 1 He became fellow in course ; Demies being students upon scholarships, who succeed In their order to the vacant fellowshipa— G. 9 Addition's walk: at Oxford. " Passing to the rear of Magdalene College, on the loft there opens a park filled with very ancient and noble trees, making that ' chequered shade' upon the short and verdant gi-ass which poets love to talk about; while here and there are groups of deer stmding up or lying down with an air of satisfaction and conteutnu-nt be- longing to creatures occupying their native possessions. Then turning to the right you enter through a tasteful iron gate and over a slight bridge, upon a walk, which, extending some distance to the left, turns abruptly to the right, when it stretches along the Cherwell and makes the circuit of tlie meadow. The trees throw a perpetual shade overhead, and the Cherwell keeps up a tinkling and gurgling melody beside you. Here a rustic mill catches the eye, there the towers of some of the colleges appear, half concealed by the intervening trees. Left and right of tlie walk are the brightest meadows; further off are views of the richly cultivated country. And this is Addison's walk."— Tappan's Step from the Ifeio World to the Old.—Y. 1, p. 140. LIFE AND WRITINGS OP ADDISON. Xvi'l equal to his Latin verse. His knowledge of Greek, though doubtless such as was, in his time, thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently less than that which many lads now carry away every year from Eton and Rugby. A minute examination of his work, if we had time to make such an examination, would fully bear out these remarks. We will briefly advert to a few of the facts on which our judgment is grounded. Great praise is due to the notes which Addison appended to his version of the second and third books of the Metamorphoses. Yet these notes, while they show him to have been, in his own domain, an accomplished scholar, show also how confined that domain was. They are rich in appo- site references to Virgil, Statins, and Claudian ; but they contain not a single illustration drawn from the Greek poets. Now if, in the whole compass of Latin literature, there be a passage which stands in need of illustration drawn from the Greek poets, it is the story of Pentheus in the third book of the Metamorphoses. Ovid was indebted for that story to Euripides and Theocritus, both of whom he has sometimes followed minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to Theocritus does Addison make the faintest allusion ; and we, therefore, believe that wo do not wrong him by supposing that he had little or no knowledge of their works. His travels in Italy, again, abouqd with classical quotations, hap- pily introduced ; but his quotations, with scarcely a single exception, are taken from Latin verse. He draws more illustrations from Auso- nius and Manilius than from Cicero. Even his notions of the political and military affairs of the Romans seem to be derived from poets and poetasters. Spots made memorable by events which have changed the destinies of the world, and have been worthily recorded by great histo- rians, bring to his mind only scraps of some ancient Pye or Hayley. In the gorge of the Apennines he naturally remembers the hardships which Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to cite, not the authen- tic narrative of Polybius, not the picturesque narrative of Livy, but the languid hexameters of Silius Italicus. On the banks of the Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's lively description ; or of the stern conciseness of the commentaries ; or of those letters to Atticus which so forcibly express the alternations of hope and fear in a sensi- tive mind at a great crisis. His only authority for the events of the civil war is Lucan. All the best ancient works of art at Rome and Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, without recalling one single verse of ^indar, of Callimachus, or of the Attic dramatists ; but they brought XVIU LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. to his recollection innumerable passages in Horace, Juvenal, Statius, and Ovid. The same may be said of the " Treatise on jMedals." In that pleas- ing work we find about three hundred passages extracted with great judgment from the Roman poets ; but we do not recollect a single pas- sage taken from any Roman orator or historian ; and we are confident that not a line is quoted from any Greek writer. No person who had derived all his information on the subject of medals from Addison, would suspect that the Greek coins were in historical interest equal, and in beauty of execution far superior to those of Rome. If it were necessary to lind any further proof that Addison's classi- cal knowledge was confined within narrow limits, that proof would be furnished by his "Essay on the Evidences of Christianity." The Roman poets throw little or no light on the literary and historical ques- tions which he is under the necessity of examining in that essay. He is, therefore, left completely in the dark ; and it is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as that of the Cock- lane ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's " Vortigern ; " puts faith in the lie about the thundering legion ; is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the gods ; and pronounces the letter of Abgarus, king of Edessa, to be a record of great authority. Nor were these errors the effects of superstition ; for to superstition Addison was by no means prone. The truth is, that he was writing about what he did not understand. Miss Aikin has discovered a letter from which it appears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he was one of several writers whom the booksellers engaged to make an English version of Herodotus ; and she infers that he must have been a good Greek scholar.^ We can allow very little weight to this argument, when we consider that his fellow- laborers were to have been Boyle and Blackmore. Boyle is remem- bered chiefly as the nominal author of the worst book on Greek history and philology that ever was printed ; and this book, bad as it is, Boyle was unable to produce without help. Of Blackmore's attainments in the ancient tongues, it may be sufficient to say that, in his prose, ho has confounded an aphorism with an apophthegm, and that when, in 3 A(1(]i!>ov''ii knoidedge of Greek. Mr. Macanlay is probably right In his estimate of A(1(lisnn"s Greek; yet wc often find him quoting passflfres froui Greek writers witl) great apparent faii.iliarlty.— V. Spectator, 253, &c. ; and it is not unfair therefore to suppose that he extended lild circle of Greek reading after he left the University. The same accusatioa was bronght against Johnson, who was not a little annoyed by it— G. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XIX his verse, he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to regale his readers with four false quantities to a page ! It is probable that the classical acquirements of Addison were of as much service to him as if they had been more extensive. The world generally gives its admiration, not to the man who does what nobody «ise even attempts to do, but to the man who does best what multi- ^ tudes do well. Bentley was so immeasurabl}'- superior to all the Other scholars of his time that very few among them could discover his supe- riority. But the accomplishment in which Addison excelled his con- temporaries was then, as it is now, highly valued and assiduously cul- tivated at all English seats of learning. Every body who had been at a public school had written Latin verses ; many had written such verses with tolerable success ; and were quite able to appreciate, though by no r" means able to rival, the skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His *^- / '*^ lines on the Barometer, and the Bowling-Green, were applauded by $ hundreds to whom the " Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris " was as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are common to all Addison's Latin poems. Our favourite piece is the Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies ; for in that piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and \^ humour which many years later enlivened thousands of breakfast tables. Swift boasted that he was never known to steal a hint : and he certainly owed as little to his predecessors as any modern writer. Yet we can- not help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, one of the happiest touches in his Voyage to Lilliput from Addison's verses. Let our readers judge. " The Emperor," says Gulliver, " is taller by about the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders." About thirty years before Gulliver's Travels appeared, Addison wrote these lines : — " Jamqne acies inter medias sese arduus Infert Pygmeadum ductor, qui, inajestate verendus, Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam." The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and justly admired both at Oxford and Cambridge, before his name had ever been heard by the wits who thronged the coffee-houses round Drury Lane theatre. In his twenty-second year he ventured to appear before the public as a writer of English verse. He addressed some complimentary lines to Drydeu, XX LIFE AND WRITINGS OP ADDISON. who after many triumphs and many reverses, had at length reached a secure and lonely eminence among the literary men of that age. Dry- den appears to have been much gratified by the young scholar's praise ; and an interchange of civilities and good offices followed. Addison was probably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and was certainly present- ed by Congreve to Charles Montagu, who was then chancellor of the exchequer, and leader of the whig party in the House of Commons. At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote himself to poetry. He published a translation of part of the fourth Georgic, Lines to King William, and other performances of equal value ; that is to say. of no value at all. But in those days the pubhc were in the habit of receiving with applause pieces which would now have little chance of obtaining the Newdigate prize, or the Seatonian prize. And the reason is obvious. The heroic couplet was then the favorite measure. The art of arrang- ing words in that measure, so that the lines may flow smoothly, that the accents may fall correctly, that the rhymes may strike the ear strong- ly, and that there may be a pause at the end of every distich, is an art as mechanical as that of mending a kettle, or shoeing a horse ; and may be learned by any human being who has sense enough to learn any thing. But, like other mechanical arts, it was gradually improved by means of many experiments and many failures. It was reserved for Pope to discover the trick, to make himself complete master of it, and to teach it to every body else. From the time when his " Pastorals " appeared, heroic versification became matter of rule and compass ; and, before long, all artists were on a level. Hundreds of dunces who never blundered on one happy thought or expression were able to write reams of couplets which, as far as euphony was concerned, could not be dis- tinguished from those of Pope himself, and which very clever writers of the reign of Charles the Second — Rochester, for example, or Marvel, or Oldham — would have contemplated with admiring despair. Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very small man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, had learned how to manufacture decasyllabic verses ; and poured them forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have passed through ]\Ir. Brunell's mill, in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an unprac- tised hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation of a celebrated passage in the iEneid :— " This child our parent earth, stirred up with spite Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write, She was last sister of that giant race That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XXI And swifter far of wing, a monster vast And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed On ber huge corpse, so many waking eyes Stick underneatli, and, which may stranger rise In the report, as many tongues slie wears." Compare with these jagged misshapen distichs the neat fabric which Hoole'S machine produces in unlimited abundance. We take the first lines on which we open in his version of Tasso. They are neither better nor worse than the rest : — " thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, No greater wonders east or west can boast Than yon small island on the pleasing coast If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, The current pass, and seek the further shore." Ever since the time of Pope there has been a glut of lines of this sort ; and we are now as little disposed to admire a man for being able to write them as for being able to write his name. But in the days of William the. Third such versification was rare ; and a rhymer who had any skill in it passed for a great poet ; just as in the dark ages a person who could write his name passed for a great clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsli, and others, whose only title to fame was that they said in tolerable metre what might have been as well said in prose, or what was not worth saying at all, were honoured with marks of distinction which ought to be reserved for genius. With these Ad- dison must have ranked, if he had not earned true and lasting glory by performances which very little resembled his juvenile poems. Dryden was now busied with Virgil, and obtained from Addison a critical preface to the Georgics. In return for this service, and for other services of the same kind, the veteran poet, in the postscript to the trans- lation of the ^neid, complimented his young friend with great liberality, and indeed with more liberality than sincerity. He affected to be afraid that his own performance would not sustain a comparison with the ver- sion of the fourth Georgic, by '" the most ingenious Mr. Addison of Ox- ford." " After his bees," added Dryden, " my latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving." The time had now arrived when it was necessary for Addison to choose a calling. Every thing seemed to point his course toward the clerical profession. His habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His college had large ecclesiastical preferment in its gift, and boasts that it has given at least one bishop to almost every see in England. Dr. XXll LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Lancelot Addison held an honourable place in the church, and had set his heart on seeing his son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expres- sions in the young man's rhymes, that his intention was to take orders. * But Charles Montagu interfered. Montagu first brought himself into notice by verses, well-timed and not contemptibly written, but never, we think, rising above mediocrity. Fortunately for himself and for his countr}'-. he early quitted poetry, in which he could never have obtained a rank as high as that of Dorset or Roscommon, and turned his mind to official and parliamentary business. It is written that the ingenious person who undertook to instruct Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, waved his wings, sprang into the air. and instantly dropped into the lake. But it is added that the wings which were unable to support him through the sky, bore him up efie3- tually as soon as he was in the water. This is no bad type of the fate of Charles Montagu, and of men like him. "When he attempted to soar into the regions of poetical invention, he altogether failed ; but as soon as he had descended from his ethereal elevation into a lower and grosser element, his talents instantly raised him above the mass. He became a «- distinguished financier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still re- tained his fondness for the pursuits of his early days ; but he showed that fondness, not by wearying the public with his own feeble perform- ances, but by discovering and encouraging literary excellence in others. A crowd of wits and poets, who would easily have vanquished him as a * competitor, revered him as a judge and a patron. In his plans for the encouragement of learning, he was cordially supported by the ablest and * most virtuous of his colleagues, the lord keeper Somers. Though both these great statesmen had a sincere love of letters, it was not solely from a love of letters that they were desirous to enlist youths of high intel- lectual qualifications in the public service. The Revolution had altered the whole system of government. Before that event, the press had been controlled by censors, and the Parliament had sat only two months in eight years. Now the press was free, and had begun to exercise unpre- cedented influence on the public mind. Parliament met annually and sat long. The chief power in the state had passed to the House of Com- mons. At such a conjuncture, it was natural that literary and oratori- cal, talents should rise in value. There was danger that a government which neglected such talents might be subverted by them. It was, f therefore, a profound and enlightened policy which led Alontagu and Somers to attach such talents to the whig party, by the strongest ties ' both of interest and of grartitude. It is remarkable that, in a neighboring country, we have recently LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XXlll seen similar effects from similar causes. The Revolution of July, 1830, established representative government in France. The men of letters instantly rose to the highest importance in the state. At the present moment, most of the persons whom we see at the head both of the administration and of the opposition have been professors, historians, journalists, poets. The influence of the literary class in England, du- ring the generation which followed the Revolution was great, but by no means so great as it has lately been in France. For, in England, the aristocracy of intellect had to contend with a powerful and deeply rooted aristocracy of a very different kind. France had no Somersets and Shrewsburies to keep down her Addisons and Priors. It was in the year 1G99, when Addison had just completed his twenty-seventh year, that the course of- his life was finally determined. Both the great chiefs of the ministry were kindly disposed towards him. In political opinions he already was, what he continued to be through * life, a firm, though moderate whig. He had addressed the most polished and vigorous of his early English lines to Somers ; and had dedicated to Montagu a Latin poem, truly Virgilian, both in style and rhyme, on • the peac3 of Ryswick. The wish of the young poet's great friends was, it should seem, to employ him in the service of the crown abroad. But an intimate knowledge of the French language was a qualification indis- pensable to a diplomatist ; and this qualification Addison had not ac- quired. It was, therefore, thought desirable that he should pass some time on the Continent in preparing himself for official employment. His own means were not such as would enable him to travel ; but a pension of £300 a year was procured for him by the interest of the lord - keeper. It seems to have been apprehended that some difiiculty might be started by the rulers of Magdalene College. But the chancellor of the exchequer wrote in the strongest terms to Hough. The state — such was the purport of Montagu's letter — could not, at that time, spare to the church such a man as Addison. Too many high posts were already occupied by adventurers,, who, destitute of every liberal art and senti- ment, at once pillaged and disgraced the country which they pretended to serve. It had become necessary to recruit for the public service from a very different class, from that class of which Addison was the representative. The close of the minister's letter was remarkable. " I am called," he said, " an enemy of the church. But I will never do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it." This interference was successful ; and in the summer of 1G99, Addi son, made a rich man by his pension, and still retaining his fellowship, quitted his beloved Oxford, and set out on his travels. He crossed from } XXIV LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Dover to Calais, proceeded to Paris, and was received there with great kindness and politeness by a kinsman of his friend Montagu, Charles Earl of Manchester, who had just been appointed ambassador to tlie court of France. The countess, a whig and a toast, was probably as gracious as her lord ; for Addison long retained an agreeable recollec- tion of the impression which she at this time made on him, and, in some lively lines written on the glasses of the Kit-Cat club, described the envy which her cheeks, glowing with the genuine bloom of England, had excited among the painted beauties of Versailles. Louis XIY. was at this time expiating the vices of his youth by a devotion which had no root in reason, and bore no fruit in charity. The servile literature of France had changed its character to suit the changed character of the prince. No book appeared that had not an air of sanctity. Racine, who was just dead, had passed the close of his life in writing sacred dramas; and Dacier was seeking for the Athanasian ■L mysteries of Plato. Addison described this state of things in a short but lively and graceful letter to Montagu. Another letter, written about the same time to the lord keeper, conveyed the strongest assur- ances of gratitude and attachment. " The only return I can make to your lordship," said Addison, " will be to apply myself entirely to my business." With this view he quitted Paris and repaired to Blois ; a place where it was supposed that the French language was spoken in its highest purity, and where not a single Englishman could be found. Here he passed some months pleasantly and profitably. Of his way of life at Blois, one of his associates, an abb6 named Philippeaux, gave an account to Joseph Spence. If this account is to be trusted, Addison studied much, mused much, talked little, had fits of absence, and either had no love affairs, or was too discreet to confide them to the abbe. A man who, even when surrounded by fellow-countrymen and fellow- students, had always been remarkably shy and silent, was not likely to be loquacious in a foreign tongue, and among foreign companions. But it is clear from Addison's letters, some of which were long after pub- lished in the " Guardian," that while he appeared to be absorbed in his ? own meditations, he was really observing French society with that keen and sly, yet not ill-natured side-glance which was pccuharly his own. From Blois he returned to Paris ; and having now mastered the ; French language, found great pleasure in the society of French philoso- phers and poets. He gave an account, in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two highly interesting conversations, one with Malebranche, the other with Boileau. Malebranche expressed great partiality for the English, LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XXT and extolled tlie genius of Newton, but shook his head when Hobbea was mentioned, and was indeed so unjust as to call the author of the '' Leviathan " a poor silly creature. Addison's modesty restrained liim from fully relating, in his letter, the circumstances of his introduction to Boileau. Boileau, having survived the friends and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom went either to court or to the academy, and was almost inaccessible to strangers. Of the English .and of English literature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the name of Dryden. Some of our countrymen, in the warmth of their patriotism, have asserted that this ignorance must have been affected. We own that we see no ground for such a supposition. Jlnglish literature was to the French of the age of Louis XIV. what German literature was to our own grandfathers. Very few, we sus pect, of the accomplished men who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to dine in Leicester Squar© with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham with JNIrs. Thrale, had the slightest jsrotion that Wieland was one of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, beyond all dispute, the first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as little about the "Paradise Lost," and about '• Absalom and Ahitophel ; " but he had read Addison's Latin poems, and admired them greatly. Thej had given him, he said, quite a new notion of the state of learning and taste among the English. Johnson will have it that these praises wer3 insincere. " Nothing," says he, " is better known of Boileau than that he had an injudicious and peev- ish contempt of modem Latin ; and therefore his profession of regard was probably the effect of his civility ratfeer than approbation." Now, nothing is better known of Boileau than that he was singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember that either friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on any composition which he did not approve. On literary questions, his caustic, disdainful, and self-confi- dent spirit rebelled against that authority to which every thing else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Louis XIV. firmly, and even rudely, that his majesty knew nothing about poetry, and admired verses which were detestable. What was there in Addison's position that could induce the satirist, whose stern and fastidious temper had been the dread of two generations, to turn sycophant for the first and last time ? Nor was Boileau's contempt of modern Latin either injudi- cious or peevish. He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first order would ever be written in a dead language. And did he think amiss ? Has not the experience of centuries confirmed his opinion ? Boileau also thought it probable that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan age would have detected ludicrous improprieties. And who XXVI LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. can think otherwise ? What modern scholar can honestly declare thai he sees the smallest impurity in the style of Livy ? Yet is it not cer- tain that, in the style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the inelegant idiom of the Po ? * Has any modern scholar understood Latin better than Frederick the Great un-derstood French? Yet is it not notorious that Frederick the Great after reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing but French, during more than half a century — after unlearning his mother tongue in order to learn French, after living familiarly during many years with French associates — could not, to the last, compose in French, without imminent risk of committing some mistake which would have moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris ? Do we believe that Erasmus and Fracas- torius wrote Latin as well as Dr. Kobertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote English ? And are there not in the Dissertation on India (the last of Dr. Robertson's works), in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a London apprentice would laugh ? But does it follow, be- cause we think thus, that we can find nothing to admire in the noble alcaics of Gray, or in the playful elegiacs of Vincent Bourne? Surely not. Nor was Boileau so ignorant or tasteless as to be incapable of appreciating good modern Latin. In the very letter to which Johnson alludes, Boileau says — " Ne croyez pas pourtant que je veuille par la blamer les vers Latins, que vous m'avez envoyes d'un de vos illustres academiciens. Je les ai trouves fort beaux, et dignes de Vida et de 4 Et in Tito Livio mirse facundiaa viro putet inesse Pollio Asinius qimndam Patavlnitatem.— Quint. L. vlii., c. 1. But Pollio was known ratlicr as a captious than a just critic, and failed Badly in his own attempt to write history. Horace says, it is true, in one of his finest odes, Jiim nuncmiiiaci murinure cornuum Perstriiigis aures, &c. — C'arw. L. 11, c. 1. But Pollio was a patron, and his work not yet published. If, liowever, the rule hold good, we should have very little genuine Roman Latin to go by. Virgil was born at Mantua, not very far from Padua. Cornelius Nepos, near Verona. Sallust was a Sabine. Neither Cice- ro, nor Horace, nor indeed scarcely any of the most eminent Roman writers, were natives of Rome, and yet they all escaped the charge of provincialism. Fleury, in his excellent "Traite des li^tudcs," takes very nearly the same ground with Macaulay. Gibbon compLa- cently hesitates in speaking of his own French (V, G. Mem., p. 59), though his English is one of the strongest illustrations of the principle. Erasmus and Fracastorius, when they read Latin, read classic Latin. Robertson and Scott passed all their lives hearing and using Scot- ticisms in their daily intercourse. In these cases, therefore, tlie psirallel liardly holds good. Italian literature furnishes instances fur both sides. None of the greater poets but Duute and Petrarch wwe native Tuscans, and Petrarch went to France at nine ; yet Ariosto and Tasso are now cited by the Crnsca. Then again Alfleri, in liis prose could not always forget his French education ; yet Botta, born and educated in Piedmont, and living in Paris, wrote the purest Italian of the age, unless wo should except Cesari, Giordani, and Colombo, none of whom were Tuscans. Arguing by examples, therefore, wo should say, Difficile si, ma non impossibile. — Q. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XXYH Sannazar, mais non pas d'Horace et de Virgile." Several poems, in modern Latin, have been praised by Boileau quite as liberally as it was his habit to praise any thing. He says, for example, of Pere Fraguier's epigrams, that Catullus seems to have come to life again. But the best proof that Boileau did not feel the undiscerning contempt for modern Latin verses which has been imputed to him, is, that he wrote ?nd pub- ished Latin verses in several metres. Indeed, it happens, curiously enough, that the most severe censure ever pronounced by him on modern Latin, is conveyed in Latin hexameters. We allude to the fragment which begins — " Quid numeris iterum me balbiitire Latinis, Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, Musa, jiibes?" For these reasons we feel assured that the praise which Boileau bestowed on the MachincB Gesticulantes^ and the Gerano-PygmfEO- machia, was sincere. lie certainly opened himself to Addison with a freedom which was a sure indication of esteem. Literature was the chief subject of conversation. The old man talked on his favorite theme much and well ; indeed, as his young hearer thought, incompara- bly well. EgUo^ had undoubtedly some of the qualities of a great critic. He wanted imagination; but he had strong sense. His literary code was formed on narrow principles ; but in applying it, he showed great judgment and penetration. In mere style, abstracted from ^e ideas of which style is the garb, his taste was excellent. He^was well acquainted with the great Greek writers ; and, though unable fully to appreciate their creative genius, admired the majestic simplicity of their manner, and had learned from them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, we think, to discover, in the " Spectator " and the " Guardian," traces of the influence, in part salutary and in part pernicious, which ihe mind of Boileau had on the mind of Addison. While Addison was at Paris, an event took place which made that capital a disagreeable residence for an Englishman and a whig. Charles, second of the name. King of Spain, died ; and bequeathed his dominions to Philip, Duke of Anjou, a younger son of the dauphin. The King of France, in direct violation of his engagements both with Great Britain and with the states-general, accepted the bequest on behalf of his grandson. The house of Bourbon was at the summit of human gran- deur. England had been outwitted, and found herself in a situation at once degrading and perilous. The people of France, not presaging the ilamities by which they were destined to expiate the perfidy of their sovereign, went mad with-pride and delight. Every man looked as if a d XXVlll LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. great estate had just been left him. " The French conversation," said Addison, " begins to grow insupportable ; that which was before the vainest nation in the world, is now worse than ever." Sick of the arrogant exultation of the Parisians, and probably foreseeing that the peace between France and England could not be of long duration, he set off for Italy. In December, 1700, he embarked at Marseilles. As he glided along the Ligurian coast, he was delighted by the sight of myrtles and olive-trees, which retained their verdure under the winter solstice. Soon, however, he encountered one of the black storms of the Mediter- ranean. The captain of the sliip gave up all for lost, and confessed himself to a capucliin who happened to be on board. The English heretic, in the mean time, fortified himself against the terrors of death with devotions of a very different kind. How strong an impression this perilous voyage made on him, appears from the ode — " How are thy servants blest, Lord ! " which was long after published in the Specta- tor. After some days of discomfort and danger, Addison was glad to land at Savona, and to make his way, over mountains where no road had yet been hewn out by art, to the city of Genoa. At Genoa, still ruled by her own doge, and by the nobles whose names were inscribed on her book of gold, Addison made a short stay. He admired the narrow streets overhung by long lines of towering palaces, the walls rich with frescoes, the gorgeous temple of the Annun- ciation, and the tapestries whereon were recorded the long glories of the house of Doria. Thence he hastened to Milan, where he contem- plated the Gothic magnificence of the cathedral with more wonder than pleasure. He passed lake Benacus while a gale was blowing, and saw the waves raging as they raged when Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, then the gayest spot in Europe, the traveller spent the carnival, the gayest season of the year, in the midst of masques, dances, and serenades. Here he was at once diverted and provoked by the absurd dramatic pieces which then disgraced the Italian stage. To one of those pieces, however, he was indebted for a valuable hint. He was present when a ridiculous play on the death of Cato was performed. C'ato,^ it seems, was in love with a daughter of Scipio. The lady had giv.'^n her heart to Caesar. The rejected lover determined to destroy h'mself He appeared seated in his library, a dagger in his hand, a Plutarch inv} a Tasso before him ; and in this position he pronounced a soJ 'loquy before lie struck the blow. We are surprised that so remarkable a circumstance as this should have escaped the notice of all Addison's biographers. There cannot, we conceive, be the smallest douVt that LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XXIX Lhia scene, in spite of its absurdities and anachronisms, struck the tra- 7eller's imagination, and suggested to him the thought of bringing Cato on the English stage. It is well known that about this time he began his tragedy, and that he finished the first four acts before he returned to England. On his way from Venice to Eome, he was drawn some miles out of the beaten road, by a wish to see the smallest independent state in Europe. On a rock where the snow still lay, though the Italian spring was now far advanced, was perched the little fortress of San Marino. The roads which led to the secluded town were so bad that few travel- lers had ever visited it, and none had ever published an account of it. Addison could not suppress a good-natured smile at the simple manners and institutions of this singular community. But he observed, with the exultation of a whig, that the rude mountain tract which formed the territory of the republic, swarmed with an honest, healthy, con- tented peasantry : while the rich plain which surrounded the metropolis of civil and spiritual tyranny was scarcely less desolate than the un- cleared wilds of America. At Rome, Addison remained on his first visit only long enough to catch a glimpse of St. Peter's, and of the Pantheon. His haste is the more extraordinary, because the holy week was close at hand. He has given us no hint which can enable us to pronounce why he chose to fl}'- from a spectacle which every year allures from distant regions persons of far less taste and sensibiHty than his. Possibly, travelling, as he did, at the charge of a government distinguished by its enmity to the Church of Rome, he may have thought that it would be imprudent in him to assist at the most magnificent rite of that church. Many eyes would be upon him ; and he might find it diflBcult to behave in such a manner as to give offence neither to his patrons in England, nor to those among whom he resided. Whatever his motives may have been, he turned his back on the most august and affecting ceremony which is known among men, and posted along the Appian way to Naples. Naples was then destitute of what are now, perhaps, its chief attrac- tions. The lovely bay and the awful mountain were indeed there. But a farm-house stood on the theatre of Herculaneum, and rows of vines grew over the streets of Pompeii. The temples of Paestum had not indeed been hidden from the eye of man by any great convulsion of nature ; but, strange to say, their existence was a secret even to artists and antiquaries. Though situated* within a few hours' journey of a great capital, where Salvator had not long before painted, and where Vico was then lecturing, those noble rema-ns were as little known to Europe as XXX LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. the ruined cities overgrown by the forests of Yucatan. What was to be seen at Naples, Addison saw. He climbed Vesuvius, explored the tun- nel of Posilipo, and wandered among the vines and almond-trees of Caprea). But neither the wonders of nature nor those of art could so occupy his attention as to prevent him from noticing, though cursorily, * the abuses of the government and the misery of the people. The great kingdom which had just descended to Philip V. was in a state of para lytic dotage. Even Castile and Arragon were sunk in wretchedness. Yet, compared with the Italian dependencies of the Spanish crown, Castile and Arragon might be called prosperous. It is clear that all the observations which Addison made in Italy tended to confirm him in the pohtical opinions which he had adopted at home. To the last he always spoke of foreign travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his Freeholder, the tory foxhunter asks what travelling is good for, except to teach a man to jabber French, and to talk against passive obedience. From Naples Addison returned to Rome by sea, along the coast which his favorite Virgil had celebrated. The felucca passed the head- land where the oar and trumpet were placed by the Trojan adven- turers on the tomb of Misenus, and anchored at night under the shelter of the fiblcd promontory of Circe. Th© voyage ended in the Tiber, still overhung with dark verdure, and still turbid with yellow sand, as when it met the eyes of iEneas. From the ruined port of Ostia, the stranger hurried to Rome ; and at Rome he remained during those hot and sickly months when, even in the Augustan age, all who could make their escape fled from mad dogs and from streets black with funerals, to gather the first figs of the season in the country. It is probable that when he, long after, poured forth in verse his gratitude to the Provi- dence which had enabled him to breathe unhurt in tainted air, he was thinking of the August and September which he passed at Rome. It was not till the latter end of October that he tore himself away from the masterpieces of ancient and modern art, which are collected in the city so long the mistress of the world. He then journeyed northward, passed through Sienna, and for a moment forgot his prejudices in favor of classic architecture as he looked on the magnificent cathedral. At Florence he spent some days with the Duke of Shrewsbury, who. cloyed with the pleasures of ambition, and impatient of its pains, fearing both parties, and loving neither, had determined to hide in an Italian retreat talents and accomplishments which, if they had been united with fixed principles and civil courage, might have made him the foremost man of his age. These days, we are told, passed pleasantly ; and we can easily believe it. For A ddison was a delightful companion when he was at his ease ; and LIFE AN» WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XXXI the duke, though he seldom forgot that he was a Talbot, had the invalu- able art of putting at ease all who came near him. Addison gave some time to Florence, and especially to the sculptures in the Museum, which he preferred even to those of the Vatican. He then pursued his journey through a country in which the ravages of the last war were still discernible, and in which all men were looking forward with dread to a still fiercer conflict. Eugene had already de- scended from the Rhtetian Alps, to dispute with Catinat the rich plain of Lombardy. The faithless ruler of Savoy was still reckoned among the allies of Louis. England had not yet actually declared war against France. But Manchester had left Paris ; and the negotiations which produced the grand alliance against the house of Bourbon were in pro- gress. Under such circumstances, it was desirable for an English traveller to reach neutral ground Mathout delay. Addison resolved to cross Mont Cenis. It was December ; and the road was very different from that which now reminds the stranger of the power and genius of Napoleon. The winter, however, was mild, and the passage was, for those times, easy. To this journey Addison alluded, when, in the ode which we have already quoted, he sai(i,that for him the divine goodness had " warmed the hoary Alpine hills." It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he composed his Epistle to his friend Montagu, now Lord Halifax. That Epistle, once widely renowned, is now known only to curious readers ; and will hardly be considered by those to whom it is known as in any perceptible degree heightening Addison's fame. It is. however, decidedly superior to any English composition which he had previously published. Nay, we think it quite as good as any poem in heroic metre which appeared during the interval between the death of Dryden and the publication of the " Essay on Criticism." It contains passages as good as the second-rate passages of Pope, and would have added to the reputation of Parnell or Prior. But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of the Epistle, it un- doubtedly does honor to the principles and spirit of the author. Hali- fax had now nothing to give. He had fallen from power, had been held up to obloquy, had been impeached by the House of Commons ; and, though his peers had dismissed the impeachment, had. as it seemed, little chance of ever again filling high office. The Epistle, written at such a time, is one among many proofs that there was no mixture of cowardice or meanness in the suavity and moderation which distin- guished Addison from all the other public men of those stormy times. At Geneva, the traveller learned that a partial change of ministry had taken place in England, and that the Earl of Manchester had be- XXXll IIFE AND WRITINGS OT ADDISON. come secretary of state. Manchester exerted himself to serve his yo ang friend. It was thought advisable that an English agent should be near the person of Eugene in Italy ; and Addison, whose diplomatic education was now finished, was the man selected. He was preparing to enter on his honorable functions, when all his prospects were for a time dark- ened by the death of AVilliam III. Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, political, and reli- gious, to the whig party. That aversion appeared in the first measures of her reign. Manchester was deprived of the seals after he had held them only a few weeks. Neither Somers nor Halifax was sworn of the Privy Council. Addison shared the fate of his three patrons. His hopes of employment in the public service were at an end ; his pension was stopped ; and it was necessary for him to support himself by his own exertions. He became tutor to a young English traveller ; and appears to have rambled with his pupil over great part of Switzerland and Germany. At this time he wrote his pleasing treatise on " Medals." It was not published till after his death ; but several distinguished scholars saw the manuscript, and gave just praise to the grace of the style, and to the learnmg and ingenuity evinced by the quotations. From Germany, Addison repaired to Holland, where he learned the news of his father's death. After passing some months in the United Provinces, he returned about the close of the year 1703 to England. He was there cordially received by his friends, and introduced by them into the Kit-Cat Club — a society in which were collected all the various talents and accomplishments which then gave lustre to the whig part}-. Addison was, during some months after his return from the Conti- nent, hard pressed by pecuniary difficulties. But it was soon in the power of his noble patrons to serve him effectually. A political change, silent and gradual, but of the highest importance, was in daily progress. The accession of Anne had been hailed by the torics with transports of joy and hope j and for a time it seemed that the whigs had fallen never to rise again. The throne was surrounded by men supposed to be at- tached to the prerogative and to tlie church ; and among these none stood so high in the favor of the sovereign as the lord-treasurer Godol- phin and the captain-general Marlborough. The country gentlemen and country clergymen had fully expected that the policy of these ministers would be directly opposed to that which had been almost constantly followed by William ; that the landed interest would be favored at the expense of trade ; that no addition would be made to the funded debt ; that the privileges conceded to dissenters by the late king would be curtailed, if not withdrawn ; that LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XXXIll the war with France, if there must be such a war, would, on our part, be almost entirely naval ; and that the government would avoid close connections with foreign powers, and, above all, with Holland. But the country gentlemen and country clergymen were fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The prejudices and passions which raged without control in vicarages, in cathedral closes, and in the manor-houses of fox-hunting squires, were not shared by the chiefs of the ministry. Those statesmen saw that it was both for the public interest, and for their own interest, to adopt a whig policy ; at least as respected the alli- ances of the country and the conduct of the war. But if the foreign policy of the whigs were adopted, it was impossible to abstain from adopting also their financial policy. The natural consequences followed. The rigid tories were alienated from the government. The votes of the whigs became necessary to it. The votes of the whigs could be secured only by further concessions j and further concessions the queen was in* duced to make. At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of parties bore a close analogy to the state of parties in 1826. In 1826, as in 1704, there was a tory ministry divided into two hostile sections. The position of Mr. Canning and his friends in 1826 corresponded to that which Marlbo- rough and Godolphin occupied in 1704. Nottingham and Jersey were, in 1704, what Lord Eldon and Lord Westmoreland were in 1826. The whigs of 1704 were in a situation resembling that in which the whigs of 1826 stood. In 1704, Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, Cowper, were not in office. There was no avowed coalition between them and the moderate tories. It is probable that no direct communication tending to such a coalition had yet taken place ; yet all men saw that such a coalition-was inevitable, nay, that it was already half formed. Such, off nearly such, was the state of things when tidings arrived of the great battle fought at Blenheim on the 13th August, 1704. By the whigs the news was now hailed with transports of joy and pride. No fault, no cause of quarrel, could be remembered by them against the command- er whose genius had, in one day, changed the face of Europe, saved the imperial throne, humbled the house of Bourbon, and secured the act of ; settlement against foreign hostility. The feeling of the tories was very ' different. They could not, indeed, without imprudence, openly express \ regret at an event so glorious to their couulry ; but their congratula- \ tions were so cold and sullen as to give deep disg-ust to the victorious f^ general and his friends. I Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time he could spare ;^ from business he was in the habit of spending at Newmarket or at the XXXIV LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. card-table. But he was not absolutely indifferent to poetry; and he was too intelligent an observer not to perceive that literature was a for- midable engine of political warfare ; and that the great whig leaders had strengthened their party, and raised their character, by extending a libe- ral and judicious patronage to good writers. He was mortified, and not without reason, by the exceeding badness of the poems which appeared in honor of the battle of Blenheim. One of these poems has been res- cued from oblivion by the exquisite absurdity of three lines • " Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, And each man mounted on his capering beast; • Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." "Where to piocure better verses the treasurer did not know. He understood how to negotiate a loan, or remit a subsidy. He was also well versed in the history of running horses and fighting cocks ; but his acquaintance among the poets was very small. He consulted Hali- fax ; but Halifax affected to decline the office of adviser. He had, he said, done his best, when he had power, to encourage men whose abili- ties and acquirements might do honor to their country. Those times were over. Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered to pine in obscurity ; the public money was squandered on the undeserving " I do know," he added, " a gentleman who would celebrate the battle in a manner worthy of the subject. But I will not name him." Go- dolphin, who was expert at the soft answer which turneth away wrath, and who was under the necessity of paying court to the w higs, gently replied, that there was too much ground for Halifax's complaints, but that what was amiss should in time be rectified ; and that in the mean tinie the services of a man such as Halifax had described should be libe- rally rewarded. Halifax then mentioned Addison, but, mindful of the dignity as well as of the pecuniary interest of his friend, insisted that the minister should appl}'- in the most courteous manner to Addison him- self; and this Godolphin promised to do. Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of stairs, over a small shop in the Haymarket. In this humble lodging he was surprised, on the morning which followed the conversation between Godolphin and Halifax, by a visit from no less a person than the Right Honorable Henry Boyle, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards Lord Carleton. This high-born minister had been sent by the lord-treasu- rer as ambassador to the needy poet. Addison readily undertook the proposed task, a task which to so good a whig was probably a pleasure. When the poem was little more than half finished, he showed it to Go- LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XXXV dolphin, who was delighted with it, and particularly with the famous similitude of the angel. Addison was instantly appointed to a commis- cionership, with about two hundred pounds a year, and was assured that this appointment was only an earnest of greater favors. The '• Campaign " came forth, and was as much admired by the pub- lic as by the minister. It pleases us less on the whole than the " Epis- 3 to Halifax." Yet it undoubtedly ranks high among the poems which appeared during the interval between the death of Dryden and the dawTi of Pope's genius. The chief merit of the ^' Campaign," we think, is that which was noticed by Johnson — the manly and rational rejection of fic- tion. The first great poet whose works have come down to us sang of war long before war became a science or a trade. If, in his time, there was enmity between two little Greek towns, each poured forth its crowd of citizens, ignorant of discipline, and armed with implements of labor rudely turned into weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a few chiefs, whose wealth had enabled them to procure good armor, horses, and chariots, and whose leisure had enabled thorn to practise military exercises. One such chief, if he were a man of great strength, agility, and courage, would probably be more formidable than twenty common men ; and the force and dexterity with which he hurled his spear might have no inconsiderable share in deciding the event of the day. Such were probably the battles with which Homer was famihar. But Ho- mer related the actions of men of a former generation — of men who sprang from the gods, and communed with the gods face to face — of men, one of whom could with ease hurl rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later period would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally represented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far sur- passing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and most expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, clad in celestial armor, drawn by celestial coursers, grasping the spear which none but himself could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking the Scamander with dead, was only a magnificent exaggeration of the real hero, who, strong, fear- less, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded by a shield and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, and whirled along by horses of Thessalian breed, struck down with his own right arm foe after foe. In all rudo ocieties similar notions are found. There are at this day countries where the life-guardsman Shaw would be considered as a much greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. Bonaparte loved to describe the astonishment with which the Mamelukes looked at his diminutive fig- ure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his fellows Jby his bodily strength, and by the skill with which he managed his horse and his XXXVl LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. sabre, could not bclieye that a man who was scarcely five feet high and rode like a butcher, was the greatest soldier in Europe, Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as much truth as poetry requires. But truth was altogether wanting to the performances of those who, writing about battles which had scarcely any thing in com- mon with the battles of his times, servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Silius Italicus, in particular, is positively nauseous. He under- took to record in verse the vicissitudes of a great struggle between gen- erals of the first order ; and his narrative is made up of the hideous wounds which these generals inflicted with their own hands. Asdrubal fling-s a spear which grazes the shoulder of consul Nero ; but Nero sends his spear into Asdrubal's side. Fabius slays Thuris, and Butes. and Maris, and Arses, and the long-haired Adherbes, and the gigantic Thy- lis, and Sapharus, and Monsesus, and the trumpeter Morinus. Hanni- bal runs Perusinus through the groin with a stake, and breaks the thigh bone of Telesinus with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was copied in modern times, and continued to prevail down to the age of Addison. Several versifiers had described William turning thousands to flight by his single prowess, and dyeing the Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as John Philips, the author of the " Splendid Shil- ling," represented Marlborough as having won the battle of Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and skill in fence. The following lines may serve as an example : — " Churchill A'iewing where ,ilie violence of Tallard most prevailed, Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. Witlx speed Precipitate he rode, urging his way O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, Attends his furious course. Around his head The glowing balls play innocent, while he With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground With headless ranks. What can they do? Or how Withstand his Mide-destroying sword ? " Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed from this ridicu- ^ , lous fashion. He reserved his praise for the qualities which made Marl- t- — Y i borough truly great, energy, sagacity, military science. But, above all, J^ I the poet extolled the firmness of that mind which, in the midst of con- i' fusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined and disposed every thing with I the serene wi§dom of a higher intelligence. Here it was that he introduced the famous comparison of Marlbo- LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XXXVll rough to an angel guiding the whirlwind. We will not dispute the gen- eral justice of Johnson's remarks on this passage. But we must point out one circumstance which appears to have escaped all the critics.^ The extraordinary effect which this simile produced when it first appeared, and which to the following generations seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly attributed to a line which most readers now regard as a feeble parenthesis — "Such as of late o'er palo Britannia pass'd." Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. The great tempest of'* November, 1703, the only tempest which in our latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical hurricane, had left a dreadful recollection in the minds of all men. No other tempest was ever in this country the occa- sion of a parliamentary address or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had been blown down. One prelate had been buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had presented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of fami- lies were still in mourning. The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the ruins of houses, still attested, in all the southern counties, the fury of the blast. The popularity which the simile of the angel enjoyed among Addison's contemporaries, has always seemed to us to be a remarkable instance of the advantage which, in rhetoric and poetry, the particular has over the general. Soon after the Campaign, was published Addison's Narrative of his Travels in Italy. The first effect produced by this narrative was disap- pointment. The crowd of readers who expected politics and scandal, speculations on the projects of Victor Amadeus, and anecdotes about the jollities of convents and the amours of cardinals and nuns, were con- founded by finding that the writer's mind was much more occupied by the war between the Trojans and Rutulians than by the war between France and Austria j and that he seemed to have heard no scandal of later date than the gallantries of the Empress Faustina. In time, how- ever, the judgment of the many was overruled by that of the few; and before the book was reprinted, it was so eagerly sought that it sold for five times the original price. It is still read with pleasure : the style is pure and flowing ; the classical quotations and allusions are numerous and happy ; and we are now and then charmed by that singularly hu- mane and delicate humor in which Addison excelled all men. Yet this agreeable work, even when considered merely as the history of a litera- •> Escaped all t?ie critics. Here Macaulay is mistaken, for this circumstance lind already fjce-u noticed many years- before by a critic, cited in No. 158 of the Addisoniana. XXXVlll LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. ry tour, may justly be censured on account of its faults of omission. We have already said that, though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, it contains scarcely any references to the Latin orators and historians. We must add that it contains little, or rather no information, respecting the history and literature of modern Italy. To the best of our remem- brance, Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo^ Berni, Lorenzo de' Medici, Machiavelli. lie coldly tells ns, that at Fcr- rara he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at Venice he heard the gondo- liers sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far less than for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apollinaris. The gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous stream of Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. But he has not a word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce ; he crosses the wood of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman ; and wanders up and down Rimini without one thought of Francesca. At Paris, he eagerly sought an introduction to Boileau ; but he seems not to have been at all aware, that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau could not sustain a comparison, of the greatest lyric poet of modern times, of Vincenzio Filicaja. This is the more remarkable, because Filicaja was the favorite poet of the all-accomplished Somers, under wiiose protection Addison travelled, and to whom the account of the Travels is dedicated. The truth is, that Addison knew little, and cared less, about the literature of modern Italy. His favorite models were Latin. His favorite critics were French. Half the Tuscan poetry that he had read seemed to him monstrous, and the other half tawdry. His Travels were followed by the lively opera of "Rosamond." This piece was ill set to music, and therefore failed on the stage ; but it completely succeeded in print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. The smoothness with which_ the verses glide, and the elasticity with which they bound, is, to our ears at least, very pleasing. We are inclined to think that if Addison had left heroic couplets to .Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and spirited song's, his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher than it now docs. Some years after his death, " Rosamond " was set to new music by Doc- tor Arne; and was performed with complete success. Several passages long retained their popularity, and were daily sung, during the latter part of George the Second's reign, at all the harpsichords in England. While Addison thus amused himself, his pro- •jiects and the pi-os- pects of his party were constantly becoming brighter and brighter. In the spring of 1705 the ministry were freed from the restraint imposed by a House of Commons, in which tories of the most perverse class had LIFE AND WR TINGS OF ADDISON. XXXIX the ascendency. The elections were favorable to the whigs. The coalition which had been tacitly and gradually formed was now openly avowed. The great seal was given to Cowper. Somers and Halifax were sworn of the council. Halifax was sent in the following year to caiTy the decorations of the garter to the electoral prince of Hanover, and was accompanied on this honorable mission by Addison, who had just been made under-secretary of state. The secretary of state under whom Addison first served was Sir Charles Hedges, a tory. But Hedges was soon dismissed to make room for the most vehement of whigs, Charles, Earl of Sunderland. In every department of the state, indeed, the high churchmen were compelled to give place to their opponents. At the close of 1707 the tories who still remained in office strove to rally, with Harley at their head. But the attempt, though favored by the queen, who had always been a tory at heart, and who had now quarrelled with the Duchess of Marlborough, was unsuccessful. The time was not yet. The captain-general was at the height of popu- larity and glory. The low-church party had a majority in Parliament. The country squires and rectors, though occasionally uttering a savage growl, were for the most part in a state of torpor, which lasted till they were roused into activity, and indeed into madness, by the prosecution of Sacheverell. Harley and his adherents were compelled to retire. The victory of the whigs was complete. At the general election of 1708 their strength in the House of Commons became irresistible; and before the end of that year, Somers was made lord-president of the council, and Wharton lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Commons which was elected in 1708. But the House of Commons was not the field for him. The bashfulness of his nature made his wit and eloquence useless in debate. He once rose, but could not overcome his diffidence, and ever after remained silent. Nobody can think it strange that a great writer should fail as a speaker. But many, probably, will think it strange that Addison's failure as a speaker should have had no unfavorable effect on his success as a politician. In our time, a man of high rank and great fortune might, though speaking very little and very ill, hold a considerable post. But it- is inconceivable that a mere adventurer, a man who, when out of office, must live by his pen, should in a few years become successively under-secretary of state, chief secretary for Ireland, and secretary of state, without some oratorical talent. Addi- son, without high birth, and with little property, rose to a post which dukes, the heads of the great houses of Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck, have thought it an honor to fill. Without opening his lips in XI LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. debate, he rose to a post the highest that Chatham or Fox ever reached. And this he did before he had been nine years in Parliament. We must look for the explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar circumstances in which that generation was placed. During the inter- val which elapsed between the time when the censorship of the press ceased and the time when parliamentary proceedings began to be freely reported, literary talents were, to a public man, of much more impor- tance, oratorical talents of much less importance, than in our time. At present, the best way of giving rapid and wide publicity to a statement or an argument, is to introduce that statement or argument into a speech made in Parliament. If a political tract were to appear superior to the conduct of the Allies, or to the best numbers of the Freeholder, the circulation of such a tract would be languid indeed when compared with the circulation of every remarkable word uttered in the deliberations of the legislature. A speech made in the House of Commons at four in the morning, is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech made on the Monday is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and Aber- deenshire. The orator, by the help of the short-hand writer, has to a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of Anne. The best speech could then produce no eifect except on those who heard it. It was only by means of the press that the opinion of the public without doors could be influenced ; and the opinion of the public without doors could not but be of the highest importance in a country governed by parliaments ; and indeed at that time governed by triennial parliaments. The pen was, therefore, a more formidable po- litical engine than the tongue. Mr. Pitt and ^Ir. Fox contended only in Parliament. But Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and Fox of an earlier period, had not done half of what was necessary, when they sat down amidst the acclamations of the House of Commons. They had still to plead their cause before the country, and this they could do only by means of the press. Their works are now forgotten. But it is cer- tain that there were in Grub-street few more assiduous scribblers of thoughts, letters, answers, remarks, than these two great chiefs of par- ties. Pulteney, when leader of the opposition, and possessed of £30,000 a year, edited the " Craftsman." Walpole, though not a man of liter- ary habits, was the author of at least ten pamphlets ; and retouched and corrected many more. These facts sufficiently show of how great importance literary assistance then was to the contending parties. St. John was, certainly, in Anne's reign, the best tory speaker ; Cow- per was probably the best whig speaker. But it may well be doubted whether St. John did so much for the tories as Swift, and whether LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. xH Oowper did so much for the whigs as Addison. When these things are duly considered, it will not be thought strange that Addison should have climbed higher in the state than any other Englishman has ever, by means merely of literary talents, been able to climb. Swift would, in all probability, have climbed as high, if he had not been encumbered by his cassock and his pudding-sleeves. As far as the homage of the great went, Swift had as much of it as if he had been lord-treasurer. To the influence which Addison derived from his literary talents, was added all the influence which arises from .character. The world, always ready to think the worst of needy political adventurers, was forced to make one exception. Restlessness, violence, audacity, laxity of principle, are tlie vices ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But faction itself could not deny that Addison had, through all changes of fortune, been strictly faithful to his early opinions, and to his early friends; that. his integrity was without stain; that his whole deport- ment indicated a fine sense of the becoming ; that, in the utmost heat of controversy, his zeal was tempered by a regard for truth, humanity, and social decorum ; that no outrage could ever provoke him to retalia- tion unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman ; and that his only faults were a too sensitive delicacy, and a modesty which amounted to bash- fulness. He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of his time ; and much of his popularity he owed, we believe, to that very timidity which his friends lamented. That timidity often prevented him from exhibit- ing his talents to the best advantage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It averted that envy which would otherwise have been excited by fame so splendid, and by so rapid an elevation. No man is so great a favorite with the public, as he who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, j and of pity ; and such were the feelings which Addison inspired. I Those who enjoyed the privilege of hearing his familiar conversation, declared with one voice that it was superior even to his writings. The brilliant Mary Montagu said that she had known all the wits, and that ' Addison was the best company in the world. The malignant Pope was 6 The malignant Pope. With all our respect for Macaulay, we must enter our protest against his injustice to Pope, of whom he scarcely ever speaks without some derogatory epithet. Tlie man who could not only write such verses as these, hut live up to them, ha« Rt least some claim to onr re?pect. Me lot the fonder office long engage To rock tbe cradle of reposing age With lenient arts extend a mother's breath — Muke languor smile, and smooth the bed of deatli ; Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep at leaat on* parent from the sky.— O. Prol. to tie Sat*f*»t Xlii LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. forced to own, that there was a charm in Addison's talk which could be found nowhere else. Swift^ when burning with animosity against the whigs, could not but confess to Stella, that, after all, he had never known any associate so agreeable as Addison. Steele, an excellent judge of lively conversation, said, that the conversation of Addison was at once the most polite, and the most mirthful, that could be imagined ; — that it was Terence and Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite something that was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an excellent judge of serious conversation, said, that when Addi- son was at his ease, he went on in a noble strain of thought and lan- guage, so as to chain the attention of every hearer. Nor were his great colloquial powers more admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart which appeared in his conversation. At the same time, it would be too much to say that he was wholly devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable from a keen sense of the ludicrous. Ho had one habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, and which we hardly know how to blame. If his first attempts to set a presuming dunce right, were ill received, he changed his tone, " assented with civil leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper into absurdi- ty. That such was his practice we should, we think, have guessed from his works. The Tatler's criticisms on Mr. Softly's sonnet, and the Spectator's dialogue with the politician, who is so zealous for the honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are excellent specimens of this innocent mischief. Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But his rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to strangers. As soon as he entered a large company, as soon as he saw an unknown face, his lips were sealed, and his manners became constrained. None who met him only in great assemblies, would have been able to believe that he was the same man who had often kept a few friends listening and laughing round a table, from the time when the play ended, till the clock of St. Paul's in Covent- Garden struck four. Yet, even at such a table, he was not seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his conversation in the highest perfection, it was necessary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his own phrase, think .aloud. " There is no such thing," he used to say, "as real conver- sation, but between two persons." This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungraceful nor unamiable, led Addison into the two most serious faults wliich can with justice be imputed to him. He found that wine broke the spell which la}^ on his fine intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into convivial excess. Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. xliil venial of all peccadilloes ; and was so far from being a mark of ill- breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentle- man. But the s mallest sppok is soon on n, whitp. p;rn|ir>rl • and almost all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing. Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, than that he wore a long wig and a sword. To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature, we must ascribe another fault which generally arises from a very different cause. He became a little too fond of seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of admirers, to whom he was as a king or rather as a god. All these men were far inferior to him in ability, and some of them had very seri- ous faults. Nor did those faults escape his observation ; for, if ever there was an eye which saw through and through men, it was the eye of Addison. But with the keenest observation, and the finest sense of the ridiculous, he had a large charity. The feeling with which he look- ed on most of his humble companions was one of benevolence, slightly tinctured with contempt. He was at perfect ease in their company ; he was grateful for their devoted attachment ; and he loaded them with benefits. Their veneration for him appears to have exceeded that with which Johnson was regarded by Boswell, or Warburton by Hurd. It was not in the power of adulation to turn such a head, or deprave such a heart as Addison's. But it must in candor be admitted, that he con- tracted some of the faults which can scarcely be avoided by any per- son who is so unfortunate as to be the oracle of a small literary co- terie. One member of this little society was Eustace Budgell,^ a young templar of some hterature, and a distant relation of Addison. There was at this time no stain on the character of Budgell, and it is not im- probable that his career would have been prosperous and honorable, if the life of his cousin had been prolonged. But when the master was laid in the grave, the disciple broke loose from all restraint ; descended rapidly from one degree of vice and misery to another ; ruined his for- tune by follies ', attempted to repair it by crimes ; and at length closed a wicked and unhappy life by self-murder. Yet, to the last, the wretch- ed man, gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, retained his affec- tion and veneration for Addison ; and recorded those feelings in the last 7 Budgdl. He forged a will— Dr. Tindal's— and drowned himself to escape prosecution. " When Eustace Budgell was walking down to the Thames determined to drown himself, he might, if he pleased, without any apprehension of danger, have turned aside and first set Are to St James' Palace.— Boswelt/s Johnson, v. 11, p. 149.-0. Xliv LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON lines which he ttaccd before he hid himself from infamy under London Bridge. Another of Addison's favorite companions was Ambrose Phillipps, a good whig and a middling poet, who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called after his name, Namhy-Pamhy. But the most remarkable members of the little sen- ate, as Pope long afterwards called it, were Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell. Steele had known Addison from childhood. They had been toge- ther at the Charter House and at Oxford ; but circumstances had then, for a time, separated them widely. Steele had left college without tak- ing a degree, had been disinherited by a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had served in the army, had tried to find the philosopher's stone, and had written a religious treatise and several comedies. He was one of those people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. His temper was sweet, his affections warm, his spirits lively, his passions- strong, and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and re-' penting, in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, he was a man of piety and honor; in practice, he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a spunging-house, or drank himself into a fever. Addison regarded Steele with kindness not unmingled with scorn,® — tried, with little success, to keep him out of scrapes, introducing him to the great, procured a good place for him, corrected his plays, and, though by no means rich, lent him large sums of money. One of these loans appears, from a letter dated in August, 1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary transactions proba- bly led to frequent bickerings. It is said that, on one occasion, Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked Addison to repay himself by the help of a bailiff. We cannot join with Miss Aikin in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it from Savage, who heard it from Steele. Few private transactions which took plac^ a hundred and twenty years ago are proved by stronger evidence than this. But we can by no means- agree with those who condemn Addison's severity. The most amiable of mankind may well be moved to indignation, when Avhat he has earned 8 Steele. " Not nnmingled with scorn "—a strong expression, and whicli should liave been supported by something better than conjecture. Tiie story of Steele's arrest stands, iia Macaulay says, on the best evidence, but the picture in the text is too much of a fancy pieo© to be admitted as history.— Q. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. XIV kardly, and lent with great inconvenience to himself, for the purpose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered with insane profusion. We will illustrate our meaning by an example, which is not the less striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in Fielding's " Amelia," is represented as the most benevolent of human beings ; yet he takes in execution, not only the goods, but the person of his friend Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong measure because he has been inform- ed that Booth, while pleading poverty as an excuse for not paying just debts, has been buying fine jewellery, and setting up a coach. No per- son who is well acquainted with Steele's life and correspondence, can doubt that he behaved quite as ill to Addison as Booth was accused of behaving to Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little doubt, was something like this : — A letter comes to Addison, imploring help in pathetic terms, and promising reformation and speedy repayment. Poor Dick declares that he has not an inch of candle, or a bushel of coals, or credit with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton.^ Addison is moved. He determines to deny himself some medals which are wanting to his series of the Twelve Caesars ; to put off buying the new edition of ./ " Bayle's Dictionary " and to wear his old sword and buckles another year. In this way he manages to send a hundred pounds to his friend. ' The next day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and ladies assembled. The fiddles are playing. The table is groaning under Champagne, Burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange that a man whose kindness is thus abused, should send sherifi''s officers to reclaim what is due to him ? Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who had introduced himself to public notice by writing a most ingenious and grateful little poem in praise of the opera of " Rosamond." He deserved, and at length attained, the first place in Addison's friendship. For a time Steele and Tickell were on good terms. But they loved Addison too much to love each other ; and at length became as bitter enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil. At the close of 1708, Wharton became lord-lieutenant of Ireland, » and appointed Addison chief secretary. Addison was consequently un- der the necessity of quiting London for Dubhn. Besides the chief secre- taryship, which was then worth about two thousand pounds a year, he obtained a patent appointing him keeper of the Irish records for life, with a salary of three or four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his cousin in the capacity of private secretary. Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but whiggism. The lord-lieutenant was not only licentious and corrupt, but was distinguish- X\\i LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. ed from other libertines and jobbers by a callous impudence whict pre- sented the strongest contrast to the secretary's gentleness and delicacy. Many parts of the Irish administration at this time appear to have de- served serious blame. But against Addison there was not a murmur. lie long afterwards asserted, what all the evidence which we have ever seen tends to prove, that his diligence and integrity gained the friendship of all the most considerable persons in Ireland. The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland has, we think^ escaped the notice of all his biographers. He was elected member for the borough of Cavan in the summer of 1709 j and in the journals of two sessions his name frequently occurs. Some of the entries appear to indicate that he so far overcame his timidity as to make speeches. Nor is this by any means improbable ; for the Irish House of Commons was a far less formidable audience than the English house ; and many tongues which were tied by fear in the greater assembly became fluent in the smaller. Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of losing the fame gained by his "single speech," sat mute at Westminster during forty years, spoke with great effect at Dublin when he was secretary to Lord Halifax. While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred to which he owes his high and permanent rank among British waiters. As yet his fame rested on performances which, though highly respectable, were not built for duration, and would, if he had produced nothing else, have now been almost forgotten, on some excellent Latin verses, on some English verses which occasionally rose above mediocrity, and on a book of travels, agreeably written, but not indicating any extraordinary powers of mind. These works showed him to be a man of taste, sense, and learning. The time had come when he was to prove himself a man of genius, and to enrich our literature with compositions which will live as long as the English language. In the spring of 1709, Steele formed a literary project, of which he. was far indeed from foreseeing the consequences. Periodical papers had during many years been published in London. Most of these were political ; but in some of them questions of morality, taste, and love- casuistry had been discussed. The literary merit of these works was small indeed ; and even their names are now known only to the curi- ous. Steele had been appointed gazetteer by Sunderland, at the request, jt is said, of Addison ; and thus had access to foreign intelligence earlier and more authentic than was in those times within the reach of an ordi- nary news-writer. This circumstance seems tx) have suggested to him LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. xlvil ,tie scheme of publishing a periodical paper on a new plan. It was to ctppear on the daj's on which the post left London for the country, which were, in that generation, the Tuesdays, ThursdaySj. and Saturdays. It was to contain the foreign news, accounts of theatrical representations, and the literary gossip of "Will's and of the Grecian. It was also to con- tain remarks on the fashionable topics of the day, compliments to beau- ties, pasquinades on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular preachers. The aim of Steele does not appear to have been at first liigherLthanthis. He was not ill qualified to conduct the work which he had planned. Ilis public intelligence he drew from the best sources. He knew the town, and had paid dear for his knowledge. He had read much more than the dissipated men of that time were in the habit of reading. He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style was , easy and not incorrect ; and though his wit and humor were of no higher order, his gay animal spirits imparted to his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary readers could hardly distinguish from comic genius. His writings have been well compared to those light wines, which, though deficient in body and flavor, are yet a pleasant small drink, if not kept too long, or carried too far. Isaac Bickerstafif, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imaginary person, almost as well known in that age as ^Ir. Paul Pry or Mr. Pickwick in ours. Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstaff" in a satirical pamphlet against Partridge, the almanac-maker. Partridge had been fool enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff had rejoined in a second pamphlet still more diverting than the first. All the wits had combined to keep up the joke, and the town was long in convulsions of laughter. Steele determined to employ the name which this controversy had made popu- lar ; and, in April, 1709, it was announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Es- quire, Astrologer, was about to publish a paper called the " Tatler." ^ Addison had not been consulted about this scheme j but as soon as he heard of it he determined to give it his assistance. The effect of that assistance cannot be better described than in Steele's own words. "I fared," he said, "like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once called him in. I could not subsist without dependence on him." " The paper," he says elsewhere, " was advanced indeed. It was raised to a greater tiling than I intended it.'' It is possible that Addison, when he sent across St. George's Chan- 9 The Tailer. Wycherly writing to Pope about the success of his Miscellanies, mentions tile Tatler as " a whimsical new newspaper which I suppose you Lave seen." — Wych. t« Poi-E, \1th May, 1709.— G. Xlviii LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. nel his first contributions to the Tatler, had no notion of the extent and variety of his own powers. He was the possessor of a vast mine, rich •with a hundred ores. But he had been acquainted only with the least precious part of his treasures ; and had hitherto contented himself with producing sometimes copper and sometimes lead, intermingled M'ith a little silver. All at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on an inexhaustible vein of the finest gold. The mere choice and arrangement of his words would have sufliced to make his essays classical. For never, not even by Dr3'den, not even by Temple, had the English lan- guage been written with such sweetness, grace, and facility. But this was the smallest part of Addison's praise. Had he clothed his thoughts in the half French style of Horace Walpole. or in the half Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half German jargon of the present day, his genius would have triumphed over all faults of manner. As a moral satirist, he stands unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and Spectators were equalled in their own kind, we should be inclined to guess that it must have been by the lost comedies of Menander. In wt, properly so called, Addison was not inferior to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of Cowley contains so many happy analogies as are crowded into the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller ; and we would under- take to collect from the " Spectators " as great a number of ingenious illustrations as can be found in " Hudibras." The still higher faculty of invention Addison possessed in still larger measure. The numerous fictions, generally original, often wuld and grotesque, but always singu- larly graceful and happy, which are found in ^is essays, fully entitle him to the rank of a great poet — a rank to which his metrical composi- tions give him no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of all the shades of human character, he stands in the first class. And what he observed he had the art of communicating in two widely different ways. He could describe virtues, vices, habits, whims, as well as Clarendon. But he could do something better. He could call human beings into existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we wish to find any thing more vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must go either to Shakspeare or to Cervantes. But what shall we say of Addison's humor, of his sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense in others, and of draw- ing mirth from incidents which occur every day, and from little peculi- arities of temper and manner, such as may be found in every man ? We feel the charm. We give ourselves up to it. But wc strive in vain to analyze it. Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar pleasantry, is LIFE AND WRITINGS OP ADDISON. xlix to compare it with the pleasantry of some other great satirist. The three most eminent masters of the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Whioh of the three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be questioned.. But each of them, within his own domain, was supreme. Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is without disguise or restraint. He gambols ; he grins ; he shakes his sides ; he points the finger ; he turns up the nose ; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never joins in it. He appears in his works such as he appeared in society. All the com- pany are convulsed in merriment, while the dean, the author of all the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness of aspect ; and gives utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with the air of a man reading the commination-service. The manner of Addison is as remote from that of Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish wit,"* throws a double portion of severity into his countenance while laughing inly ; but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look of demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost imper- ceptible elevation of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a cynic. It i& that of a gentleman, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding. "We own that the humor of Addison is, in our opinion, of a more delicious flavor than the humor of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is certain,' that both Swift and Voltaire have been suc- cessfully mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to mimic Addi- son. The letter of the Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, and imposed, during a long time, on the academicians of Paris. There are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical works, which we, at least, cannot distinguish from Swift's best writing. But of the many eminent men who have made Addison their model^ though many have copied his mere diction with happy effect, none has been able to catch the tone of his pleasantry. In the World, in the Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the Lounger, there are numerous papers written in obvious imitation of his Tatlers and Spectators. Most of these papers have some merit ; many are very lively and amusing ; but there is not a single one which could be passed off as Addison's on a critic of the smallest perspicacity. But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the other great masters of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even in his merriment. 1 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into misanthropy, charac- terizes the works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, indeed, not inhuman ; but he venerated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see any thing but subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more monkey-like was his grimacing and' chattering. The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistophiles ; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jennings oddly imagined, a portion of the happi- ness of seraphim and just men made perfect be derived from an exquisite perception of the ludicrous, their mirth must surely be none other than the mu-th of Addison j — a mirth consistent with tender compassion for all that is frail, and with profound reverence for all that is sublime. Nothing great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doctrine of natural Jq or revealed religion, has ever been associated by Addison with any [ degrading idea. His humanity is without a parallel in literar}- history. ^ The highest proof of human virtue is to possess boundless power with- out abusing it. No kind of power is more formidable than the power of making men ridiculous ; and that power Addison possessea in bound- less measure. IIow grossly that power was abused" by Swift and Vol- taire is well known. But of Addison it may be confidently affirmed that he has blackened no man's character, na}^, that it would be diffi- s. \ JVcult, if not impossible, to find in all the volumes which he has left as a / A^sj pgl e taunt which can be^ called un gg j tiQr ous orjinkind. Yet he had detractors, whose malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that which men, not superior to him in genius, wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompignan. He was a politician ; he was the best writer of his party ; he lived in times of fierce excitement — in times when persons of high character and station stooped to scurrihty such as is now practised by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and no example could induce him to return railing for railing. ^ Of the service which his essays rendered to morality it is difficult to speak too highly. It is true that, when the Tatler appeared, that age of outrageous profaneness and licentiousness which followed the Res- toration had passed away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres into something which, compared with the excesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be called decency. Yet there still lingered in the public mind a pernicious notion that there was some connection between genius and profligacy — between the domestic virtues and the sullen for- mality of the Puritans. That error it is the glory of Addison to have Jy dispelled, file taught the nation that the faith and the morality ot LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 11 Hale and Tillotson might be found in company with wit more sparkling than the wit of Oongreve, and with humor richer than the humor of Vanbrugh. So effectuall}^, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered among us as the sure mark of a fool. And this revolution, the greatest and most salu- tary ever effected by any satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, without writing one personal lampoon. In the early contributions of Addison to the Tatler, his peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from the first his superiority to his coadjutors was evident. Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to any thing that he ever wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire Tom FoHo, Ned Softly, and the Political Upholsterer. The proceedings of the Court of Honor, the Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen Words, the Memoirs of the Shilling, are excellent specimens of that ingenious and lively species of fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There is one still better paper, of the same class, but though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three years ago, was probably thought as edifying as one of Smalridge's sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeamish readers of the nineteenth century. During the session of Parliament which commenced in November, 1709, and which the impeachment of Sacheverell has made memorable, Addison appears to have resided in London. The Tatler was now more popular than any periodical paper had ever been ; and his connection with it was generally known. It was not known, however, that almost every thing good in the Tatler was his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty numbers which we owe to him were not merely the best, but so decidedly the best, that any five of them are more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in which he had no share. He required, at this time, all the solace which he could derive from literary success. The queen had always disliked the whigs. She had during some years disliked the Marlborough flimily. But, reigning by a disputed title, she could not venture directly to oppose herself to a majority of both Houses of Parliament ; and, engaged as she was in a war, on the event of which her own crown was staked, she could not venture to disgrace a great and successful general. But at length, in the year 1710, the causes which had restrained her from showing her aversion to the low church party ceased to operate. The trial of Sache- verell produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcel}^ less violent than lose which we can ourselves remember in 1820, and in 1831. The country gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rabble of the towns lii LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. were all, for once, on the same side. It was clear that, if a general election took place before the excitement abated, the tories would have a majority. The services of ^Marlborough had been so splendid that they were no longer necessary. The queen's throne w^as secure from all attacks on the part of Louis. Indeed, it seemed much more likely that the English and German armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and j\Iarli, than that a marshal of France would bring back the Pre- tender to St. James's. The queen, acting by the advice of Ilarley, de- termined to dismiss her servants. In June the change commenced. Sunderland was the first who fell. The tories exulted over his fall. The whigs tried, during a few weeks, to persuade themselves that her majesty had acted only from personal dislike to the secretary, and that she meditated no further alteration. But, early in August, Godolphin was surprised by a letter from Anne, which directed him to break his white staff. Even after this event, the irresolution or dissimulation of Ilarley kept up the hopes of the whigs during another month ; and then the ruin became rapid and violent. The Parliament was dissolved. The ministers were turned out. The tories were called to office. The tide of popularity ran violently in favor of the high church party. That party, feeble in the late House of Commons, was now irresistible. The power which the tories had thus suddenly acquired, they used with blind and stupid ferocity. The howl which the whole pack set up for prey and for blood, appalled even him who had roused and unchained them. When at this distance of time, we calmly review the conduct of the discarded ministers, we cannot but feel a movement of indignation at the injustice with which they were treated. No body of men had ever administered the government with more energy, ability, and mode- ration ; and their success had been proportioned to their wisdom. They had saved Holland and Germany. They had humbled France. They had, as it seemed, all but torn Spain from the house of Bourbon. They had made England the first power in Europe. At home they had united England and Scotland. I.^hey had respected the rights of conscience and the liberty of the subject. They retired leaving their country at the height of prosperity and glory. And yet they were pursued to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy as was never raised against the gov- ernment which threw away thirteen colonies ; or against the government which sent a gallant army to perish in the ditches of Walcheren. None of the whigs suffered more in the general wreck than Ajildison. He had just sustained some heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which wo are imperfectly informed, when his secretaryship was taken from him. He had reason to believe that he should also be deprived of LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. lui the small Irish office which he held by patent. He had just resigned his fellowship. It seems probable that he had already ventured to raise his eyes to a great lady ; and that, while his political friends were all- powerful, and while his own fortunes were rising,' he had been, in the phrase of the romances which were then fashionable, permitted to hope. But Mr. Addison, the ingenious writer, and Mr. Addison, the chief secretary, were, in her ladyship's opinion, two very different persons. All these calamities united, however, could not disturb the serene cheer- fulness of a mind conscious of innocence, and rich in its own wealth. He told his friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought to admire his philosophy, that he had lost at once his fortune, his place, his fellow- ship, and his mistress, that he must think of turning tutor again, and yet that his spirits were as good as ever. He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which his friends had incurred, he had no share. Such was the esteem with which he was regarded, that while the most violent measures were taken for the pur- pose of forcing tory members on whig corporations, he was returned to Parliament without even a contest. Swift, who was now in London, and who had already determined on quitting the whigs, wrote to Stella in these words : — " The tories carry it among the new members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed easy and undisputed ; and I believe if he had a mind to be king, he would hardly be refused." The good-will with which the tories regarded Addison is the more honorable to him, because it had not been purchased by any conces- sion on his part. During the general election he published a political journal, entitled the " Whig Examiner." Of that journal it may be sufScient to say that Johnson, in spite of his strong political prejudices, pronounced it to be superior in wit to any of Swift's writings on the other side. When it ceased to appear, Swift, in a letter to Stella, ex- pressed his exultation at the death of so formidable %n antagonist. " He might well rejoice," says Johnson, " at the death of that which he could not have killed." " On no occasion," he adds, " was the genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and in none did the superiori ty of his powers more evidently appear." The only use wliich Addison appears to have made of the favor with which he was regarded by the tories, was to save some of his friends from the general ruin of the whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation which made it his duty to take a decided part in politics. But the case of Steele and of Ambrose Phillipps was different. For Phillipps, Addison even condescended to solicit ; with what success we have not ascertained. Steele held two places. He was gazetteer and liv LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. he was also a commissioner of stamps. The gazette was taken from him. But he was suffered to retain his place in the stamp- office, on an '.mplied understanding that he should not be active against the new government ; and he was, during more than two years, induced by Ad- dison to observe this armistice with tolerable fidelity, v^ Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon politics, and the article of news, which had once formed about one-third of his paper, altogether disappeared. The Tatler had completely changed its char- acter. It was now nothing but a series of essays on books, morals, and manners. Steele, therefore, resolved to bring it to a close, and to com- mence a new work on an improved plan. It was announced that this new work would be published daily. The undertaking was generally regarded as bold, or rather rash; but the event amply justified the con- fidence with which Steele relied on the fertility of Addison's genius. On the 2d of January, 17 il, appeared the last Tatler. On the 1st of lilarch following appeared the first of an incomparable series of papers, containing observations on life and literature by an imaginary spec- tator. The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by Addison ; and it is not easy to doubt that the portrait was meant to be in some fea- tures a likeness of the painter. The Spectator is a gentleman who, after passing a studious youth at the university, has travelled on classic ■^ound, and has bestowed much attention on curious points of antiquity. He has, on his return, fixed his residence in London, and has observed all the forms of life which are to be found in that great city ; — has daily listened to the wits of Will's, has smoked with the philosophers of the Grecian, and has mingled with the parsons' at Child's, and with the politicians at the St. James's. In the morning he often listens to the hum of the Exchange ; in the evening his face is constantly to be seen in the pit of Drury-lane theatre. But an insurmountable bashful- ness prevents him from opening his mouth, except in a small circle of intimate friends. These friends were first sketched by Steele. -Four of the club, the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, and the merchant, were uninterest- ing figures, fit only for a background. But the other two, an old coun- try baronet, and an old town rake, though not delineated vaih a very delicate pencil, had some good strokes. Addison took the rude outlines into his own hands, retouched them, colored them, and is in truth the creator of the. Sir Roger de Covcrley and the Will Honeycomb with whom we are all familiar. The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be both original and LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Iv eminently happy. Eveiy valuable essay in the series may be read with pleasure separately ; yet the five or six hundred essays form a whole, and a whole which has the interest of a novel. It must be remembered, toOj that at that time, no novel, giving a lively and powerful picture of the common life and manners of England had appeared. Richardson was working as a compositor. Fielding was robbing bird's nests. Smollett was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, which connects together the Spectator's essays, gave to our ancestors their first taste of an exquisite and untried pleasure. That narrative was indeed con- structed with no art or labor. The events were such events as occur every day. Sir Roger comes up to town to see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet always calls Prince Eugene, goes with the Si^ectator on the water to Spring Gardens, walks among the tombs in the abbey, is fright- ened by the Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far as to go to the theatre, when the " Distressed Mother " is acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old butler, and the old chaplain, eats a Jack caught by Will Wimble, rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law discussed by Tom Touchy. At last a letter from the honest butler brings to the club the news that Sir Roger is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The club breaks up ; and the Spectator resigns his functions. Such events can hardly be said to form a plot, yet they are related with such truth, such grace, such wit, such humor, such pathos, such know- ledge of the human heart, such knowledge of the ways of the world, that they charm us on the hundredth perusal. We have not the least doubt that, if Addison had written a novel, on an extensive plan, it would have been superior to any that we possess. As it is, he is entitled to be considered, not only as the greatest of the English essajasts. but as the forerunner of the great English novelists. We say this of Addison alone ; for Addison is the Spectator. About three-sevenths of the work are his ; and it is no exaggeration to say, that his first essay is as good as the best essay of any of his coadjutors. His best essays approach near to absolute perfection ; nor is their excellence more wonderful than their variety. His invention never seems to flag ; nor is he ever under the necessity of repeating himself, or of wearing out a subject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that there was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh glass of nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as lively and ingenious as Lucian's Auction of Lives ; on the Tuesday an eastern apologue as richly colored ItI life and writings of ADDISON. as the Tales of Scherezade ; on the Wednesday, a character described with the skill of La Bruyerej on the Thursday, a scene from common life equal to the best chapters in the Vicar of Wakefield ; on the Friday, some sly Horatian pleasantry on the fashionable follies — on hoops, patches, or puppet-shows ; and on the Saturday a religious meditation which will bear a comparison with the finest passages in Massillon. It is dangerous to select where there is so much that deserves the highest praise. We will venture, however, to say, that any persons who wish to form a just notion of the extent and vaiiety of Addison's powers, will do well to read at one sitting the following papers : — the two Visits to the Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange, the Journal of the Retired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, the Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and the Death of Sir Roger de Coverley. The least valuable of Addison's contributions to the Spectator are, in the judgment of our age, his critical papers. Yet his critical papers are always luminous, and often ingenious. The veiy worst of them must be regarded as creditable to him, when the character of the school in which he had been tiained is fairly considered. The best of them were much too good for his readers. In truth, he was not so far behind our generation as he was before his own. No essays in the Spectator were more censured and derided than those in which he raised his voice against the contempt with which our fine old ballads were regarded ; and showed the scoffers that the same gold which, burnished and polish- ed, gives lustre to the ^neid and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the rude dross of Chevy Chace. It is not strange that the success of the Spectator should have been such as no similar work has ever obtained. The number of copies daily distributed was at fiist three thousand. It subsequently increas- ed, and had risen to near four thousand when the stamp-tax was imposed. That tax was fatal to a crowd of journals. The Spectator, however, stood its ground, doubled its price, and though its circulation fell off, still yielded a large revenue both to the state and to the authors. For particular papers, the demand was immense ; of some, it is said twenty thousand copies were required. But this was not all. To have the Spectator served up every morning with the bohea and rolls, was a luxury for the few ; the majority were content to wait till essays enough had appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies of each volume were immediately taken off, and new editions were called for. It must be remembered, that the population of England was then hardly a third of what it now is. The number of Englishmen who were in the habit of reading, was probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shop- LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Ivii keeper or a farmer who found any pleasure in literature, was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless more than one knight of the shire whose country-seat did not contain ten books — receipt-books, and books on farriery included. Under these circumstances, the sale of the Spectator must be considered as indicating a popularity quite as great as that of *^^e most successful works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in our vn time. At the close of 1712, the Spectator ceased to appear. It wa^ proba- bly felt that the short-faced gentleman and his club had been long enough before the town ; and that it was time to withdraw them, and to replace them by a new set of characters. In a few weeks the first number of the "Guardian" was published. But the Guardian was unfortunate both in its birth and in its death. It began in dulness and disappeared in a tempest of faction. The original plan was bad. Addison contributed nothing till sixty-six numbers had appeared ; and it was then impossible even for him to make the Guardian what the Spectator had been. Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards were people to whom even he could impart no interest. He could only furnish some excellent little essays, both serious and comic ; and this he did. Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guardian during the first two months of its existence, is a question which has puzzled the editors and biographers, but which seems to us to admit of a very easy solu- tion. He was then engaged in bringing his Cato on the stage. The first four acts of this drama had been lying in his desk since his return from Italy. His modest and sensitive nature shrank from the risk of a public and shameful failure ; and, though all who saw the manuscript were loud in praise, some thought it possible that an audience might become impatient even of very good rhetoric ; and ad- vised Addison to print the play without hazarding a representation. At length, after many fits of apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of his political friends, who hoped that the public would dis- cover some analogy between the followers of Caesar and the tories, between Sempronius and the apostate whigs, between Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties of Rome, and the band of patriots who still stood firm round Halifax and Wharton. Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury-lane theatre, without stipulating for any advantage to himself. They, therefore thought themselves bound to spare no cost in scenery and dresses. The decorations, it is true, would not have pleased the skilful eye of Mr, Macready. Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace ; Marcia's hoop was worthy of a duchess on the birthday j and Cato wore a wig worth fifty Wiii LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON guineas. The prologue was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly a dignified and spirited composition. The part of the hero was excellent- ly 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 Ileathcote, 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 Jona- than'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 pre- scription, 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 length fell amidst thunders of unanimous applause. 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 torieSj indeed, found much to sneer at in the conduct of their opponents. Steele 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 sell stock than when to clap and when to hiss at a play ; and incurred some ridicule by making the hypocritical Sempronius their favorite, 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 gen- tleman of wit and virtue, and in whose friendship many persons of both parties vCere happy, and whose name ought not to be mixed up with fac- tious squabbles. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. lix Of the jests by which the triumph of the whig party was disturbed, the most severe and happy was Bolingbroke's. Between two acts, ho sent for Booth to his box, and presented him, before the whole theatre, •with a purse of fifty guineas, for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. It was April ; and in April, a hundred and thirty years ago, the London season was thought to be far advanced. During a whole mouth, 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 audience 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 fore- noon, 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 decla- mation ; and, among plays fashioned on the French model, must be al- lowed to rank high ; not indeed with Athalie, Zaire, or Saul, but, we think, not below Cinna ; and certainly above any other English tragedy of the same 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 contemporaries. 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 no- thing 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 eccentricities which excite laugh: ter ; and Addison's power of turning either an absurd book or an ab- surd man into ridicule was unrivalled. Addison, however, serenely con- scious of his superiority, looked with pity on his assailant, whose temper. iZ LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. naturally irritable and gloomy, had been soured by want, by controver- sy, and by literary failures. But among the young candidates for Addison's favor 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 had expanded to their full maturity ; and his best poem, the " Rape of the Lock," had recently been published. Of his genius. Ad- dison had always expressed high admiration. But Addison had clearly discerned, what might indeed have been discerned by an eye less pene- trating than his, that the diminutive, crooked, sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on societ}'- for the unkindness of nature. In the Spec- tator, the Essay on Criticism had been praised with cordial warmth ; but a gentle hint had been added, that the writer of such an excellent poem would have done well to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, though evidently more galled by the censure than gratified by the praise, returned thanks for the admonition, and promised to profit by it. The two writers continued to exchange civilities, counsel, and small good offices. Addison publicly extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces, and Pope furnished Addison with a prologue. This did not last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had injured without provocation. The appear- ance of the Remarks on Cato, gave the irritable poet an opportunity of venting his malice under the show of friendship j and such an opportu- nity could not but be welcome to a nature which was implacable in en- mity, and which always preferred the tortuous to the straight path. He published, accordingly, the " Narrative of the Frenzy of John Den- nis." But Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great master of invective and sarcasm. He could dissect a character in terse and sono- rous couplets, brilliant with antithesis. But of dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon on Dennis, such as that on Atticus, or that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. But Po^ writing dialogue resembled — to borrow Horace's magery and his own — a wolf which, instead of biting, should take to Kicking, or a monkey which should try to sting. The Narrative is ut- terly contemptible. Of argument there is not even the show ; and the jests are such as, if they were introduced in a farce, would call forth the hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about the drama ; and the nurse thinks that he is calling for a dram. " There is," he cries, " no peripetia in the tragedy, no change of fortune, no change at all." "Pray, good sir, be not angry," said the old woman ; " I'll fetch change.'- This is not exactly the pleasantry of Addison. There can be no doubt that Addison saw through this officious zeal LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 1x1 and felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do him no good, and, if he were thought to have any hand in it, must do him harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridicule, he had never, even in self-defence, used those powers inhumanly or uncourteously ; and he was not disposed to let others make his fame and his interests a pretext under which they might commit outrages from which he had himself constantly abstained. He accordingly de- clared that he had no concern in the " Narrative," that he disapproved of it, and that, if he answered the " Remarks," he would answer them like a gentleman ; and he took care to communicate this to Dennis. Pope was bitterly mortified ; and to this transaction we are inclined to ascribe the hatred with which he ever after regarded Addison. In September, 1713, the Guardian ceased to appear. Steele had gone mad about politics. A general election had just taken place ; he had been chosen member for Stockbridge, and fully expected to play a first part in Parliament. The immense success of the Tatler and Spec- tator had turned his head. He had been the editor of both those papers j and was not aware how entirely they owed their influence and popu- larity to the genius of his friend. His spirits, always violent, were now excited by vanity, ambition, and faction, to such a pitch that he every day committed some offence against good sense and good taste. All the discreet and moderate members of his own party regretted and condemned his folly. '• I am in a thousand troubles," Addison wrote, " about poor Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public may not be ruinous to himself. But he has sent me word that he is determined to go on, and that any advice I may give him in this particular will have no weight with him." Steele set up a political paper called " The Englishman," which, as it was not supported by contributions from Addison, completely failed. B}' this work, by some other writings of the same kind, and by the airs which he gave himself at the first meeting of the new Parliament, he made the tories so angry that they determined to expel him. The whigs stood by him gallantly ; but were unable to save him. The vote of expulsion was regarded by all dispassionate men as a tyrannical exercise of the power of the majority. But Steele's violence and folly, though they by no means justified the steps which his enemies took, had completely disgusted his friends ; nor did he ever regain the place which he had held in the public estimation. Addison about this time conceived the design of adding an eighth volume to the Spectator. In June, 1714, the first number of the new series appeared, and during about six months, three papers were pub- Ixii LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. lished weekly. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast be- tween the Englishman and the eighth volume of the Spectator — be- tween Steele without Addison, and Addison without Steele. The " Englishman •' is forgotten; the eighth volume of the Spectator con- tains, perhaps, the finest essaj^s, both serious and playful, in the Eng- lish language. Before this volume was completed, the death of Anne produced an entire change in the administration of public affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It found the tory party distracted by internal feuds, and unprepared for any great effort. Harlcy had just been disgraced. Bo- lingbroke, it was supposed, would be the chief minister. But the queen was on her deathbed before the white staff" had been given, and her last public act was to deliver it with a feeble hand to the Duke of Shrewsbury. The emergency produced a coalition between all sections of public men who were attached to the Protestant succession. George the First was proclaimed without opposition. A council, in which the leading whigs had seats, took the direction of aff'airs till the new king should airive. The first act of the lords justices was to appoint Addi- son their secretary. 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 com- position, and that the lords justices called in a clerk who at once did what was wanted. It is not strange that a story so flattering to medi- ocrity should be popular ; and we are sorry to deprive dunces of their consolation. But the truth jnust 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 j and that- his despatches are, without exception, remarkable for unpre- tending simplicity. Every body 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, however, inclined to believe that the story is not abso- lutely 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 Bussell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, for example, would, in similar cir- cumstances, be found quite as ignorant. ■ Every oflBce 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 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Ixlu must be signed by the chief of the departmentj 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 Indian 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 favorable 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 favorable conclusions. Swift did full justice to the rare powers of conversation which were latent under the bashful de- portment of Addison. Addison, on the other hand, discerned much good nature under the severe look and manner of Swift ; and, in- deed, 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 states- men loaded Addison with.._solid benefits. They praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and did nothuig 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 honor and consistency to revenge ; joined the tories, and became their most for- midable champion. He soon found, however, 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 Ixiv LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. dignity of no great value, on condition of fixing his residence in a coun- try which he detested. 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. " E^x* <* 5* a\\r,\a)v aXedo/xeda Kai St 6fii\ov ' TloWol ix\v yap e'/xot Tpieus KXeiToi r iiriKOvpoi, Krelveiu, tv «e ^(6$ yt irop-fj ica/. voarai Kix^id), TloWol S" ad »li, and bruise the rising grass : ; • Etherial sweets. The following version, though it be exact enough, for the most part, and not inelegant, gives us but a faint idea of the ori- ginal. It has the grace, but not the energy, of Virgil's manner. The late Translator of the Georgics* has succeeded much better. The versifi- cation (except only the bad rhymes) may be excused ; for the frequent triplets and alexandrines (which Dryden's laziness, by the favour of his exuberant genius, had introduced) were esteemed, when this translation • was made, not blemishes, but beauties. ♦ Mr. Nevllo. VOL 1.— 2 26 TRANSLATIONS. Nor must the lizard's painted brood appear, Nor wood-pecks, nor the swallow harbour near. They waste the swarms, and as they fly along Convey the tender morsels to their young. Let purling streams, and fountains edg'd with moss, And shallow rills run trickling through the grass ; Let branching olives o'er the fountain grow, Or palms shoot up, and shade the streams below ; That when the youth, led by their princes, shun The crowded hive, and sport it in the sun, Refreshing springs may tempt 'em from the heat, And shady coverts yield a cool retreat. Whether the neighbouring water stands or runs, Lay twigs across, and bridge it o'er with stones ; That if rough storms, or sudden blasts of wind Should dip, or scatter those that lag behind, Uere they may settle on the friendly stone, And dry their reeking pinions at the sun. Plant all the flowery banks with lavender. With store of sav'ry scent the fragrant air. Let running betony the field o'erspread. And fountains soak the violet's dewy bed. Tho' barks or plaited willows make your hive, A narrow inlet to their cells contrive; For colds congele and freeze the liquors up, And, melted down with heat, the waxen buildings drop The bees, of both extremes alike afraid, Their wax around the whistling crannies spread. And suck out clammy dews from herbs and flow'rs, To smear the chinks, and plaister up the pores ; For this they hoard up glue, whose clinging drops, Like pitch, or bird-lime, hang in stringy ropes. G E O R G I C K . 27 They oft, 'tis said, in dark retirements dwell. And work in subterraneous caves their cell ; At other times th' industrious insects live Tn hollow rocks, or make a tree their hive. Point all their cliinky lodgings round with mud, And leaves most thinly on yoiir work be strow'd ; But let no baleful eugh-tree flourish near, Nor rotten marshes send out streams of mire ; Nor burning crabs grow red, and crackle in the fire. Nor neighb'ring caves return the dying sound, Nor echoing rocks the doubled voice rebound. Things thus prepar'd When th' under-world is seiz'd with cold and night. And summer here descends in streams of light, ' The bees thro' woods and forests take their flight. They rifle ev'ry flow'r and lightly skim The chrystal brook, and sip the running stream ; And thus they feed their young with strange delight, And knead the yielding wax, and work the slimy sweet. But when on high you see the bees repair. Born on the winds thro' distant tracts of air. And view the winged cloud all blackning from afar ; While shady coverts, and fresh streams they chuse, Milfoil and common honey-suckles bruise, And sprinkle on their hives the fragrant juice. On brazen vessels beat a tinkling sound. And shake the cymbals of the goddess round ; Then all will hastily retreat, and fill The warm resounding hollow of their cell. If once two rival kings their right debate, And factions and cabals embroil the state, 28 TRANSLATIONS. The people's actions will their thoughts declare ; All their hearts tremble, and beat thick with war ; Hoarse broken sounds, like trumpets' harsh alarms, Run thro' the hive, and call 'em to their arms ; All in a hurry spread their shiv'ring wings. And fit their claws, and point their angry stings : In crowds before the king's pavilion meet. And boldly challenge out the foe to fight : At last, when all the heav'ns are warm and fair. They rush together out, and join ; the air Swarms thick, and echoes with the humming war. All in a firm round cluster mix, and strow With heaps of little corps the earth below ; As thick as hail-stones from the floor rebound. Or shaken acorns rattle on the ground. No sense of danger can their kings controul, Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul : Each obstinate in arms pursues his blow, 'Till shameful flight secures the routed foe. This hot dispute and all this mighty fray A little dust flung upward will allay. But when both kings are settled in their hive, Mark him who looks the worst, and lest he live Idle at home in ease and luxury. The lazy monarch must be doom'd to die ; So let the royal insect rule alone, And reign without a rival in his throne. The kings are different ; one of better note All speckt with gold, and many a shining spot. Looks gay, ana glistens in a gilded coat ; But love of ease, and sloth, in one prevails. That scarce his hanging paunch behind him trails : Virgil's fourth georgick. 29 The people's looks are different as their king's, Some sparkle bright, and glitter in their wings ; Others look loathsome and diseas'd with sloth, Like a faint traveller, whose dusty mouth Grows dry with heat, and spits a maukish froth. The first are best From their o'erflowing combs, you'll often press ^ Pure luscious sweets, that mingling in the glass Correct the harshness of the racy juice, And a rich flavour through the wine diffuse. But when they sport abroad, and rove from home. And leave the cooling hive, and quit th' unfinish'd coml , Their airy ramblings are with ease confin'd. Clip their king's wings, and if they stay behind No bold usurper dares invade their right. Nor sound a march, nor give the sign for flight. Let flow'ry banks entice 'em to their cells. And gardens all perfum'd with native smells ; Where carv'd Priapus has his fix'd abode. The robber's terror, and the scare-crow god. WilS thyme and pine-trees from their barren hill Transplant, and nurse 'em in the neighbouring soil, Set fruit-trees round, nor e'er indulge thy sloth. But water 'em, and urge their shady growth. And here, perhaps, were I not giving o'er, And striking sail, and making to the shore, I'd show what art the gardener's toils require, Why rosy paestum blushes twice a year ; What streams the verdant succory supply. And how the thirsty plant drinks rivers dry ; With what a cheerful green does parsley grace. And writhes the bellying cucumber along the twisted grass ; 30 TRANSLATIONS. Nor wou'd I pass the soft Acanthus o'er, Ivy nor myrtle-trees that love the shore ; Nor daflfodils, that late from earth's slow womb Unrumple their swoln buds, and show their yellow bloom. For once I saw in the Tarentine vale, Where slow Galesus drencht the washy soil, , Ah old Corician yeoman who had got A few neglected acres to his lot. Where neither corn nor pasture grac'd the field, Nor would the vine her purple harvest yield ; But sav'ry herbs among the thorns were found. Vervain and poppy-flowers his garden crown'd. And drooping lilies whiten'd all the ground. Blest with these riches he could empires slight, And when he rested from his toils at night. The earth unpurchas'd dainties wou'd afford. And his own garden furnish'd.out his board : The spring did first his opening roses blow,* First ripening autumn bent his fruitful bough. When piercing colds had burst the brittle stone, And freezing rivers stiffen'd as they run. He then would prune the tend'rest of his trees. Chide the late spring, and lingring western breeze : His bees first swarm'd, and made his vessels foam With the rich squeezing of the juicy comb. Here lindons and the sappy pkie increas'd ; Here, when gay flow'rs his smiling orchard drest, * Roses blow. Not usual or exact to use the word blow actively. Yel Milton speaks of ba7iks that blow flowers, (Mask at Ludlow Castle, page 993.) And, indeed, it is not easy to say, how far this licentious construc- tion, if sparingly used, si sumpfa pudenfer, may be allowed, especially in the higher poetry. The reason is, tliat it takes the expression out of the tainenesa of prose, and pleases by its noveltv, more than it disgusts by its irregularity : and whatever pleases in this degree, is poetical. As many blossoms as the spring could sliow, So many dangling apples mellow'd on the bough. In rows his elm and knotty pear-trees bloom, And thorns ennobled now to bear a plumb, And spreading plane-trees, where supinely laid He now enjoys the cool, and quaffs beneath the Shade. But these, for want of room I must omit, And leave for future poets to recite. Now I'll proceed their natures to declare. Which Jove himself did on the bees confer ; Because, invited by the timbrel's sound, Lodg'd in a cave, th' almighty babe they found. And the young god nurst kindly under ground. Of all the wing'd inhabitants of air. These only make their young the publick care ; In well-disposed societies they live, { And laws and statutes regulate their hive ;\ Nor stray like others, unconfin'd abroad, But know set stations, and a fix'd abode : Each provident of cold in summer flies Thro' fields, and woods, to seek for new supplies, And in the common stock unlades his thighs. Some watch the food, some in the meadows ply Taste ev'ry bud, and suck each blossom dry ; Whilst others, lab'ring in their cells at hi)me, Temper Narcissus' clammy tears with gum, For the first groundwork of the golden comb ; On this they found their waxen works, and raise The yellow fabrick on its glewy base, ^ome educate the young, or hatch the seed With vital warmth, and future nations breed ; 83 TRANSLATIONS. Whilst others thicken all the slimy dews, And into purest honey work the juice ; Then fill the hollows of the comb, and swell With luscious nectar ev'ry flowing cell. By turns they watch, by turns with curious eyes Survey the heav'ns, and search the clouded skies To find out breeding storms, and tell what tempests rise. By turns they ease the loaden swarms, or drive, The drone, a lazy insect, from their hive. The work is warmly ply'd through all the cells. And strong with thyme the new-made honey smells. So in their caves the brawny Cyclops sweat, When with huge strokes the stubborn wedge they beat, And all th' unshapen thunder-bolt compleat ; Alternately their hammers rise and fall ; Whilst griping tongs turn round the glowing ball. With puffing bellows some the flames increase, And some in waters dip the hissing mass ; Their beaten anvils dreadfully resound, And ^tna shakes all o'er, and thunders under ground. Thus, if great things we may with small compare, . The busie swarms their different labours share. Desire of profit urges all degrees ; The aged insects by experience wise, Attend the c(^b, and fashion ev'ry part, And shape the waxen fret-work out with art : The young at night, returning from their toils. Bring home their thighs clog'd with the meadows' spoils On lavender, and saffron buds they feed. On bending osiers, and the balmy reed, From purple violets and the telle they, bring Their gather'd sweets, and rifle all the spring. 33 All work together, all together rest, The morning still renews their labours past ; Then all rush out, their different tasks pursue, Sit on the bloom, and suck the rip'ning dew ; Again, when evening warns 'em to their home, "With weary wings and heavy thighs they come, And crowd about the chink, and mix a drowsie hum. Into their cells at length they gently creep, There all the night their peaceful station keep,- Wrapt up in silence, and dissolv'd in sleep. None range abroad when winds or storms are nigh, Nor trust their bodies to a faithless sky. But make small journeys, with a careful wing. And fly to water at a neighbouring spring ; And least their airy bodies should be cast In restless whirls, the sport of ev'ry blast. They carry stones to poise 'em in their flight, As ballast keeps th' unsteady vessel right. But, of all customs that the bees can boast, Tis this may challenge admiration most ; That none will Hymen's softer joys approve, . Nor waste their spirits in luxurious love, / But all a long virginity maintain. And bring forth young without a mother's pain : From herbs and flowers they pick each tender bee, And cull from plants a buzzing progeny ; From these they chuse out subjects, and create A little monarch of the rising state ; Then build wax-kingdoms for the infant prince, And form a palace for his residence. But often in their journeys, as they fly. On flints they tear their silken wings, or lye VOL. I.— 2* 34 TRANSLATIONS. Grov'ling beneath their flowery load, and die. Thus love of honey can an insect fire, And in a fly such generous thoughts inspire. Yet by repeopling their decaying state, Tho' seven short springs conclude their vital date, Their ancient stocks eternally remain, And in an endless race their children's children reiga No prostrate vassal of the East can more With slavish fear his haughty prince adore ; His life uni{es 'em all ; but when he dies, All in loud tumults and distractions rise ; They waste their honey, and their combs deface, And wild confusion reigns in every place. Him all admire, all the great guardian own. And crowd about his courts, and buzz about his throne. Oft on their backs their weary prince they bear. Oft in his cause embattled in the air, Pursue a glorious death, in wounds and war. Some, from such instances as these have taught " The bees' extract is heavenly ; for they thought The universe alive ; and that a soul, Difi'us'd throughout the matter of the whole, To all the vast unbounded frame was giv'n. And ran through earth, and air, and sea, and all the deep of heaven ; That this first kindled life in man and beast. Life, that again flows into this at last. That no compounded animal could die. But when dissolv'd, the spirit mounted high. Dwelt in a star, and settled in the sky." When-e'er their balmy sweets you mean to seize, And take the liquid labours of the bees, I Virgil's fourth georgick. 35 Spui-t d'rauglits of water from your mouth, and drive A loathsome cloud of smoak amidst their hive. Twice in the year their flow'ry toils begin, And twice they fetch their dewy harvest in ; Once, when the lovely Pleiades arise. And add fresh lustre to the summer skies ; And once, when hast'ning from the watry sign, They quit their station, and forbear to shine. The bees are prone to rage, and often found To perish for revenge, and die upon the wound. Their venoni'd sting produces aking pains. And swells the flesh, and shoots among the veins. When first a cold hard winter's storms arrive, And threaten death or famine to their hive. If now their sinking state and low affairs Can move your pity, and provoke your cares. Fresh burning thyme before their cells convey, And cut their dry and husky wax away ; For often lizards seize the luscious spoils. Or drones, that riot on another's toils : Ofb broods of moths infest the hungry swarms. And oft the furious wasp their hive alarms With louder hums, and with unequal arms ; Or else the spider at their entrance sets Her snares, and spins her bowels into nets. When sickness reigns (for they as well as we Feel all th' effects of frail mortality) By certain marks the new disease is seen. Their colour changes, and their looks are thin ; Their funeral rites are forin'd, and ev'ry bee With grief attends the sad solemnity ; S6 TRANSLATIONS. The few diseas'd survivors hang before Their sickly cells, and droop about the door, Or slowly in their hives their limbs unfold, Shrunk up with hunger, and benumb'd with cold ; In drawling hums, the feeble insects gi'ieve, And doleful buzzes echo thro' the hive, Like winds that softly murmur thro' the trees, Like flames pent up, or like retiring seas. Now lay fresh honey near their empty rooms, In troughs of hollow reeds, whilst frying gums Cast round a fragrant mist of spicy fumes. Thus kindly tempt the famish'd swarm to eat, And gently reconcile 'em to their meat. Mix juice of galls, and wine, that grow in time Condens'd by fire, and thicken to a slime. To these dry'd roses, thyme and centry join, And raisins, ripen'd on the Psythian vine. Besides, there grows a flow'r in marshy ground, Its name Amellus, easy to be found ; A mighty spring works in its root, and cleaves The sprouting stalk, and shews itself in leaves : The flow'r itself is of a golden hue. The leaves inclining to a darker blue ; The leaves shoot thick about the flow'r, and grow Into a bush, and shade the turf below : The plant in holy garlands often twines The altars' posts, and beautifies the shrines ; Its taste is sharp, in vales new-shorn it grows, Where Mella's stream in watry mazes flows. Take plenty of its roots, and boil 'em well In wine, and heap 'em up before the cell. Virgil's fourth georgicf ^ But if the whole stock fail, and none survive ; To raise new people, and recruit the hive, I'll here the great experiment declare, That spread th' Arcadian shepherd's name so far. How bees from blood of slaughter'd bulls have fled, And swarms amidst the red corruption bred. For where th' Egyptians yearly see their bounds Refresh'd with floods, and sail about their grounds, Where Persia borders, and the rolling Nile Drives swiftly down the swarthy Indians' soil, 'Till into seven it multiplies its stream, And fattens Egypt with a fruitful slime : In this last practice all their hope remains, And long experience justifies their pains. First then a close contracted space of ground, With streighten'd walls and low-built roof they found ; A narrow shelving light is next assign'd To all the quarters, one to every wind : Through these the glancing rays obliquely pierce : Hither they lead a bull that's young and fierce, When two-years growth of horn he proudly shows, _ And shakes the comely terrors of his brows : His nose and mouth, the avenues of breath, They muzzle up, and beat his limbs to death ; With violence to life and stifling pain He flings and spurns, and tries to snort in vain, Loud heavy mows fall thick on ev'ry side, 'Till his bruis'd bowels burst within the hide, When dead, they leave him rotting on the ground, With branches, thyme and cassia, strow'd around. All this is done, when flrst the western breeze Becalms the year, and smooths the troubled seas ; 38 TRANSLATIONS Before the chattering swallow builds her nest, Or fields in spring's embroidery are drest. Meanwhile the tainted juice ferments within, And quickens, as it works : And now are see A wond'rous swarm, that o'er the carcass crawls, Of shapeless, rude, unfinish'd animals. No legs at first the insect's weight sustain, At length it moves its new-made limbs with pain ; Now strikes the air with quiv'ring wings, and tries To lift its body up, and learns to rise ; Now bending thighs and gilded wings it wears Full grown, and all the bee at length appears ; From every side the fruitful carcass pours Its swarming brood, as thick as summer-show'rs. Or flights of arrows from the Parthian bows. When twanging strings first shoot 'em on the foes. r Thus have I sung the nature of the bee ; \ / While Caesar, tow'ring to divinity, v^ The frighted Indians with his thunder aw'd, \ And claim'd their homage, and commenc'd a god \ I flourish'd all the while in arts of peace, jRetir'd and shelter'd in inglorious ease : \ I who before the songs of shepherds made, f When gay and young my rural lays I play'd, , And set my Tityrus beneath his shade. MILTON'S STILE IMITATED/* IN A TRANSLATION OF A STORY OUT OF THE THIRD .ENEID Lost in the gloomy horror of the night We struck upon the coast where jS^tna lies, Horrid and waste, its entrails fraught with fire, That now casts out dark fumes and pitchy clouds, Vast showers of ashes hov'ring in the smoke ; Now belches molten stones and ruddy flame. Incenst, or tears up mountains by the roots. Or slings a broken rock aloft in air. The bottom works with smother'd fire involv'd In pestilential vapours, stench and smoke. 'Tis said, that thunder-struck Enceladus Groveling beneath th' incumbent mountain's weight, Lyes stretch'd supine, eternal prey of flames ; And when he heaves against the burning load, Reluctant, to invert his broiling limbs, A sudden earthquake shoots through all the isle, And jEtna thunders dreadful under ground, [' These imitations of celebrated authors were favourite exercises with Pope, who was much more successful in them than his great rival. Kurd's "very imperfectly," is unquestionably just; but his "stiffness and rigour" of Milton's style will probably be classed with his estimate of Shakspeare in the first note on Cato. — G.] » Milton's stile imitated. Very imperfectly. What we find, is the stiff- ness and rii^our of Milton's stile, somewhat eased and suppled by the grace ; of Mr, Addison's, but without the numbers or the force of that great poet 40 TRANSLATIONS. Then pours out smoke in wreathing curls convolv'd, And shades the sun's bright orb, and blots out day. Here in the shelter of the woods we lodged, And frighted heard strange sounds and dismal yells, Nor saw from whence they came ; for all the night A murky storm deep louring o'er our heads Hung imminent, that with impervious gloom Oppos'd itself to Cynthia's silver ray, And shaded all beneath. But now the sun With orient beams had chas'd the dewy night From earth and heav'n ; all nature stood disclos'd : When looking on the neighb'ring woods we saw The ghastly visage of a man unknown, rj' H, \ An uncouth feature, meagre, pale, and wild ; \ Affliction's foul and terrible dismay Sate in his looks, his face impair'd and worn With marks of famine, speaking sdre distress ; His locks were tangled, and his shaggy beard Matted with filth ; in all things else a Greek. He first advanc'd in haste ; but, when he saw Trojans and Trojan arms, in mid career Stopt short, he back recoil'd as one surpriz'd : But soon recovering speed, he ran, he flow Precipitant, and thus with piteous cries Our ears assail'd : " By heav'n's eternal fires, By ev'ry god that sits enthron'd on high, By this good light, relieve a wretch forlorn. And bear me hence to any distant shore, So I may shun this savage race accurst. 'Tis true I fought among the Greeks that late With sword and fire o'erturn'd Neptunian Troy And laid the labours of the gods in dust; MILTON S STILE IMITATED. 41 For which, if so the sad offence deserves, Plung'd in the deep, for ever let me lie Whelm'd under seas; if death must be my doom, Let man inflict it, and I die well-pleas'd." He ended here, and now profuse of tears "^ In suppliant mood fell prostrate at our feet : We bade him speak from whence, and what he was, And how by stress of fortune sunk thus low ; Anchises too with friendly aspect mild Gave him his hand, sure pledge of amity ; When, thus encouraged, he began his tale. I'm one, says he, of poor descent, my name Is Achaemenides, my country Greece, Ulysses' sad compeer, who whilst he fled The raging Cyclops, left me here behind Disconsolate, forlorn ; within the cave He left me, giant Polypheme's dark cave ; A dungeon wild and horrible, the walls On all sides furr'd with mouldy damps, and hung With clots of ropy gore, and human limbs, His dire repast : himself of mighty size. Hoarse in his voice, and in his visage grim, Intractable, that riots on the flesh Of mortal men, and swills the vital blood. Him did I see snatch up with horrid grasp Two sprawling Greeks, in either hand a man ; I saw him when with huge tempestuous swg^ He dasht and broke 'em on the grundsil edge ; The pavement swam in blood, the walls around Were spatter'd o'er with brains. He lapt the blood, And chew'd the tender flesh still warm with life, That swell'd and heav'd itself amidst his teeth 42 TRANSLATIONS. As sensible of pain. Not less mean while Our chief incens'd, and studious of revenge, Plots his destruction, which he thus effects. The giant, gorg'd with flesh, and wine, and blood, Lay stretcht at length and snoring in his den. Belching raw gobbets from his maw, o'er-charg'd With purple wine and cruddled gore confused. We gather'd round, and to his single eye. The single eye that in his forehead glar'd Like a full moon, or a broad burnish' d shield, A forky staff we dext'rously apply'd, Which, in the spacious socket turning round, Scoopt out the big round gelly from its orb. But let ine not thus interpose delays ; Fly, mortals, fly this curst detested race : A hundred of the same stupendous size, A hundred Cyclops live among the hills, Gigantick brotherhood, that stalk along With horrid strides o'er the high mountains' tops, Enormous in their gait ; I oft have heard Their voice and tread, oft seen 'em as they past, Sculking and scowring down, half dead with fear. Thrice has the moon wash'd all her orb in light. Thrice travell'd o'er, in her obscure sojourn, The realms of night inglorious, since I've liv'd Amidst these woods, gleaning from thorns and shrubs A wretched 'Sustenance. As thus he spoke We saw descending from a neighb'ring hill Blind Polypheme ; by weary steps and slow The groping giant with a trunk of pine Explor'd his way ; around his woolly flocks Attended grazing ; to the well-known shore Milton's stile imitated. 43 He bent his course, and on the margin stood, A hideous monster, terrible, deform'd ; Full in the midst of tis high front there gap'd The spacious hollow where his eye-ball roll'd, A ghastly orifice : he rins'd the wound. And wash'd away the strings and clotted blood That cak'd within ; 'then stalking through the deep He fords the ocean, while the topmost wave Scarce reaches up his middle side ; we stood Amaz'd be sure, a sudden horror chill Ran through each nerve, and thrill'd in ev'ry vein, 'Till using all the force of winds and oars We sped away ; he heard us in our course, And with his out-stretch'd arms around him grop'd, But finding nought within his reach, he rais'd Such hideous shouts that all the ocean shook. Ev'n Italy, tho' many a league remote. In distant echoes answer'd ; ^tna roar'd. Through all its inmost winding caverns roar'd. >- - Rous'd with the sound, the mighty family Of one-ey'd brothers hasten to the shore. And gather round the bellowing Polypheme, A dire assembly : we with eager haste Work ev'ry one, and from afar behold A host of giants covering all the shore. So stands a forest tall of mountain oaks Advanced to mighty growth : the traveller Hears from the humble valley where he rides The hollow murmurs of the winds that blow Amidst the boughs, and at the distance sees The shady tops of trees unnumber'd rise, A stately prospect wavi4ig in the clouds HOKACE. ODE III. BOOK III. Augustus had a design to rebuild Troy^ and make it tTie Metropolis of the Roman Empire^ Jiaving closeted several Senators on the project: Horace is supposed to hate written the following Ode on this occasion: — I The man resolv'd and steady to his trust, J^ Inflexible to ill, and obstinately just, May the rude rabble's insolence despise. Their senseless clamours and tumultuous cries ; The tyrant's fierceness he beguiles. And the stern brow, and the harsh voice defies, And with superior greatness smiles. Not the rough whirlwind, that deforms Adria's black gulf, and vexes it with storms. The stubborn virtue of his soul can move ; Not the red arm of angry Jove, That flings the thunder from the sky. And gives it rage to roar, and strength io fly. Should the whole frame of nature round him break, In ruin and confusion hurl'd, He, unconcern'd, would hear the mighty crack,* And stand secure amidst a falling world. a Crack. Plainly iised here for the sate of the rhyme ; for the poet knew very well that the word was low and vulgar. To ennoble it a little he adds the epithet " mighty," which yet, has only the effect to make it even ridiculous. [This unfortunate line has been not unworthily recorded in the "Art of Sinking in Poetry."— G,] , HORACE. 45 Such were the godlike arts that led Bright Pollux to the blest abodes : Such did for great Alcides plead, And gain'd a place among the gods ; Where now Augustus, mix'd with heroes, lies, And to his lips the nectar bowl applies : His ruddy lips the purple tincture show, And with immortal strains divinely glow. By arts like these did young Lyaeus rise : His tigers drew him to the skies, Wild from the desert and unbroke : In vain they foam'd, in vain they star'd. In vain their eyes with fury glar'd. He tam'd 'em to the lash, and bent 'em to the yoke. Such were the paths that Home's great founder trod, When in a whirlwind snatch'd on high, He shook off dull mortality, And lost the monarch in the god. Bright Juno then her awful silence broke, And thus th' assembled deities bespoke. Troy, says the goddess, perjur'd Troy has felt The dire effects of her proud tyrant's guilt ; The towering pile, and soft abodes, Wall'd by the hand of servile gods, Now spreads its ruins all around, And lies inglorious on the ground. An umpire, partial and unjust. And a lewd woman's impious lust, Lay heavy on her head, and sink her to the dust. Since false Laomedon's tyrannic sway, That durst defraud th' immortals of their pay, 46 TRANSLATIONS. Her guardian gods renounc'd their patronage, Nor would the fierce invading foe repel ; To my resentment, and Minerva's rage, The guilty king and the whole people fell. And now the long protracted wars are o'er, The soft adult'rer shines no more; No more does Hector's force the Trojans shield, That drove whole armies back, and singly clear'd the field. My vengeance sated, I at length resign To Mars his offspring of the Trojan line : Advanc'd to god-head let him rise, And take his station in the skies ; There entertain his ravish'd sight With scenes of glory, fields of light ; Quaff with the gods immortal wine, And see adoring nations crowd his shrine : The thin remains of Troy's afflicted host, In distant realms may seats unenvy'd find, And flourish on a foreign coast ; But far be Rome from Troy disjoined. Remov'd by seas, from the disastrous shore, May endless billows rise between, and storms unnumber'd roar. Still let the curst detested place. Where Priam lies, and Priam's faithless race, Be cover'd o'er with weeds, and hid in grass. There let the wanton flocks unguarded stray ; Or, while the lonely shepherd sings ; Amidst the mighty ruins play. And frisk upon the tombs of kings. May tigers there, and all the savage kind, Sad solitary haunts, and silent deserts find ; HORACE. In gloomy vaults, and nooks of palaces, May th' unmolested lioness Her brinded whelps securely lay. Or, coucht, in dreadful slumbers waste the day. While Troy in heaps of ruins lies, Rome and the Roman capitol shall rise ; Th' illustrous exiles unconfin'd Shall triumph far and near, and rule mankind. In vain the sea's intruding tide Europe from Afric shall divide, And part the sever'd world in two : Through Afric's salids their triumphs they shall sprca.l, And the long train of victories pursue To Nile's yet undiscover'd head. Riches the hardy soldier shall despise, And look on gold with undesiring eyes. Nor the disbowel'd earth explore In search of the forbidden ore ; Those glitt'ring ills conceal'd within the mine, Shall lie untouch'd, and innocently shine. To the last bounds that nature sets. The piercing colds and sultry heats. The godlike race shall spread their arms ; Now fill the polar circle with alarms. Till storms and tempests their pursuits confine Now sweat for conquest underneath the line. This only law the victor shall restrain, On these conditions shall he reign ; If none his guilty hand employ To build again a second Troy, If none the rash design pursue, Nor tempt the vengeance of the gods anew 47^ 48 TRANSLATIONS. A curse there cleaves to the devoted place. That shall the new foundations rase : Greece shall in mutual leagues conspire To storm the rising town with fire, And at their armies' head myself will show What Juno, urged to all her rage, can do. Thrice should Apollo's self the city raise, And line it round with walls of brass, Thrice should my fav'rite Greeks his works confound. And hew the shining fabric to the ground ; Thrice should her captive dames to Greece return. And their dead sons and slaughter' d liusbands mourn. But hold, my muse, forbear thy towering flight, Nor bring the secrets of the gods to light : In vain would thy presumptuous verse Th' immortal rhetoric rehearse ; * The mighty strains, in lyric numbers bound, Forget their majesty and lose theirr sound. • Rehearse. A word Mr. Addison is very fond of, because it afforded a rhyme for verse : but it disgraces an ode, and should, indeed, be banished from all poetry. OVID'S METAMORPHOSES. • BOOK II. THE STORY OF PHAETON. The sun's bright palace, on high columns rais'd, "With burnish'd gold and flaming jewels blaz'd; The folding gates diffus'd a silver light, And with a milder gleam refresh'd the sight ; Of polish'd ivory was the cov'ring wrought ; The matter vied not with the sculptor's thought, For in the portal was display'd on high (The work of Vulcan) a fictitious sky ; A waving sea th' inferior earth embrac'd, A.nd gods and goddesses the waters grac'd. ^geon here a mighty Avhale bestrode ; Triton, and Proteus (the deceiving god) With Doris here were carv'd, and all her train Some loosely swimming in the figur'd main, While some on rocks their dropping hair divide. And some on fishes through the waters glide : Tho' various features did the Sisters grace, A sister's likeness was in every face. • Mr. Addison appears to have been mucli taken with the native graces i of Ovid's poetry. The following translations are highly finished and even ,1 laboured (if I may so speak) into an ease, which resembles very much, and almost equals, that of his author. 60 TRANSLATIONS. On earth a different landskip courts the eyes, Men, towns, and beasts, in distant prospects rise, And nymphs, and streams, and woods, and rural deities. O'er all, the heav'n's refulgent image shines ; On either gate were six engraven signs. Here Phaeton, still gaining on th' ascent, To his suspected father's palace went, Till pressing forward through the bright abode, He saw at distance the illustrious god : He saw at distance, or the dazzling light Had flash'd too strongly on his aching sight. The god sits high, exalted on a throne Of blazing gems, with purple garments on : The hours, in order rang'd on either hand, And days, and months, and years, and ages, stand. Here Spring appears with flow*ry chaplets bound; Here Summer in her wheaten garland crown'd ; Here Autumn the rich trodden grapes besmear ; And hoary "Winter shivers in the rear. Phoebus beheld the youth from off his throne ; That eye, which looks on all, was fix'd on one. He saw the boy's confusion in his face, Surpris'd at all the wonders of the place ; And cries aloud, " What wants my son ? for know My son thou art, and I must call thee so." " Light of the world," the trembling youth replies, " Hlustrious parent ! since you don't despise The parent's name, some certain token give, That I may Clymene's proud boast believe. Nor longer under ftilse reproaches grieve." The tender sire was touch'd with what he said And flung the blaze of glories from his head, ovid's metamorphoses. 51 And bid the youth advance : " My son," said he, " Come to thy father's arms ! for Clymene Has told thee true : a parent's name I own, And deem thee worthy to be call'd my son. As a sure proof, make some request, and I, Whate'er it be, with that request comply ; By Styx I swear, whose waves are hid in night. And roll impervious to my piercing sight." The youth transported, asks, without delay, To guide the Sun's bright chariot for a day. The god repented of the oath he took. For anguish thrice his radiant head he shook ; '* My son," says he, " some other proof require. Rash was my promise, rash is thy desire. I'd fain deny this wish which thou hast made. Or, what I can't deny, would fain dissuade. Too vast and hazardous the task appears, Nor suited to thy strength, nor to thy years. Thy lot is mortal, but thy wishes fly . Beyond the province of mortality : There is not one of all the gods that dares (However skill'd in other great affairs) To mount the burning axle-tree, but I ; Not Jove himself, the ruler of the sky. That hurls the three-fork'd thunder from above, Dares try his strength ; yet who so strong as Jove ? The steeds climb up the first ascent with pain : And when the middle firmament they gain, If downward from the heavens my head I bow. And see the earth and ocean hang below, Ev'n I am seiz'd with horror and affright; And my own heart misgives me at the sight. 52 TRANSLATIONS. A mighty downfal steeps the ev'ning stage, And steady reins must curb the horses' rage. Tethys herself has fear'd to see me driv'n Down headlong from the precipice of heaven. Besides, consider what impetuous force Turns stars and planets in a different course : I steer against their motions ; nor am I Borne back by all the current of the sky. But how could you resist the orbs that roll In adverse whirls, and stem the rapid pole ? But you perhaps may hope for pleasing woods, And stately domes, and cities fill'd with gods ; While through a thousand snares your progress lies, Where forms of starry monsters stooji the skies : For, should you hit the doubtful way aright, The Bull with stooping horns stands opposite ; Next him the bright Haempnian Bow is strung ; And next, the Lion's grinning visage hung : The Scorpion's claws here clasp a wide extent. And here the Crab's in lesser clasps are bent. Nor would you find it easy to compose The mettled steeds, when from their nostrils flows The scorching fire, that in their entrails glows. Ev'n I their head-strong fury scarce restrain. When they grow warm and restiff to the rein. Let not my son a fatal gift require, But, ! in time recal your rash desire ; You ask a gift that may your parent tell, Let the^'e my fears your parentage reveal ; And learn a father from a father's care : Look on my face ; or if my heart lay bare. Could you but I.»ck, you'd read the father thert). ovid's metamorphoses. 53 Chuse out a gift from seas, or earth, or skies, For open to your wisli all nature lies, Only decline this one unequal task, For 'tis a mischief, not a gift you ask ; You ask a real mischief, Phaeton : Nay, -hang not thus about my neck, my son : I grant your wish, and Styx has heard my voice, Chuse what you will, but make a wiser choice." Thus did the god th' unwary youth advise ; But he still longs to travel through the skies. "When the fond father (for in vain he pleads) At length to the Vulcanian chariot leads. A golden axle did the work uphold, Gold was the beam, the wheels were orb'd with gold. The spokes in rows of silver pleas'd the sight, The seat with party-colour'd gems was bright ; Apollo shined amid the glare of light. The youth with secret joy the work surveys ; When now the morn disclos'd her purple rays ; The stars were fled ; for Lucifer had chas'd The stars away, and fled himself at last. Soon as the father saw the rosy morn, And the moon shining with a blunter horn, He bid the nimble Hours without delay Bring forth the steeds ; the nimble Hours obey : From their full racks the gen'rous steeds retire, Dropping ambrosial foams, and snorting fire. Still anxious for his son, the god of day. To make him proof against the burning ray, His temples with celestial ointment wet. Of sov'reign virtue to repel the heat ; 64 ♦ TRANSLATIONS. Then fix'd the beamy circle on his head, And fetch'd a deep foreboding sigh, and said, " Take this at least, this last advice, my son : ' Keep a stiff rein, and move but gently on : The coursers of themselves will run too fast, Your art must be to moderate their haste. Drive 'em not on directly through the skies. But where the Zodiac's winding circle lies, Along the midmost zone ; but sally forth Nor to the distant south, nor stormy north. The horses' hoofs a beaten track will show, But neither mount too high, nor sink too low. That no new fires or heaven or earth infest ; Keep the mid-way, the middle way is best. Nor, where in radiant folds the Serpent twines. Direct your course, nor where the Altar shines. Shun both extremes ; the rest let Fortune guide, And better for thee than thy self provide ! See, while I speak, the shades disperse away, Aurora gives the promise of a day ; I'm caird, nor can I make a longer stay. Snatch up the reins ; or still th' attempt forsake, And not my chariot, but my counsel take, While yet securely on the earth you stand ; Nor touch the horses with too rash a hand. Let me alone to light the world, while you Enjoy those beams which you may safely view." He spoke in vain : the youth with active heat And sprightly vigour vaults into the seat ; And joys to hold the reins, and fondly gives Those thanks his father with remorse receives. ovid's metamorphoses. 55 Mean while the restless horses neigh'd aloud, Breathing out fire, and pawing where they stood. Tethys, not knowing what had past, gave way, And all the waste of heaven before 'em lay. They spring together out, and swiftly bear The flying youth through clouds and yielding air ; "With wingy speed outstrip the eastern wind, And leave the breezes of the morn behind. The youth was light, nor could he fill the seat, Or poise- the chariot with its wonted weight : But as at sea th' unballass'd vessel rides. Cast to and fro, the sport of winds and tides ; So in the bounding chariot toss'd on high. The youth is hurry'd headlong through the sky. Soon as the steeds perceive it, they forsake Their stated course, and leave the beaten track. The youth was in a maze, nor did he know Which way to turn the reins, or where to go ; Nor wou'd the horses, had he known, obey. Then the Seven Stars first felt Apollo's ray. And wish'd to dip in the forbidden sea. The folded Serpent next the frozen pole, Stiff and benum'd before, began to roll. And rag'd with inward heat, and threaten'd war. And shot a redder light from every star ; Nay, and 'tis said, Bootes too, that fain Thou would'st have fled, tho' cumbered with thy wain, Th' unhappy youth then, bending down his head, Saw earth and ocean far beneath him spread : His colour chang'd, he startled at the sight. And his eyes darken 'd by too great a light. 56 TRANSLATIONS. Now could he wish the fiery steeds untry'd, His birth obscure, and his request deny'd : Now would he Merops for his father owr, And quit his boasted kindred to the Sun. So fares the pilot, when his ship is toss'd In troubled seas, and all its steerage lost, Ho^gives her to the winds, and in despair Seeks his last refuge in the gods and prayer. What cou^d he do ? his eyes, if backward cast, Find a long path he had already past ; If forward, still a longer path they find : Both he compares, and measures in his mind ; And sometimes easts an eye upon the east, ^ And sometimes looks on the forbidden west. The horses' names he knew not in the fright . Nor wou'd he loose the reins, nor could he hold 'em tight. Now all the horrors of the heavens he spies, And monstrous shadows of prodigious size. That deck'd with stars, lie scatter'd o'er the skies. There is a place above, where Scorpio bent In tail and arms surrounds a vast extent ; In a wide circuit of the heavens he shines, And fills the space of two celestial signs. Soon as the youth beheld him, vex'd with heat, Brandish his sting, and in his poison sweat. Half dead with sudden fear he dropt the reins ; The. horses felt 'em loose upon their man -s, And, flying out tlirough all the pliiins ab »ve, Han uncontrol'd where'er their fury droTt ; Rush'd on the stars, and through a pathless way Of unknown regions hurry'd on the day. OVID^S METAMORPHOSES. 57 And now above, and now below they flew, And near the earth the burning chariot drew. The clouds disperse in fumes, the wond'ring Moon ^ Beholds her brother's steeds beneath her own ; The highlands smoke, cleft by the piercing rays, Or, clad with woods, in their own fuel blaze. Next o'er the plains, where ripen'd harvests grow, The running conflagration spreads below. But these are trivial ills : whole cities burn, And peopled kingdoms into ashes turn. The mountains kindle as the car draws near, Athos and Tmolus red with fires appear ; (Eagrian Haemus (then a single name) And virgin Helicon increase the flame ; Taurus and Oete glare amid the sky, And Ida, spite of all her fountains, dry. Eryx, and Othrys, and Cithaeron, glow ; And Rhodope, no longer cloth'd in snow ; High Pindus, Mimas, and Parnassus, sweat, And ^tna rages with redoubled heat. Even Scythia, through her hoary regions warm'd, In vain with all her native frost was arm'd. Cover'd with flames, the tow'ring Appennine, And Caucasus, and proud Oljnnpus, shine : And, where the long-extended Alps aspire. Now stands a huge continu'd range of fire. Th' astonish'd youth, where'er his eyes could turn» Beheld the universe around him burn : The world was iu a blaze ; nor could he bear The sultry vapours and the scorching air, Which from below, as from a furnace flow'd ; And now the axle-tree beneath him glow'd : VOL. I. — 3* 58 TRANSLATIONS. Lost in the whirling clouds, that round him broke, • And white with ashes, hov'ring in the smoke, He flew where'er the horses drove, nor knew Whither the horses drove, or where he flew. 'Twas then, they say, the swarthy Moor begun To change his hue, and blacken in the sun. Then Lybia first, of all her moisture drain'd, Became a barr'en waste, a wild of sand. The water-nymphs lament their empty urns, Boeotia, robb'd of silver Dirce, mourns, Corinth Pyrene's wasted spring bewails, And Argos grieves whilst Amymone fails. The floods are drain'd from every distant coast Even Tanais, tho' fix'd in ice, was lost, Enrag'd Caicus and Lycormas roar, And Xanthus, fated to be burnt once more. The fam'd Mseander, that un weary 'd strays Through mazy windings, smokes in every maze. From his lov'd Babylon Euphrates flies ; The big-swoln Ganges and the Danube rise In thick'ning fumes, and darken half the skies. In flames Ismenos and the Phasis roU'd, And Tagus floating in his melted gold. The swans, that on Cayster often try'd Their tuneful songs, now sung their last, and dy'd. The frighted Nile ran ofi", and under ground Conceal'd his head, nor can it yet be found : His seven divided currents all are dry, And where they roll'd, seven gaping trenches lie. No more the Bhine or Rhone their course maintain, Nor Tiber of his promis'd empire vain. 59 The ground, deep cleft, admits the dazzling ray, And startles Pluto with the flash of day. The sea shrinks in, and to the sight disclose Wide naked plains, where once their billows rose ; Their rocks are all discover'd, and increase The number of the scatter'd Cyclades. The fish in shoals about the bottom creep, Nor longer dares the crooked dolphin leap : Gasping for breath, th' unshapen Phocse die, And on the boiling wave extended lie. Nereus, and Doris with her virgin train. Seek out the last recesses of the main ; Beneath unfathoma,ble depths they faint. And secret in their gloomy caverns pant. Stern Neptune thrice above the waves upheld His face, and thrice was by the flames repell'd. The Earth at length, on every side embrac'd With scalding seas, that floated round her waist, When now she felt the springs and rivers come. And crowd within the hollow of her womb, Uplifted to the heavens her blasted head. And clapt her hand upon her brows, and said ; (But first, impatient of the sultry heat. Sunk deeper down, and sought a cooler seat ;) " If you, great king of gods, my death approve. And I deserve it, let me die by Jove ; If I must perish by the force of fire. Let me transfix'd with thunderbolts expire. See, whilst I speak, my breath the vapours choke, (For now her face lay wrapt in clouds of smoke) See my singed hj^ir, behold my faded eye. And withey'd face, where heaps of cinders lie I 60 TRANSLATIONS. And does the plough for this my body tear ? This the reward for all the fruits I bear, Tortur'd with rakes, and harass' ^\<^ year ? That herbs for cattle daily I rei/ : And food for man, and frankincense for you ? But grant me guilty ; what has Neptune done ? "Why are his waters boiling in the sun ? The wavy empire, which by lot was given. Why does it waste, and further shrink fiom heaven ? If I nor he your pity can provoke. See your own heavens, the heavens begin to smoke ! Should once the sparkles catch those bright abodes, Destruction seizes on the heavens and gods ; Atlas becomes unequal to his freight. And almost faints beneath the glowing weight. The heaven, and earth, and sea, together burn, All must again into their chaos turn. Apply some speedy cure, prevent our fate, And succour nature, e'er it be too late." She ceas'd ; for chok'd with vapours round her spread, Down to the deepest shades she sunk her head. Jove call'd to witness every power above, And even the god, whose son the chariot drove, That what he acts he is compell'd to do, Or universal ruin must ensue. Strait he ascends the high ethereal throne, From whence he us'd to dart his thunder down, From whence his showers and storms he us'd to pour But now could meet with neither storm nor shower. Then, aimhig at the youth, with lifted hand, FuU t^t his head he hurl'd the forky brand, 61 In dreadful thund'rings. Thus the almighty sire Suppress'd the raging of the fires »with fire. At once from life, and from the chariot driven, Th' ambitious boy fell thunder-struck from heaven The horses started with a sudden bound, And flung the reins and chariot to the ground : The studded harness from their necks they broke, Here fell a wheel, and here a silver spoke, Here were the beam and axle torn away ; And, Bcatter'd o'er the earth, the shining fragments lay. The breathless Phaeton, with flaming hair, Shot from the chariot like a falling star, That in a summer's evening from the top Of heaven drops down, or seen?s at least to drop ; Till on the Po his blasted corpse was hurl'd, Far from his country, in the western world. PHAETON'S SISTEES TEANSFOEMED INTO TEEES. The Latian nymphs came round him, and amaz'd On the dead youth, transfix'd with thunder, gaz'd ; And, whilst yet smoking from the bolt he lay, His shatter 'd body to a tomb convey, And o'er the tomb an epitaph devise : *' Here he who drove the sun's bright chariot lies ; His father's fiery steeds he could not guide, But in the glorious enterprise he dy'd." Apollo hid hi^ face, and pin'd for grief, And, if the story may deserve belief, The space of one whole day is said to run, From morn to wonted even, without a sun : The burning ruins, with a fainter ray, Supply the sun, and counterfeit a day^ 62 TRANSLATIONS. A day, that stitl did nature's face disclose : This comfort from the mighty mischief rose. But Clymene, enrag'd with grief, laments, And, as her grief inspires, her passion vents : "Wild for her son, and frantic in her woes, With hair dishevell'd, round the world she goes, To seek where'er his body might be cast ; Till, on the borders of the Po, at last The name inscrib'd on the new tomb appears : The dear, dear name she bathes in flowing tears, Hangs o'er the tomb, unable to depart. And hugs the marble to her throbbing heart. Her daughters too lament, and sigh, and mourn, (A fruitless tribute to their brother's urn,) And beat their naked bosoms, and complain. And call aloud for Phaeton in vain ; All the long night their mournful watch they keep, And all the day stand round the tomb, and weep. Four times, revolving, the full moon return'd ; So long the mother and the daughters mourn'd : When now the eldest, Phaethusa, strove To rest her weary limbs, but could not move ; Lampetia would have help'd her, but she found Herself withheld, and rooted to the ground : A third in wild affliction, as she grieves, Would rend her hair, but fills her hand with leaves , One sees her thighs transform'd, another views Her arms shot out, and branching into boughs. And now their legs, and breasts, and bodies stood Crusted with bark, and hard'ning into wood ; But still above were female heads display'd. And mouths, that calPd the mother to their aid. 63 What could, alas ! the weeping mother do ? From this to that with eager haste she flew, And kiss'd her sprouting daughters as they grew. She tears the bark that to each body cleaves, And from their verdant fingers strips the leaves : The blood came trickling, where she tore away The leaves and bark : the maids were heard to say, '' Forbear, mistaken parent, oh ! forbear ; A wounded daughter in each tree you tear ; Farewell for ever." Here the bark increas'd, Clos'd on their faces, and their words suppress'd. The new-made trees in tears of amber run, Which, harden 'd into value by the sun, Distil for ever on the streams below : The limpid streams their radiant treasures show, Mixt in the sand ; whence the rich drops convey'd Shine in the dress of the bright Latian maid. THE TEANSrOEMATION 01' CTCNUS INTO A SWAN. Cycnus beheld the nymphs transform'd, ally'd To their dead brother on the mortal side, In friendship and affection nearer bound ; He left the cities and the realms he own'd, Through pathless fields and lonely shores to range, And woods, made thicker by the sisters' change. Whilst here, within the dismal gloom, alone, The melancholy monarch made his moan, His voice was lessen'd, as he try'd to speak, And issu'd through a long extended neck ; His hair transforms to down, his fingers meet In skinny films, and shape his oary feet ; 64 TRANSLATIONS. From both his sides the wings and feathers break ; And from his mouth proceeds a blunted beak : All C jcnus now into a swan was turn'd, Who, still rememb'ring how his kinsman burn'd, To solitary pools and lakes retires, And loves the waters as oppos'd to fires. Meanwhile Apollo in a gloomy shade (The native lustre of his brows decay'd) Indulging sorrow, sickens at the sight Of his own sun-shine, and abhors the light : The hidden griefs, that in his bosom rise, Sadden his looks, and overcast his eyes. As when some dusky orb obstructs his ray, And sullies, in a dim eclipse, the day. » Now secretly with inward griefs he pin'd, Now warm resentments to his grief he join'd, And now renounc'd his office to mankind. " E'er since the birth of time," said he, " I've borne A long ungrateful toil without return ; Let now some other manage, if he dare, The fiery steeds, and mount the burning car ; Or, if none else, let Jove his fortune try, And learn to lay his murd'ring thunder by; Then will he own, perhaps, but own too late. My son deserv'd not so severe a fate." The gods stand round him, as he mourns, and pray He would resume the conduct of the day, Nor let the world be lost in endless night: Jove too himself, descending from his height. Excuses what had happen'd, and entreats. Majestically mixing prayers and threats. ovid's metamorphoses. 65 Prevail'd upon, at length, again he took The harness'd steeds, that still with horror shook, And plies 'em with the lash, and whips 'em on, And, as he whips, upbraids 'em with his son. THE STOEY OF CALISTO. The day was settled in its course ; and Jove Walk'd the wide circuit of the heavens above. To search if any cracks or flaws were made ; But all was safe : the earth he then survey'd, And cast an eye on every different coast. And every land ; but on Arcadia most. Her fields he cloth' d, and chear'd her blasted face With running fountains, and with springing grass. No tracks of heaven's destructive fire remain, The fields and woods revive, and nature smiles again But as the god walk'd to and fro the earth. And rais'd the plants, and gave the spring its birth, By chance a fair Arcadian nymph he view'd, And felt the lovely charmer in his blood. The nymph nor spun, nor dress'd with artful pride ; Her vest was gather'd up, her hair was ty'd ; Now in her hand a slender spear she bore, Now a light quiver on her shoulders wore ; To chaste Diana from her youth inclin'd The sprightly warriors of the wood she join'd. Diana too the gentle huntress lov'd, Nor was there one of all the nymphs that rov'd O'er Maenalus, amid the maiden throng, More favour'd once; but fav)ur lasts not long. G6 TRANSLATIONS. The sun now shone in all its strength, and drove The heated virgin panting to a grove ; The grove around a grateful shadow cast : She dropt her arrows, and her bow unbrac'd ; She flung herself on the cool grassy bed ; And on the painted quiver rais'd her head. Jove saw the charming huntress unprepar'd Stretch'd on the verdant turf, without a guard. " Here I am safe," he cries, " from Juno's eye; Or should my jealous queen the theft descry. Yet would I venture on a theft like this. And stand her rage for such, for such a bliss ! " Diana's shape and habit strait he took, Soften'd his brows, and smooth'd his awful look, And mildly in a female accent spoke. " How fares my girl ? How went the morning chase ? " To whom the virgin, starting from the grass, " All hail, bright deity, whom I prefer To Jove himself, tho' Jove himself were here." The god was nearer than she thought, and heard, Well-pleas'd, himself before himself preferr'd. He then salutes her with a warm embrace ; And, e'er she half had told the morning chase, With love inflam'd, and eager on his bliss, Smother'd her words, and stopp'd her with a kiss ; His kisses with unwonted ardour glow'd, Nor could Diana's shape conceal the god. The virgin did whate'er a virgin could ; (Sure Juno must have pardon 'd, had she view'd) With all her might against his force she strove ; But how can mortal maids contend with Jove I ovid's metamorphoses. 67 Possest at length of what his heart desir'd, Back to his heavens th' exulting god retir'd. The lovely huntress, rising from the grass, With downcast eyes, and with a blushing face, By shame confounded, and by fear dismay'd, Flew from the covert of the guilty shade. And almost, in the tumult of her mind. Left her forgotten bow and shafts behind. But now Diana, with a sprightly train Of quiver'd virgins, bounding o er the plain, Call'd to the nymph ; the nymph began to fear A second fraud, a Jove disguis'd in her ; But, when she saw the sister nymphs, suppress'd Her rising fears, and mingled with the rest. How in the look does conscious guilt appear ! Slowly she mov'd, and loitered in the rear ; Nor lightly tripp'd, nor by the goddess ran, As once she us'd, the foremost of the train. Her looks were flushed, and sullen was her mien, That sure the virgin goddess (had she been Aught but a virgin) must the guilt have seen. 'Tis said the nymphs saw all, and guess'd aright * And now the moon had nine times lost her light, When Dian, fainting in the mid-day beams, Found a cool covert, and refreshing streams That in soft murmurs through the forest flow'd, And a smooth bed of shining gravel show'd. A covert so obscure, and streams so clear, Tlie goddess prais'd : " And now no spies are near, Let's strip, my gentle maids, and wash," she cries. Ploas'd with the motion, every maid complies ; 68 TRANSLATIONS. Only the blushing huntress stood confus'd, And form'd delays, and her delays excus'd ; In vain excus'd : her fellows round her press'd, And the reluctant nymph by force undress'd. The naked huntress all her shame reveal'd. In vain her hands the pregnant womb conceal'd ; " Begone ! " the goddess cries with stern disdain, " Begone ! nor dare the hallow'd stream to stain : " She fled, for ever banish'd from the train. This Juno heard, who long had watch'd her time To punish *the detested rival's crime ; The time was come : for, to enrage her more, A lovely boy the teeming rival bore. The goddess cast a furious look, and cry'd, " It is enough ! I'm fully satisfy'd ! This boy shall stand a living mark, to prove My husband's baseness, and the strumpet's love : But vengeance shall awake : those guilty charms, That drew the Thunderer from Juno's arms, No longer shall their wonted force retain, Nor please the god, nor make the mortal vain. This said, her hand within her hair she wound, Swung her to earth, and dragg'd her on the ground, The prostrate wretch lifts up her arms in prayer ; Her arms grow shaggy, and deform'd w^ith hair, Her nails are sharpen'd into pointed claws, Her hands bear half her weight, and turn to paws ; * Her lips, that once could tempt a god, begin To grow distorted in an ugly grin. And, lest the supplicating brute might reach The ears of Jove, she was depriv'd of speech : m Her surly voice thro' a hoarse passage came In savage sounds : her mind was still the same. The furry monster fix'd her eyes above, And heav'd her new unwieldy paws to Jove, And begg'd his aid with inward groans ; and tho' She could not call him false, she thought him so. How did she fear to lodge in woods alone, And haunt the fields and meadows once her own ! How often would the deep-mouth'd dogs pursue. Whilst from her hounds the frighted huntress flew ! How did she fear her fellow-brutes, and shun The shaggy bear, tho' now herself was one ! How from the sight of rugged wolves retire. Although the grim Lycaon was her sire ! But now her son had fifteen summers told. Fierce at the chase, and in the forest bold ; When, as he beat the woods in quest of prey, He chanc'd to rouse his -mother where she lay. She knew her son, and kept him in her sight, And fondly gaz'd : the boy was in a fright, And aim'd a pointed arrow at her breast, And would have slain his mother in the beast ; But Jove forbad, and snatch 'd 'em through the air In whirlwinds up to heaven, and fix'd 'em there : Where the new constellations nightly rise, And add a lustre to the northern skies. When Juno saw the rival in her height. Spangled with stars, and circled round with light. She sought old Ocean in his deep abodes. And Tethys ; both revered among the gods. They ask what brings her there : " Ne'er ask," says she, * What brings me here, heaven is no place for me. 70 TRANSLATIONS. You'll see, when night has cover'd all things o'er, Jove's starry bastard and triumphant whore Usurp the heavens ; you'll see 'em proudly roll In their new orbs, and brighten all the pole. And who shall now on Juno's altars wait, When those she hates grow greater by her hate ? I on the nymph a brutal form impress'd, Jove to a goddess has transform'd the beast ; This, this was all my weak revenge could do : But let the god his chaste amours pursue, And, as he acted after lo's rape. Restore th' adult'ress to her former shape ; Then may he cast his Juno off, and lead The great Lycaon's offspring to his bed. But you, ye venerable powers, be kind, And, if my wrongs a due resentment find, Receive not in your waves their setting beams. Nor let the glaring strumpet taint your streams." The goddess ended, and her wish was given. Back she return'd in triumph up to heaven ; Her gaudy peacocks drew her through the skies, Their tails were spotted with a thousand eyes ; The eyes of Argus on their tails were rang'd. At the same time the raven's colour chang'd. THE STOKY OF COEONIS, AND BIRTH OF ^SCULAl'lUS. The raven once in snowy plumes was drest. White as the whitest dove's unsully'd breast. Fair as the guardian of the Capitol, Soft as the swan ; a large and lovply fowl ; His tongue, his prating tongue had chang'd liini quite To sooty blackness from the purest white. ovid's metamorpho&es. 71 The story of his change shall here be told In Thessaly there liv'd a nymph of old, Coronis nam'd ; a peerless maid she shin'd, Confest the fairest of the fairer kind. Apollo lov'd her, till her guilt he knew, While true she was, or whilst he thought her t-uo. But his own bird the raven chanc'd to find The false one with a secret rival join'd. Coronis begg'd him to suppress the tale. But could not with repeated prayers prevail. His milk-white pinions to the god he ply'd ; The busy daw flew with him, side by side. And by a thousand teasing questipns drew Th' important secret from him as they flew. The daw gave honest counsel, tho' despis'd, And, tedious in her tattle, thus advis'd : " Stay, silly bird, th' ill-natur'd task refuse, Nor be the bearer of unwelcome news. ] Be warn'd by my example : you discern What now I am, and what I was shall learn. My foolish honesty was all my crime ; Then hear my story. Once upon a time, The two-shap'd Ericthonius had his birth (Without a mother) from the teeming earth ; Minerva nurs'd him, and the infant laid Within a chest of twining osiers made. The daughters of King Cecrops undertook To guard the chest, commanded not to look On what was hid within. I stood to see The charge obey'd, perch'd on a neighb'ring tree. The sisters Pandrosos and Ilerse keep The strict command ; Aglauros needs would peep, 72 TRANSLATIONS. And saw the monstrous infant in a fright, And call'd her sisters to the hideous sight : A boy's soft shape did to the waist prevail, But the boy ended in a dragon's tail. I told the stern Minerva all that pass'd, But for my pains, discarded and disgrac'd, The frowning goddess drove me from her sight, And for her favorite chose the bird of night. Be then no tell-tale ; for I think my wrong Enough to teach a bird to hold her tongue. " But you, perhaps, may think I was remov'd, As never by the heavenly maid belov'd : But I was lov'd ; ask Pallas if I lie ; Tho' Pallas hate me now, she won't deny : For I, whom in a feather'd shape you view, Was once a maid, (by heaven the story's true) A blooming maid, and a king's daughter too. A crowd of lovers own'd my beauty's charms ; My beauty was the cause of all my harms; Neptune, as on his shores I went to rove^ Observ'd me in my walks, and fell in love. He made his courtship, he confess'd his pain. And offered force when all his arts were vain ; Swift he pursu'd : I ran along the strand, 'Till, spent and weary'd on the sinking sand, I shriek'd aloud, with cries I fill'd the air To gods and men ; nor god nor man was there : A virgin goddess heard a virgin's prayer. For, as my arms I lifted to the skies, I saw black feathers from my fingers rise ; I strove to fling my garment on the ground ; My garment turn'd to plumes, and girt me roimd : 73 My hands to beat my naked bosom try ; Nor naked bosom now nor hands had I. Lightly I tript, nor weary as before Sunk in the sand, but skimm'd along the shore ; Till, rising on my wings, I was preferr'd To be the chaste Minerva's virgin bird : Preferr'd in vain ! I now am in disgrace : Nyctimene, the owl, enjoys my place, " On her incestuous life I need not dwell, (In Lesbos still the horrid tale they tell) And of her dire amours you must have heard, For which she now does penance in a bird, That, conscious of her shame, avoids the light, And /loves the gloomy cov'ring of the night ; The birds, where'er she flutters, scare away The hooting wretch, and drive her from the day." The raven, iirg'd by such impertinence. Grew passionate, it seems, and took offence. And curst the harmless daw ; the daw withdrew : The raven to her injur'd patron flew. And found him out, and told the fatal truth Of false Coronis and, the favour'd youth. The god was wroth ; the colour left his look, The wreath his head, the harp his hand forsook : His silver bow and feather'd shafts he took. And lodg'd an arrow in the tender breast, That had so often to his own been prest. Down fell the wounded nymph, and sadly groan'd, And pull'd his arrow reeking from the wound ; And welt'ring in her blood, thus faintly cry'd, " Ah cruel god ! tho' I have justly dy'd, VOL. I. — 4 74 TRANSLATIONS. What has, alas ! my unborn infant done, That he should fall, and two expire in one ? " This said, in agonies she fetch'd her breath. The god dissolves in pity at her death ; He hates the bird that made her falsehood known, And hates himself for what himself had done ; The feather'd shaft, that sent her to the fates, And his own hand, that sent the shaft, he hates. Fain would he heal the wound, and ease her pain, And tries the compass of his art in vain. Soon as he saw the lovely nymph expire, The pile made ready, and the kindling fire, With sighs and groans her obsequies he kept, And, if a god could weep, the god had wept. Her corpse he kiss'd, and heavenly incense brought, And solemniz'd the death himself had wrought. But, lest his ofi"spring. should her fate partake, Spite of th' immortal mixture in his make. He ript her womb, and set the child at large, And gave him to the centaur Chiron's charge : Then in his fury black'd the raven o'er, And bid him prate in his white plumes no more. OCYREIIOE TRANSFORMED TO A MARE. Old Chiron took the babe with secret joy, Proud of the charge of the celestial boy. His daughter too, whom on the sandy shore The nymph Chariclo to the centaur bore, With hair dishevel'd on her shoulders came To see the child, Ocyrrhoe was her name ; She knew her father's arts, and could reheaTse The depths of prophecy in sounding verse. I OVId's METAMORniOSEB. 75 Once, as the sacred infant she survej'd, The god was kindled in the raving maid, And thus she utter'd her prophetic tale ; " Hail, great physician of the world, all hail ; Hail, mighty infant, who in years to come Shalt heal the nations and defraud the tomb ; Swift be thy growth ! thy triumphs unconfin'd ! Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind. Thy daring art shall animate the dead, And draw the thunder on thy guilty head : Then shalt thou die ; but from the dark abode Eise up victorious, and be twice a god. And thou, my sire, not destin'd by thy birth To turn to dust, and mix with common earth. How wilt thou toss, and rave, and long to die, And quit thy claim to immortality ; When thou shalt feel, enrag'd with inward pains, The Hydra's venom rankling in thy veins ? The gods, in pity, shall contract thy date. And give thee over to the power of Fate." Thus, entering into destiny, the maid The secrets of offended Jove betray'd : More had she still to say ; but now appears Oppress'd with sobs and sighs, and drown'd in tears. " My voice," says she, " is gone, my language fails Through every limb my kindred shape prevails : Why did the god this fatal gift impart. And with prophetic raptures swell my heart ! What new desires are these ? I long to pace O'er flowery meadows, and to feed on grass ; I hasten to a brute, a maid no more ; But why, alas I am I transform'd all o'er ? TRANSLATIONS. My sire does half a human shape retain, And in his upper parts preserves the man." Her tongue no more distinct complaints affords, But in shrill accents and mis-shapen words Pours forth such hideous wailings, as declare The human form confounded in the mare : 'Till by degrees accomplish'd in the beast. She neigh'd outright, and all the steed exprest. Her stooping body on her hands is borne, Her hands are turn'd to hoofs, and shod in horn ; Her yellow tresses ruffle in a mane. And in a flowing tail she frisks her train. The mare was finish'd in her voice and look. And a new name from the new figure took. THE TEANSFORMATION OF BATTUS TO A TOUCH-STONE. Sore wept the centaur, and to Phoebus pray'd ; But how could Phoebus give the centaur aid ? Degraded of his power by angry Jove, In Elis then a herd of beeves he drove ; And wielded in his hand a staff of oak. And o'er his shoulders threw the shepherd's cloak ; On seven compacted reeds he us'd to play, And on his rural pipe to waste the day. As once, attentive to his pipe, he play'd, The crafty Hermes from the god convey'd A drove, that sep'rate from their fellows stray'd. The theft an old insidious peasant view'd, (They called him Battus in the neighbourhood) Hir'd by a wealthy Pylian prince to feed His favourite mares, and watch the generous breed. ovid's metamorphoses. 77 The thievish god suspected him, and took The hind aside, and thus in whispers spoke : " Discover not the theft, whoe'er thou be, Amd take that milk-white heifer for thy fee "• " Go, stranger," cries the clown, " securely on, That stone shall sooner tell ; " and show'd a stone. The god withdrew, but straight return'd again, In speech and habit like a country swain ; And cries out, " Neighbour, hast thou seen a stray Of bullocks and of heifers pass this way ? In the recovery of my cattle join, A bullock and a heifer shall be thine." The peasant quick replies, *' You'll find 'em there In yon dark vale : " and in the vale they were. The double bribe had his false heart beguil'd : The god, successful in the trial, smil'd ; " And dost thou thus betray myself to me ? Me to myself dost thou betray ? " says he : Then to a touch-stone turns the faithless spy, And in his name records his infamy. THE STORY OF AGLAUEOS, TEANSFOEMED INTO A STATUE. This done, the god flew up on high, and pass'd O'er lofty Athens, by Minerva grac'd, And wide Munichia, whilst his eyes survey All the vast region that beneath him lay. 'Twas now the feast, when" each Athenian maid Her yearly homage to Minerva paid ; In canisters, with garlands cover'd o'er, High on their heads their mystic gifts they bore ; And now, returning in a solemn train. The trDop of shining virgins fiU'd the plain. 78 TRANSLATIONS. The god well-pleas'd beheld the pompous show, And saw the bright procession pass below ; Then veer'd about, and took a wheeling flight, And hover'd o'er them : as the spreading kite, That smells the slaughter'd victim from on high, Flies at a distance if the priests are nigh. And sails around, and keeps it in her eye ; So kept the god the virgin choir in view. And in slow winding circles round them flew As Lucifer excels the meanest star, Or, as the full-orb'd Phcebe, Lucifer ; So much did Herse all the rest outvie. And gave a grace to the solemnity, Hermes was fir'd, as in the clouds he hung: So the cold bullet, that with fury slung From Balearic engines mounts on high, Glows in the whirl, and burns along the sky. At length he pitch'd upon the ground, and show'd The form divine, the features of a god. He knew their virtue o'er a female heart. And yet he strives to better them by art. He hangs his mantle loose, and sets to show The golden edging on the seam below ; Adjusts his flowing curls, and in his hand Waves, with an air, the sleep-procuring wand ; The glittering sandals to his feet applies. And to each heel the well- trimmed pinion ties. His ornaments with nicest art display'd, He seeks th' apartment of the royal maid. The roof was all with polish'd ivory lin'd, That, richly mix'd, in clouds of tortoise shin'd. OVID's METAMOPwPIIOSES. 79 Three rooms, contiguous, in a range were plac'd, The midmost by the beauteous Ilerse grac'd ; Her virgin sisters lodg'd on either side. ^ Aglauros first th' approaching god descry'd, And as he cross'd her chamber, ask'd his name, And what his business was, and whence he came. " I come," reply'd the god, " from heaven, to woo Your sister, and to make an aunt of you ; I am the son and messenger of Jove, My name is Mercury, my business love ; Do you, kind damsel, take a lover's part, \ And gain admittance to your sister's heart." She star'd him in the face with looks amaz'd. As when she on Minerva's secret gaz'd, And asks a mighty treasure for her hire. And, till he brings it, makes the god retire. Minerva griev'd to see the nymph succeed ; And now rememb'ring the late impious deed, When, disobedient to her strict command, She touch'd the chest with an unhallow'd hand ; In big-swoln sighs her inward rage express'd, That heav'd the rising ^gis on her breast ; Then sought out Envy in her dark abode, Defil'd with ropy gore and clots of blood : Shut from the winds, and from the wholesome skies, In a deep vale the gloomy dungeon lies. Dismal and cold, where not a beam of light Invades the winter, or disturbs the night. Directly to the cave her course she steer'd ; Against the gates her martial lance she rear'd ; The gates flew open, and the fiend appear'd. 8C TRANSLATIONS. A pois'nous morsel in her teeth she chew'd, And gorg'd the flesh of vipers for her food. Minerva loathing, turn'd away her eye : The hideous monster, rising heavily, Came stalking forward with a sullen pace, And left her mangled offals on the place. Soon as she saw the goddess gay and bright, She fetch'd a groan at such a cheerful sight. Livid and meagre were her looks, her eye In foul distorted glances turn'd awry ; A hoard of gall her inward parts possess'd, And spread a greenness o'er her canker'd breast ; Her teeth were brown with rust ; and from her tongu-e, In dangling drops, the stringy poison hung. She never smiles but when the wretched weep, Nor lulls her malice with a moment's sleep, Kestless in spite : while watchful to destroy, She pines and sickens at another's joy ; Foe to herself, distressing and distrest, She bears her own tormentor in her breast. The goddess gave (for she abhorr'd her sight) A short command : " To Athens speed tliy flight ; On curst Aglauros try thy utmost art, And fix thy rankest venoms in her heart." This said, her spear she push'd against the ground, And mounting from it with an active bound. Flew off to heav'n : the hag with eyes a^^kew Look'd up, and mutter'd curses as she flow ; For sore she fretted, and began to grieve At the success which she herself must give. Then takes her staff, hung round with wreaths of thorn, And sails along in a black whirlwind borne, ovid's metamorphoses. 81 O'er fields and flowery meadows : where she steers Her baneful course, a mighty blast appears, Mildews and blights ; the meadows are defac'd, The fields, the flowers, and the whole year laid waste . On mortals next, and peopled towns she falls, And breathes a burning plague among their walls. When Athens she beheld, for arts renown'd, "With peace rn^de happy, and with plenty crown'd, Scarce could the hideous fiend from tears forbear To find out nothing that deserv'd a tear. Th' apartment now she entered, where at rest Aglauros lay, with gentle sleep opprest. To execute Minerva's dire command. She strok'd the virgin with her canker'd hand. Then prickly thorns into her breast convey 'd, That stung to madness the devoted maid : Her subtle venom still improves the smart, ^. Frets in the blood, and festers in the heart. To make the work more sure, a scene she drew, And plac'd before the dreaming virgin's view Her sister's marriage, and her glorious fate : Th' imaginary bride appears in state ; The bridegroom with unwonted beauty glows, For Envy magnifies whate'er she shows. Full of the dream, Aglauros pin'd away In tears all night, in darkness all the day-; Consum'd like ice, that just begins to run. When feebly smitten by the distant sun ; Or like unwholesome weeds, that, set on fire, Are slowly wasted, and in smoke expire. Given up to Envy, (for in ev'ry thought The thorns, th > venom, and the vision wrought) VOL. I. — 4* 82 TRANSLATIONS. Oft did she call on death, as oft decreed, Rather than see her sister's wish succeed, To tell her awful father what had pass'd : At length before the door herself she cast ; And, sitting on the ground with sullen pride, A passage to the love-sick god deny'd. The god caress'd, and for admission pray'd. And sooth'd, in softest words, th' envenom'd maid. In vain he sooth'd ; " Begone ! " the maid replies, '' Or here I keep my seat, and never rise." " Then keep thy seat for ever ! " cries the god, And touch'd the door, wide-opening to his rod. Fain would she rise, and stop him, but she found Her trunk too heavy to forsake the ground ; Her joints are all benumb'd, her hands are pale, And marble now appears in every nail. As when a cancer in the body feeds. And gradual death from limb to limb proceeds ; So does the chillness to each vital part Spread by degrees, and creeps into her heart ; 'Till hard'ning every where, and speechless grown, She sits unmov'd, and freezes to a stone. But still her envious hue and sullen mien, Are in the sedentary figure seen. EUEOPA'S KAPE. When now the god his fury had allay'd, And taken vengeance of the stubborn maid, From where the bright Athenian turrets rise He mounts aloft, and re-ascends the skies. 83 Jove saw him enter the sublime abodes, And, as he mix'd among the crowd of gods, Beckon'd him out, and drew him from the rest And in soft whispers thus his will exprest. " My trusty Hermes, by whose ready aid Thy sire's commands are thro' the world convey'd Resume thy wings, exert their utmost force, And to the walls of Sidon speed thy course ; There find a herd of heifers wand'ring o'er The neighbouring hill, and drive them to the shore." Thus spoke the god, concealing his intent. The trusty Hermes on his message went, And found the herd of heifers wand'ring o'er A neighbouring hill, and drove 'em to the shore ; Where the king's daughter, with a lovely train Of fellow nymphs, was sporting on the plain. The dignity of empire laid aside, (For love but ill agrees with kingly pride) The ruler of the skies, the thundering god, "Who shakes the world's foundations with a nod, Among a herd of lowing heifers ran, Frisk'd in a bull, and bellow'd o'er the plain. Large rolls of fat about his shoulders clung, And from his neck the double dewlap hung. His skin was whiter than the snow that lies Unsully'd by the breath of southern skies ; Small shining horns on his curl'd forehead stand, As turn'd and polish'd by the workman's hand ; His eye-balls roll'd, not formidably bright, But gaz'd and languish'd with a gentle light. His every look was peaceful, and exprest The softness of the lover in the beast. 84 TRANSLATIONS. Agenor's royal daughter, as she pla3''d Among the fields, the milk-white bull survey'd. And view'd his spotless body with delig'''t, And at a distance kept him in her sight. At length she pluck'd the rising flowers, and fed The gentle beast, and fondly strok'd his head. He stood well pleas'd to touch the charming fair. But hardly could confine his pleasure there. And now he wantons o'er the neighbouring strand, Now rolls his body on the yellow sand ; And now, perceiving all her fears decay'd. Comes tossifig forward to the royal maid ; Gives her his breast to stroke, and downward turns His grisly brow, and gently stoops his horns. In flowery wreaths the royal virgin drest His bending horns, and kindly clapt his breast. 'Till now grown wanton, and devoid of fear, Not knowing that she prest the thundercr, She plac'd herself upon his back, and rode O'er fields and meadows, seated on the god, He gently march'd along, and by degrees Left the dry meadow, and approach'd the seas , Where now he dips his hoofs and wets his thighs, Now plunges in, and carries off the prize. The frighted nymph looks backward on the shore, And hears the tumbling billows round her roar ; But still she holds him fast : one hand is borne Upon his back, the other grasps a horn : Her train of ruffling garments flies behind, ' Swells in the air, and hovers in the wind. Through storms and tempests he the virgin bore, And lands her safe on the pictean shore ; METAMORPHOSES. 85. "Where now, in his divinest form array'd, In his true shape He captivates the maid ; Who gazes on him, and with wondering eyes Beholds the new majestic figure rise. His glowing features, and celestial light, And all the god discover'd to her sight. BOOK III. THE STORY OP CADMUS. When now Agenor had his daughter lost, He sent his son to search on every coast ; And sternly bid him to his arms restore The darling maid, or see his face no more, But live an exile in a foreign clime : Thus was the father pious to a crime. The restless youth search'd all the world around ; But how can Jove in his amours be found ? When tired at length with unsuccessful toil, To shun his angry sire and native soil, He goes a suppliant to the Delphic dome ; There asks the god what new-appointed home - Should end his wand'rings and his toils relieve. The Delphic oracles this answer give. " Behold among the fields a lonely cow. Unworn with yokes, unbroken to the plow ; Mark well the place where first she lays her down, There measure out thy walls and build thy town, And from thy guide, Boeotia call the land, In which the destin'd walls and town shall stand." 86 TRANSLATIONS. No sooner had he left the dark abode, Big with the promise of the Delphic god, When in the fields the fatal cow he view'd, Nor gall'd with yokes, nor worn with servitude : Her gently at a distance he pursu'd ; And as he walk'd aloof, in silence pray'd To the great power whose counsels he obey'd. Her way through flowery Panope she took, And now, Cephisus, cross'd thy silver brook ; When to the heavens her spacious front she rais'd, And bellow'd thrice, then backward turning, gaz'd On those behind, 'till on the dfestin'd place She stoop'd, and couch'd amid the rising grass. Cadmus salutes the soil, and gladly hails The new-found mountains, and the. nameless vales, And thanks the gods, and turns about his eye To see his new dominions round him lie ; Then sends his servants to a neighbouring grove For living streams, a sacrifice to Jove. O'er the wide plain there rose a shady wood Of aged trees ; in its dark bosom stood A bushy thicket, pathless and unworn, O'er-run with brambles, and perplex'd with thorn : Amidst the brake a hollow den was found. With rocks and shelving arches vaulted round. Deep in the dreary den, conceal'd from day, Sacred to Mars, a mighty dragon lay. Bloated w.th poison to a monstrous size; Fire broke in flashes when he glanc'd his eyes ; His towering crest was glorious to behold, His shoulders and his sides were scal'd with gold ; ovid's metamorphoses. 87 Three tongues he brandish'd when he charg'd his foes ; His teeth stood jaggy in three dreadful rows. The Tjrians in the den for water sought, And with their urns explor'd the hollow vault : From side to side their empty urns rebound, And rouse the sleepy serpent with the sound. Straight he bestirs him, and is seen to rise ; And now with dreadful hissings fills the skies, And darts his forky tongues, and rolls his glaring eyes The Tyrians drop their vessels in the fright, All pale and trembling at the hideous sight. Spire above spire uprear'd in air he stood, And gazing round him, over-look'd the wood : Then floating on the ground, in circles roll'd ; Then leap'd upon them in a mighty fold. Of such a bulk, and such a monstrous size. The serpent in the polar circle lies. That stretches over half the northern skies. In vain the Tyrians on their arms rely. In vain attempt to fight, in vain to fly : All their endeavours and their hopes are vain ; Some die entangled in the winding train ; Some are devour'd ; or feel a loathsome death, Swoln up with blasts of pestilential breath. And now the scorching sun was mounted high, In all its lustre, to the noon- day sky ; "When, anxious for his friends, and fill'd with cares, To search the woods th' impatient chief prepares. A lion's hide around his loins he wore. The well-pois'd jav'lin to the field he bore, Inur'd to blood ; the far-clestroying dart. And, the best weapon, an undaunted heart. 88 TRANSLATIONS. Soon as the youtli approach'd the fatal place, He saw his servants breathless on the grass ; The scaly foe amid their corpse he view'd, Basking at ease, and feasting in their blood. " Such friends," he cries, " deserv'd a longer date , But Cadmus will revenge, or share their fate." Then heav'd a stone, and rising to the throw, He sent it in a whirlwind at the foe : A tower, assa,ulted by so rude a stroke, With all its lofty battlements had shook ; But nothing here th' unwieldy rock avails, Rebounding harmless from the plaited scales. That, firmly join'd, preserv'd him from a wound, With native armour crusted all around. The pointed jav'lin more successful flew, Which at his back the raging warrior threw ; Amid the plaited scales it took its course. And in the spinal marrow spent its force. The monster hiss'd aloud, and rag'd in vain. And writh'd his body to and fro with pain ; And bit the spear, 'and wrench'd the wood away ; The point still buried in the marrow lay. And now his rage, increasing with his pain. Reddens his eyes, and beats in every vein ; Churn'd in his teeth the foamy venom rose. Whilst from his mouth a blast of vapours flows, Such as th' infernal Stygian waters cast : The plants around him wither in the blast. Now in a maze of rings he lies enroll'd, Now all unravell'd, and without a fold ; Now, like a torrent, with a mighty force Bears down the forest in his boisterous course. O V I D ' S METAMORPHOSES. 89 Cadmus gave back, and on tlie lion's spoil Sustain'd the shock, then forc'd him to recoil ; The pointed jav'lin warded off his rage : Mad with his pains, and furious to engage, The serpent champs the steel, and bites the spear, Till blood and venom all the point besmear. But still the hurt he yet receiv'd was slight ; For, whilst the champion with redoubled might Strikes home the jav'lin, his retiring foe Shrinks from the wound, and disappoints the blow. . The dauntless hero still pursues his stroke, And presses forward, 'till a knotty oak Retards his foe, and stops him in the rear ; Full in his throat he plung'd the fatal spear, That in th' extended neck a passage found, And pierc'd the solid timber through the wound, Fix'd to the reeling trunk, with many a stroke Of his huge tail, he lash'd the sturdy oak ; Till spent with toil, and labouring hard for breath, He now lay twisting in the pangs of death. Cadmus beheld him wallow in a flood Of swimming poison, intermix'd with blood ; When suddenly a speech was heard from high, (The speech was heard, nor was the speaker nigh) " Why dost thou thus with secret pleasure see, Insulting man ! what thou thyself shaltSse ? " Astonish'd at the voice, he stood amaz'd, And all around with inward horror gaz'd : When Pallas swift descending from the skies, Pallas, the guardian of the bold and wise. Bids him plow up the field, and scatter round The dragon's teeth o'er all the furrow'd ground ; 90 TRANSLATIONS. Then tells the youth how to his wondering eyes • Embattled armies from the field should rise. He sows the teeth at Pallas's command, And flings the future people from his hand. The clods grow warm, and crumble where he sows ; And now the pointed spears advance in rows ; Now nodding plumes appear, and shining crests, Now the broad shoulders and the rising breasts ; O'er all the field the breathing haFvest swarms, A growing host, a crop of men and arms. So through the parting stage a figure rears Its body up, and limb by limb appears By just degrees ; till all the man arise. And in his full proportion strikes the eyes. Cadmus surpris'd, and startled at the sight Of his new foes, prepar'd himself for fight : When one cry'd out, " Forbear, fond man, forbear To mingle in a blind promiscuous war." This said, he struck his brother to the ground. Himself expiring by another's wound ; Nor did the third his conquest long survive, Dying ere scarce he had begun to live. The dire example ran through all the field, Till heaps of brothers were by brothers kill'd ; The furrows swam in blood : and only five Of all the vast increase were left alive. Echion one, at Pallas's command. Let fall the guiltless weapon from his hand ; And with the rest a peaceful treaty makes. Whom Cadmus as his friends and partners takes ; So founds a city on the promis'd earth. And gives his new Boeotian empire birth. ovid's metamorphoses. 91 Here Cadmus reign'd ; and now one would have guess'd The royal founder in his exile blest ; Long did he live within his new abodes, Ally'd by marriage to the deathless gods ; And, in a fruitful wife's embraces old, A long increase of children's children told : But no frail man, however great or high. Can be concluded blest before he die. ActaBon was the first of all his race, "Who griev'd his grandsire in his borrow'd face; Condemn'd by stern Diana to bemoan The branching horns, and visage not his own ; To shun his once-lov'd dogs, to bound away, And from their huntsman to become their prey. And yet consider why the change was wrought, You'll find it his misfortune, not his fault ; Or if a fault, it was the fault of chance : For how can guilt proceed from ignorance ? THE TEANSFOEMATIOX OF ACTION INTO A STAG. In a fair chase a shady mountain stood. Well stor'd with game, and mark'd with trails of blood. Here did the huntsmen till the heat of day Pursue the stag, and load themselves with prey ; When thus Actaeon calling to the rest : - " My friends," says he, " our sport is at the best. The sun is high advanc'd, and downward sheds His burning beams directly on our heads ; Then by consent abstain from further spoils, Call off the d:)gs, and gather up the toils ; 9^ TRANSLATIONS. And ere to-morrow's sun begins his race, Take the cool morning to renew the chase." They all consent, and in a cheerful train The jolly huntsmen, loaden with the slain, Return in triumph from the sultry plain. Down in a vale with pine and cypress clad, Refresh'd with gentle winds, and brown with shade, The chaste Diana's private haunt, there stood Full in the centre of the darksome wood A spacious grotto, all around o'er-grbwn With hoary moss, and arch'd with pumice-stone, From out its rocky clefts the waters flow. And trickling swell into a lake below. Nature had every where so play'd her part. That every where she seem'd to vie with art. Here the bright goddess, toil'd and chaf'd with heat, ' Was wont to bathe her in the cool retreat. Here did she now with all her train resort, Panting with heat, and breathless from the sport ; Her armour-bearer laid her bow aside. Some loos'd her sandals, some her veil unty'd ; Each busy nymph her proper part undrest ; While Crocale, more handy than the rest, Gather'd her flowing hair, and in a noose Bound it together, whilst her own hung loose. Five of the more ignoble sort by turns Fetch up the water, and unlade their urns. Now all undrest the shining goddess stood, When young Actgeon, wilder'd in the wood, To the cool grot by his hard fate betray'd. The fountains fiU'd with naked nymphs survey'd ovid's metamorphoses. 93 The frighted virgins shriek'd at the surprise, (The forest echo'd with their piercing cries) Then in a huddle round their goddess prest ; She, proudly eminent above the rest, With blushes glow'd ; such blushes as adorn The ruddy welkin, or the purple morn ; And tho' the crowding nymphs her body hide, Half backward shrunk, and view'd him from aside. Surpris'd, at first she would have snatch'd her bow, But sees the circling waters round her flow ; These in the hollow of her hand she took. And dash'd 'em in his face, while thus she spoke : " Tell if thou canst the wondrous sight disclos'd, A goddess naked to thy view expos'd." This said, the man began to disappear By slow degrees, and ended in a deer. A rising horn on either brow he wears. And stretches out his neck, and pricks his ears ; Bough is his skin, with sudden hairs o'er-grown, His bosom pants with fears before unknown, Transform'd at length, he flies away in haste. And wonders why he flies away so fast. But as by 'chance, within a neighbouring brook, He saw his branching horns and alter' d look, Wretched Actaeon ! in a doleful tone He try'd to speak, but only gave a groan ; And as he wept, within the wat'ry glass He saw the big round drops, with silent pace. Bun trickling down a savage hairy face. What should he do ? Or seek his old abodes, Or herd among the deer, and sculk in woods ? 94 TRANSLATIONS. Here shame dissuades him, there his fear prevails, And each by turns his aching heart assails. As he thus ponders, he behind him spies His opening hounds, and now he hears their cries : A generous pack, or to maintain the chase, Or snuff the vapour from the scented grass. He bounded off with fear, and swiftly ran O'er craggy mountains, and the flowery plain ; Through brakes and thickets forc'd his way, and flew Through many a ring, where once he did pursue. In vain he oft endeavour'd to proclaim His new misfortune, and to tell his name ; Nor voice nor words the brutal tongue supplies ; From shouting men, and horns, and dogs he flies, Deafen'd and stunn'd with their promiscuous cries. When now the fleetest of the pack, that prcst Close at his heels, and sprung before the rest. Had fasten'd on him, straight another pair Hung on his wounded haunch, and held him there, Till all the pack came up, and every hound Tore the sad huntsman, grov'ling on the ground. Who now appear'd but one continu'd wound. With dropping tears his bitter fate he moans, ' And fills the mountain with his dying groans. His servants with a piteous look he spies, And turns about his supplicating eyes. His servants, ignorant of what had chanc'd, With eager haste and joyful shouts advanc'd. And call'd their lord Actaeon to the game : He shook his head in answer to the name ; He heard, but wish'd he had indeed been gone, Or only to have stood a looker on. 95 But, to his grief, he finds himself too near, And feels his rav'nous dogs with fury tear Their wretched master, panting in a deer. THE BIRTH OF BACCHUS. Actaeon's sufferings, and Diana's rage, Did all the thoughts of men and gods engage ; S'ome call'd the evils which Diana wrought, Too great, and disproportion'd to the fault • Others again esteem'd Act99on's woes Fit for a virgin goddess to impose. The hearers into different parts divide. And reasons are produced on either side. Juno alone, of all that heard the news. Nor would condemn the goddess, nor excuse : She heeded not the justice of the deed, But joy'd to see the race of Cadmus bleed ; For still she kept Europa in her mind, And, for her sake, detested all her kind. Besides, to aggravate her hate, she heard How Semele, to Jove's embrace preferr'd, Was now grown big with an immortal load, And carry 'd in her womb a future god. Thus terribly incens'd the goddess broke To sudden fury, and abruptly spoke. " Are my reproaches of so small a force ? 'Tis ^ime I then pursue another course : It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die, If I'm indeed the mistress of the sky ; If rightly styl'd among the powers above The wife and sister of the thundering Jove ; ^6 TRANSLATIONS. (And none can sure a sister's right deny) It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die. She boasts an honour I can hardly claim ; Pregnant, she rises to a mother's name ; While proud and vain she triumphs in her Jove, And shows the glorious tokens of his love : But if I'm still the mistress of the skies, By her own lover the fond beauty dies." This said, descending in a yellow cloud, Before the gates of Semele she stood. Old Beroe's decrepit shape she wears. Her wrinkled visage, and her hoary hairs ; Whilst in her trembling gait she totters on, And learns to tattle in the nurse's tone. The goddess, thus disguis'd in age, beguil'd With pleasing stories her false foster-child. Mudi did she talk of love, and when she came To mention to the nymph her lover's name, Fetching a sigh, and holding down her head, " 'Tis well," says she, " if all be true that's said But trust me, child, I'm much inclin'd to fear Some counterfeit in this your Jupiter. Many an honest, well-designing maid, Has been by these pretended gods betray'd. But if he be indeed the thundering Jove, Bid him, when next he courts the rites of love, Descend triumphant from th' ethereal sky. In all the pomp of his divinity ; Encompass'd round by those celestial charms, With which he fills th' immortal Juno's arms." Th' unwary nymph, insnar'd with what she said, Desir'd of Jove, when next he sought her bed, ovid's metamorphoses. 97 To grant a certain gift which she would chuse ; " Fear not," replj'd the god, " that I'll refuse Whate'er you ask : may Styx confirm my voice, Chuse what you will, and you shall have your choice. " Then," says the nymph, " when next you seek my arms, May you descend in those celestial charms. With which your Juno's bosom you inflame And fill with transport heaven's immortal dame." The god surpris'd, would fain have stopp'd her voice * But he had sworn, and she had made her choice. To keep his promise he ascends, and shrouds His awful brow in whirlwinds and in clouds ; Whilst all around, in terrible array, His thunders rattle, and his lightnings play. And yet, the dazzling lustre to abate, He set not out in all his pomp and state, Clad in the mildest lightning of the skies. And arm'd with thunder of the smallest size : Not those huge bolts, by which the giants slain, Lay overthrown on the Phlegrean plain. 'Twas of a lesser mould, and lighter weight ; They call it thunder of a second-rate. For the rough Cyclops, who by Jove's command Temper'd the bolt and turn'd it to his hand, Work'd up less flame and fury in its make, And quench'd it sooner in the standing lake. Thus dreadfully adorn'd, with horror bright, Th' illustrious god, descending from his height. Came rushing on her in a storm of light. The mortal dame, too feeble to engage The ligl^tning's flashes, and the thunder's rage, 98 TRANSLATIONS Consum'd amidst the glories she desir'd, And in the terrible embrace expir'd. But, to preserve his offspring from the tomb, Jove took him smoking from the blasted womb ; And, if on ancient tales we may rely, Inclos'd th' abortive mfant in his thigh. Here, when the babe had all his time fulfill'd, Ino first took him for her foster-child ; Then the Niseans, in their dark abode, Nurs'd secretly with milk the thriving god. THE TRANSFOEMATION OF TIBESIAS. 'Twas now, while these transactions past on earth. And Bacchus thus procur'd a second birth, "When Jove, dispos'd to lay aside the weight Of public empire, and the cares of state ; As'to his queen in nectar bowls he quaff 'd, " In troth," says he, and as he spoke he laugh 'd, " The sense of pleasure in the male is far More dull and dead than what you females share-" Juno the truth of what was said deny'd ; Tiresias therefore must the cause decide ; For he the pleasure of each sex had try'd. It happen'd once, within a shady wood, Two twisted snakes he in con j unction. view'd; When with his staff their slimy folds he broke, And lost his manhood at the fatal stroke. But, after seven revolving years he view'd The self-same serpents in the self-same wood ; " And if," says he, " such virtue in you lie, That he who dares your slimy folds untie Must change his kind, a second stroke I'll try." ovid's meta MORI' hoses. 99. Again he struck the snakes, and stood again New-sex'd, and straight recover'd into man. Him therefore both the deities create The sovereign umpife in their grand debate ; And he declar'd for Jove ; when Juno, fir'd More than so trivial an affair requir'd, Depriv'd him, in her fury, of his sight. And left him groping round in sudden night. But Jove (for so it is in heaven decreed, That no one god repeal another's deed ;) Irradiates all his soul with inward light. And with the prophet's art relieves the want of sight. THE TEANSFOEMATION OF ECHO. Fam'd far and near for knowing things to come, From him th' inquiring nations sought their doom ; The fair Liriope his answers try'd, And first th' unerring prophet justify'd ; This nymph the god Cephisus had abus'd, ' With all his winding waters circumfus'd, And on the Nereid got a lovely boy, Whom the soft maids even then beheld with joy. The tender dame, solicitous to know Whether her child should reach old age or no. Consults the sage Tiresias, who replies, " If e'er he knows himself, he surely dies." Long liv'd the dubious mother in suspense, Till time unriddled all the prophet's sense. Narcissus now his sixteenth year began, Just turned of boy, and on the verge of man ; Many a friend the blooming youth caress'd, Many a love-sick maid her flame confess'd. JOO TRANSLATIONS. Such was his pride, in vain the friend caressM, The love-sick maid in vain her flame confess'd. Once, in the woods, as he pursu'd the chase, The babbling Echo had descry'd hig" face ; She, who in other's words her silence breaks, Nor speaks herself but when another speaks. Echo was then a maid, of speech bereft, Of wonted speech ; for tho' her voice was left, Juno a curse did on her tongue impose. To sport with every sentence in the close. Full often when the goddess might have caught Jove and her rivals in the very fault, This nymph with subtle stories would delay Her coming, till the lovers slipp'd away. The goddess found out the deceit in time. And then she cry'd, " That tongue, for this thy crime, Which could so many subtle tales produce, Shall be hereafter but of little use." Hence 'tis she prattles in a fainter tone. With mimic sounds, and accents not her own. This love-sick virgin, over-joy'd to find The boy alone, still follow 'd hiiji behind ; When, glowing warmly at her near approach. As sulphur blazes at the taper's touch. She long'd her hidden passion to reveal. And tell her pains, but had not words to tell: She can't begin, but waits for the rebound. To catch his voice, and to return the sound. The nymph, when nothing could Narcissus move,* Still dash'd with blushes for her slighted love, • Wktn nothing could Harcisms move. One would think, from the expression, that the means taken by Echo to move Narcissus, had been OVID^S METAMORPHOSES. 101 Liv'd in the shady covert of the woods, In solitary caves and dark abodes ; Where pining wander'd the rejected fair, Till harass'd out, and worn away with care, The sounding skeleton, of blood bereft. Besides her bones and voice had nothing left. Her bones are petrify'd, her voice is found In vaults, where still it doubles every sound. THE STOET OF NAECIS8US. Thus did the nymphs in vain caress the boy, He still was lovely, but he still was coy ; When one fair virgin of the slighted train Thus pray'd the gods, provok'd by his disdain, " Oh may he love like me, and love like me in vain ! " Rhamnusia pity'd the neglected fair. And with just vengeance answer' d to her prayer. There stands a fountain in a darksome wood, Nor stain'd with falling leaves nor rising mud ; Untroubled by the breath of winds it rests, Unsully'd by the touch of men or beasts ; High bowers of shady trees above it grow, And rising grass and cheerful greens below. Pleas'd with the form and coolness of the place,* And over-heated by the morning chase, Narcissus on the grassy verdure lies : But whilst within the crystal fount he tries To quench his heat, he feels new heats arise. specified ; and so th jy are in the original. The truth is, fourteen lines are here omitted, not \» ithout good reason ; but the inartificial connection betrays the omission. ^Pleased with th'- form and coolness of the place. Easier, and better than the original, — '■^faciemque loci, fontemque secutus" Yet> without losing the Ovidian turn of expression. ■f02 TRANSLATIONS. For as his own bright image he survey'd, He fell in love with the fantastic shade ; And o'er the fair resemblance hung nnmov'd, Nor knew, fond youth ! it was himself he lov'd. The well-turn'd neck and shoulders he descries, The spacious forehead, and the sparkling ej^es ; The hands that Bacchus might not scorn to show, And hair that round Apollo's head might flow, With all the purple youthfulness of face, That gently blushes in the wat'ry glass. By his own flames consum'd the lover lies, And gives himself the wound by which he dies. To the cold water oft he joins his lips. Oft catching at the beauteous shade he dips His arms, as often from himself he slips. Nor knows he who it is his arms pursue With eager clasps, but loves he knows not who. What could, fond youth, this helpless passion move ? What kindle in thee this unpity'd love ? Thy own warm blush within the water glows. With thee the colour'd shadow comes and goes. Its empty being on thyself relies ; Step thou aside, and the frail charmer dies. Still o'er the fountain's wat'ry gleam he stood, Mindless of sleep, and negligent of food ; Still view'd his face, and languish'd as he view'd. At length he rais'd his head, and thus began To vent his griefs, and tell the woods his pain. * You trees," says he, " and thou surrounding grove, Who oft have been the kindly scenes of love, Tell me, if e'er within your shades did lie A youth so tortur'd, so perplex'd as I ? ovid's metamor pho & es. 103 I who before me see the charming fair, Whilst there he stands, and yet he stands not there . In such a maze of love my thoughts are lost ; And yet no bulwark'd town nor distant coast. Preserves the beauteous youth from being seen, No mountains rise, nor oceans flow between. A shallow water hinders my embrace ; And yet the lovely mimic wears a face That kindly ^miles, and when I bend to join My lips to his, he fondly bends to mine. '■ r^ Hear, gentle youth, and pity my complaint, Come from thy well, thou fair inhabitant. My charms an easy conquest have obtain'd O'er other hearts, by thee alone disdain'd. But why should I despair ? I'm sure he burns With equal flames, and languishes by turns. Whene'er I stoop he offers at a kiss. And when my arms I stretch, he stretches his. His eye with pleasure on my face he keeps, He smiles my smiles, and when I weep he weeps.^ ^ Whene'er I speak, his moving lips appear " To utter something, which I cannot hear. " Ah wretched me ! I now begin too late To find out all the long-perplex'd deceit ; It is myself I love, myself I see ; The gay delusion is a part of me. I kindle up the fires by which I burn. And my own beauties from the well return. Whom should I court ? how utter my complaint ? Enjoyment but produces my restraint, And too much plenty makes me die for want. i04 TRANSLATIONS. How gladly would I from myself remove f And at a distance set the thing I love. My breast is warm'd with such unusual fire, I wish him absent whom I most desire. And now I faint with grief ; my fate draws nigh ; In all the pride of blooming youth I die. Death will the sorrows of my heart relieve. might the visionary youth survive, 1 should with joy my latest breath resign I But oh ! I see his fate involv'd in mine." This said, the weeping youth again return'd To the clear fountain, where again he burn'd ; His tears defac'd the surface of the well With circle after circle, as they fell : And now the lovely face but half appears, O'errun with wrinkles, and deform'd with tears. " Ah whither," cries Narcissus, " dost thou fly ? Let me still feed the flame by which I die ; Let me still see, tho' I'm no further blest," Then rends his garment off, and beats his breast His naked bosom redden'd with the blow, In such a blush as purple clusters show, Ere yet the sun's autumnal heats refine Their sprightly juice, and mellow it to wine. The glowing beauties of his breast he spies, And with a new redoubled passion dies. As wax dissolves, as ice begins to run. And trickle into drops before the sun ; So melts the youth, and languishes away, His beauty withers, and his limbs decay ; And none of those attractive charms remain, To which the slighted Echo sued in vain. 105 She saw him in his present misery, Whom, spite of all her wrongs, she griev'd to see - She answer'd sadly to the lover's moan, Sigh'd back his sighs, and groan'd to every groan : " Ah youth ! belov'd in vain," Narcissus cries ; " Ah youth ! belov'd in vain," the nymph replies. " Farewel," says he ; the parting sound scarce fell From his faint lips, but she replied, " Farewel." Then on th' unwholesome earth he gasping lies. Till death shuts up those self-admiring eyes. To the cold shades his flitting ghost retires, And in the Stygian waves itself admires. For him the Naiads and the Dryads mourn, Whom the sad Echo answers in her turn ; And now the sister-nymphs prepare his urn : When, looking for his corpse, they only found A rising stalk, with yellow blossoms crown'd. THE STOKY OF PENTHEU8. This sad event gave blind Tiresias fame, Through Greece establish'd in a prophet's name. Th' unhallow'd Pentheus only durst deride The cheated people, and their eyeless guide. To whom the prophet in his fury said. Shaking the hoary honours of his head ; " 'Twere well, presumptuous man, 'twere well for thee If thou wert eyeless too, and blind, like me : For the time comes, nay, 'tis already here, When the young god's solemnities appear ; Which, if thou dost not with just rites adorn, Thy impious carcass, into pieces torn. Shall strew the woods, and hang on every thorn. VOL. I. — 5* 106 TRANSLATIONS. Then, then^ remember what I now fortel, And own the blind Tiresias saw too well." Still Pentheus scorns him, and derides his skill, But time did all the promis'd threats fulfil. For now thro' prostrate Grreece young Bacchus rode, Whilst howling matrons celebrate the god. All ranks and sexes to his orgies ran, To mingle in the pomps, and fill th.e train. When Pentheus thus his wicked rage express'd ; " What madness, Thebans, has your souls possess'd ? Can hollow timbrels, can a drunken shout. And the lewd clamours of a beastly rout, Thus quell your courage ? can the weak alarm Of women's yells, those stubborn souls disarm. Whom nor the sword nor trumpet e'er could fright, Nor the loud din and horror of a fight ? And you, our sires, who left your old abodes. And fix'd in foreign earth your country gods ; Will you without a stroke your city yield. And poorly quit an undisputed field ? But you, whose youth and vigour should inspire Heroic warmth, and kindle martial fire, Whom burnish'd arms and crested helmets grace. Not flowery garlands and a painted face ; Remember him to whom you stand ally'd : The serpent for his well of waters dy'd. He fought the strong ; do you his courage show, And gain a conquest o'er a feeble foe. If Thebes must fall, oh might the fates afford , A nobler doom from famine, fire, or sword ! Then might the Thebans perish with renown : But now a beardless victor sacks the town ; ovid's metamorphoses. 107 "Whom nor the prancing steed, nor pond'rous shield, Nor the hack'd helmet, nor the dusty field, But the soft joys of luxury and ease, The purple vests,- and flowery garlands please. Stand then aside, I'll make the counterfeit Renounce his godhead, and confess the cheat. Acrisius from the Grecian walls repell'd This boasted power.; why then should Pentheus yield; Go quickly, drag th' audacious boy to me ; ' I'll try the force of his divinity." Thus did th' audacious wretch those rites profane, His friends dissuade th' audacious wretch in vain ; In vain his grandsire urg'd him to give o'er His impious threats ; the wretch but raves the more. So have I seen a river gently glide, In a smooth course and inoffensive tide ; But if with dams its current we restrain, It bears down all, and foams along the plain. But now his servants came besmear'd with blood, Sent by their haughty prince to seize the god ; The god they found not in the frantic throng, But dragg'd a zealous votary along. THE MARINERS TRANSFORMED TO DOLPHINS. Him Pentheus view'd with fury in his look, And scarce withheld his hands while thus he spoke : " Vile slave ! whom speedy vengeance shall pursue, And terrify thy base seditious crew : Thy country and thy parentage reveal. And why thou join'st in these mad orgies tell." The captive views him with undaunted eyes. And, arm'd with inward innocence, replies. 108 TRANSLATIONS. " From high Meonia's rocky shores I carae, Of poor descent, Acoetes is my name : My sire was meanly born ; no oxen plow'd His fruitful fields, nor in his pastures Ic 7,''d. His whole estate within the waters lay ; With lines and hooks he caught the finny prey. His art was all his livelihood ; which he Thus with his dying lips bequeath'd to me : In streams, my boy, and rivers, take thy chance ; There swims," said he, " thy whole inheritance. " Long did I live on this poor legacy ; Til] tir'd with rocks, and my own native sky, To arts of navigation I inclined ; Observ'd the turns and changes of the wind : Learn'd the fit havens, and began to note The stormy Hyades, the rainy Goat, The bright Taygete, and the shining bears, With all the sailor's catalogue of stars. " Once, as by chance for Delos I design'd, My vessel, driv'n by a strong gust of wiLt'3^ Moor'd in a Chian creek ; ashore I went. And all the following night in Chios spent. When morning rose, I sent my mates to bring Supplies of water from a neighb'riug spring, Whilst I the motion of the winds explor'd ; Then summon'd in my crew, and went aboard. Opheltes heard my summons, and with joy Brought to the shore a soft and lovely boy, With more than female sweetness in his look, Whom straggling in the neighb'riug fields he took. With fumes of wine the little captive glows, And nods with sleep, and staggers as he goes. ovid's metamorphoses. 109 " I view'd him nicely, and began to trace Each heavenly feature, each immortal grace, And saw divinity in all his face. * I know not who,' said I, ' this god should be ; But that he is a god I plainly see : And thou, whoe'er thou art, excuse the force These men have us'd ; and, oh ! befriend our course ' * Pray not for us,' the nimble Dictys cry'd, Dictys, that could the main- top-mast bestride, And down the rope with active vigour slide. To the same purpose old Epopeus spoke, Who overlook'd the oars, and tim'd the stroke j The same the pilot, and the same the rest; Such impious avarice their souls possest. ' Nay, heaven forbid that I should bear away Within my vessel so divine a prey,' Said I ; and stood to hinder their intent : When Lycabas, a wretch for murder sent From Tuscany, to suffer banishment, With his clench'd fist had struck me overboard, Had not my hands, in falling, grasp'd a cord. " His base confederates the fact approve ; When Bacchus, (for 'twas he) began to move, Wak'd by the noise and clamours which they rais'd ; And shook his drowsy limbs, and round him gaz'd : * What means this noise ? ' he cries ; ' am I betray'd ? Ah ! whither, whither must I be convey'd ? ' ' Fear not,' said Proreus, ' child, but tell us where You wish to land, and trust our friendly care.' ' To Naxos then direct your course,' said he ; * Naxos a hospitable port shall be To each of you, a joyful home to me.' no TRANSLATIONS. By every god that rules the sea or sky, The perjur'd villains promise to comply, Aud bid me hasten to unmoor the ship. With eager joy I launch into the deep ; And, heedless of the fraud, for Naxos stand : They whisper oft, and beckon with the hand, And give me signs, all anxious for their prey. To tack about, and steer another way. * Then let some other to my post succeed,' Said I, * I'm guiltless of so foul a deed.' ' What,' says Ethalion, 'must the ship's whole crew Follow your humour, and depend on you ? ' And straight himself he seated at the prore, "And tack'd about and sought another shore. " The beauteous youth now found himself betray'd, And from the deck the rising waves survey'd, And seem'd to weep, and as he wept he said ; * And do you thus my easy faith beguile ? Thus do you bear me to my native isle ? Will such a multitude of men employ Their strength against a weak defenceless boy ? ' " In vain did I the god-like youth deplore, The more I begg'd, they thwarted me the more. And now by all the gods in heaven that hear This solemn oath, by Bacchus' self, I swear, The mighty miracle that did ensue. Although it seems beyond belief, is true. The vessel, fix'd and rooted in the flood, Unmov'd by all the beating billows stood. In vain the mariners would plow the main With sails unfurl'd, and strike their )ars in vain : Ill A.round their oars a twining ivy cleaves, And climbs the mast and hides the cords in leaves : The sails are cover'd with a cheerful green, And berries in the fruitful canvas seen. Amidst the waves a sudden forest rears Its verdant head, and a new spring appears. " The God we now behold with open'd eyes ; A herd of spotted panthers round him lies In glaring forms ; the grapy clusters spread On his fair brows, and dangle on his head. And whilst he frowns, and brandishes his spear. My mates, surpris'd with madness or with fear, Leap'd overboard ; first perjur'd Madon found Rough scales and fins his stiff 'ning sides surround ; * Ah ! what,' cries one, ' has thus transform'd thy look Straight his own mouth grew wider as he spoke ; And now himself he views with like surprise. Still at his oar th' industrious Libys plies ; But, as he plies, each busy arm shrinks in. And by degrees is fashion'd to a fin. Another, as he catches at a cord, Misses his arms, and, tumbling overboard, With his broad fins and forky tail he laves The rising surge, and flounces in the waves. Thus all my crew transform'd around the ship, Or dive below, or on the surface leap. And spout the waves, and wanton in the deep. Full nineteen sailors did the ship convey, A shoal of nineteen dolphins round her play. I only in my proper shape appear. Speechless with wonder, and half dead with fear, 112 TRANSLATIONS. Till Bacchus kindly bid me fear no more. With him I landed on the Chian shore, And him shall ever gratefull}^ adore." " This forging slave," says Pentheus, " would prevail O'er our just fury by a far-fetched tale : Go, let him feel the whips, the swords, the fire, And in the tortures of the rack expire." Th' officious servants hurry him away, And the poor captive in a dungeon lay. But, whilst the whips and tortures are prepared. The gates fly open, of themselves unbarr'd ; At liberty th' unfetter'd captive stands, And flings the loosen'd shackles from his hands. THE DEATH OF PENTHEUS. But Pentheus, grown more furious than before, Resolv'd to send his messengers no more. But went himself to the distracted throng Where high Cithaeron echo'd with their song. And as the fiery war-horse paws the ground, And snorts and trembles at the trumpet's sound ; Transported thus he heard the frantic rout, And rav'd and madden'd at the distant shout. A spacious circuit on the hill there stood, Level and wide, and skirted round with wood ; Here the rash Pentheus, with unhallow'd eyes, The howling dames and mystic orgies spies. His mother sternly view'd him where he stood And kindled into madness as she view'd : Her leafy jav'lin at her son she cast, And cries, " The boar that lays our country waste f ovid's metamorphoses. 113 The boar, my sisters ! aim the fatal dart, And strike the brindled monster to the heart." Pentheus astonish'd heard the dismal sound, And sees the yelling matrons gath'ring round ; He sees, and weeps at his approaching fate, And begs for mercy, and repents too late. " Help, help ! my aunt Autonoe," he cry'd ; " Remember how your own Actaeon dy'd." Deaf to his cries, the frantic matron crops One stretch'd-out arm, the other Ino lops. In vain does Pentheus to his mother sue. And the raw bleeding stumps presents to view : His' mother howl'd ; and heedless of his prayer, Her trembling hand she twisted in his hair, " And this," she cry'd, " shall be Agave's share." When from the neck his struggling head she tore, And in her hands the ghastly visage bore, With pleasure all the hideous trunk survey ; Then pull'd and tore the mangled limbs away, As starting in the pangs of death it lay. Soon as the wood its leafy honours casts, Blown off and scatter'd by autumnal blasts, With such a sudden death lay Pentheus slain, And in a thousand pieces strow'd the plain. By so distinguishing a judgment aw'd, The Thebans tremble, and confess the god. 114 TRANSLATIONS. BOOK lY. THE STOKT OF SALMACIS AND HERMAPHKODITU B.* How Salmacis, with weak enfeebling streams Softens the body, and unnerves the limbs, And what the secret cause shall here be shown ; The cauBe is secret, but th' effect is known. The Naiads nurst an infant heretofore, That Cytherea once to Hermes bore : From both th' illustrious authors of his race The child was nam'd ; nor was it hard to trace Both the bright parents through the infant's face. When fifteen years, in Ida's cool retreat, The boy had told, he left his native seat. And sought fresh fountains in a foreign soil : The pleasure l^sen'd the attending toil. With eager steps the Lycian fields he crost, And fields that border on the Lycian coast ; A river here he view'd so lovely bright. It shew'd the bottom in a fairer light. Nor kept a sand conceal'd from human sight. The stream produc'd nor slimy ooze, nor weeds, Nor miry rushes, nor the spiky reeds ; But dealt enriching moisture all around The fruitful banks with cheerful verdure crown'd. And kept the spring eternal on the ground* • Mr. Addison was very J^oung when he made these translations. Still, one a little wonders how his virgin muse, " nescia quid sit amor'' (as Ovid says of Hermaphroditus) conld be drawn in to attempt this sub- ject : — but the charms of the poetry prevailed. He very properly omits, or softens, the most obnoxious passages of his original ; and, after all, seems half-ashamed of what he had done, as we may conclude from his writing no notes on this story, which, being told in Ovid's best manner, must have suggested to him many fine ones. ovid's metamorphoses. 115 A nymph presides, nor practis'd in the chase, Nor skilful at the bow, nor at the race ; Of all the blue-eyed daughters of the main. The only stranger to Diana's train : Her sisters often, as 'tis said, would cry " Fy Salmacis, what always idle ! fy. Or take thy quiver, or thy arrows seize. And mix the toils of hunting with thy ease." Nor quiver she nor arrows e'er wou'd seize. Nor mix the toils of hunting with her ease. But oft would bathe her in the crystal tide. Oft with a comb her dewy locks divide ; Now in the limpid streams she view'd her face, And drest her image in the floating glass ; On beds of leaves she now repos'd her limbs. Now gather'd flowers that grew about her streams ; And then by chance was gathering, as she stood To view the boy, and long'd for what she view'd. Fain wou'd she meet the youth with hasty feet, She fain wou'd meet him, but refus'd to meet Before her looks were set with nicest care, And well deserv'd to be reputed fair. " Bright youth," she cries, " whom all thy features prove A god, and, if a god, the god of love ; But if a mortal, blest thy nurse's breast, Blest are thy parents, and thy sisters blest : But, oh, how blest ! how more than blest thy bride, AUy'd in bliss, if any yet ally'd. If so, let mine the stol'n enjoyments be ; If not, behold a willing bride in me." The boy knew nought of love, and touch'd with shame, He strove, and blusht, but still the blush became : 116 TRANSLATIONS. In rising blushes still fresh beauties rose ; The sunny side of fruit such blushes shows, And such the moon, when all her silver white Turns in eclipses to a ruddy light. The nymph still begs, if not a nobler bliss, A cold salute at least, a sister's kiss : And now prepares to take the lovely boy Between her arms. He, innocently coy, "Replies, " Or leave me to myself alone. You rude uncivil nymph, or I'll begone." " Fair stranger then," says she, " it shall be so ; " And, for she fear'd his threats, she feign'd to go ; But hid within a coyer t's neighbouring green, She kept him still in sight, herself unseen. The boy now fancies all the danger o'er. And innocently sports about the shore. Playful and wanton to the stream he trips. And dips his foot, and shivers as he dips. The coolness pleas'd him, and with eager haste His airy garments on the banks he cast ; His godlike features, and his heavenly hue, And all his beauties were expos'd to view. His naked limbs tlie nymph with rapture spies, While hotter passions in her bosom rise, Flush in her cheeks, and sparkle in her eyes. She longs, she burns to clasp him in her arms. And looks, and sighs, and kindles at his charms Now all undrest upon the banks he stood, And clapt his sides, and leapt into the flood : His lovely limbs the silver waves divide. His limbs appear more lovely through the tide ; ovid's metamorphoses. 117 As lilies shut within a crystal case, Receive a glossy lustre from the glass. " He's mine, he's all my own," the Naiad cries, And flings off all, and after him she flies. And now she fastens on him as he swims. And holds him close, and wraps about his limbs. The more the boy resisted, and was coy. The more she dipt, and kist the struggling boy. So when the wriggling snake is snatcht on high In eagle's claws, and hisses in the sky, Around the foe his twirling tail he flings, And twists her legs, and writhes about her wings. The restless boy still obstinately strove To free himself, and still refus'd her love. Amidst his limbs she kept her limbs entwined, " And why, coy youth," she cries, " why thus unkind I Oh may the gods thus keep us ever join'd ! Oh may we never, never part again !" So pray'd the nymph, nor did she pray in vain : For now she finds him, as his limbs she prest, Grow nearer still, and nearer to her breast ; Till, piercing each the other's flesh, they run Together, and incorporate in one : Last in one face are both their faces join'd, As when the stock and grafted twig combin'd Shoot up the same, and wear a common rind : Both bodies in a single body mix, A single body with a double sex. The boy, thus lost in woman, now survey'd The river's guilty stream, and thus he pray'd. (He pray'd, but wonder'd at his softer tone, Surpris'd to hear a voice but half his own) 118 TRANSLATIONS. You parent-gods, whose heavenly names I bear, Hear your Hermaphrodite, and grant my prayer; Oh grant, that whomsoe'er these streams contain^ If man he enter'd, he may rise again Supple, unsinew'd, and but half a man ! The heavenly parents answer'd, from on high, Their two-shap'd son, the double votary; Then gave a secret virtue to the flood, And ting'd its source to make his wishes good. NOTES ON SOME OP THE FOREGOING STORIES IN OYID'S METAMORPHOSES. ON THE STORY OF PHAETON, PAGE 49. The story of Phaeton is told with a greater air of majesty J and grandeur than any other in all Ovid. It is, indeed, the most important subject he treats of, except the deluge ; and I cannot but believe that this is the conflagration he hints at in the first book. Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur affore tempus >Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regia cseli Ardeat, et mundi moles operosa laboret ; (though the learned apply those verses to the future burning of the world) for it fully answeiiS that description, if the Caeli miserere tui, circumspica utrumque Furaat uterque polus.- Fumat uterque polus comes up to correptaque regia cceli — Besides, it is Ovid's custom to prepare the reader for a following story, by giving such intimations of it in a foregoing one, which was more particularly necessary to be done before he led us into so strange a story as this he is now upon. P. 49. 1. 7 — For in the portal, &c. We have here the pic- ture of the universe drawn in little. Balaenarumque prementem -^geona suis immunia terga lacertis. 120 NOTES. Mgeon makes a diverting figure in it. -Facies non omnibus una Nee diversa tamen : qualem decet esse sororum. The thought is very pretty, of giving Doris and her daughters such a difference in their looks as is natural to different persons, and yet such a likeness as showed their affinity. Terra viros, urbesque gerit, sylvasque, ferasque, Fluminaque, et nymphas, et caetera nuniina ruris. The less important figures are well huddled together in the pro- miscuous description at the end, which very well represents what the painters call a group. Circum caput omne micantes Deposuit radios ; propiusque accedere jussit. P. 50. 1. 32. — And fiung the hlaze^ &c. It gives us a great image of Phoebus, that the youth was forced to look on him at a distance, and not able to approach him till he had lain » aside the circle of rays that cast such a glory about his head. And, in- deed, we may every where observe in Ovid, that he never fails of a due loftiness in his ideas, tho' he wants it in his words. And this I think infinitely better than to have sublime expressions and mean thoughts, which is generally the true chararacter of Clau- dian and Statius. But this is not considered by them who run * Had lain ande. He uses lain for laid very improperly, here, and elsewhere, on the idea, I suppose, that the verb lay has two perfect par- ticiples; just as the verb load has loadid and loaden. — But the fact is otherwise ; and the reason is not far to seek. The double d in the regular participle " loaded" having an ill sound, the ear gradually introduced load- en, which our nicer writers, and amongst the rest, our author, prefers to loaded, though the last is not entirely disused. There was not the same reason for changing laid to lain ; and the use has never prevailed : if it had, ''had lain andu'' is, by accident, better than ''had laid aside ;" and that meliority of sound induced, no doubt, our delicate writer, who was all ear, to prefer "lain," in this place, to laid, without reflecting that the es- tablished practice was, for good reason, against him. — "Lain" is, properly, the perfect participle of lye — laid, of lay. ovid's metamorphoses. 121 down Ovid in the gross, for a low middle way of writing. What can be more simple and unadorned, than his description of En- celadus in the sixth book ? Nititur ille quidera, pugnatque resurgere saepe, Dextra sed Ausonio mauus est subjecta Peloro, Lseva Pacliyne tibi, Lilibaeo crura premuntur, Degravat -^tna caput, sub qu^ resupinus arenas Ejectat, fiaramamque fero vomit ore Typhaeus. But the image we have here is truly great and sublime, of a giant vomiting out a tempest of fire, and heaving up all Sicily, with the body of an island upon his breast, and a vast promontory on either arm. There are few books that have had worse commentators on them than Ovid's Metamorphoses. Those of the graver sort have been wholly taken up in the mythologies, and think they have appeared very judicious, if they have shown us out of an old author that Ovid is mistaken in a pedigree, or has turned such a person into a wolf that ought to have been made a tiger. Others have employed themselves on what never entered into the poet's thoughts, in adapting a dull moral to every story, and making the persons of his poems to be only nicknames for such virtues or vices ; particularly the pious commentator, Alexander 11 OSS," has dived deeper into our author's design than any of the rest ; for he discovers in him the greatest mysteries of the Chris- tian religion, and finds almost in every page some typical repre- sentation of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But if these writers have gone too deep, others have been wholly employed in the surface, most of them serving only to help out a school-boy in the construing part ; or if they go out of their way, it is only to mark out the griGmce of the author, as they call them, which are generally the heaviest pieces of a poet, distinguished from the rest by Italian characters. The best of Ovid's expositors is VOL. I. — 6 122 NOTES. he that wrote for the Dauphin's use, who has very well shewn the meaning of the author, but seldom reflects on his beauties or im- perfections ; for in most places he rather acts the geographer than the critic, and, instead of pointing out the fineness of a de- scription, only tells you in what part of the yorld the place is situated. I shall, therefore, only consider Ovid under the charac- ter of a poet, and endeavour to show him impartially, without the usual prejudice of a translator ; which I arh the more willing to do, because I believe such a comment would give the reader a truer taste of poetry than a comment on any other poet would do ; for in reflecting on the ancient poets, men think they may venture to praise all they meet with in some, and scarce any thing in others ; but Ovid is confest to have a mixture of both kinds, to have something of the best and worst poets, and by conse- quence, to be the fairest subject for criticism. P. 51. 1. 13. My son^ says he, &c. Phoebus 's speech is very nobly ushered in, with the terque quaterque concutiens illustre caput — and well represents the danger and difficulty of the undertaking ; but that which is its peculiar beauty, and makes it truly Ovid's, is the representing them just as a father would to his young son ; Per tamen adversi gradieris cornua taui'i, Hsemoniosqiie arcus, violentique ora leonis, Ssevaque circuitu eurvantem braehia longo Scorpion, atque aliter eurvantem braehia eanerum. for one while he scares him with bugbears in the way, Vasti quoque rector Ol3'mp3, Qui fera terribili jaeuletur fulmina dextra, Non agat hos currua ; et quid Jove majus liabetur? Depreeor hoc unum quod vero nomine paena, Non honor est. Poenam, PhaCton, pro iiiunerc poacis. and in other places perfectly tattles like a father, which by the ovid's metamorphoses. 123 way makes the length of the speech very natural, and concludes with all the fondness and concern of a tender parent. Patrio pater esse metu probor ; aspice vultus Ecce meos : utmamque oculos m pectore posses Inserere, et patrias intus deprendere curas ! , at Oii .o, the decency of the poet, and the unaffected virine of ihe man; who, n >t to make a merit of his 'moral scruples, [)retends only a critical. For, th<;1 this last was nothing mo e than a pretence, aj^pears fi-om tlie foliuwiiiLf stoi-y of JSarcissus; where Echo is, ai?ain, introduceil by Ovid plat/ing o)i. word-^' but so inoffensively, that our critical traiislatur condescends to jo/a^ witii her. Afi youth ! beloved in vain, Narcissus cries ; Ah youth ! beloved in vain, tlie nymph replies Farexcd, says lie ; the parting sound scarce fell From his faint lips, butsho replied, /areuj«i. ovid's metamorphoses. 133 whole words, as puns, echos, and the like. Besides these two kinds of false and true wit, there is another of a middle nature, that has something of both in it. When in two ideas that have some resemblance with each other, and are both expressed by the same word, we make use of the ambiguity of the word to speak that of one idea included under it, which is proper to the other. Thus, for example, most languages have hit on a word, which pro- perly signifies fire, to express love by, (and therefore we may be sure there is some resemblance in the ideas mankind have of them ;) from hence the witty poets of all languages, when they have once called love a fire, consider it no longer as the passion, but speak of it under the notion of a real fire, and, as the turn of wit requires, make the same word in the same sentence stand for either of the ideas that is annexed to it. When Ovid's Apollo falls in love, he burns with a new flame ; when the sea-nymphs languish with this passion, they kindle in the water ; the Greek epigrammatist fell in love with one that flung a snow-ball at him, and therefore takes occasion to admire how fire could be thus con- cealed in snow. In short, whenever the poet feels any thing in this love that resembles something in fire, he carries on this agreement into a kind of allegory ; but if, as in the preceding in- stances, he finds any circumstance in his love contrary to the na- ture of fire, he calls his love a fire, and by joining this circum- stance to it, surprises his reader with a seeming contradiction. I should not have dwelt so long on this instance, had it not been so frequent in Ovid, who is the greatest admirer of this mixed wit of all the ancients, as our Cowley is among the moderns. Homer, Virgil, Horace, and the greatest poets scorned it, as in- deed it is only fit for epigram and little copies of verses ; one would wonder therefore how so sublime a genius as Milton could sometimes fall into it, in such a work as an epic poem. But we must attribute it to his humouring the vicious taste of the age he 1/ 134 NOTES. lived in, and the false judgment of our unlearned English readers in general, who have few of them a relish of the more masculine and noble beauties of poetry. / PAB. YI. / Ovid seems particularly pleased with the subject of this story, but has notoriously fallen into a fault he is often taxed with, of not knowing when he has said enough, by his endeavouring to excel. How has he turned and twisted that one thought of Nar- cissus's being the person beloved, and the lover too ? Cunctaque miratur quibus est mirabilis ipse. Qui probat, ipse probatui". Dumque petit petitur, pariterque incendit et ardet Atque oculos idem qui decipit incitat error. Perque oculos perit ipse sues Uror amore mei flammas moveoque feroque, &c. But we cannot meet with a better instance of the extravagance and wantonness of Ovid's fancy, than in that particular circum- stance at the end of the story of Narcissus's gazing on his face after death in the Stygian waters. The design was very bold, of making a boy fall in love with himself here on earth, but to tor- ture him with the same passion after death, and not to let his ghost rest in quiet, was intolerably cruel and uncharitable. P. 101. 1. 25. — But whilst within, &c. Dumque sitiiii sedare cupit sitis altera crevit. We have here a touch of that mixed wit I have before spoken of, but I think the measure of pun in it outweighs the true wit ; for if we express the thought in other words, the turn is almost lost. This passage of Nar- cissus probably gave Milton the hint of applying it to Eve, though I think her surprise at the sight of her own face in the water, far more just and natural, than this of Narcissus. She was a raw unexperienced being, just created and therefore might .35 easily be subject to the delusion ; but Narcissus had been in the world sixteen years, and was brother and son to the water-nymphs, and therefore to be supposed conversant with fountains long be- fore this fatal mistake. P. 102. 1. 29. — " You trees, ''^ says he, &c. Ovid is very justly celebrated for the passionate speeches of his poem. They y have generally abundance of nature in them, but I leave it to better judgment to consider whether they are not often too witty and too tedious. The poet never cares for smothering a good thought that comes in his way, and never thinks he can draw tears enough from his reader, by which means our grief is either diverted or spent before we come to his conclusion ; for we cannot at the same time be delighted with the wit of the poet, and con- cerned for the person that, speaks it ; and a great critic has ad- mirably well observed, Lamentationes debent esse breves et con- cisce, nam lachryma subitb excrescit, et difficile est auditor em vel lector em in summo animi affectu diu tenere. Would any one in Narcissus's condition have cried out — Inopein me copia fecit ? Or can any thing be more unnatural than to turn off from his sorrows for the sake of a pretty reflection ? utinam nostro secedere corpore possem ! Votnm in amante novum ; vellem, quod amamus, abesset. None, I suppose, can be much grieved for one that is so witty on his own afflictions. But I think we may every where observe in Ovid that he employs his invention more than his judgment, and speaks all the ingenious things that can be said on the sub- ject, rather than those which are particularly proper to the person and circumstances of the speaker. 136 NOTES. FAB. VII. P. 106. 1. 9. — W/ie^ Pentheus thus. There is a great deal of spirit and fire in this speech of Pentheus, but I believe none besides Ovid would have thought of the transformation of the serpent's teeth for an incitement to the Thebans' courage, when he desires them not to degenerate from their great forefather the dragon, and\draws a parallel between the behaviour of them both. Este, preeor memores, qua sitis stirpe creati, lUiusque animos, qui multos perdidit unus, Sumite sei-pentis: pro fontibus ille, lacuqu<^ Interiit, at vos pro famd vineite vestrd. Ille dedit Letho fortes, vos pellite molles, Et patrium revocate Decus. FAB. YIII. The story of Acoetes has abundance of nature in all the parts of it, as well in the description of his own parentage and em- ployment, as in that of the sailors' characters and manners. But the short speeches scattered up and down iil it, which make the Latin very natural, cannot appear so well in our language, which is much more stubborn and unpliant, and therefore are but as so many rubs in the story, that are still turning the narration out of its proper course. The transformation at the latter end is wonderfully beautiful. FAB. IX. Ovid has two very good similies on Pentheus, where he com- pares him to a river in a former story, and to a war-horse in the present. POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIOiVS. I [To Mr. Dryd^n :— Tliese lines, of which Johnson says, " in his twenty- second year he first shewed his power of English poetry by some verses addressed to Dry den," hardly deserve the careful examination which Hurd has bestowed upon them. They were probably called forth by the publi- cation of Tonson's Third Miscellany, which contained of Dryden's, beside a few songs, the first book of the Metamorphoses, with part of the ninth and sixteenth. Bryden, whom his politics and change of religion had driv- en, in his old age, to earn his bread by translating, was gratified by the ap- - plause of a promising scholar from the University of wuich he had writ- ten — "Oxford to him a dearer name shall be Than his own mother University : Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage ; He chooses Athens in his riper age ; " and an intercourse began, which if Macaulay's conjecture be true, had a decisive influence upon Addison's fortunes ; for Dryden presented him to Congreve, and Congreve to Montague, afterwards Lord Halifax, one of hia earliest and most efiicient patrons. — G.] ' TO ME. DKYDEN/ How long, great poet, shall thy sacred lays Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise ? Can neither injuries of time, or age. Damp thy poetick heat, and quench thy rage ? Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote, "^ Grief chill'd his breast, and check'd his rising thought ; Pensive and sad, his drooping muse betrays The Roman genius in its last decays. Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possest, And second youth is kindled in thy breast ; Thou mak'st the beauties of the Romans known,** And England boasts of riches not her own ; a It would not be fair to criticise our author's poetry, especially the poetr5r of his younger days, very exactly. He was not a poet born; or, he had not studied, with sufficient care, the best models of English poetry. Whatever the cause might be, he had not the command of what Dryden so eminently possessed, a truly poetic diction. His poetry is only pure prose, put into verse. And " Non satis est puris versum perscribere verbis." However, it may not be amiss to point out the principal defects of his ex- pression, that his great example may not be pleaded in excuse of them. b Thou makest, vide after, Thou teachest. This way of using verbs of the present and imperfect tense, in the second person singular, should be utterly banished from our poetry. The sound is intolerable. Milton aiiiQ others have ratlier chosen to violate grammar itself, than offend the ea*. thus unmercifully. This libeity ma}', perhapsj be taken sometimes, in the greater poetry ; m odes especially. But the better way will generally be to turn the expression differently : As, 'Tis thine to teach, or in some sxich way / 140 POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. Thy lines have heighten'd Virgil's majesty, And Horace wonders at himself in thee. Thou teachest Persius to inform our isle In smoother numbers, and a clearer stile ; And Juvenal, instructed in thy page, Edges his satyr, and improves his rage. Thy copy casts a fairer light on all. And still outshines the bright original. Now Ovid boasts =* th' advantage of thy song, And tells his story in the British tongue ; Thy charming verse, ^ and fair translations, show How thy own laurel first began to grow ; How wild Lycaon chang'd by angry gods, And frighted at himself, ran howling through the woods. mayst thou still the noble task prolong,'^ Nor age, nor sickness interrupt thy song : Then may we wondering read, how human limbs Have water'd kingdoms, and dissolv'd in streams^ , Of those rich fruits that on the fertile mould Turn'd yellow by degrees, and ripen'd into gold : How some in feathers, or a ragged hide. Have liv'd a second life, and difierent natures try'd. Then will thy Ovid, thus transform'd, reveal A nobler change than he himself can tell.« Mag. Coll. Oxon. June 2, 1693. The Author's age 21. b -tK advantage of thy song. An instance of unpoetical expression. Thy charming verse and fair translations. The epithets too general and prosaic. .7^ ^Alexandrines, as they are called, should never be admitted into this Vfeind of verse. But Dryden's uncoufined genius hiid given a sanction to them. «* mayst thou still, &c. See note in the preceding page. It might have stood thus: "Still may thy muse the noble task prolong." ^reveal — tell. Bad rhymes. There are other instances in this short poem ; and in general Mr. Addison was a bad rhyuiist. ^ AN ACCOUNT OF THE GREATEST ENGLISH POETS TO MR. H. S.^" Aprils, 1694. Since, dearest Harry, ^ you will needs request A short account of all the muse-possest, ! That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times, Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes ; Without more preface, writ in formal length. To speak the undertaker's want of strength, * The Sacheverell to whom these lines were addressed, was, accord- ing to one account, a Manxman, who died young, leaving a history of the Isle of Man. He left his papers to Addison, and among them the plan of a tragedy on the death of Socrates. In this case, Johnson's sarcasm is at fault, though it is somewhat strange that with the voucher for this fact among his own papers, he should not have corrected his mistake. — [Vide note to Johnson's Life of Addison.] But as is more generally believed, he was the celebrated Dr. Sacheverell, whose trial excited so much attention ; and Addison is said, on the authority of Dr. Young, to have been in love with a sister of his. This piece was first published in a miscellany, and never reprinted by Addison himself, who probably saw reason, in after years, to change some of his opinions. Johnson says he never printed it. The omission of Shak- speare's name has been often noticed. The finest passage is the lines on Milton.— G. • Henry Sacheverell, whose story is well known. Yet with all his fol- lies, some respect may seem due to the memory of a man, who had merit in his youth, as appears from a ]iaper of verses under his name, in Dryden's Miscellanies; and who lived in the early friendship of Mr. Addison. ^ The introductory and concluding lines of this poem are a bad imita- tion of Horace's manner — Sermoni propiora. In the rest, the poetry is bet- ter than the criticism, which is right or wrong, as it chances ; being echoed from the common voice. 142 POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. Ill try to make their several beauties known, And show their verses worth, tho' not my own. Long had our dull forefathers slept supine, Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine ; 'Till Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose, V And many a story told in rhyme and prose. But age has rusted what the poet writ. Worn out his language, and obscur'd his wit : In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain, And tries to make his readers laugh in vain. Old Spenser,' next, warm'd with poetic rage, In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age ; An age that yet uncultivate and rude, Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursu'd Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods. To dens of dragons, and enchanted woods. But now the mystic tale, that pleas'd of yore, » Can charm an understanding age no more ; ' The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, While the dull moral lies too plain below. We view well-pleas'd at distance all the sights Of arms and palfries, battles, fields, and fights, And damsels in distress, and courteous knights. But when we look too near, the shades decay, And all the pleasing landscape fades away. Great Cowley then^ (a mighty genius) wrote, O'er-run with wit, and lavish of his thought : * Old Spenser. Addison is said to have confessed that when he wrote this judgment, he had never road Spenser. In the Spectator he puts Spenser " in the same class with Milton." — ^G. " Great Cowley then. But if he had not read Spenser, he evidently had i-ead Cowley, whose ]>rose he must have admired, if for nothing else, for its freedom from the faults which are here so justly condemned in his THE GREATEST ENGLISH POETS. 143 His turns too closely on the reader press : He more had pleas'd us, had he pleas'd us less. One glittering thought no sooner strikes our eyes With silent wonder, but new wonders rise, As in the milky-way a shining white O'er-flows the heav'ns with one continu'd light ; That not a single star can shew his rays, Whilst jointly all promote the common blaze. Pardon, great poet, that I dare to name Th' unnumber'd beautieS of thy verse with blame,; Thy fault is only wit in its excess, \^' But wit like thine in any shape will please. What muse but thine can equal hints inspire, And fit the deep-mouth'd Pindar to thy lyre : * Pindar, whom others in a labour'd strain, . And forc'd expression imitate in vain ? Well-pleas'd in thee he soars with new delight, And plays in more unbounded verse, and takes a nobler flight. Blest man ! whose spotless life and charming lays Employ'd the tuneful prelate in thy praise : Blest man ! who now shalt be for ever known In Sprat's successful labours and thy own. But Milton, next, with high and haughty stalks, ' Unfetter'd in m?ijestick numbers walks ; No vulgar hero can his muse ingage ; Nor earth's wide scene confine his hallow'd rage. See ! see, he upward springs, and tow'ring high Spurns the dull province of mortality, verse. Parts of bis criticism are admirable ; but the unfortunate line — " lie more had pleased us," has bepn severely ridicaled. — G. • Cowley had great merit, but nature had formed him to manage Ana? or eon's lute, and not Pindar's Ivre 144 POEMS ON SEVERAL UCCASIONS, Shakes heaven's eternal throne with dire alarms. ' — And sets the Almighty thunderer in arms. What-e'er his pen describes I more than see, Whilst ev'ry verse arrayed in majesty, Bold, and sublime, my whole attention draws. And seems above the critick's nicer laws.' How are you struck with terror and delight, "~~ When angel with arch-angel copes in fight ! . When great Messiah's out-spread banner shines, How does the chariot rattle in his lines ! What sounds of brazen wheels, what thunder, scare, And stun the reader with the din of war ! With fear my spirits and my blood retire. To see the seraphs sunk in clouds of fii-e ; But when, with eager steps, from hence I rise, And view the first gay scenes of Paradise ; What tongue, what words of rapture can express A vision so profuse of pleasantness. ^ Oh had the poet ne'er profan'd his pen, To varnish o'er the guilt of faithless men ; His other works might have deserv'd applause ! But now the language can't support the cause ; While the clean current, tho' serene and bright,'' Betrays a bottom odious to the sight. ■ 1 wonder what these laws could be. Nobody understood the critic's nicest laws, better than Milton, or observed them with more respect. The observation might be true of Shakspeare ; but, by illhap, we do not so much as find his name in this account of English poets. •» A vision so profuse of pleasantness. A prettily turned line. The ex- pression (originally Milton's, P. L. iv. 243. viii. 286) pleased our poet so much, that we have it again in the letter from Italy — proftise of bliss, and elsewhere. *> Serene and bright. Tliis is a strange description of Milton's language, if he means the language of his prose works. Tlie paneg^'ric seems made at random. THE GREATEST ENGLISH POETS. 145 But now my muse a softer strain rehearse, Turn every line with art, and smooth thy verse ; The courtly Waller next commands thy lays : ^^ Muse tune thy verse, with art, to Waller's praise. While tender airs and lovely dames inspire Soft melting thoughts, and propagate desire , So long shall Waller's strains our passions move, And Sacharissa's beauties kindle love. Thy verse, harmonious bard, and flatt'ring song. Can make the vanquish'd great, the coward strong, Thy verse can show ' ev'n Cromwell's innocence. And compliment the storms that bore him hence. Oh had thy muse not come an age too soon, But seen great Nassau on the British throne ! How had his triumphs glitter'd in thy page. And warm'd thee to a more exalted rage ! What scenes of death and horror had we view'd. And how had Boyne's wide current reek'd in blood ! Or, if Maria's charms thou would'st rehearse. In smoother numbers and a softer verse ; Thy pen had well describ'd her graceful air, And Gloriana wou'd have seem'd more fair. Nor must Boscommon pass neglected by, .;s, - That makes ev'n rules a noble poetry : Bules, whose deep sense, and heav'nly numbers show \ The best of critlcks, and of poets too. Nor, Denham, must we e'er forget thy strains, .^^^ While Cooper's Hill commands the neighb'ring plains. * rill/ verse can shoi'\ Of tins an They meet each other, mingling blaze with blaze. ^ Polish'd in courts, and hardened in the field, Renown'd for conquest, and in council skill'd, Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood Of mounting spirits, and fermenting blood : Lodg'd in the soul, with virtue over-rul'd, Inflam'd by reason, and by reason cool'd, • In hours of peace content to be unknown, And only in the field of battle shown: To souls like these, in mutual friendship join'd, Heaven dares intrust the cause of human kind. Britannia's graceful sons appear in arms, ^ Her harass'd troops the hero's presence warms, Whilst the high hills and rivers all around With thund'ring peals of British shouts resound : Doubling their speed, they march with fresh delight, Eager for glory, and require the fight. So the stanch hound the trembling deer pursues, And smells his footsteps in the tainted dews, Tlie remainder of the paragraph is at least good senge, and in the last couplet but one — " In hours of peace, content to be unknown, And only in the field of battle shown — ^" Addison is himself again. The Dutch struck a medal with Marlborough and Eugene's heads in profile, and the inscription — Heroxcm concordia victrix. — G. ^ Britannia's graceful sons. An odd epithet for soldiers, and still more so by its local contrast witli " harassed troops." It requires a moment's reflection to see that they refer to the same persons. But the tameness of the first thrfie couplets of this paragraph is compensated by the simile of the hound, equally just and beautiful, and expressed in Addison's best manner. Though, perhaps, the picture would have been moi-e exact, and none the less poetical, if bounds had been used instead of shoots, in de- scribing the sudden start of the dog on the fresl^ scent. — G. 180 POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. The tedious track unrav'Hng by degrees : But when the scent comes warm in ev'ry breeze, Fir'd at the near approach, he shoots away On his full stretch, and bears upon his prey. The march concludes, ' the various realms are past, Th' immortal Schellenberg appears at last ; Like hills th' aspiring ramparts rise on high, Like valleys at their feet the trenches lie ; Batt'ries on batt'ries guard each fatal pass, Threat'ning destruction ; rows of hollow brass, Tube behind tube, the dreadful entrance keep, Whilst in their wombs ten thousand thunders sleep : Great Churchill owns, charm'd with the glorious sight, His march o'erpaid by such a promis'd fight. A^ 4 The western sun now shot a feeble ray, I And faintly scatter'd the remains of day, Ev'ning approach'd ; but, oh ! what hosts of foes Were never to behold that ev'ning close ! Thick'ning their ranks, and wedg'd in firm array. The close-compacted Britons win their way : In vain the cannon their throng'd war defac'd With tracts of death, and laid the battle waste ; Still pressing forward to the fight, they broke Through flames of sulphur, and a night of smoke, Till slaughter'd legions fiU'd the trench below. And bore their fierce avengers to the foe. High on the works the mingling hosts engage ; The battle kindled into tenfold rage * 2'he march concludes. Fr<:)m this point the poem continues through several paraj^niphs, with a full flt)W of vigorous and haimonious verse, in which the three couplets beginning "The Western Sun," should be parti- cularly mentioned. For the "Schellenberg," see the introduction. — G. THE CAMPAIGN. * 181 With show'rs of bullets, and with storms of fire Burns in full fury ; heaps on heaps expire, Nations with nations mix'd confus'dly die, And lost in one promiscuous carnage lie. How many gen'rous Britons meet their doom, New to the field, and heroes in the bloom ! Th' illustrious youths, that left their native shore To march where Britons never march'd before, (0 fatal love of fame ! glorious heat, * ' Only destructive to the brave and great !) After such toils o'ercome, such dangers past, Stretch'd on Bavarian ramparts, breathe their last. But hold, my muse, may no complaints appear, Nor blot the day with an ungrateful tear ; While Marlbro' lives Britannia's stars dispense A friendly light and shine in innocence. Plunging thro' seas of blood ^ his fiery steed, Where'er his friends retire, or foes succeed ; * Those he supports, these drives to sudden flight. And turns the various fortune of the fight. Forbear, great man, ^ renown'd in arms, forbear To brave the thickest terrors of the war, Nor hazard thus, confus'd in crowds of foes, Britannia's safety, and the world's repose ; Let nations anxious for thy life, abate This scorn of danger, and contempt of fate : ^ Plunging thro' seas of blood. Here Marlborough has a little too much of the * mighty bone,' and Addison seems to forfeit for a moment his claims to the praise of Johnson and Macaulay. — G. ' Where'er his friends retire, or foes succeed. Chronicled, and not un- worthily, in the eleventh chapter of the "Art of sinking in poetry." — G. ^Forbear, great man. Ne rue per niedios nimium temerarius hostes. — PT.ars. 2. vii. v. 590. Imitated also by Voltaire — " Ah cher prince, arrfitez." ^ontenoi. — G. 182 PO*EMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. Thou liv'st not for thyself ; thy queen demands Conquest and peace from thy victorious hands ; Kingdoms and empires in thy fortune join, And Europe's destiny depends on thine. At length the long-disputed pass they gain, By crouded armies fortify'd in vain ; The war breaks in, the fierce Bavarians yield, And see their camp with British legions fill'd. So Belgian mounds ' hear on their shatter'd sides The sea's whole weight, increas'd with swelling tides ; But if the rushing wave a passage finds, Enrag'd by wat'ry moons, and warring winds, The trembling peasant sees his country round Cover'd with tempests, and in oceans drown'd. The few surviving foes disperst in flight, (Refuse of swords, and gleanings of a fight)* In ev'ry rustling wind the victor hear, ^ And Marlbro's form in ev'ry shadow fear, ^So Belgian mounds. In his examination of the simile of the Angela Johnson says: "In the poem now examined (the Campaign) where the English are represented as gaining a fortified pass, by repetition of attack, and perseverance of resolution, their obstinacy of courage and vigor of onset is well illustrated by the sea, that breaks with incessant battery, the dikes of Holland."— G. " M every rustling wind,