Swift has left a

In the year 1718 "Cato" came out. description of the first night of the performance. All the laurels of Europe were scarcely sufficient for the author of this prodigious poem.' Laudations of Whig and Tory chiefs, popular ovations, complimentary garlands from literary men, translations in all languages, delight and homage from all-save from John Dennis in a minority of one -Mr. Addison was called the "great Mr. Addison" after this. The Coffee-house Senate saluted him Divus: it was heresy to question that decree.

alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be tor diffident of himself; and too much concerned about his character as a poet; or (as he worded it), too solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very little matter after all !"-POPE (Spence's Anecdotes).

....

1 "As to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at present to be a bare looker-on.. Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion:

"Envy itself is dumb-in wonder lost;

And factions strive who shall applaud him most.'

.....

"The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hands than the head. . . . . . I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgment (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator."-POPE'S Letter to SIR W. TRUMBULL.

Cato ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue.

It is worth noticing how many things in Cato keep their ground as habitual quotations, e. g. :

". . . . big with the fate

Of Cato and of Rome."

""Tis not in mortals to command success,

But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."

Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1717. And letters of his are extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written to young Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him as "my dearest lord," and asks affectionately about his studies, and writes very prettily about nightingales, and birds'-nests, which he has found at Fulham for his lordship. Those nightingales were intended to warble in the ear of Lord Warwick's mamma. Addison married her ladyship in 1716; and died at Holland House three years after that splendid but dismal union.'

"Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury."

"I think the Romans call it Stoicism."

"My voice is still for war.'

"When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station."

Not to mention

"The woman who deliberates is lost."

And the eternal

66 Plato, thou reasonest well,"

which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play!

"The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused, to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, 'Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.' The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness; it neither found them, nor made them, equal. Rowe's ballad of The Despairing Shepherd' is said to have been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable pair."-DR. JOHNSON.

"I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. At that time he declined it, and I really believe that he would have done well to have declined it now. Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both."-LADY WORTLEY MONTAGU TO POPE. Works, Lord Wharncliffe's edit., vol. ii. p. 111.

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who inherited, on

But it is not for his reputation as the great author of "Cato" and the "Campaign," or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as my Lady Warwick's husband, or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about, hanging and ruthless-a literary Jeffries-in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried: only peccadilloes and small sins against society: only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops;' or a her mother's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her father had purchased, and died, unmarried, at an advanced age. She was of weak intellect.

Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship, for his Collection contains 'Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr. Addison's going to Ireland,' in which her ladyship is called 'Chloe,' and Joseph Addison, Lycidas;' besides the ballad mentioned by the Doctor, and which is entitled 'Colin's Complaint.' But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a specimen :—

"What though I have skill to complain

Though the Muses my temples have crowned;
What though, when they hear my sweet strain,
The Muses sit weeping around.

"Ah, Colin! thy hopes are in vain;

Thy pipe and thy laurel resign;

Thy false one inclines to a swain

Whose music is sweeter than thine.

1 One of the most humorous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the "Spectator" tells us, particularly pleased his friend SIR ROGER.

"Mr. SPECTATOR,

"You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the

nuisance in the abuse of beaux' canes and snuff-boxes. It may be a lady is tried for breaking the peace of our sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerous from the side-box or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian's head or a citizen's wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too little for her husband and children: every one of the little sinners brought

:

country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagancies. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, Sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their head-dresses; for as the humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure. "The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are very airy and very proper for the season; but this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather; besides, I would fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their mothers before them?

"I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of out-works and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops.

Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that it portends the downfall of the French king, and observes, that the farthingale appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and blood-shed, and believe it of the same prognostication as the tail of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think that it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world rather than going out of it," &c. &c.-Spectator, No. 127.

before him are amusing, and he dismisses each with the pleasantest penalties and the most charming words of ad

monition.

Addison wrote his papers as gaily as if he was going out for a holiday. When Steele's "Tatler" first began his prattle, Addison, then in Ireland, caught at his friend's notion, poured in paper after paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his daily observation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed an almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty years old: full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his brain, manúring hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting again, like other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much as yet; a few Latin poems-graceful prolusions; a polite book of travels; a dissertation on medals, not very deep; four acts of a tragedy, a great classical exercise; and the "Campaign," a large prize poem that won an enormous prize. But with his friend's discovery of the "Tatler," Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful talker in the world began to speak. He does not go very deep: let gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he could not go very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night's rest. or his day's tranquillity about any woman in his life:'

1 "Mr. Addison has not had one epithalamium that I can hear of, and must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his own."-POPE's Letters.