Books: Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, etc.

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Contents.

Introduction by Henry Morley.
Joseph Addison.
Richard Savage.
Jonathan Swift.

INTRODUCTION.

Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" were written to serve as
Introductions to a trade edition of the works of poets whom the
booksellers selected for republication. Sometimes, therefore, they
dealt briefly with men in whom the public at large has long ceased
to be interested. Richard Savage would be of this number if
Johnson's account of his life had not secured for him lasting
remembrance. Johnson's Life of Savage in this volume has not less
interest than the Lives of Addison and Swift, between which it is
set, although Savage himself has no right at all to be remembered in
such company. Johnson published this piece of biography when his
age was thirty-five; his other lives of poets appeared when that age
was about doubled. He was very poor when the Life of Savage was
written for Cave. Soon after its publication, we are told, Mr.
Harte dined with Cave, and incidentally praised it. Meeting him
again soon afterwards Cave said to Mr. Harte, "You made a man very
happy t'other day." "How could that be?" asked Harte. "Nobody was
there but ourselves." Cave answered by reminding him that a plate
of victuals was sent behind a screen, which was to Johnson, dressed
so shabbily that he did not choose to appear.

Johnson, struggling, found Savage struggling, and was drawn to him
by faith in the tale he told. We have seen in our own time how even
an Arthur Orton could find sensible and good people to believe the
tale with which he sought to enforce claim upon the Tichborne
baronetcy. Savage had literary skill, and he could personate the
manners of a gentleman in days when there were still gentlemen of
fashion who drank, lied, and swaggered into midnight brawls. I have
no doubt whatever that he was the son of the nurse with whom the
Countess of Macclesfield had placed a child that died, and that
after his mother's death he found the papers upon which he built his
plot to personate the child, extort money from the Countess and her
family, and bring himself into a profitable notoriety.

Johnson's simple truthfulness and ready sympathy made it hard for
him to doubt the story told as Savage told it to him. But when he
told it again himself, though he denounced one whom he believed to
be an unnatural mother, and dealt gently with his friend, he did not
translate evil into good. Through all the generous and kindly
narrative we may see clearly that Savage was an impostor. There is
the heart of Johnson in the noble appeal against judgment of the
self-righteous who have never known the harder trials of the world,
when he says of Savage, "Those are no proper judges of his conduct,
who have slumbered away their time on the down of plenty; nor will
any wise man easily presume to say, 'Had I been in Savage's
condition, I should have lived or written better than Savage.'" But
Johnson, who made large allowance for temptations pressing on the
poor, himself suffered and overcame the hardest trials, firm always
to his duty, true servant of God and friend of man.

Richard Savage's whole public life was built upon a lie. His base
nature foiled any attempt made to befriend him; and the friends he
lost, he slandered; Richard Steele among them. Samuel Johnson was a
friend easy to make, and difficult to lose. There was no money to
be got from him, for he was altogether poor in everything but the
large spirit of human kindness. Savage drew largely on him for
sympathy, and had it; although Johnson was too clear-sighted to be
much deceived except in judgment upon the fraudulent claims which
then gave rise to division of opinion. The Life of Savage is a
noble piece of truth, although it rests on faith put in a fraud.

H. M.

ADDISON.

Joseph Addison was born on the 1st of May, 1672, at Milston, of
which his father, Lancelot Addison, was then rector, near
Ambrosebury, in Wiltshire, and, appearing weak and unlikely to live,
he was christened the same day. After the usual domestic education,
which from the character of his father may be reasonably supposed to
have given him strong impressions of piety, he was committed to the
care of Mr. Naish at Ambrosebury, and afterwards of Mr. Taylor at
Salisbury.

Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for
literature, is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is
injuriously diminished: I would therefore trace him through the
whole process of his education. In 1683, in the beginning of his
twelfth year, his father, being made Dean of Lichfield, naturally
carried his family to his new residence, and, I believe, placed him
for some time, probably not long, under Mr. Shaw, then master of the
school at Lichfield, father of the late Dr. Peter Shaw. Of this
interval his biographers have given no account, and I know it only
from a story of a BARRING-OUT, told me, when I was a boy, by Andrew
Corbet, of Shropshire, who had heard it from Mr. Pigot, his uncle.

The practice of BARRING-OUT was a savage licence, practised in many
schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the
periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of
liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took
possession of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade
their master defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose
that on such occasions the master would do more than laugh; yet, if
tradition may be credited, he often struggled hard to force or
surprise the garrison. The master, when Pigot was a schoolboy, was
BARRED OUT at Lichfield; and the whole operation, as he said, was
planned and conducted by Addison.

To judge better of the probability of this story, I have inquired
when he was sent to the Chartreux; but, as he was not one of those
who enjoyed the founder's benefaction, there is no account preserved
of his admission. At the school of the Chartreux, to which he was
removed either from that of Salisbury or Lichfield, he pursued his
juvenile studies under the care of Dr. Ellis, and contracted that
intimacy with Sir Richard Steele which their joint labours have so
effectually recorded.

Of this memorable friendship the greater praise must be given to
Steele. It is not hard to love those from whom nothing can be
feared; and Addison never considered Steele as a rival; but Steele
lived, as he confesses, under an habitual subjection to the
predominating genius of Addison, whom he always mentioned with
reverence, and treated with obsequiousness.

Addison, who knew his own dignity, could not always forbear to show
it, by playing a little upon his admirer; but he was in no danger of
retort; his jests were endured without resistance or resentment.
But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose
imprudence of generosity, or vanity of profusion, kept him always
incurably necessitous, upon some pressing exigence, in an evil hour,
borrowed a hundred pounds of his friend probably without much
purpose of repayment; but Addison, who seems to have had other
notions of a hundred pounds, grew impatient of delay, and reclaimed
his loan by an execution. Steele felt with great sensibility the
obduracy of his creditor, but with emotions of sorrow rather than of
anger.

In 1687 he was entered into Queen's College in Oxford, where, in
1689, the accidental perusal of some Latin verses gained him the
patronage of Dr. Lancaster, afterwards Provost of Queen's College;
by whose recommendation he was elected into Magdalen College as a
demy, a term by which that society denominates those who are
elsewhere called scholars: young men who partake of the founder's
benefaction, and succeed in their order to vacant fellowships. Here
he continued to cultivate poetry and criticism, and grew first
eminent by his Latin compositions, which are indeed entitled to
particular praise. He has not confined himself to the imitation of
any ancient author, but has formed his style from the general
language, such as a diligent perusal of the productions of different
ages happened to supply. His Latin compositions seem to have had
much of his fondness, for he collected a second volume of the "Musae
Anglicanae" perhaps for a convenient receptacle, in which all his
Latin pieces are inserted, and where his poem on the Peace has the
first place. He afterwards presented the collection to Boileau, who
from that time "conceived," says Tickell, "an opinion of the English
genius for poetry." Nothing is better known of Boileau than that he
had an injudicious and peevish contempt of modern Latin, and
therefore his profession of regard was probably the effect of his
civility rather than approbation.

Three of his Latin poems are upon subjects on which perhaps he would
not have ventured to have written in his own language: "The Battle
of the Pigmies and Cranes," "The Barometer," and "A Bowling-green."
When the matter is low or scanty, a dead language, in which nothing
is mean because nothing is familiar, affords great conveniences; and
by the sonorous magnificence of Roman syllables, the writer conceals
penury of thought, and want of novelty, often from the reader and
often from himself.

In his twenty-second year he first showed his power of English
poetry by some verses addressed to Dryden; and soon after published
a translation of the greater part of the Fourth Georgic upon Bees;
after which, says Dryden, "my latter swarm is scarcely worth the
hiving." About the same time he composed the arguments prefixed to
the several books of Dryden's Virgil; and produced an Essay on the
Georgics, juvenile, superficial, and uninstructive, without much
either of the scholar's learning or the critic's penetration. His
next paper of verses contained a character of the principal English
poets, inscribed to Henry Sacheverell, who was then, if not a poet,
a writer of verses; as is shown by his version of a small part of
Virgil's Georgics, published in the Miscellanies; and a Latin
encomium on Queen Mary, in the "Musae Anglicanae." These verses
exhibit all the fondness of friendship; but, on one side or the
other, friendship was afterwards too weak for the malignity of
faction. In this poem is a very confident and discriminate
character of Spenser, whose work he had then never read; so little
sometimes is criticism the effect of judgment. It is necessary to
inform the reader that about this time he was introduced by Congreve
to Montague, then Chancellor of the Exchequer: Addison was then
learning the trade of a courtier, and subjoined Montague as a
poetical name to those of Cowley and of Dryden. By the influence of
Mr. Montague, concurring, according to Tickell, with his natural
modesty, he was diverted from his original design of entering into
holy orders. Montague alleged the corruption of men who engaged in
civil employments without liberal education; and declared that,
though he was represented as an enemy to the Church, he would never
do it any injury but by withholding Addison from it.

Soon after (in 1695) he wrote a poem to King William, with a rhyming
introduction addressed to Lord Somers. King William had no regard
to elegance or literature; his study was only war; yet by a choice
of Ministers, whose disposition was very different from his own, he
procured, without intention, a very liberal patronage to poetry.
Addison was caressed both by Somers and Montague.

In 1697 appeared his Latin verses on the Peace of Ryswick, which he
dedicated to Montague, and which was afterwards called, by Smith,
"the best Latin poem since the 'AEneid.'" Praise must not be too
rigorously examined; but the performance cannot be denied to be
vigorous and elegant. Having yet no public employment, he obtained
(in 1699) a pension of three hundred pounds a year, that he might be
enabled to travel. He stayed a year at Blois, probably to learn the
French language and then proceeded in his journey to Italy, which he
surveyed with the eyes of a poet. While he was travelling at
leisure, he was far from being idle: for he not only collected his
observations on the country, but found time to write his "Dialogues
on Medals," and four acts of Cato. Such, at least, is the relation
of Tickell. Perhaps he only collected his materials and formed his
plan. Whatever were his other employments in Italy, he there wrote
the letter to Lord Halifax which is justly considered as the most
elegant, if not the most sublime, of his poetical productions. But
in about two years he found it necessary to hasten home; being, as
Swift informs us, distressed by indigence, and compelled to become
the tutor of a travelling squire, because his pension was not
remitted.

At his return he published his Travels, with a dedication to Lord
Somers. As his stay in foreign countries was short, his
observations are such as might be supplied by a hasty view, and
consist chiefly in comparisons of the present face of the country
with the descriptions left us by the Roman poets, from whom he made
preparatory collections, though he might have spared the trouble had
he known that such collections had been made twice before by Italian
authors.

The most amusing passage of his book is his account of the minute
republic of San Marino; of many parts it is not a very severe
censure to say that they might have been written at home. His
elegance of language, and variegation of prose and verse, however,
gain upon the reader; and the book, though awhile neglected, became
in time so much the favourite of the public that before it was
reprinted it rose to five times its price.

When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of appearance
which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been
reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was therefore,
for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind; and a
mind so cultivated gives reason to believe that little time was
lost. But he remained not long neglected or useless. The victory
at Blenheim (1704) spread triumph and confidence over the nation;
and Lord Godolphin, lamenting to Lord Halifax that it had not been
celebrated in a manner equal to the subject, desired him to propose
it to some better poet. Halifax told him that there was no
encouragement for genius; that worthless men were unprofitably
enriched with public money, without any care to find or employ those
whose appearance might do honour to their country. To this
Godolphin replied that such abuses should in time be rectified; and
that, if a man could be found capable of the task then proposed, he
should not want an ample recompense. Halifax then named Addison,
but required that the Treasurer should apply to him in his own
person. Godolphin sent the message by Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord
Carlton; and Addison, having undertaken the work, communicated it to
the Treasury while it was yet advanced no further than the simile of
the angel, and was immediately rewarded by succeeding Mr. Locke in
the place of Commissioner of Appeals.

In the following year he was at Hanover with Lord Halifax: and the
year after he was made Under Secretary of State, first to Sir
Charles Hedges, and in a few months more to the Earl of Sunderland.
About this time the prevalent taste for Italian operas inclined him
to try what would be the effect of a musical drama in our own
language. He therefore wrote the opera of Rosamond, which, when
exhibited on the stage, was either hissed or neglected; but,
trusting that the readers would do him more justice, he published it
with an inscription to the Duchess of Marlborough--a woman without
skill, or pretensions to skill, in poetry or literature. His
dedication was therefore an instance of servile absurdity, to be
exceeded only by Joshua Barnes's dedication of a Greek Anacreon to
the Duke. His reputation had been somewhat advanced by The Tender
Husband, a comedy which Steele dedicated to him, with a confession
that he owed to him several of the most successful scenes. To this
play Addison supplied a prologue.

When the Marquis of Wharton was appointed Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland, Addison attended him as his secretary; and was made Keeper
of the Records, in Birmingham's Tower, with a salary of three
hundred pounds a year. The office was little more than nominal, and
the salary was augmented for his accommodation. Interest and
faction allow little to the operation of particular dispositions or
private opinions. Two men of personal characters more opposite than
those of Wharton and Addison could not easily be brought together.
Wharton was impious, profligate, and shameless; without regard, or
appearance of regard, to right and wrong. Whatever is contrary to
this may be said of Addison; but as agents of a party they were
connected, and how they adjusted their other sentiments we cannot
know.

Addison must, however, not be too hastily condemned. It is not
necessary to refuse benefits from a bad man when the acceptance
implies no approbation of his crimes; nor has the subordinate
officer any obligation to examine the opinions or conduct of those
under whom he acts, except that he may not be made the instrument of
wickedness. It is reasonable to suppose that Addison counteracted,
as far as he was able, the malignant and blasting influence of the
Lieutenant; and that at least by his intervention some good was
done, and some mischief prevented. When he was in office he made a
law to himself, as Swift has recorded, never to remit his regular
fees in civility to his friends: "for," said he, "I may have a
hundred friends; and if my fee be two guineas, I shall, by
relinquishing my right, lose two hundred guineas, and no friend gain
more than two; there is therefore no proportion between the good
imparted and the evil suffered." He was in Ireland when Steele,
without any communication of his design, began the publication of
the Tatler; but he was not long concealed; by inserting a remark on
Virgil which Addison had given him he discovered himself. It is,
indeed, not easy for any man to write upon literature or common life
so as not to make himself known to those with whom he familiarly
converses, and who are acquainted with his track of study, his
favourite topic, his peculiar notions, and his habitual phrases.

If Steele desired to write in secret, he was not lucky; a single
month detected him. His first Tatler was published April 22 (1709);
and Addison's contribution appeared May 26. Tickell observes that
the Tatler began and was concluded without his concurrence. This is
doubtless literally true; but the work did not suffer much by his
unconsciousness of its commencement, or his absence at its
cessation; for he continued his assistance to December 23, and the
paper stopped on January 2. He did not distinguish his pieces by
any signature; and I know not whether his name was not kept secret
till the papers were collected into volumes.

To the Tatler, in about two months, succeeded the Spectator: a
series of essays of the same kind, but written with less levity,
upon a more regular plan, and published daily. Such an undertaking
showed the writers not to distrust their own copiousness of
materials or facility of composition, and their performance
justified their confidence. They found, however, in their progress
many auxiliaries. To attempt a single paper was no terrifying
labour; many pieces were offered, and many were received.

Addison had enough of the zeal of party; but Steele had at that time
almost nothing else. The Spectator, in one of the first papers,
showed the political tenets of its authors; but a resolution was
soon taken of courting general approbation by general topics, and
subjects on which faction had produced no diversity of sentiments--
such as literature, morality, and familiar life. To this practice
they adhered with few deviations. The ardour of Steele once broke
out in praise of Marlborough; and when Dr. Fleetwood prefixed to
some sermons a preface overflowing with Whiggish opinions, that it
might be read by the Queen, it was reprinted in the Spectator.

To teach the minuter decencies and inferior duties, to regulate the
practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which
are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances
which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly
vexation, was first attempted by Casa in his book of "Manners," and
Castiglione in his "Courtier:" two books yet celebrated in Italy
for purity and elegance, and which, if they are now less read, are
neglected only because they have effected that reformation which
their authors intended, and their precepts now are no longer wanted.
Their usefulness to the age in which they were written is
sufficiently attested by the translations which almost all the
nations of Europe were in haste to obtain.

This species of instruction was continued, and perhaps advanced, by
the French; among whom La Bruyere's "Manners of the Age" (though, as
Boileau remarked, it is written without connection) certainly
deserves praise for liveliness of description and justness of
observation. Before the Tatler and Spectator, if the writers for
the theatre are excepted, England had no masters of common life. No
writers had yet undertaken to reform either the savageness of
neglect, or the impertinence of civility; to show when to speak, or
to be silent; how to refuse, or how to comply. We had many books to
teach us our more important duties, and to settle opinions in
philosophy or politics; but an arbiter elegantiarum, (a judge of
propriety) was yet wanting who should survey the track of daily
conversation, and free it from thorns and prickles, which tease the
passer, though they do not wound him. For this purpose nothing is
so proper as the frequent publication of short papers, which we
read, not as study, but amusement. If the subject be slight, the
treatise is short. The busy may find time, and the idle may find
patience. This mode of conveying cheap and easy knowledge began
among us in the civil war, when it was much the interest of either
party to raise and fix the prejudices of the people. At that time
appeared Mercurius Aulicus, Mercurius Rusticus, and Mercurius
Civicus. It is said that when any title grew popular, it was stolen
by the antagonist, who by this stratagem conveyed his notions to
those who would not have received him had he not worn the appearance
of a friend. The tumult of those unhappy days left scarcely any man
leisure to treasure up occasional compositions; and so much were
they neglected that a complete collection is nowhere to be found.

These Mercuries were succeeded by L'Estrange's Observator; and that
by Lesley's Rehearsal, and perhaps by others; but hitherto nothing
had been conveyed to the people, in this commodious manner, but
controversy relating to the Church or State; of which they taught
many to talk, whom they could not teach to judge.

It has been suggested that the Royal Society was instituted soon
after the Restoration to divert the attention of the people from
public discontent. The Tatler and Spectator had the same tendency;
they were published at a time when two parties--loud, restless, and
violent, each with plausible declarations, and each perhaps without
any distinct termination of its views--were agitating the nation; to
minds heated with political contest they supplied cooler and more
inoffensive reflections; and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent
work, that they had a perceptible influence upon the conversation of
that time, and taught the frolic and the gay to unite merriment with
decency--an effect which they can never wholly lose while they
continue to be among the first books by which both sexes are
initiated in the elegances of knowledge.

The Tatler and Spectator adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice
of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness; and, like La
Bruyere, exhibited the "Characters and Manners of the Age." The
personages introduced in these papers were not merely ideal; they
were then known, and conspicuous in various stations. Of the Tatler
this is told by Steele in his last paper; and of the Spectator by
Budgell in the preface to "Theophrastus," a book which Addison has
recommended, and which he was suspected to have revised, if he did
not write it. Of those portraits which may be supposed to be
sometimes embellished, and sometimes aggravated, the originals are
now partly known, and partly forgotten. But to say that they united
the plans of two or three eminent writers, is to give them but a
small part of their due praise; they superadded literature and
criticism, and sometimes towered far above their predecessors; and
taught, with great justness of argument and dignity of language, the
most important duties and sublime truths. All these topics were
happily varied with elegant fictions and refined allegories, and
illuminated with different changes of style and felicities of
invention.

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