To some of the vigorous spirits of the age the mild and social character of theSpectator’ssatire did not commend itself. Swift, who had contributed several papers to theTatlerwhile it was in its infancy, found it too feminine for his taste. “I will not meddle with theSpectator,” says he in hisJournal to Stella, “let himfair sexit to the world’s end.” Personal pique, however, may have done as much as a differing taste to depreciate theSpectatorin the eyes of the author of theTale of a Tub, for he elsewhere acknowledges its merits. “TheSpectator,” he writes to Stella, “is written by Steele, with Addison’s help; it is often very pretty.... But I never see him (Steele) or Addison.” That part of the public to whom the paper was specially addressed read it with keen relish. In the ninety-second number a correspondent, signing herself “Leonora,”[46]writes:
“Mr. Spectator,—Your paper is a part of my tea-equipage; and my servant knows my humour so well that, calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual hour), she answered, theSpectatorwas not yet come in, but the tea-kettle boiled, and she expected it every moment.”
“Mr. Spectator,—Your paper is a part of my tea-equipage; and my servant knows my humour so well that, calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual hour), she answered, theSpectatorwas not yet come in, but the tea-kettle boiled, and she expected it every moment.”
In a subsequent number “Thomas Trusty” writes:
“I constantly peruse your paper as I smoke my morning’s pipe (though I can’t forbear reading the motto before I fill and light), and really it gives a grateful relish to every whiff; each paragraph is fraught either with useful or delightful notions, and I never fail of being highly diverted or improved. The variety of your subjects surprises me as much as a box of pictures did formerly, in which there was only one face, that by pulling some pieces of isinglass over it was changed into a grave senator or a merry-andrew, a polished lady or a nun, a beau or a blackamoor, a prude or a coquette, a country squire or a conjuror, with many other different representations very entertaining (as you are), though still the same at the bottom.”[47]
TheSpectatorwas read in all parts of the country.
“I must confess,” says Addison, as his task was drawing to an end, “that I am not a little gratified and obliged by that concern which appears in this great city upon my present design of laying down this paper. It is likewise with much satisfaction that I find some of the most outlying parts of the kingdom alarmed upon thisoccasion, having received letters to expostulate with me about it from several of my readers of the remotest boroughs of Great Britain.”[48]
With how keen an interest the public entered into the humour of the paper is shown by the following letter, signed “Philo-Spec:”
“I was this morning in a company of your well-wishers, when we read over, with great satisfaction, Tully’s observations on action adapted to the British theatre, though, by the way, we were very sorry to find that you have disposed of another member of your club. Poor Sir Roger is dead, and the worthy clergyman dying; Captain Sentry has taken possession of a fair estate; Will Honeycomb has married a farmer’s daughter; and the Templar withdraws himself into the business of his own profession.”[49]
It is no wonder that readers anticipated with regret the dissolution of a society that had provided them with so much delicate entertainment. Admirably as the club was designed for maintaining that variety of treatment on which Mr. Trusty comments in the letter quoted above, the execution of the design is deserving of even greater admiration. The skill with which the grave speculations of theSpectatorare contrasted with the lively observations of Will Honeycomb on the fashions of the age, and these again are diversified with papers descriptive of character or adorned with fiction, while the letters from the public outside form a running commentary on the conduct of the paper, cannot be justly appreciated without a certain effort of thought. But it may safely be said that, to have provided society day after day, for more than two years, with a species of entertainment which, nearly two centuries later, retains all its old power to interest and delight, is an achievement unique in the history of literature. Even apart from the exquisite art displayed in their grouping, the matter of manyof the essays in theSpectatoris still valuable. The vivid descriptions of contemporary manners, the inimitable series of sketches of Sir Roger de Coverley, the criticisms in the papers onTrue and False Witand Milton’sParadise Lost, have scarcely less significance for ourselves than for the society for which they were immediately written.
Addison’s own papers were 274 in number, as against 236 contributed by Steele. They were, as a rule, signed with one of the four letters C. L. I. O., either because, as Tickell seems to hint in hisElegy, they composed the name of one of the Muses, or, as later scholars have conjectured, because they were respectively written from four different localities—viz., Chelsea, London, Islington, and the Office.
The sale of theSpectatorwas doubtless very large relatively to the number of readers in Queen Anne’s reign. Johnson, indeed, computes the number sold daily to have been only sixteen hundred and eighty, but he seems to have overlooked what Addison himself says on the subject very shortly after the paper had been started: “My publisher tells me that there are already three thousand of them distributed every day.”[50]This number must have gone on increasing with the growing reputation of theSpectator. When the Preface of theFour Sermonsof Dr. Fleetwood, Bishop of Llandaff, was suppressed by order of the House of Commons, theSpectatorprinted it in its 384th number, thus conveying, as the Bishop said in a letter to Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, “fourteen thousand copies of the condemned preface into people’s hands that would otherwise have never seen or heard of it.” Making allowance for the extraordinary character of the number, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the usual daily issue of theSpectatorto readers in all parts of the kingdom would, towards the close of its career, have reached ten thousand copies. Theseparate papers were afterwards collected into octavo volumes, which were sold, like the volumes of theTatler, for a guinea apiece. Steele tells us that more than nine thousand copies of each volume were sold off.[51]
Nothing could have been better timed than the appearance of theSpectator; it may indeed be doubted whether it could have been produced with success at any other period. Had it been projected earlier, while Addison was still in office, his thoughts would have been diverted to other subjects, and he would have been unlikely to survey the world with quite impartial eyes; had the publication been delayed it would have come before the public when the balance of all minds was disturbed by the dangers of the political situation. The difficulty of preserving neutrality under such circumstances was soon shown by the fate of theGuardian. Shortly after theSpectatorwas discontinued this new paper was designed by the fertile invention of Steele, with every intention of keeping it, like its predecessor, free from the entanglements of party. But it had not proceeded beyond the forty-first number when the vehement partizanship of Steele was excited by the ToryExaminer; in the 128th number appeared a letter, signed “An English Tory,” calling for the demolition of Dunkirk, while soon afterwards, finding that his political feelings were hampered by the design on which theGuardianwas conducted, he dropped it and replaced it with a paper called theEnglishman. Addison himself, who had been a frequent contributor to theGuardian, did not aid in theEnglishman, of the violent party tone of which he strongly disapproved. A few years afterwards the old friends and coadjutors in theTatlerandSpectatorfound themselves maintaining an angry controversy in the opposing pages of theOld Whigand thePlebeian.
CATO.
It is a peculiarity in Addison’s life that Fortune, as if conspiring with the happiness of his genius, constantly furnished him with favourable opportunities for the exercise of his powers. The pension granted him by Halifax enabled him, while he was yet a young man, to add to his knowledge of classical literature an intimate acquaintance with the languages and governments of the chief European states. When his fortunes were at the lowest ebb on his return from his travels, his introduction to Godolphin by Halifax, the consequence of which wasThe Campaign, procured him at once celebrity and advancement. The appearance of theTatler, though due entirely to the invention of Steele, prepared the way for development of the genius that prevailed in theSpectator. But the climax of Addison’s good fortune was certainly the successful production ofCato, a play which, on its own merits, might have been read with interest by the scholars of the time, but which could scarcely have succeeded on the stage if it had not been appropriated and made part of our national life by the violence of political passion.
Addison had not the genius of a dramatist. The grace, the irony, the fastidious refinement which give him such an unrivalled capacity in describing and criticising thehumours of men as aspectatordid not qualify him for imaginative sympathy with their actions and passions. But, like most men of ability in that period, his thoughts were drawn towards the stage, and even in Dryden’s lifetime he had sent him a play in manuscript, asking him to use his interest to obtain its performance. The old poet returned it, we are told, “with many commendations, but with an expression of his opinion that on the stage it would not meet with its deserved success.” Addison, nevertheless, persevered in his attempts, and during his travels he wrote four acts of the tragedy ofCato, the design of which, according to Tickell, he had formed while he was at Oxford, though he certainly borrowed many incidents in the play from a tragedy on the same subject which he saw performed at Venice.[52]It is characteristic, however, of the undramatic mood in which he executed his task that the last act was not written till shortly before the performance of the play, many years later. As early as 1703 the drama was shown to Cibber by Steele, who said that “whatever spirit Mr. Addison had shown in his writing it, he doubted that he would ever have courage enough to let hisCatostand the censure of an English audience; that it had only been the amusement of his leisure hours in Italy, and was never intended for the stage.” He seems to have remained of the same opinion on the very eve of the performance of the play. “When Mr. Addison,” says Pope, as reported by Spence, “had finished hisCatohe brought it to me, desired to have my sincere opinion of it, and left it with me for three or four days. I gave him my opinion of it sincerely, which was, ‘that I thought he had better not act it, and that he would get reputation enough by only printing it.’ This I said as thinking the lines well written, butthe piece not theatrical enough. Some time after Mr. Addison said ‘that his own opinion was the same with mine, but that some particular friends of his, whom he could not disoblige, insisted on its being acted.’”[53]
Undoubtedly, Pope was right in principle, and anybody who reads the thirty-ninth paper in theSpectatormay see not only that Addison was out of sympathy with the traditions of the English stage, but that his whole turn of thought disqualified him from comprehending the motives of dramatic composition. “The modern drama,” says he, “excels that of Greece and Rome in the intricacy and disposition of the fable—but, what a Christian writer would be ashamed to own, falls infinitely short of it in the moral part of the performance.” And the entire drift of the criticism that follows relates to the thought, the sentiment, and the expression of the modern drama, rather than to the really essential question, the nature of the action. It is false criticism to say that the greatest dramas of Shakespeare fail in morality as compared with those of the Greek tragedians. That the manner in which the moral is conveyed is different in each case is of course true, since the subjects of Greek tragedy were selected from Greek mythology, and were treated by Æschylus and Sophocles, at all events, in a religious spirit, whereas the plays of Shakespeare are only indirectly Christian, and produce their effect by an appeal to the individual conscience. None the less is it the case thatMacbeth,Hamlet, andLearhave for modern audiences a far deeper moral meaning than theAgamemnonor theŒdipus Tyrannus. The tragic motive in Greek tragedy is the impotence of man in the face of moral law or necessity; in Shakespeare’s tragedies it is the corruption of the will, some sin of the individual againstthe law of God, which brings its own punishment. There was nothing in this principle of which a Christian dramatist need have been ashamed; and as regards Shakespeare, at any rate, it is evident that Addison’s criticism is unjust.
It is, however, by no means undeserved in its application to the class of plays which grew up after the Restoration. Under thatrégimethe moral spirit of the Shakesperian drama entirely disappears. The king, whose temper was averse to tragedy, and whose taste had been formed on French models, desired to see every play end happily. “I am going to end a piece,” writes Roger, Earl of Orrery, to a friend, “in the French style, because I have heard the King declare that he preferred their manner to our own.” The greatest tragedies of the Elizabethan age were transformed to suit this new fashion; even King Lear obtained a happy deliverance from his sufferings in satisfaction of the requirements of an effeminate Court. Addison very wittily ridicules this false taste in the fortieth number of theSpectator. He is not less felicitous in his remarks on the sentiments and the style of the Caroline drama, though he does not sufficiently discriminate his censure, which he bestows equally on the dramatists of the Restoration and on Shakespeare. Two main characteristics appear in all the productions of the former epoch—the monarchical spirit and the fashion of gallantry. The names of the plays speak for themselves: on the one hand,The Indian Emperor,Aurengzebe,The Indian Queen,The Conquest of Granada,The Fate of Hannibal; on the other,Secret Love,Tyrannic Love,Love and Vengeance,The Rival Queens,Theodosius, or the Power of Love, and numberless others of the same kind. In the one set of dramas the poet sought to arouse the passion of pity by exhibiting the downfall of persons of high estate; in the otherhe appealed to the sentiment of romantic passion. Such were the fruits of that taste for French romance which was encouraged by Charles II., and which sought to disguise the absence of genuine emotion by the turgid bombast of its sentiment and the epigrammatic declamation of its rhymed verse.
At the same time, the taste of the nation having been once turned into French channels, a remedy for these defects was naturally sought for from French sources; and just as the school of Racine and Boileau set its face against the extravagances of the romantic coteries, so Addison and his English followers, adopting the principles of the French classicists, applied them to the reformation of the English theatre. Hence arose a great revival of respect for the poetical doctrines of Aristotle, regard for the unities of time and place, attention to the proprieties of sentiment and diction—in a word, for all those characteristics of style afterwards summed up in the phrase “correctness.”
This habit of thought, useful as an antidote to extravagance, was not fertile as a motive of dramatic production. Addison worked with strict and conscious attention to his critical principles: the consequence is that hisCato, though superficially “correct,” is a passionless and mechanical play. He had combated with reason the “ridiculous doctrine in modern criticism, that writers of tragedy are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical justice.”[54]But his reasoning led him on to deny that the idea of justice is an essential element in tragedy. “We find,” says he, “that good and evil happen alike to all men on this side the grave; and, as the principal design of tragedy is to raise commiseration and terror in theminds of the audience, we shall defeat this great end if we always make virtue and innocence happy and successful.... The ancient writers of tragedy treated men in their plays as they are dealt with in the world, by making virtue sometimes happy and sometimes miserable, as they found it in the fable which they made choice of, or as it might affect their audience in the most agreeable manner.”[55]But it is certain that the fable which the two greatest of the Greek tragedians “made choice of” was always of a religious nature, and that the idea of Justice was never absent from it; it is also certain that Retribution is a vital element in all the tragedies of Shakespeare. The notion that the essence of tragedy consists in the spectacle of a good man struggling with adversity is a conception derived through the French from the Roman Stoics; it is not found in the works of the greatest tragic poets.
This, however, was Addison’s central motive, and this is what Pope, in his famous Prologue, assigns to him as his chief praise:
“Our author shuns by vulgar springs to moveThe hero’s glory or the virgin’s love;In pitying love we but our weakness show,And wild ambition well deserves its woe.Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause,Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.Virtue confessed in human shape he draws—What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was:No common object to your sight displays,But what with pleasure heav’n itself surveys;A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,And greatly falling with a falling state.”
A falling state offers a tragic spectacle to the thought and the reason, but not one that can be represented on the stage so as to move the passions of the spectators. The character of Cato, as exhibited by Addison, is an abstraction, round which a number of other lay figures are skilfully grouped for the delivery of lofty and appropriate sentiments. Juba, the virtuous young prince of Numidia, the admirer of Cato’s virtue, Portius and Marcus, Cato’s virtuous sons, and Marcia, his virtuous daughter, are all equally admirable and equally lifeless. Johnson’s criticism of the play leaves little to be said:
“About things,” he observes, “on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right; and ofCatoit has not been unjustly determined that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here ‘excites or assuages emotion;’ here is ‘no magical power of raising fantastic terror or wild anxiety.’ The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care; we consider not what they are doing or what they are suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say. Cato is a being above our solicitude; a man of whom the gods take care, and whom we leave to their care with heedless confidence. To the rest neither gods nor men can have much attention, for there is not one among them that strongly attracts either affection or esteem. But they are made the vehicles of such sentiments and such expressions that there is scarcely a scene in the play which the reader does not wish to impress upon his memory.”
To this it may be added that, from the essentially undramatic bent of Addison’s genius, whenever he contrives a train of incident he manages to make it a little absurd. Dennis has pointed out with considerable humour the consequences of his conscientious adherence to the unity of place, whereby every species of action in theplay—love-making, conspiracy, debating, and fighting—is made to take place in the “large hall in the governor’s palace of Utica.” It is strange that Addison’s keen sense of the ridiculous, which inspired so happily his criticisms on the allegorical paintings at Versailles,[56]should not have shown him the incongruities which Dennis discerned; but, in truth, they pervade the atmosphere of the whole play. All the actors—the distracted lovers, the good young man, Juba, and the blundering conspirator, Sempronius—seem to be oppressed with an uneasy consciousness that they have a character to sustain, and are not confident of coming up to what is expected of them. This is especially the case with Portius, a pragmatic young Roman, whose praiseworthy but futile attempts to unite the qualities of Stoical fortitude, romantic passion, and fraternal loyalty, exhibit him in a position of almost comic embarrassment. According to Pope, “the love part was flung in after, to comply with the popular taste;” but the removal of these scenes would make the play so remarkably barren of incident that it is a little difficult to credit the statement.
The deficiencies ofCatoas an acting play were, however, more than counterbalanced by the violence of party spirit, which insisted on investing the comparatively tame sentiments assigned to the Roman champions of liberty with a pointed modern application. In 1713 the rage of the contending factions was at its highest point. The Tories were suspected, not without reason, of designs against the Act of Settlement; the Whigs, on the other hand, were still suffering in public opinion from the charge of having, for their own advantage, protracted the war with Louis XIV. Marlborough had been accused in 1711 of receiving bribeswhile commander-in-chief, and had been dismissed from all his employments. Disappointment, envy, revenge, and no doubt a genuine apprehension for the public safety, inspired the attacks of the Whigs upon their rivals; and when it was known that Addison had in his drawers an unfinished play on so promising a subject asCato, great pressure was put upon him by his friends to complete it for the stage. Somewhat unwillingly, apparently, he roused himself to the task. So small, indeed, was his inclination for it, that he is said in the first instance to have asked Hughes, afterwards author of theSiege of Damascus, to write a fifth act for him. Hughes undertook to do so, but on returning a few days afterwards with his own performance, he found that Addison had himself finished the play. In spite of the judgment of the critics,Catowas quickly hurried off for rehearsal, doubtless with many fears on the part of the author. His anxieties during this period must have been great. “I was this morning,” writes Swift to Stella on the 6th of April, “at ten, at the rehearsal of Mr. Addison’s play, calledCato, which is to be acted on Friday. There was not half a score of us to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough to see the actors prompted every moment, and the poet directing them, and the drab that acts Cato’s daughter (Mrs. Oldfield) out in the midst of a passionate part, and then calling out, ‘What’s next?’”
Mrs. Oldfield not only occasionally forgot the poet’s text, she also criticised it. She seems to have objected to the original draft of a speech of Portius in the second scene of the third act; and Pope, whose advice Addison appears to have frequently asked, suggested the present reading:
“Fixt in astonishment, I gaze upon theeLike one just blasted by a stroke from heavenWho pants for breath, andstiffens, yet alive,In dreadful looks: a monument of wrath.”[57]
Pope also proposed the alteration of the last line in the play from
“And oh, ’twas this that ended Cato’s life,”
to
“And robs the guilty world of Cato’s life;”
and he was generally the cause of many modifications. “I believe,” said he to Spence, “Mr. Addison did not leave a word unchanged that I objected to in hisCato.”[58]
On the 13th of April the play was ready for performance, and contemporary accounts give a vivid picture of the eagerness of the public, the excitement of parties, and the apprehensions of the author. “On our first night of acting it,” says Cibber, in his Apology, speaking of the subsequent representation at Oxford, “our house was, in a manner, invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o’clock at noon; and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late for their places. The same crowds continued for three days together—an uncommon curiosity in that place; and the death of Cato triumphed over the injuries of Cæsar everywhere.” The prologue—a very fine one—was contributed by Pope; the epilogue—written, according to the execrable taste fashionable after the Restoration, in a comic vein—by Garth. As to the performance itself, a very lively record of the effect it produced remains in Pope’s letter to Trumbull of the 30th April, 1713:
“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 had been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the authorsaid of another may the most properly be applied to him on this occasion:‘Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost,And factions strive who shall applaud him most!’[59]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 hand than the head. This was the case, too, with the Prologue-writer, who was clapped into a staunch Whig at the end of every two lines. 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, between one of the acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledgment, as he expressed it, for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs are unwilling to be distanced this way, and therefore design a present to the same Cato very speedily; in the meantime they are getting ready as good a sentence as the former on their side; so betwixt them it is probable that Cato (as Dr. Garth expressed it) may have something to live upon after he dies.”
“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 had been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the authorsaid of another may the most properly be applied to him on this occasion:
‘Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost,And factions strive who shall applaud him most!’[59]
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 hand than the head. This was the case, too, with the Prologue-writer, who was clapped into a staunch Whig at the end of every two lines. 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, between one of the acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledgment, as he expressed it, for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs are unwilling to be distanced this way, and therefore design a present to the same Cato very speedily; in the meantime they are getting ready as good a sentence as the former on their side; so betwixt them it is probable that Cato (as Dr. Garth expressed it) may have something to live upon after he dies.”
The Queen herself partook, or feigned to partake, of the general enthusiasm, and expressed a wish that the play should be dedicated to her. This honour had, however, been already designed by the poet for the Duchess of Marlborough, so that, finding himself unable under the circumstances to fulfil his intentions, he decided to leave the play without any dedication.Catoran for the then unprecedented period of thirty-five nights. Addison appears to have behaved with great liberality to the actors, and, at Oxford, to have handed over to them all the profits of the first night’s performance; while they in return, Cibber tells us, thought themselves “obliged to spare no pains in the proper decorations” of the piece.
The fame ofCatospread from England to the Continent. It was twice translated into Italian, twice into French, andonce into Latin; a French and a German imitation of it were also published. Voltaire, to whom Shakespeare appeared no better than an inspired barbarian, praises it in the highest terms. “The first English writer who composed a regular tragedyand infused a spirit of elegance through every part of it was,” says he, “the illustrious Mr. Addison. HisCatois a masterpiece, both with regard to the diction and the harmony and beauty of the numbers. The character of Cato is, in my opinion, greatly superior to that of Cornelia in thePompeyof Corneille, for Cato is great without anything of fustian, and Cornelia, who besides is not a necessary character, tends sometimes to bombast.” Even he, however, could not put up with the love-scenes:
“Addison l’a déjà tenté;C’étoit le poëte des sâges,Mais il étoit trop concerté,Et dans son Caton si vantéLes deux filles en vérité,Sont d’insipides personages.Imitez du grand AddisonSeulement ce qu’il a de bon.”
There were, of course, not wanting voices of detraction. A graduate of Oxford attackedCatoin a pamphlet entitledMr. Addison turned Tory, in which the party spirit of the play was censured. Dr. Sewell, a well-known physician of the day—afterwards satirised by Pope as “Sanguine Sewell”—undertook Addison’s defence, and showed that he owed his success to the poetical, and not to the political, merits of his drama. A much more formidable critic appeared in John Dennis, a specimen of whose criticism onCatois preserved in Johnson’sLife, and who, it must be owned, went a great deal nearer the mark in his judgment than did Voltaire. Dennis had many of the qualities ofa good critic. Though his judgment was often overborne by his passion, he generally contrived to fasten on the weak points of the works which he criticised, and he at once detected the undramatic character ofCato. His ridicule of the absurdities arising out of Addison’s rigid observance of the unity of place is extremely humorous and quite unanswerable. But, as usual, he spoiled his case by the violence and want of discrimination in his censure, which betrayed too plainly the personal feelings of the writer. It is said that Dennis was offended with Addison for not having adequately exhibited his talents in theSpectatorwhen mention was made of his works; and he certainly did complain in a published letter that Addison had chosen to quote a couplet from his translation of Boileau in preference to another from a poem on the battle of Ramilies, which he himself thought better of. But the fact seems to have been overlooked that Dennis had other grounds for resentment. In the 40th number of theSpectatorthe writer speaks of “a ridiculous doctrine of modern criticism, that they (tragic writers) are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical justice.” This was a plain stroke at Dennis, who was a well-known advocate of the doctrine; and a considerable portion of the critic’s gall was therefore expended on Addison’s violation of the supposed rule inCato.
Looking atCatofrom Voltaire’s point of view—which was Addison’s own—and having regard to the spirit of elegance infused through every part of it, there is much to admire in the play. It is full of pointed sentences, such as—
“’Tis not in mortals to command success,But we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.”
It has also many fine descriptive passages, the best of which, perhaps, occurs in the dialogue between Syphax and Juba respecting civilised and barbarian virtues:
“Believe me, prince, there’s not an AfricanThat traverses our vast Numidian desertsIn quest of prey, and lives upon his bow,But better practises these boasted virtues.Coarse are his meals, the fortune of the chase;Amidst the running streams he slakes his thirst,Toils all the day, and at th’ approach of nightOn the first friendly bank he throws him down,Or rests his head upon a rock till morn—Then rises fresh, pursues his wonted game,And if the following day he chance to findA new repast, or an untasted spring,Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.”
But in all those parts of the poem where action and not ornament is demanded, we seem to perceive the work of a poet who was constantly thinking of what his characters ought to say in the situation, rather than of one who was actually living with them in the situation itself. Take Sempronius’ speech to Syphax, describing the horrors of the conspirator’s position:
“Remember, Syphax, we must work in haste:Oh think what anxious moments pass betweenThe birth of plots and their last fatal period.Oh! ’tis a dreadful interval of time,Filled up with horror all, and big with death!Destruction hangs on every word we speak,On every thought, till the concluding strokeDetermines all, and closes our design.”
Compare with this the language of real tragedy, the soliloquy of Brutus inJulius Cæsar, on which Addison apparently meant to improve:
“Since Cassius first did whet me against CæsarI have not slept.Between the acting of a dreadful thingAnd the first motion, all the interim isLike a phantasma, or a hideous dream:The genius and the mortal instrumentsAre then in council; and the state of man,Like to a little kingdom, suffers thenThe nature of an insurrection.”
These two passages are good examples of the French and English ideals of dramatic diction, though the lines fromCatoare more figurative than is usual in that play. Addison deliberately aimed at this French manner. “I must observe,” says he, “that when our thoughts are great and just they are often obscured by the sounding phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions in which they are clothed. Shakespeare is often very faulty in this particular.”[60]Certainly he is; but who does not see that, in spite of his metaphoric style, the speech of Brutus just quoted is far simpler and more natural than the elegant “correctness” of Sempronius.
ADDISON’S QUARREL WITH POPE.
It has been said that withCatothe good fortune of Addison reached its climax. After his triumph in the theatre, though he filled great offices in the State and wedded “a noble wife,” his political success was marred by disagreements with one of his oldest friends; while with the Countess of Warwick, if we are to believe Pope, he “married discord.” Added to which he was unlucky enough to incur the enmity of the most poignant and vindictive of satiric poets, and a certain shadow has been for ever thrown over his character by the famous verses on “Atticus.” It will be convenient in this chapter to investigate, as far as is possible, the truth as to the quarrel between Pope and Addison. The latter has hitherto been at a certain disadvantage with the public, since the facts of the case were entirely furnished by Pope, and, though his account was dissected with great acuteness by Blackstone in theBiographia Britannica, the partizans of the poet were still able to plead that his uncontradicted statements could not be disposed of by mere considerations of probability.
Pope’s account of his final rupture with Addison is reported by Spence as follows: “Philips seems to have been encouraged to abuse me in coffee-houses and conversations. Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley in whichhe had abused both me and my relations very grossly. Lord Warwick himself told me one day ‘that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with Mr. Addison; that his jealous temper would never admit of a settled friendship between us; and, to convince me of what he had said, assured me that Addison had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and had given him ten guineas after they were published.’ The next day, while I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison to let him know ‘that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his; that, if I was to speak severely of him in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty way; that I would rather tell him himself fairly of his faults and allow his good qualities; and that it should be something in the following manner.’ I then subjoined the first sketch of what has since been called my satire on Addison. He used me very civilly ever after; and never did me any injustice, that I know of, from that time to his death, which was about three years after.”[61]
Such was the story told by Pope in his own defence against the charge that he had written and circulated the lines on Addison after the latter’s death. In confirmation of his evidence, and in proof of his own good feeling for and open dealing with Addison, he inserted in the so-called authorised edition of his correspondence in 1737 several letters written apparently to Addison, while in what he pretended to be the surreptitious edition of 1735 appeared a letter to Craggs, written in July, 1715, which, as it contained many of the phrases and expressions used in the character of Atticus, created an impression in the mind of the public that both letter and verses were written about the same time. No suspicion as to the genuineness of thiscorrespondence was raised till the discovery of the Caryll letters, which first revealed the fact that most of the pretended letters to Addison had been really addressed to Caryll; that there had been, in fact, no correspondence between Pope and Addison; and that, therefore, in all probability, the letter to Craggs was also a fictitious composition, inserted in the so-called surreptitious volume of 1735 to establish the credit of Pope’s own story.
We must accordingly put aside, as undeserving of credence, the poet’s ingeniously constructed charge, at any rate in the particular shape in which it is preferred, and must endeavour to form for ourselves such a judgment as is rendered probable by the acknowledged facts of the case. What is indisputable is that in 1715 a rupture took place between Addison and Pope, in consequence of the injury which the translator of theIliadconceived himself to have suffered from the countenance given to Tickell’s rival performance; and that in 1723 we find the first mention of the satire upon Addison in a letter from Atterbury to Pope. The question is, what blame attaches to Addison for his conduct in the matter of the two translations; and what is the amount of truth in Pope’s story respecting the composition of the verses on Atticus.
Pope made Addison’s acquaintance in the year 1712. On the 20th of December, 1711, Addison had noticed Pope’sArt of Criticismin the 253d number of theSpectator—partly, no doubt, in consequence of his perception of the merits of the poem, but probably at the particular instigation of Steele, whose acquaintance with Pope may have been due to the common friendship of both with Caryll. The praise bestowed on theEssay(as it was afterwards called) was of the finest and most liberal kind, and was the more welcome because it was preceded by a censureconveyed with admirable delicacy on “the strokes of ill-nature” which the poem contained. Pope was naturally exceedingly pleased, and wrote to Steele a letter of thanks under the impression that the latter was the writer of the paper, a misapprehension which Steele at once hastened to correct. “The paper,” says he, “was written by one with whom I will make you acquainted—which is the best return I can make to you for your favour.”
These words were doubtless used by Steele in the warmth of his affection for Addison, but they also express the general estimation in which the latter was then held. He had recently established his man Button in a coffee-house in Covent Garden, where, surrounded by his little senate, Budgell, Tickell, Carey, and Philips, he ruled supreme over the world of taste and letters. Something, no doubt, of the spirit of the coterie pervaded the select assembly. Addison could always find a word of condescending praise for his followers in the pages of theSpectator; he corrected their plays and mended their prologues; and they on their side paid back their patron with unbounded reverence, perhaps justifying the satirical allusion of the poet to the “applause” so grateful to the ear of Atticus:
“While wits and Templars every sentence raise,And wonder with a foolish face of praise.”
Pope, according to his own account, was admitted to the society, and left it, as he said, because he found it sit too far into the night for his health. It may, however, be suspected that the natures of the author of theDunciadand of the creator of Sir Roger de Coverley, though touching each other at many points, were far from naturally congenial; that the essayist was well aware that the man who could write theEssay on Criticismhad a highercapacity for poetry than either himself or any of his followers; and that the poet, on his side, conscious of great if undeveloped powers, was inclined to resent the air of patronage with which he was treated by the King of Button’s. Certain it is that the praise of Pope by Addison in number 253 of theSpectatoris qualified (though by no means unjustly), and that he is not spoken of with the same warmth as Tickell and Ambrose Philips in number 523. “Addison,” said Pope to Spence, “seemed to value himself more upon his poetry than upon his prose, though he wrote the latter with such particular ease, fluency, and happiness.”[62]This often happens; and perhaps the uneasy consciousness that, in spite of the reputation which hisCampaignhad secured for him, he was really inferior to such men as John Philips and Tickell, made Addison touchy at the idea of the entire circle being outshone by a new candidate for poetical fame.
Whatever jealousy, however, existed between the two was carefully suppressed during the first year of their acquaintance. Pope showed Addison the first draft of theRape of the Lock, and, according to Warburton (whose account must be received with suspicion), imparted to him his design of adding the fairy machinery. If Addison really endeavoured to dissuade the poet from making this exquisite addition, the latter was on his side anxious thatCato, which, as has been said, was shown to him after its completion, should not be presented on the stage; and his advice, if tested by the result, would have been quite as open as Addison’s to an unfavourable construction. He wrote, however, for the play the famous Prologue which Steele inserted, with many compliments, in theGuardian. But not long afterwards the effect of thecompliments was spoiled by the comparatively cold mention of Pope’sPastoralsin the same paper that contained a glowing panegyric on thePastoralsof Ambrose Philips. In revenge, Pope wrote his paper commending Philips’ performance and depreciating his own, the irony of which, it is said, escaping the notice of Steele, was inserted by him in theGuardian, much to the amusement of Addison and more to the disgust of Philips.
The occasion on which Pope’s pique against Addison began to develop into bitter resentment is sufficiently indicated by the date which the poet assigns to the first letter in the concocted correspondence—viz., July 20, 1713. This letter (which is taken, with a few slight alterations of names, from one written to Caryll on November 19, 1712) opens as follows:
“I am more joyed at your return than I should be at that of the sun, so much as I wish for him this melancholy wet season; but it has a fate too like yours to be displeasing to owls and obscure animals who cannot bear his lustre. What puts me in mind of these night-birds was John Dennis, whom I think you are best revenged upon, as the sun was in the fable upon those bats and beastly birds above mentioned, only by shining on. I am so far from esteeming it any misfortune, that I congratulate you upon having your share in that which all the great men and all the good men that ever lived have had their part of—envy and calumny. To be uncensured and to be obscure is the same thing. You may conclude from what I here say that it was never in my thoughts to have offered you my pen in any direct reply to such a critic, but only in some little raillery, not in defence of you, but in contempt of him.”
The allusion is to the squib calledDr. Norris’ Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis, which, it appears, was shown to Addison by Pope before its appearance, and after the publication of which Addison caused Steele to write to Lintot in the following terms:
“Mr. Lintot,—Mr. Addison desired me to tell you that he wholly disapproves the manner of treating Mr. Dennis in a little pamphlet by way of Mr. Norris’ account. When he thinks fit to take notice of Mr. Dennis’ objections to his writings, he will do it in a way Mr. Dennis shall have no just reason to complain of. But when the papers above mentioned were offered to be communicated to him he said he could not, either in honour or conscience, be privy to such a treatment, and was sorry to hear of it.—I am, sir, your very humble servant.”
Pope’s motive in writing the pamphlet was, as Johnson says, “to give his resentment full play without appearing to revenge himself” for the attack which Dennis had made on his own poems. Addison doubtless divined the truth; but the wording of the letter which he caused a third person to write to Lintot certainly seems studiously offensive to Pope, who had, professedly at any rate, placed his pen at his service, and who had connected his own name withCatoby the fine Prologue he had written in its praise. Lintot would of course have shown Pope Steele’s letter, and we may be sure that the lofty tone taken by Addison in speaking of the pamphlet would have rankled bitterly in the poet’s mind.
At the same time Philips, who was naturally enraged with Pope on account of the ridicule with which the latter had covered hisPastorals, endeavoured to widen the breach by spreading a report that Pope had entered into a conspiracy to write against the Whigs, and to undermine the reputation of Addison. Addison seems to have lent a ready ear to these accusations. At any rate Pope thought so; for when the good-natured painter Jervas sought to bring about a composition, he wrote to him (27th August, 1714):
“What you mentioned of the friendly office you endeavoured to do betwixt Mr. Addison and me deserves acknowledgment on mypart. You thoroughly know my regard to his character, and my propensity to testify it by all ways in my power. You as thoroughly know the scandalous meanness of that proceeding, which was used by Philips, to make a man I so highly value suspect my disposition towards him. But as, after all, Mr. Addison must be the judge in what regards himself, and has seemed to be no very just one to me, so I must own to you I expect nothing but civility from him, how much soever I wish for his friendship. As for any offices of real kindness or service which it is in his power to do me, I should be ashamed to receive them from any man who had no better opinion of my morals than to think me a party man, nor of my temper than to believe me capable of maligning or envying another’s reputation as a poet. So I leave it to time to convince him as to both, to show him the shallow depths of those half-witted creatures who misinformed him, and to prove that I am incapable of endeavouring to lessen a person whom I would be proud to imitate, and therefore ashamed to flatter. In a word, Mr. Addison is sure of my respect at all times, and of my real friendship whenever he shall think fit to know me for what I am.”
It is evident, from the tone of this letter, that all the materials for a violent quarrel were in existence. On the one side was Addison, with probably an instinctive dislike of Pope’s character, intensified by the injurious reports circulated against Pope in the “little senate” at Button’s; with a nature somewhat cold and reserved; and with something of literary jealousy, partly arising from a sense of what was due to his acknowledged supremacy, and partly from a perception that there had appeared a very formidable “brother near the throne.” On the side of Pope there was an eager sensitiveness, ever craving for recognition and praise, with an abnormal irritability prone to watch for, and reluctant to forgive, anything in the shape of a slight or an injury. Slights and injuries he already deemed himself to have received, and accordingly, when Tickell, in 1715, published his translation of the First Book of theIliadat the same time with his own translation of the first four books, his smothered resentment broke into a blaze at what he imagined to be a conspiracy to damage his poetical reputation. Many years afterwards, when the quarrel between Addison and himself had become notorious, he arranged his version of it for the public in a manner which is, indeed, far from assisting us to a knowledge of the truth, but which enables us to understand very clearly what was passing in his own mind at the time.
The subscription for Pope’s translation of theIliadwas set on foot in November, 1713. On the 10th October, 1714, having two books completed, he wished to submit them—or at any rate he told the public so in 1735—to Addison’s judgment. This was at a date when, as he informed Spence, “there had been a coldness between Mr. Addison and me” for some time. According to the letter which appears in his published correspondence, he wrote to Addison on the subject as follows:
“I have been acquainted by one of my friends, who omits no opportunities of gratifying me, that you have lately been pleased to speak of me in a manner which nothing but the real respect I have for you can deserve. May I hope that some late malevolences have lost their effect?... As to what you have said of me I shall never believe that the author ofCatocan speak one thing and think another. As a proof that I account you sincere, I beg a favour of you: it is that you would look over the two first books of my translation of Homer, which are in the hands of Lord Halifax. I am sensible how much the reputation of any poetical work will depend upon the character you give it. It is therefore some evidence of the trust I repose in your good will when I give you this opportunity of speaking ill of me with justice, and yet expect you will tell me your truest thoughts at the same time you tell others your most favourable ones.”[63]
Whether the facts reported in this letter were as fictitious as we have a right to assume the letter itself to be, it is impossible to say; Pope at any rate told Spence the following story, which is clearly meant to fall in with the evidence of the correspondence:
“On his meeting me there (Button’s Coffee-House) he took me aside and said he should be glad to dine with me at such a tavern if I would stay till those people (Budgell and Philips) were gone. We went accordingly, and after dinner Mr. Addison said ‘that he had wanted for some time to talk with me: that his friend Tickell had formerly, while at Oxford, translated the first book of theIliad. That he now designed to print it, and had desired him to look it over: he must therefore beg that I would not desire him to look over my first book, because, if he did, it would have the air of double dealing.’ I assured him that I did not take it ill of Mr. Tickell that he was going to publish his translation; that he certainly had as much right to translate any author as myself; and that publishing both was entering on a fair stage. I then added ‘that I would not desire him to look over my first book of theIliad, because he had looked over Mr. Tickell’s, but could wish to have the benefit of his observations on my second, which I had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon.’ Accordingly, I sent him the second book the next morning; and in a few days he returned it with very high commendation. Soon after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the first book of theIliadI met Dr. Young in the street, and, upon our falling into that subject, the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise at Tickell’s having such a translation by him so long. He said that it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the matter; that he and Tickell were so intimately acquainted at Oxford that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied in so long a work there without his knowing something of the matter; and that he had never heard a single word of it till this occasion.”[64]
It is scarcely necessary to say that, after the light thathas been thrown on Pope’s character by the detection of the frauds he practised in the publication of his correspondence, it is impossible to give any credence to the tales he poured into Spence’s ear, tending to blacken Addison’s character and to exalt his own. Tickell’s MS. of the translation is in existence, and all the evidence tends to show that he was really the author of it. But the above statement may be taken to reflect accurately enough the rage, the resentment, and the suspicion which disturbed Pope’s own mind on the appearance of the rival translation. We can scarcely doubt that it was this, and this alone, which roused him to such glowing indignation and inspired him to write the character of Atticus. When the verses were made public, after Addison’s death, he probably perceived that the public would not consider the evidence for Addison’s collusion with Tickell to be sufficiently strong to afford a justification for the bitterness of the satire. It was necessary to advance some stronger plea for such retaliation, especially as rumour confidently asserted that the lines had not been written till after Addison was dead. Hence the story told by Pope to Spence, proving first that the lines were not only written during Addison’s lifetime, but were actually sent to Addison himself; and secondly, that they were only composed after the strongest evidence had been afforded to the poet of his rival’s malignant disposition towards him. Hence, too, the publication in 1735 of the letter to Craggs, which, containing as it did many of the phrases and metaphors employed in the verses, seemed to supply indirect evidence that both were written about the same period.
With regard to Pope’s story, it is not too much to say that it entirely breaks down on examination. He professes to give it on the authority of Lord Warwick himself,reckoning, of course, that the evidence of Addison’s own step-son would be conclusive with the public. But Addison was not married to the Countess of Warwick till August, 1716; and in the previous May he had bestowed the most liberal praise on Pope’s translation in one of his papers in theFreeholder. For Lord Warwick, therefore, to argue at that date that Addison’s “jealous tempercould never admit of a settled friendship” between him and Pope was out of the question. If, on the other hand, Lord Warwick told his story to Pope before his mother’s marriage, the difficulty is equally great. The letter to Craggs, which, if it was ever sent to the latter at all, must obviously have been written in the same “heat” which prompted the satire on Atticus, is dated July 15, 1715. This fits in well enough with the date of the dispute about the rival translations of theIliad, but not with Lord Warwick’s story, for Wycherley, after whose death Gildon, we are told, was hired by Addison to abuse Pope, did not die till the December of that year.
Again, the internal evidence of the character itself points to the fact that, when it was first composed, its “heat” was not caused by any information the poet had received of a transaction between Addison and Gildon. The following is the first published version of the satire:
“If Dennis writes and rails in furious petI’ll answer Dennis when I am in debt.If meagre Gildon draw his meaner quill,I wish the man a dinner and sit still.But should thereOnewhose better stars conspireTo form a bard, and raise a genius higher,Blest with each talent and each art to please,And born to live, converse, and write with ease;Should such a one, resolved to reign alone,Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,View him with jealous yet with scornful eyes,Hate him for arts that caused himself to rise,Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;Alike reserved to blame or to commend,A timorous foe and a suspicious friend,Fearing e’en fools, by flatterers besieged,And so obliging that he ne’er obliged;Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,Just hint the fault, and hesitate dislike,Who when two wits on rival themes contest,Approves of both, but likes the worst the best:Like Cato, give his little senate lawsAnd sits attentive to his own applause;While wits and templars every sentence praiseAnd wonder with a foolish face of praise:Who would not laugh if such a man there be?Who would not weep if Addison were he?”
There is sufficient corroborative evidence to allow us to believe that these lines were actually written, as Pope says, during Addison’s lifetime; and if they were, the character of the satire would naturally suggest that its motive was Addison’s supposed conduct in the matter of the two translations of theIliad. There is nothing in them to indicate any connection in the poet’s mind between Gildon and Addison; on the other hand, the allusion to the “two wits” shows the special grievance that formed the basis, in his imagination, of the whole character. Afterwards we find that “meaner quill” is replaced by “venalquill;” and the couplet about the rival translations is suppressed. The inference is plain. When Pope was charged with having written the character after Addison’s death, he found himself obliged, in self-defence, to furnish a moral justification for the satire; and, after his own unfortunate manner, he proceeded to build up for himself aposition on a number of systematic falsehoods. His story was probably so far true that the character was really written while Addison was alive; on the other hand, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the entire statement about Gildon and Lord Warwick is fabulous; and, as the assertion that the lines were sent to Addison immediately after their composition is associated with these myths, this, too, may fairly be dismissed as equally undeserving of belief.
As to the truth of the character of Atticus, however, it by no means follows, because Pope’s account of its origin is false, that the portrait itself is altogether untrue. The partizans of Addison endeavour to prove that it is throughout malicious and unjust. But no one can fail to perceive that the character itself is a very extraordinary picture of human nature; and there is no reason to suppose that Addison was superior to the weaknesses of his kind. On the contrary, there is independent evidence to show that he was strongly influenced by that literary jealousy which makes the groundwork of the ideal character. This the piercing intelligence of Pope no doubt plainly discerned; his inflamed imagination built up on this foundation the wonderful fabric that has ever since continued to enchant the world. The reader who is acquainted with his own heart will probably not find much difficulty in determining what elements in the character are derived from the substantial truth of nature, and what are to be ascribed to the exaggerated perceptions of Genius.