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"These, you know very well, were not the reasons which made Mr. Addison turn his thoughts to the civil world; and, as you were the instrument of his becoming acquainted with Lord Halifax, I doubt not but you remember the warm instances that noble lord made to the head of the College not to insist upon Mr. Addison's goi...
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No doubt the real motive of the interest in Addison shown by Lord Halifax, at that time known as Charles Montague, was an anxiety which he shared with all the leading statesmen of the period, and of which more will be said presently, to secure for his party the services of the ablest writers. Finding his _protégé_ as y...
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It is characteristic both of his own tastes and of his age that he seems to have thought his best passport to intellectual society abroad would be his Latin poems. His verses on the _Peace of Ryswick_, written in 1697 and dedicated to Montague, had already procured him great reputation, and had been praised by Edmund S...
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But the most interesting of the names in the volume is that of the once celebrated Edmond, commonly called "Rag," Smith, author of the _Ode on the Death of Dr. Pocock_, who seems to have been among Addison's intimate acquaintance, and deserves to be recollected in connection with him on account of a certain similarity ...
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Addison's compositions in the _Musæ Anglicanæ_ are eight in number. All of them are distinguished by the ease and flow of the versification, but they are generally wanting in originality. The best of them is the _Pygmæo-Gerano-Machia_, which is also interesting as showing traces of that rich vein of humour which Addiso...
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A literary success of this kind at that epoch gave a writer a wider reputation than he could gain by compositions in his own language. Armed, therefore, with copies of the _Musæ Anglicanæ_ for presentation to scholars, and with Halifax's recommendatory letters to men of political distinction, Addison started for the Co...
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Travelling in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries involved an amount of thought and precaution which would have seemed inconvenient to the tourist accustomed to abandon himself to the authority of guide-books, couriers, and railway companies. By ardent spirits like Roderick Random it was regarded as the sphere of ...
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On some of the stronger and more enthusiastic minds the chief effect of the grand tour was to produce a violent hatred of all foreign manners. Dennis, the critic, for instance, who, after leaving Cambridge, spent some time on the Continent, returned with a confirmed dislike to the French, and ostentatiously displayed i...
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But, in general, what was intended to be a school for manners and political instruction proved rather a source of unsettlement and dissipation; and the vigorous and glowing lines in which Pope makes the tutor describe to Dullness the doings of the "young Æneas" abroad, may be taken as a faithful picture of the travelle...
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"Intrepid then o'er seas and land he flew; Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too. There all thy gifts and graces we display, Thou, only thou, directing all our way! To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs, Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons; Or Tyber, now no longer Roman, rolls, Vain of Italian arts, Ital...
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It is needless to say that Addison's experiences of travel were of a very different kind. He left England in his twenty-eighth year, with a mind well equipped from a study of the best authors, and with the intention of qualifying himself for political employment at home, after familiarising himself with the languages a...
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During his journey he made notes for his _Remarks on Italy_, which he published immediately on his return home, and he amused himself, while crossing Mont Cenis, with composing his _Letter to Lord Halifax_, which contains, perhaps, the best verses he ever wrote. Though the ground over which he passed was well trodden, ...
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When Addison landed in France, in 1699, the power of Louis XIV., so long the determined enemy of the English Revolution of 1688, had passed its climax. The Peace of Ryswick, by which the hopes of the Jacobites were finally demolished, was two years old. The king, disappointed in his dreams of boundless military glory, ...
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Finding, perhaps, that the conversation at the capital was not very congenial to his taste, he seems to have hurried on to Blois, a town then noted for the purity with which its inhabitants spoke the French language, and where he had determined to make his temporary abode. His only record of his first impressions of Pa...
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"I don't believe, as good a poet as you are, that you can make finer Lanskips than those about the King's houses, or with all yo{r} descriptions build a more magnificent palace than Versailles. I am, however, so singular as to prefer Fontainebleau to the rest. It is situated among rocks and woods that give you a fine v...
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"Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as between two and three in summer, and lie abed till between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative while here, and often thoughtful; sometimes so lost in thought that I have come into his room and have stayed five minutes there be...
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The following characteristic letter to a gentleman of Blois, with whom he seems to have had an altercation, is interesting as showing the mixture of coolness and dignity, the "blood and judgment well commingled" which Hamlet praised in Horatio, and which are conspicuous in all Addison's actions as well as in his writin...
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"Sir,--I am always as slow in making an Enemy as a Friend, and am therefore very ready to come to an Accommodation with you; but as for any satisfaction, I don't think it is due on either side when y{e} Affront is mutual. You know very well that according to y{e} opinion of y{e} world a man would as soon be called a Kn...
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The length of Addison's sojourn at Blois seems to have been partly caused by the difficulty he experienced, owing to the defectiveness of his memory, in mastering the language. Finding himself at last able to converse easily, he returned to Paris some time in the autumn of 1700, in order to see a little of polite socie...
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In general, Addison's remarks on the French character are not complimentary. He found the vanity of the people so elated by the elevation of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of Spain that they were insupportable, and he felt no reluctance to quit France for Italy. His observations on the national manners, as seen at Blo...
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"Truly, by what I have yet seen, they are the Happiest nation in the world. 'Tis not in the pow'r of Want or Slavery to make 'em miserable. There is nothing to be met with in the Country but Mirth and Poverty. Ev'ry one sings, laughs, and starves. Their Conversation is generally Agreeable; for if they have any Wit or S...
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He embarked from Marseilles for Genoa in December, 1700, having as his companion Edward Wortley Montague, whom Pope satirises under the various names of Shylock, Worldly, and Avidien. It is unnecessary to follow him step by step in his travels, but the reader of his _Letter to Lord Halifax_ may still enjoy the delight ...
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The phrase "classic ground," which has become proverbial, is first used in these verses, and, as will have been observed, Pope repeats it with evident reference to the above passage in his satire on the travels of the "young Æneas." Addison seems to have carried the Latin poets with him, and his quotations from them ar...
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His enthusiastic appreciation of the classics, which caused him in judging any work of art to look, in the first place, for regularity of design and simplicity of effect, shows it self characteristically in his remarks on the Lombard and German styles of architecture in Italy. Of Milan Cathedral he speaks without much ...
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"When a man sees the prodigious pains and expense that our forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to himself what miracles of architecture they would have left us had they only been instructed in the right way; for, when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than that of the pr...
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