the estrangement of Pope and Addison Imagination, and his Epistle to Curio. became complete. Addison had from Pope himself, emboldened no doubt by the first seen that Pope was false and the success with which he had expanded malevolent. Pope had discovered that and remodelled the Rape of the Lock, Addison was jealous. The discovery made the same experiment on the Dunwas made in a strange manner. Pope ciad. All these attempts failed. Who had written the Rape of the Lock, in was to foresee that Pope would, once two cantos, without supernatural ma- in his life, be able to do what he could chinery. These two cantos had been not himself do twice, and what nobody loudly applauded, and by none more else has ever done? loudly than by Addison. Then Pope Addison's advice was good. But had thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes, it been bad, why should we pronounce Ariel, Momentilla, Crispissa, and Um-it dishonest? Scott tells us that one of briel, and resolved to interweave the his best friends predicted the failure of Rosicrucian mythology with the original Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe not fabric. He asked Addison's advice. to take so unpromising a subject as Addison said that the poem as it stood Faust. Hume tried to dissuade Robertwas a delicious little thing, and en- son from writing the History of Charles treated Pope not to run the risk of the Fifth. Nay, Pope himself was one marring what was so excellent in trying of those who prophesied that Cato to mend it. Pope afterwards declared would never succeed on the stage, and that this insidious counsel first opened advised Addison to print it without his eyes to the baseness of him who risking a representation. But Scott, gave it, Goethe, Robertson, Addison, had the good sense and generosity to give their advisers credit for the best intentions. Pope's heart was not of the same kind with theirs. In 1715, while he was engaged in translating the Iliad, he met Addison at a coffeehouse. Phillipps and Budgell were there; but their sovereign got rid of them, and asked Pope to dine with him alone. After dinner, Addison said that he lay under a difficulty which he wished to explain. "Tickell," he said, "translated some time ago the first book of the Iliad. I have promised to look it over and correct it. I cannot therefore ask to see yours; for that would be double dealing." Pope made a civil reply, and begged that his second book might have the advantage of Addison's revision. Addison readily agreed, looked over the second book, and sent it back with warm commendations. Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was most ingenious, and that he afterwards executed it with great skill and success. But does it necessarily follow that Addison's advice was bad? And if Addison's advice was bad, does it necessarily follow that it was given from bad motives? If a friend were to ask us whether we would advise him to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances were ten to one against him, we should do our best to dissuade him from running such a risk. Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we should not admit that we had counselled him ill; and we should certainly think it the height of injustice in him to accuse us of having been actuated by malice. We think Addison's advice good advice. It rested on a sound principle, the result of long and wide experience. The general rule undoubtedly is that, when a successful Tickell's version of the first book work of imagination has been pro-appeared soon after this conversation. duced, it should not be recast. We In the preface, all rivalry was earnestly cannot at this moment call to mind a disclaimed. Tickell declared that he single instance in which this rule has should not go on with the Iliad. That been transgressed with happy effect, enterprise he should leave to powers except the instance of the Rape of the which he admitted to be superior to Lock. Tasso recast his Jerusalem. his own. His only view, he said, in Akenside recast his Pleasures of the publishing this specimen was to beVOL. II. Ал speak the favour of the public to a translation of the Odyssey, in which he had made some progress. any turns of expression peculiar to Addison. Had such turns of expression been discovered, they would be sufficiently accounted for by supposing Addison to have corrected his friend's lines, as he owned that he had done. Is there any thing in the character of the accused persons which makes the accusation probable? We answer confidently nothing. Tickell was long after this time described by Pope himself as a very fair and worthy man. Addison had been, during many years, before the public. Literary rivals, po Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pronounced both the versions good, but maintained that Tickell's had more of the original. The town gave a decided preference to Pope's. We do not think it worth while to settle such a question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said to have translated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word translation be used in the sense which it bears in the Midsummer Night's Dream. When Bot-litical opponents, had kept their eyes tom makes his appearance with an ass's head instead of his own, Peter Quince exclaims, "Bless thee! Bottom, bless thee! thou art translated." In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either Pope or Tickell may very properly exclaim, "Bless thee! Homer; thou art translated indeed." Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in thinking that no man in Addison's situation could have acted more fairly and kindly, both towards Pope, and towards Tickell, than he appears to have done. But an odious suspicion had sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he soon firmly believed, that there was a deep conspiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The work on which he had staked his reputation was to be depreciated. The subscription, on which rested his hopes of a competence, was to be defeated. With this view Addison had made a rival translation: Tickell had consented to father it; and the wits of Button's had united to puff it. Is there any external evidence to support this grave accusation? The answer is short. There is absolutely none. Was there any internal evidence which proved Addison to be the author of this version? Was it a work which Tickell was incapable of producing? Surely not. Tickell was a Fellow of a College at Oxford, and must be supposed to have been able to construe the Iliad; and he was a better versifier than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pretended to have discovered on him. But neither envy nor faction, in their utmost rage, had ever imputed to him a single deviation from the laws of honour and of social morality. Had he been indeed a man meanly jealous of fame, and capable of stooping to base and wicked arts for the purpose of injuring his competitors, would his vices have remained latent so long? He was a writer of tragedy: had he ever injured Rowe? He was a writer of comedy had he not done ample justice to Congreve, and given valuable help to Steele ? He was a pamphleteer: have not his good nature and generosity been acknowledged by Swift, his rival in fame and his adversary in politics? That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly improbable. That Addison should have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly improbable. But that these two men should have conspired together to commit a villany seems to us improbable in a tenfold degree. All that is known to us of their intercourse tends to prove, that it was not the intercourse of two accomplices in crime. These are some of the lines in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow over the coffin of Addison : In silent whisperings purer thoughts im- | such a man as this should attribute to part, And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart; Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." In what words, we should like to know, did this guardian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan such as the Editor of the Satirist would hardly dare to propose to the Editor of the Age? We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which he knew to be false. We have not the smallest doubt that he believed it to be true; and the evidence on which he believed it he found in his own bad heart. His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as that of which he suspected Addison and Tickell. He was all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the consequences of injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of his life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos; he was taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron Hill; he was taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a still fouler lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montague; he was taxed with it; and he lied with more than usual effrontery and vehemence. He puffed himself and abused his enemies under feigned names. He robbed himself of his own letters, and then raised the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds of malignity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds which he seems to have committed from love of fraud alone. He had a habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came near him. Whatever his object might be, the indirect road to it was that which he preferred. For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration as it was in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope was scarcely dead when it was discovered that, from no motive except the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke. Nothing was more natural than that | others that which he felt within himself. A plain, probable, coherent explanation is frankly given to him. He is certain that it is all a romance. A line of conduct scrupulously fair, and even friendly, is pursued towards him. He is convinced that it is merely a cover for a vile intrigue by which he is to be disgraced and ruined. It is vain to ask him for proofs. He has none, and wants none, except those which he carries in his own bosom. Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Addison to retaliate for the first and last time, cannot now be known with certainty. We have only Pope's story, which runs thus. A pamphlet appeared containing some reflections which stung Pope to the quick. What those reflections were, and whether they were reflections of which he had a right to complain, we have now no means of deciding. The Earl of Warwick, a foolish and vicious lad, who regarded Addison with the feelings with which such lads generally regard their best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, that this pamphlet had been written by Addison's direction. When we consider what a tendency stories have to grow, in passing even from one honest man to another honest man, and when we consider that to the name of honest man neither Pope nor the Earl of Warwick had a claim, we are not disposed to attach much importance to this anecdote. It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He had already sketched the character of Atticus in prose. In his anger he turned this prose into the brilliant and energetic lines which every body knows by heart, or ought to know by heart, and sent them to Addison. One charge which Pope has enforced with great skill is probably not without foundation. Addison was, we are inclined to believe, too fond of presiding over a circle of humble friends. Of the other imputations which these famous lines are intended to convey, scarcely one has ever been proved to be just, and some are certainly false. That Addison was not in the habit of "damn ing with faint praise" appears from | for Homer as Dryden had done for innumerable passages in his writings, Virgil. From that time to the end of and from none more than from those in his life, he always treated Pope, by which he mentions Pope. And it is Pope's own acknowledgment, with jusnot merely unjust, but ridiculous, to tice. Friendship was, of course, at an describe a man who made the fortune end. of almost every one of his intimate friends, as 66 'so obliging that he ne'er obliged." One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play the ignominious part of talebearer on this occasion, may have been his dislike of the marriage which was about to take place between his mother and Addison. The Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honourable family of the Middletons of Chirk, a family which, in any country but ours, would be called noble, resided at Holland House. Addison had, during some years, occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of London, and Holland House may be called a town residence. But, in the days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids and sportsmen wandered between green hedges and over fields bright with daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were country neighbours, and became intimate friends. The great wit and scholar tried to allure the young Lord from the fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, breaking windows, and rolling women in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of letters and the practice of virtue. These well meant exertions did little good, however, either That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly, we cannot doubt. That he was conscious of one of the weaknesses with which he was reproached, is highly probable. But his heart, we firmly believe, acquitted him of the gravest part of the accusation. He acted like himself. As a satirist he was, at his own weapons, more than Pope's match; and he would have been at no loss for topics. A distorted and diseased body, tenanted by a yet more distorted and diseased mind; spite and envy thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent and noble as those which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface; a feeble sickly licentiousness; an odious love of filthy and noisome images; these were things which a genius less powerful than that to which we owe the Spectator could easily have held up to the mirth and hatred of mankind. Addison had, moreover, at his command, other means of vengeance which a bad man would not have scrupled to use. He was powerful in the state. Pope was a Catholic; and, in those times, a minister would have found it easy to harass the most inno-to the disciple or to the master. Lord cent Catholic by innumerable petty Warwick grew up a rake; and Addison vexations. Pope, near twenty years fell in love. The mature beauty of the later, said that " through the lenity of Countess has been celebrated by poets the government alone he could live in language which, after a very large with comfort." "Consider," he ex- allowance has been made for flattery, claimed, "the injury that a man of would lead us to believe that she was a high rank and credit may do to a pri- fine woman; and her rank doubtless vate person, under penal laws and heightened her attractions. The courtmany other disadvantages." It is pleas- ship was long. The hopes of the lover ing to reflect that the only revenge appear to have risen and fallen with which Addison took was to insert in the fortunes of his party. His attachthe Freeholder a warm encomium on ment was at length matter of such nothe translation of the Iliad, and to ex-toriety that, when he visited Ireland for hort all lovers of learning to put down their names as subscribers. There could be no doubt, he said, from the specimens already published, that the masterly hand of Pope would do as much the last time, Rowe addressed some consolatory verses to the Chloe of Holland House. It strikes us as a little strange that, in these verses, Addison should be called Lycidas, a name of singularly evil omen for a swain just about to cross St. George's Channel. was celebrated in Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by Vincent Bourne, At length Chloe capitulated. Addi- who was then at Trinity College, Camson was indeed able to treat with her bridge. A relapse soon took place; on equal terms. He had reason to ex- and, in the following spring, Addison pect preferment even higher than that was prevented by a severe asthma from which he had attained. He had inhe- discharging the duties of his post. He rited the fortune of a brother who died resigned it, and was succeeded by his Governor of Madras. He had pur-friend Craggs, a young man whose nachased an estate in Warwickshire, and tural parts, though little improved by had been welcomed to his domain in cultivation, were quick and showy, very tolerable verse by one of the neigh- whose graceful person and winning bouring squires, the poetical foxhunter, manners had made him generally acWilliam Somerville. In August 1716, ceptable in society, and who, if he had the newspapers announced that Joseph lived, would probably have been the Addison, Esquire, famous for many ex- most formidable of all the rivals of cellent works both in verse and prose, Walpole. had espoused the Countess Dowager of Warwick. As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The Ministers, therefore, were able to bestow on Addison a retiring pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. In what form this pension was given we are not told by the biographers, and have not time to inquire. But it is certain that Addison did not vacate his seat in the House of Commons. He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a house which can boast of a greater number of inmates distinguished in political and literary history than any other private dwelling in England. His portrait still hangs there. The features are pleasing; the complexion is remarkably fair; but, in the expres- Rest of mind and body seem to have sion, we trace rather the gentleness of re-established his health; and he thankhis disposition than the force and keen-ed God, with cheerful piety, for having ness of his intellect. set him free both from his office and Not long after his marriage he reach-from his asthma. Many years seemed ed the height of civil greatness. The to be before him, and he meditated Whig Government had, during some many works, a tragedy on the death of time, been torn by internal dissensions. Socrates, a translation of the Psalms, a Lord Townshend led one section of the treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Cabinet, Lord Sunderland the other. Of this last performance, a part, which At length, in the spring of 1717, Sun- we could well spare, has come down derland triumphed. Townshend re- to us. tired from office, and was accompanied by Walpole and Cowper. Sunderland proceeded to reconstruct the Ministry; and Addison was appointed Secretary of State. It is certain that the Seals were pressed upon him, and were at first declined by him. Men equally versed in official business might easily have been found; and his colleagues knew that they could not expect assistance from him in debate. He owed his elevation to his popularity, to his stainless probity, and to his literary fame. But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet when his health began to fail. From one serious attack he recovered in the autumn; and his recovery But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradually prevailed against all the resources of medicine. It is melancholy to think that the last months of such a life should have been overclouded both by domestic and by political vexations. A tradition which began early, which has been generally received, and to which we have nothing to oppose, has represented his wife as an arrogant and imperious woman. It is said that, till his health failed him, he was glad to escape from the Countess Dowager and her magnificent diningroom, blazing with the gilded devices of the House of Rich, to some tavern where he could enjoy a laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a bottle of claret, with the |