Book 3 — Footnotes

1.

The influence of Scott on Thackeray is undoubted and freely confessed. But I cannot fall in with “certain persons of distinction” in making Esmond very specially indebted to Woodstock. Woodstock is a very great book in itself and amazing when one knows its circumstances: but it is, even for Scott, very specially and exclusively objective. Esmond is subjective also in the highest degree.

2.

This form, which he used elsewhere than in the Biographia Literaria, is better than esemplastic which he employed there.

3.

The justice or accuracy of his individual presentments and even of his general view of the time is quite another matter. We may touch on part of it presently. But the real point is that the whole is of a piece at least in potentia: that it gives a world that might have existed.

4.

The lectures on the Humourists were, of course, delivered before Esmond was published; but, in another sense, they are only aftercrops or by-products. The notes, sometimes very interesting, are James Hannay's.

5.

As might perhaps have been expected from its original appearance, not piecemeal but in the regular three-volume form, Esmond was not very much altered by its author in later issues. There was, indeed, a “revised” edition in 1858, in which a considerable number of minor changes, nearly all for the better, were made. These have been carefully considered, but in practically every case there was really nothing to do but to follow them silently. For it would be absurd, in the present edition, to chronicle solemnly the rectification of mere misprints like “Hoxton” for “Hexton”, or the change from “was never” to “never was”. In some points of orthography “Chelsea” and “Chelsey”, for instance, Thackeray never reached full consistency, and he has sometimes been caught in the intricacies of the Castlewood relations and nomenclature, &c. So, too, Walcote, which is near Wells at first, moves to the neighbourhood of Winchester later; and there are other characteristic oversights. But, on the whole, there is little need of comment, and none of variants, save in a very few instances, where the “revised” edition seems to have been altered for the worse. On the other hand, in recent editions of Thackeray, published by his representatives, considerable alterations to The English Humourists, &c., in text and notes have been introduced, dates being changed in accordance with later researches, quotations (in which Thackeray was pretty lax) adjusted to their originals, and so forth. As the chief authorities consulted in making these alterations were the late Sir Leslie Stephen, Mr. Austin Dobson, and Mr. Sidney Lee, there need not be much question as to their accuracy: and it perhaps shows undue hardihood in the present editor not to adopt them. But it seems to him that Thackeray's books are not so much text-books of history, literary and other, where accuracy is the first point, as literature, where it is not. Such corrections could be most properly introduced in the notes of a fuller commentated edition: less so, it may seem, in an almost unannotated text. In particular, Thackeray's misquotations (they are not seldom distinct improvements) sometimes directly form the basis of his own remarks, which become less apposite if the citations are corrected. As the text of this volume has few original illustrations some miscellaneous sketches are added to it.

6.

Lionel Tipton, created Baron Bergamot, ann. 1686, Gentleman Usher of the Back Stairs, and afterwards appointed Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset (on the decease of George, second Viscount Castlewood), accompanied his Majesty to St. Germains, where he died without issue. No Groom of the Posset was appointed by the Prince of Orange, nor hath there been such an officer in any succeeding reign.

7.

To have this rank of marquis restored in the family had always been my lady viscountess's ambition; and her old maiden aunt, Barbara Topham, the goldsmith's daughter, dying about this time, and leaving all her property to Lady Castlewood, I have heard that her ladyship sent almost the whole of the money to King James, a proceeding which so irritated my Lord Castlewood that he actually went to the parish church, and was only appeased by the marquis's title which his exiled majesty sent to him in return for the 15,000l. his faithful subject lent him.

8.

Ὄ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς βροτοὶ αἰτιόωνται, ἐξ ἡμέων γάρ φασι κάκ᾽ ἔμμεναι; οἱ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπὲρ μόρον ἄλγε᾽ ἔχουσιν.

9.

My mistress before I went this campaign sent me John Lockwood out of Walcote, who hath ever since remained with me.—H. E.

10.

This passage in the memoirs of Esmond is written on a leaf inserted into the MS. book, and dated 1744, probably after he had heard of the duchess's death.

11.

Our grandfather's hatred of the Duke of Marlborough appears all through his account of these campaigns. He always persisted that the duke was the greatest traitor and soldier history ever told of: and declared that he took bribes on all hands during the war. My lord marquis (for so we may call him here, though he never went by any other name than Colonel Esmond) was in the habit of telling many stories which he did not set down in his memoirs, and which he had from his friend the Jesuit, who was not always correctly informed, and who persisted that Marlborough was looking for a bribe of two millions of crowns before the campaign of Ramillies. And our grandmother used to tell us children, that on his first presentation to my lord duke, the duke turned his back upon my grandfather; and said to the duchess, who told my lady dowager at Chelsea, who afterwards told Colonel Esmond—“Tom Esmond's bastard has been to my levee: he has the hang-dog look of his rogue of a father”—an expression which my grandfather never forgave. He was as constant in his dislikes as in his attachments; and exceedingly partial to Webb, whose side he took against the more celebrated general. We have General Webb's portrait now at Castlewood, Va.

12.

'Tis not thus woman loves: Col. E. hath owned to this folly for a score of women besides.—R.

13.

And, indeed, so was his to them, a thousand, thousand times more charming, for where was his equal?—R.

14.

See Appendix, p. 464.

15.

What indeed? Ps. xci. 2. 3, 7.—R. E.

16.

The managers were the bishop, who cannot be hurt by having his name mentioned, a very active and loyal Nonconformist divine, a lady in the highest favour at Court, with whom Beatrix Esmond had communication, and two noblemen of the greatest rank, and a Member of the House of Commons, who was implicated in more transactions than one in behalf of the Stuart family.

17.

There can be very little doubt that the doctor, mentioned by my dear father, was the famous Dr. Arbuthnot.—R. E. W.

18.

My dear father saith quite truly, that his manner towards our sex was uniformly courteous. From my infancy upwards, he treated me with an extreme gentleness, as though I was a little lady. I can scarce remember (though I tried him often) ever hearing a rough word from him, nor was he less grave and kind in his manner to the humblest negresses on his estate. He was familiar with no one except my mother, and it was delightful to witness up to the very last days the confidence between them. He was obeyed eagerly by all under him; and my mother and all her household lived in a constant emulation to please him, and quite a terror lest in any way they should offend him. He was the humblest man, with all this; the least exacting, the most easily contented; and Mr. Benson, our minister at Castlewood, who attended him at the last, ever said—“I know not what Colonel Esmond's doctrine was, but his life and death were those of a devout Christian.”—R. E. W.

19.

This remark shows how unjustly and contemptuously even the best of men will sometimes judge of our sex. Lady Esmond had no intention of triumphing over her daughter; but from a sense of duty alone pointed out her deplorable wrong.—R. E.

20.

In London we addressed the prince as royal highness invariably; though the women persisted in giving him the title of king.

21.

The anecdote is frequently told of our performer, Rich.

22.

He was from a younger branch of the Swifts of Yorkshire. His grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Swift, Vicar of Goodrich, in Herefordshire, suffered for his loyalty in Charles I's time. That gentleman married Elizabeth Dryden, a member of the family of the poet. Sir Walter Scott gives, with his characteristic minuteness in such points, the exact relationship between these famous men. Swift was “the son of Dryden's second cousin”. Swift, too, was the enemy of Dryden's reputation. Witness the Battle of the Books:—“The difference was greatest among the horse” says he of the moderns, “where every private trooper pretended to the command, from Tasso and Milton to Dryden and Withers.” And in Poetry, a Rhapsody, he advises the poetaster to— Read all the Prefaces of Dryden, For these our critics much confide in, Though merely writ, at first, for filling, To raise the volume's price a shilling. “Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet,” was the phrase of Dryden to his kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such matters.

23.

“Miss Hetty” she was called in the family—where her face, and her dress, and Sir William's treatment of her, all made the real fact about her birth plain enough. Sir William left her a thousand pounds.

24.

Sometimes, during his mental affliction, he continued walking about the house for many consecutive hours; sometimes he remained in a kind of torpor. At times, he would seem to struggle to bring into distinct consciousness, and shape into expression, the intellect that lay smothering under gloomy obstruction in him. A pier-glass falling by accident, nearly fell on him. He said, he wished it had! He once repeated, slowly, several times, “I am what I am.” The last thing he wrote was an epigram on the building of a magazine for arms and stores, which was pointed out to him as he went abroad during his mental disease:— Behold a proof of Irish sense: Here Irish wit is seen; When nothing's left that's worth defence, They build a magazine!

25.

Besides these famous books of Scott's and Johnson's, there is a copious Life by Thomas Sheridan (Dr. Johnson's “Sherry”), father of Richard Brinsley, and son of that good-natured, clever, Irish Doctor, Thomas Sheridan, Swift's intimate, who lost his chaplaincy by so unluckily choosing for a text on the king's birthday, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof!” Not to mention less important works, there is also the Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, by that polite and dignified writer, the Earl of Orrery. His lordship is said to have striven for literary renown, chiefly that he might make up for the slight passed on him by his father, who left his library away from him. It is to be feared that the ink he used to wash out that stain only made it look bigger. He had, however, known Swift, and corresponded with people who knew him. His work (which appeared in 1751) provoked a good deal of controversy, calling out, among other brochures, the interesting Observations on Lord Orrery's Remarks, &c., of Dr. Delany.

26.

Dr. Wilde's book was written on the occasion of the remains of Swift and Stella being brought to the light of day—a thing which happened in 1835, when certain works going on in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, afforded an opportunity of their being examined. One hears with surprise of these skulls “going the rounds” of houses, and being made the objects of dilettante curiosity. The larynx of Swift was actually carried off! Phrenologists had a low opinion of his intellect, from the observations they took. Dr. Wilde traces the symptoms of ill-health in Swift, as detailed in his writings from time to time. He observes, likewise, that the skull gave evidence of “diseased action” of the brain during life—such as would be produced by an increasing tendency to “cerebral congestion”.

27.

“He [Dr. Johnson] seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice against Swift; for I once took the liberty to ask him if Swift had personally offended him, and he told me he had not.”—Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides.

28.

Few men, to be sure, dared this experiment, but yet their success was encouraging. One gentleman made a point of asking the Dean, whether his uncle Godwin had not given him his education. Swift, who hated that subject cordially, and, indeed, cared little for his kindred, said, sternly, “Yes; he gave me the education of a dog.” “Then, sir,” cried the other, striking his fist on the table, “you have not the gratitude of a dog!” Other occasions there were when a bold face gave the Dean pause, even after his Irish almost-royal position was established. But he brought himself into greater danger on a certain occasion, and the amusing circumstances may be once more repeated here. He had unsparingly lashed the notable Dublin lawyer, Mr. Serjeant Bettesworth— So, at the bar, the booby Bettesworth, Though half a crown out-pays his sweat's worth, Who knows in law nor text nor margent, Calls Singleton his brother-serjeant! The Serjeant, it is said, swore to have his life. He presented himself at the deanery. The Dean asked his name. “Sir, I am Serjeant Bett-es-worth.” “In what regiment, pray?” asked Swift. A guard of volunteers formed themselves to defend the Dean at this time.

29.

“But, my Hamilton, I will never hide the freedom of my sentiments from you. I am much inclined to believe that the temper of my friend Swift might occasion his English friends to wish him happily and properly promoted at a distance. His spirit, for I would give it the proper name, was ever untractable. The motions of his genius were often irregular. He assumed more the air of a patron than of a friend. He affected rather to dictate than advise.”—Orrery.

30.

“An anecdote which, though only told by Mrs. Pilkington, is well attested, bears, that the last time he was in London he went to dine with the Earl of Burlington, who was but newly married. The earl, it is supposed, being willing to have a little diversion, did not introduce him to his lady nor mention his name. After dinner said the Dean, ‘Lady Burlington, I hear you can sing; sing me a song.’ The lady looked on this unceremonious manner of asking a favour with distaste, and positively refused. He said, ‘She should sing, or he would make her. Why, madam, I suppose you take me for one of your poor English hedge-parsons; sing when I bid you.’ As the earl did nothing but laugh at this freedom, the lady was so vexed that she burst into tears and retired. His first compliment to her when he saw her again was, ‘Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you last?’ To which she answered with great good humour, ‘No, Mr. Dean; I'll sing for you if you please.’ From which time he conceived a great esteem for her.”—Scott's Life. “He had not the least tincture of vanity in his conversation. He was, perhaps, as he said himself, too proud to be vain. When he was polite, it was in a manner entirely his own. In his friendships he was constant and undisguised. He was the same in his enmities.”—Orrery.

31.

“I make no figure but at Court, where I affect to turn from a lord to the meanest of my acquaintances.”—Journal to Stella. “I am plagued with bad authors, verse and prose, who send me their books and poems, the vilest I ever saw; but I have given their names to my man, never to let them see me.”—Journal to Stella. The following curious paragraph illustrates the life of a courtier:— “Did I ever tell you that the lord treasurer hears ill with the left ear just as I do?... I dare not tell him that I am so, sir; for fear he should think that I counterfeited to make my court!”—Journal to Stella.

32.

The war of pamphlets was carried on fiercely on one side and the other; and the Whig attacks made the ministry Swift served very sore. Bolingbroke laid hold of several of the Opposition pamphleteers, and bewails their “factitiousness” in the following letter:— “BOLINGBROKE TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD. “Whitehall, July 23rd, 1712. “It is a melancholy consideration that the laws of our country are too weak to punish effectually those factitious scribblers, who presume to blacken the brightest characters, and to give even scurrilous language to those who are in the first degrees of honour. This, my lord, among others, is a symptom of the decayed condition of our Government, and serves to show how fatally we mistake licentiousness for liberty. All I could do was to take up Hart, the printer, to send him to Newgate, and to bind him over upon bail to be prosecuted; this I have done; and if I can arrive at legal proof against the author Ridpath, he shall have the same treatment.” Swift was not behind his illustrious friend in this virtuous indignation. In the history of the four last years of the queen, the Dean speaks in the most edifying manner of the licentiousness of the press and the abusive language of the other party: “It must be acknowledged that the bad practices of printers have been such as to deserve the severest animadversion from the public.... The adverse party, full of rage and leisure since their fall, and unanimous in their cause, employ a set of writers by subscription, who are well versed in all the topics of defamation, and have a style and genius levelled to the generality of their readers.... However, the mischiefs of the press were too exorbitant to be cured by such a remedy as a tax upon small papers, and a bill for a much more effectual regulation of it was brought into the House of Commons, but so late in the session that there was no time to pass it, for there always appeared an unwillingness to cramp overmuch the liberty of the press.” But to a clause in the proposed bill, that the names of authors should be set to every printed book, pamphlet, or paper, his reverence objects altogether, for, says he, “beside the objection to this clause from the practice of pious men, who, in publishing excellent writings for the service of religion, have chosen, out of an humble Christian spirit, to conceal their names, it is certain that all persons of true genius or knowledge have an invincible modesty and suspicion of themselves upon first sending their thoughts into the world.” This “invincible modesty” was no doubt the sole reason which induced the Dean to keep the secret of the Drapier's Letters and a hundred humble Christian works of which he was the author. As for the Opposition, the Doctor was for dealing severely with them: he writes to Stella:— Journal. Letter XIX “London, March 25th, 1710-11. “... We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing him pickled in a trough this fortnight for twopence a piece; and the fellow that showed would point to his body and say, ‘See, gentlemen, this is the wound that was given him by his grace the Duke of Ormond;’ and, ‘This is the wound,’ &c.; and then the show was over, and another set of rabble came in. 'Tis hard that our laws would not suffer us to hang his body in chains, because he was not tried; and in the eye of the law every man is innocent till then.” Journal. Letter XXVII “London, July 25th, 1711. “I was this afternoon with Mr. Secretary at his office, and helped to hinder a man of his pardon, who is condemned for a rape. The under-secretary was willing to save him; but I told the secretary he could not pardon him without a favourable report from the judge; besides he was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue, and deserved hanging for something else, and so he shall swing.”

33.

It was his constant practice to keep his birthday as a day of mourning.

34.

“These devils of Grub Street rogues, that write the Flying Post and Medley in one paper, will not be quiet. They are always mauling Lord Treasurer, Lord Bolingbroke, and me. We have the dog under prosecution, but Bolingbroke is not active enough; but I hope to swinge him. He is a Scotch rogue, one Ridpath. They get out upon bail, and write on. We take them again, and get fresh bail; so it goes round.”—Journal to Stella.

35.

Swift was by no means inclined to forget such considerations; and his English birth makes its mark, strikingly enough, every now and then in his writings. Thus in a letter to Pope (Scott's Swift, vol. xix, p. 97), he says:— “We have had your volume of letters.... Some of those who highly value you, and a few who knew you personally, are grieved to find you make no distinction between the English gentry of this kingdom, and the savage old Irish (who are only the vulgar, and some gentlemen who live in the Irish parts of the kingdom); but the English colonies, who are three parts in four, are much more civilized than many counties in England, and speak better English, and are much better bred.” And again, in the fourth Drapier's Letter, we have the following:— “A short paper, printed at Bristol, and reprinted here, reports Mr. Wood to say ‘that he wonders at the impudence and insolence of the Irish, in refusing his coin.’ When, by the way, it is the true English people of Ireland who refuse it, although we take it for granted that the Irish will do so too whenever they are asked.”—Scott's Swift, vol. iv, p. 143. He goes further, in a good-humoured satirical paper, On Barbarous Denominations in Ireland, where (after abusing, as he was wont, the Scotch cadence, as well as expression), he advances to the “Irish brogue”, and speaking of the “censure” which it brings down, says:— “And what is yet worse, it is too well known that the bad consequence of this opinion affects those among us who are not the least liable to such reproaches farther than the misfortune of being born in Ireland, although of English parents, and whose education has been chiefly in that kingdom.”—Ibid. vol. vii, p. 149. But, indeed, if we are to make anything of Race at all, we must call that man an Englishman whose father comes from an old Yorkshire family, and his mother from an old Leicestershire one!

36.

“The style of his conversation was very much of a piece with that of his writings, concise and clear and strong. Being one day at a sheriff's feast, who amongst other toasts called out to him, ‘Mr. Dean. The trade of Ireland!’ he answered quick: ‘Sir, I drink no memories!’ “Happening to be in company with a petulant young man who prided himself on saying pert things ... and who cried out, ‘You must know, Mr. Dean, that I set up for a wit?’ ‘Do you so?’ says the Dean. ‘Take my advice, and sit down again!’ “At another time, being in company, where a lady whisking her long train [long trains were then in fashion] swept down a fine fiddle and broke it; Swift cried out— Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae!” —Dr. Delany, Observations upon Lord Orrery's “Remarks, &c. of Swift”. London, 1754.

37.

“Don't you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir William Temple would look cold and out of humour for three or four days, and I used to suspect a hundred reasons? I have plucked up my spirits since then, faith; he spoiled a fine gentleman.”—Journal to Stella.

38.

“The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and fortunate in their expression, when they placed a man's happiness in the tranquillity of his mind and indolence of body; for while we are composed of both, I doubt both must have a share in the good or ill we feel. As men of several languages say the same things in very different words, so in several ages, countries, constitutions of laws and religion, the same thing seems to be meant by very different expressions; what is called by the Stoics apathy, or dispassion; by the sceptics, indisturbance; by the Molinists, quietism; by common men, peace of conscience,—seems all to mean but great tranquillity of mind.... For this reason Epicurus passed his life wholly in his garden: there he studied, there he exercised, there he taught his philosophy; and, indeed, no other sort of abode seems to contribute so much to both the tranquillity of mind and indolence of body, which he made his chief ends. The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise of working or walking, but, above all, the exemption from cares and solicitude, seem equally to favour and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease both of the body and mind.... Where Paradise was has been much debated, and little agreed; but what sort of place is meant by it may perhaps easier be conjectured. It seems to have been a Persian word, since Xenophon and other Greek authors mention it as what was much in use and delight among the kings of those eastern countries. Strabo describing Jericho: ‘Ibi est palmetum, cui immixtae sunt etiam ahae stirpes hortenses, locus ferax palmis abundans, spatio stadiorum centum, totus irriguus: ibi est Regis Balsami paradisus.’ ”—Essay on Gardens. In the same famous essay Temple speaks of a friend, whose conduct and prudence he characteristically admires. “I thought it very prudent in a gentleman of my friends in Staffordshire, who is a great lover of his garden, to pretend no higher, though his soil be good enough, than to the perfection of plums; and in these (by bestowing south walls upon them) he has very well succeeded, which he could never have done in attempts upon peaches and grapes; and a good plum is certainly better than an ill peach.”

39.

Swift's Thoughts on Hanging. (Directions to Servants.) “To grow old in the office of a footman is the highest of all indignities; therefore, when you find years coming on without hopes of place at Court, a command in the army, a succession to the stewardship, an employment in the revenue (which two last you cannot obtain without reading and writing), or running away with your master's niece or daughter, I directly advise you to go upon the road, which is the only post of honour left you: there you will meet many of your old comrades, and live a short life and a merry one, and making a figure at your exit, wherein I will give you some instructions. “The last advice I give you relates to your behaviour when you are going to be hanged; which, either for robbing your master, for housebreaking, or going upon the highway, or in a drunken quarrel by killing the first man you meet, may very probably be your lot, and is owing to one of these three qualities: either a love of good fellowship, a generosity of mind, or too much vivacity of spirits. Your good behaviour on this article will concern your whole community; deny the fact with all solemnity of imprecations: a hundred of your brethren, if they can be admitted, will attend about the bar, and be ready upon demand to give you a character before the Court; let nothing prevail on you to confess, but the promise of a pardon for discovering your comrades: but I suppose all this to be in vain; for if you escape now, your fate will be the same another day. Get a speech to be written by the best author of Newgate: some of your kind wenches will provide you with a holland shirt and white cap, crowned with a crimson or black ribbon: take leave cheerfully of all your friends in Newgate: mount the cart with courage; fall on your knees; lift up your eyes; hold a book in your hands, although you cannot read a word; deny the fact at the gallows; kiss and forgive the hangman; and so farewell; you shall be buried in pomp at the charge of the fraternity: the surgeon shall not touch a limb of you; and your fame shall continue until a successor of equal renown succeeds in your place....”

40.

“He continued in Sir William Temple's house till the death of that great man.”—Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, by the Dean. “It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to himself.”—Preface to Temple's Works. On all public occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same tone. But the reader will better understand how acutely he remembered the indignities he suffered in his household, from the subjoined extracts from the Journal to Stella:— “I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d—— ailed him on Sunday: I made him a very proper speech; told him I observed he was much out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the cause, but would be glad to see he was in better; and one thing I warned him of—never to appear cold to me, for I would not be treated like a schoolboy; that I had felt too much of that in my life already” [meaning Sir William Temple] &c. &c.—Journal to Stella. “I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple because he might have been Secretary of State at fifty; and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment.”—Ibid. “The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary of State.”—Ibid. “Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite well. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family the other night. He gave us all twelvepence a piece to begin with; it put me in mind of Sir William Temple.”—Ibid. “I thought I saw Jack Temple [nephew to Sir William] and his wife pass by me to-day in their coach; but I took no notice of them. I am glad I have wholly shaken off that family.”—S. to S. Sept., 1710.

41.

“Swift must be allowed,” says Dr. Johnson, “for a time, to have dictated the political opinions of the English nation.” A conversation on the Dean's pamphlets excited one of the Doctor's liveliest sallies. “One, in particular, praised his Conduct of the Allies.—Johnson: ‘Sir, his Conduct of the Allies is a performance of very little ability.... Why, sir, Tom Davies might have written the Conduct of the Allies!’ ”—Boswell's Life of Johnson.

42.

“Whenever he fell into the company of any person for the first time, it was his custom to try their tempers and disposition by some abrupt question that bore the appearance of rudeness. If this were well taken, and answered with good humour, he afterwards made amends by his civilities. But if he saw any marks of resentment, from alarmed pride, vanity, or conceit, he dropped all further intercourse with the party. This will be illustrated by an anecdote of that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. After supper, the Dean having decanted a bottle of wine, poured what remained into a glass, and seeing it was muddy, presented it to Mr. Pilkington to drink it. ‘For,’ said he, ‘I always keep some poor parson to drink the foul wine for me.’ Mr. Pilkington, entering into his humour, thanked him, and told him ‘he did not know the difference, but was glad to get a glass at any rate.’ ‘Why then,’ said the Dean, ‘you shan't, for I'll drink it myself. Why, —— take you, you are wiser than a paltry curate whom I asked to dine with me a few days ago; for upon my making the same speech to him, he said, he did not understand such usage, and so walked off without his dinner. By the same token, I told the gentleman who recommended him to me, that the fellow was a blockhead, and I had done with him.’ ”—Sheridan's Life of Swift.

43.

FROM THE ARCHBISHOP OF CASHELL. “Cashell, May 31st, 1735 “Dear Sir,— “I have been so unfortunate in all my contests of late, that I am resolved to have no more, especially where I am likely to be overmatched; and as I have some reason to hope what is past will be forgotten, I confess I did endeavour in my last to put the best colour I could think of upon a very bad cause. My friends judge right of my idleness; but, in reality, it has hitherto proceeded from a hurry and confusion, arising from a thousand unlucky unforeseen accidents rather than mere sloth. I have but one troublesome affair now upon my hands, which, by the help of the prime serjeant, I hope soon to get rid of; and then you shall see me a true Irish bishop. Sir James Ware has made a very useful collection of the memorable actions of my predecessors. He tells me, they were born in such a town of England or Ireland; were consecrated such a year; and, if not translated, were buried in the Cathedral church, either on the north or south side. Whence I conclude, that a good bishop has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die; which laudable example I propose for the remainder of my life to follow; for to tell you the truth, I have for these four or five years past met with so much treachery, baseness, and ingratitude among mankind, that I can hardly think it incumbent on any man to endeavour to do good to so perverse a generation. “I am truly concerned at the account you give me of your health. Without doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can take to recover your flesh; and I do not know, except in one stage, where you can choose a road so suited to your circumstances, as from Dublin hither. You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at every ten or twelve miles' end. From Kilkenny hither is twenty long miles, bad road, and no inns at all: but I have an expedient for you. At the foot of a very high hill, just midway, there lives in a neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is not poor; his wife is allowed to be the best little woman in the world. Her chickens are the fattest, and her ale the best in all the country. Besides, the parson has a little cellar of his own, of which he keeps the key, where he always has a hogshead of the best wine that can be got, in bottles well corked, upon their side; and he cleans, and pulls out the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with a coach; if you be tired, you shall stay all night; if not, after dinner we will set out about four, and be at Cashell by nine; and by going through fields and by-ways, which the parson will show us, we shall escape all the rocky and stony roads that lie between this place and that, which are certainly very bad. I hope you will be so kind as to let me know a post or two before you set out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, that I may have all things prepared for you. It may be, if you ask him, Cope will come: he will do nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, I shall add no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth, your most faithful and obedient servant, “Theo. Cashell.”

44.

“Mr. Swift lived with him [Sir William Temple] some time, but resolving to settle himself in some way of living, was inclined to take orders. However, although his fortune was very small, he had a scruple of entering into the Church merely for support.”—Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, by the Dean.

45.

“Dr. Swift had a natural severity of face, which even his smiles could never soften, or his utmost gaiety render placid and serene; but when that sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is scarce possible to imagine looks or features that carried in them more terror and austerity.”—Orrery.

46.

“London, April 10th, 1713. “Lady Masham's eldest boy is very ill: I doubt he will not live; and she stays at Kensington to nurse him, which vexes us all. She is so excessively fond, it makes me mad. She should never leave the queen, but leave everything, to stick to what is so much the interest of the public, as well as her own....”—Journal.

47.

“My health is somewhat mended, but at best I have an ill head and an aching heart.”—In May, 1719.

48.

Perhaps the most melancholy satire in the whole of the dreadful book, is the description of the very old people in the Voyage to Laputa. At Lugnag, Gulliver hears of some persons who never die, called the Struldbrugs, and expressing a wish to become acquainted with men who must have so much learning and experience, his colloquist describes the Struldbrugs to him. “He said, They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years old, after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament, and repent that others are gone to a harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect. And for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others. “If a Struldbrug happened to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore. For the law thinks it to be a reasonable indulgence that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. “As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates, only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit, they cannot purchase lands or take leases, neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds. “At ninety they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relatives. For the same reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable. “The language of this country being always on the flux, the Struldbrugs of one age do not understand those of another; neither are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (further than by a few general words) with their neighbours, the mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country. “This was the account given me of the Struldbrugs, as near as I can remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me several times by some of my friends; but although they were told ‘that I was a great traveller, and had seen all the world’, they had not the least curiosity to ask me a single question; only desired I would give them slumskudask, or a token of remembrance; which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the law that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a very scanty allowance. “They are despised and hated by all sorts of people; when one of them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly; so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the usual way of computing how old they are, is, by asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting history; for infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old. “They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women more horrible than the men; besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described; and among half a dozen, I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above a century or two between them.”—Gulliver's Travels.

49.

The name of Varina has been thrown into the shade by those of the famous Stella and Vanessa; but she had a story of her own to tell about the blue eyes of young Jonathan. One may say that the book of Swift's life opens at places kept by these blighted flowers! Varina must have a paragraph. She was a Miss Jane Waryng, sister to a college chum of his. In 1696, when Swift was nineteen years old, we find him writing a love-letter to her, beginning, “Impatience is the most inseparable quality of a lover.” But absence made a great difference in his feelings; so, four years afterwards, the tone is changed. He writes again, a very curious letter, offering to marry her, and putting the offer in such a way that nobody could possibly accept it. After dwelling on his poverty, &c., he says, conditionally, “I shall be blessed to have you in my arms, without regarding whether your person be beautiful, or your fortune large. Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the second, is all I ask for!” The editors do not tell us what became of Varina in life. One would be glad to know that she met with some worthy partner, and lived long enough to see her little boys laughing over Lilliput, without any arrière pensée of a sad character about the great Dean!

50.

A sentimental Champollion might find a good deal of matter for his art, in expounding the symbols of the “Little Language”. Usually, Stella is “M.D.,” but sometimes her companion, Mrs. Dingley, is included in it. Swift is “Presto”; also P.D.F.R. We have “Goodnight, M.D.; Night, M.D.; Little M.D.; Stellakins; Pretty Stella; Dear, roguish, impudent, pretty M.D.!” Every now and then he breaks into rhyme, as— I wish you both a merry new year, Roast beef, minced-pies, and good strong beer, And me a share of your good cheer. That I was there, as you were here, And you are a little saucy dear.

51.

The following passages are from a paper begun by Swift on the evening of the day of her death, Jan. 28, 1727-8: “She was sickly from her childhood, until about the age of fifteen; but then she grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London—only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in perfection. “... Properly speaking”—he goes on with a calmness which, under the circumstances, is terrible—“she has been dying six months!...” “Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who more improved them by reading and conversation.... All of us who had the happiness of her friendship agreed unanimously, that in an afternoon's or evening's conversation she never failed before we parted of delivering the best thing that was said in the company. Some of us have written down several of her sayings, or what the French call bons mots, wherein she excelled beyond belief.” The specimens on record, however, in the Dean's paper called Bons Mots de Stella, scarcely bear out this last part of the panegyric. But the following prove her wit: “A gentleman, who had been very silly and pert in her company, at last began to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A bishop sitting by comforted him—that he should be easy, because ‘the child was gone to heaven’. ‘No, my lord,’ said she; ‘that is it which most grieves him, because he is sure never to see his child there.’ “When she was extremely ill, her physician said, ‘Madam, you are near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavour to get you up again.’ She answered, ‘Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath before I get up to the top.’ “A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty. He was at a loss; but she solved the difficulty, by saying, ‘the doctor's nails grew dirty by scratching himself.’ “A quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked; it had a broad brim, and a label of paper about its neck. ‘What is that?’—said she—‘my apothecary's son!’ The ridiculous resemblance, and the suddenness of the question, set us all a-laughing.”—Swift's Works, Scott's ed., vol. ix, 295-6.

52.

“I am so hot and lazy after my morning's walk, that I loitered at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, where my best gown and periwig was, and out of mere listlessness dine there, very often; so I did to-day.”—Journal to Stella. Mrs. Vanhomrigh, Vanessa's mother, was the widow of a Dutch merchant who held lucrative appointments in King William's time. The family settled in London in 1709, and had a house in Bury Street, St. James's—a street made notable by such residents us Swift and Steele; and, in our own time, Moore and Crabbe.

53.

“Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress; impatient to be admired; very romantic in her turn of mind; superior, in her own opinion, to all her sex; full of pertness, gaiety, and pride; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but far from being either beautiful or genteel;... happy in the thoughts of being reported Swift's concubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife.”—Lord Orrery.

54.

“You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said, as often as you can get the better of your inclinations so much; or as often as you remember there was such a one in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last: I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more;, but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you'd not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you; for when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but so much regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me; and believe I cannot help telling you this and live.”—Vanessa. (M. 1714.)

55.

“If we consider Swift's behaviour, so far only as it relates to women, we shall find that he looked upon them rather as busts than as whole figures.”—Orrery. “You must have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of very virtuous women, who attended him from morning to night.”—Orrery. A correspondent of Sir Walter Scott's furnished him with the materials on which to found the following interesting passage about Vanessa—after she had retired to cherish her passion in retreat:— “Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account), showed the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden while a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well; and his account of her corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company; her constant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden.... She avoided company, and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called ‘Vanessa's bower’. Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot.... There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey.... In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them.”—Scott's Swift, vol. i, pp. 246-7. “... But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the object of her affections—to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connexion with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long elicited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him—then in Ireland—‘If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent with mine.’ Her silence and patience under this state of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe for Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival's health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connexion. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean; and full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogatories, and, without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was liable, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table, and, instantly leaving the house, remounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished, hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived the last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks.”—Scott.

56.

“M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. Il n'a pas, à la verité, la gaîté du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la raison, le choix, le bon goût qui manquent à notre curé de Meudon. Ses vers sont d'un goût singulier, et presque inimitable; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose; mais pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit voyage dans son pays.”—Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 22.

57.

The following is a conspectus of them:— Addison.—Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper of the Records in Ireland; Lord of Trade; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively. Steele.—Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians; Commissioner of “Forfeited Estates in Scotland”. Prior.—Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King William; Secretary to the Embassy in France; Under Secretary of State; Ambassador to France. Tickell.—Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. Congreve.—Commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches; Commissioner for Wine Licences; place in the Pipe-office; post in the Custom-house; Secretary of Jamaica. Gay.—Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover.) John Dennis.—A place in the Custom-house. “En Angleterre ... les lettres sont plus en honneur qu'ici.”— Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 20.

58.

He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire—a very ancient family.

59.

“Pipe.—Pipe, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the great roll. “Pipe-Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out leases of crown lands, by warrant, from the Lord-Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer. “Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c.”—Rees, Cyclopaed. Art. Pipe. “Pipe-Office.—Spelman thinks so called because the papers were kept in a large pipe or cask. “These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe ... because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills.”—Bacon, The Office of Alienations. [We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But a modern man of letters can know little on these points—by experience.]

60.

“It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in the least, nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His place in the Custom-house, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year.”—Biog. Brit., Art. Congreve.

61.

Dryden addressed his “twelfth epistle” to “My dear friend Mr. Congreve,” on his comedy called The Double Dealer, in which he says— Great Jonson did by strength of judgement please; Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his case. In differing talents both adorn'd their age: One for the study, t'other for the stage. But both to Congreve justly shall submit, One match'd in judgement, both o'ermatched in wit. In him all beauties of this age we see, &c. &c. The Double Dealer, however, was not so palpable a hit as the Old Bachelor, but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our “swell” applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the Epistle Dedicatory to the “Right Honourable Charles Montague.” “I was conscious,” said he, “where a true critic might have put me upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack, ... but I have not heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer.” He goes on— “But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected. How can I help it? It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.... I should be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood.”

62.

“Instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave behind me a memorial of my friendship, with one of the most valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country—one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer—and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of Mr. Congreve and of—A. Pope.”—Postscript to Translation of the Iliad of Homer. Mar. 25, 1720.

63.

“When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said, he had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for our author, and generally took him under his protection in his high authoritative manner.”—Thos. Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies.

64.

“Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess showed us a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle.”—Dr. Young (Spence's Anecdotes).

65.

“A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it.”—Thos. Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies.

66.

The sum Congreve left her was 200l., as is said in the Dramatic Miscellanies of Tom Davies; where are some particulars about this charming actress and beautiful woman. She had a “lively aspect”, says Tom, on the authority of Cibber, and “such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired everybody with desire”. “Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of them her lovers.” Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. “In Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla....; Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in his Love for Love; in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the Mourning Bride; and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the Way of the World. Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not very distant from the real character of Congreve.”—Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii, 1784. She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public favourite. She died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.

67.

Johnson calls his legacy the “accumulation of attentive parsimony, which,” he continues, “though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress.”—Lives of the Poets.

68.

He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called “Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations,” &c. A specimen or two are subjoined:— “The greater part of these examples which he has produced, are only demonstrations of his own impurity: they only savour of his utterance, and were sweet enough till tainted by his breath. “Where the expression is unblameable in its own pure and genuine signification, he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit; he possesses the innocent phrase, and makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies. “If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures.... I will only call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it. “The corruption of a rotten divine is the generation of a sour critic.” “Congreve,” says Dr. Johnson, “a very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security.... The dispute was protracted through two years; but at last Comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labours in the reformation of the theatre.”—Life of Congreve.

69.

The scene of Valentine's pretended madness in Love for Love is a splendid specimen of Congreve's daring manner:— Scandal.—And have you given your master a hint of their plot upon him? Jeremy.—Yes, Sir; he says he'll favour it, and mistake her for Angelica. Scandal.—It may make us sport. Foresight.—Mercy on us! Valentine.—Husht—interrupt me not—I'll whisper predictions to thee, and thou shalt prophesie;—I am truth, and can teach thy tongue a new trick,—I have told thee what's passed—now I'll tell what's to come:—Dost thou know what will happen to-morrow? Answer me not—for I will tell thee. To-morrow knaves will thrive thro' craft, and fools thro' fortune; and honesty will go as it did, frost-nipt in a summer suit. Ask me questions concerning tomorrow. Scandal.—Ask him, Mr. Foresight. Foresight.—Pray what will be done at Court? Valentine.—Scandal will tell you;—I am truth, I never come there. Foresight.—In the city? Valentine.—Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters, as if religion were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horn'd herd buzz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt prentice that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things, that you will see very strange; which are, wanton wives with their legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks. But hold, I must examine you before I go further; you look suspiciously. Are you a husband? Foresight.—I am married. Valentine.—Poor creature! Is your wife of Covent Garden Parish? Foresight.—No; St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. Valentine.—Alas, poor man! his eyes are sunk, and his hands shrivelled; his legs dwindled, and his back bow'd. Pray, pray, for a metamorphosis—change thy shape, and shake off age; get the Medea's kettle and be boiled anew; come forth with lab'ring callous hands, and chine of steel, and Atlas' shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the calves of twenty chairmen, and make the pedestals to stand erect upon, and look matrimony in the face. Ha, ha, ha! That a man should have a stomach to a wedding supper, when the pidgeons ought rather to be laid to his feet! ha, ha, ha! Foresight.—His frenzy is very high now, Mr. Scandal. Scandal.—I believe it is a spring-tide. Foresight.—Very likely—truly; you understand these matters. Mr. Scandal, I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things he has uttered. His sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical. Valentine.—Oh! why would Angelica be absent from my eyes so long? Jeremy.—She's here, Sir. Mrs. Foresight.—Now, Sister! Mrs. Frail.—O Lord! what must I say? Scandal.—Humour him, Madam, by all means. Valentine.—Where is she? Oh! I see her; she comes, like Riches, Health, and Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and abandoned wretch. Oh—welcome, welcome! Mrs. Frail.—How d'ye, Sir? Can I serve you? Valentine.—Hark'ee—I have a secret to tell you. Endymion and the moon shall meet us on Mount Latmos, and we'll be married in the dead of night. But say not a word. Hymen shall put his torch into a dark lanthorn, that it may be secret; and Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail; and Argus's hundred eyes be shut—ha! Nobody shall know, but Jeremy. Mrs. Frail.—No, no; we'll keep it secret; it shall be done presently. Valentine.—The sooner the better. Jeremy, come hither—closer—that none may overhear us. Jeremy, I can tell you news; Angelica is turned nun, and I am turning friar, and yet we'll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part; for she'll meet me two hours hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won't see one another's faces 'till we have done something to be ashamed of, and then we'll blush once for all.... Enter Tattle. Tattle.—Do you know me, Valentine? Valentine.—You!—who are you? No, I hope not. Tattle.—I am Jack Tattle, your friend. Valentine.—My friend! What to do? I am no married man, and thou canst not lye with my wife; I am very poor, and thou canst not borrow money of me. Then, what employment have I for a friend? Tattle.—Hah! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a secret. Angelica.—Do you know me, Valentine? Valentine.—Oh, very well. Angelica.—Who am I? Valentine.—You're a woman, one to whom Heaven gave beauty when it grafted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond; and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white—a sheet of spotless paper—when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill. I know you; for I loved a woman, and loved her so long that I found out a strange thing: I found out what a woman was good for. Tattle.—Ay! pr'ythee, what's that? Valentine.—Why, to keep a secret. Tattle.—O Lord! Valentine.—Oh, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she should tell, yet she is not to be believed. Tattle.—Hah! Good again, faith. Valentine.—I would have musick. Sing me the song that I like.—Congreve, Love for Love. There is a Mrs. Nickleby, of the year 1700, in Congreve's comedy of The Double Dealer, in whose character the author introduces some wonderful traits of roguish satire. She is practised on by the gallants of the play, and no more knows how to resist them than any of the ladies above quoted could resist Congreve. Lady Plyant.—Oh, reflect upon the honour of your conduct! Offering to pervert me [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady for her daughter's hand, not for her own]—perverting me from the road of virtue, in which I have trod thus long, and never made one trip—not one faux pas. Oh, consider it; what would you have to answer for, if you should provoke me to frailty! Alas! humanity is feeble, Heaven knows! Very feeble, and unable to support itself. Mellefont.—Where am I? Is it day? and am I awake? Madam— Lady Plyant.—O Lord, ask me the question! I'll swear I'll deny it—therefore don't ask me; nay, you shan't ask me, I swear I'll deny it. O Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face; I warrant I am as red as a turkey-cock; O fie, cousin Mellefont! Mellefont.—Nay, madam, hear me; I mean—— Lady Plyant.—Hear you? No, no; I'll deny you first, and hear you afterwards. For one does not know how one's mind may change upon hearing—hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are fallible. I won't trust my honour, I assure you; my honour is infallible and uncomatable. Mellefont.—For heaven's sake, madam—— Lady Plyant.—Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of Heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart? May be, you don't think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don't think it a sin; but still, my honour, if it were no sin ——. But, then, to marry my daughter for the convenience of frequent opportunities—I'll never consent to that: as sure as can be, I'll break the match. Mellefont.—Death and amazement! Madam, upon my knees—— Lady Plyant.—Nay, nay, rise up; come, you shall see my good nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion. 'Tis not your fault; nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms? And how can you help it, if you are made a captive? I swear it is pity it should be a fault; but, my honour. Well, but your honour, too—but the sin! Well, but the necessity. O Lord, here's somebody coming. I dare not stay. Well, you must consider of your crime; and strive as much as can be against it—strive, be sure; but don't be melancholick—don't despair; but never think that I'll grant you anything. O Lord, no: but be sure you lay all thoughts aside of the marriage, for though I know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind for your passion to me; yet it will make me jealous. O Lord, what did I say? Jealous! No, I can't be jealous; for I must not love you; therefore don't hope; but don't despair neither. They're coming; I must fly.—The Double Dealer, act II, scene v, page 156.

70.

“There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance. The Old Bachelor was written for amusement in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant ambition of wit.”—Johnson, Lives of the Poets.

71.

“Among those by whom it (‘Will's’) was frequented, Southerne and Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship.... But Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon Dryden's friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the celebrated Old Bachelor being put into the poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the stage, returned it to the author with the high and just commendation, that it was the best first play he had ever seen.”—Scott's Dryden, vol. i, p. 370.

72.

It was in Surrey Street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life. The anecdote in the text, relating to his saying that he wished “to be visited on no other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity”, is common to all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Voltaire's Letters concerning the English Nation, published in London, 1733, as also in Goldsmith's Memoir of Voltaire. But it is worthy of remark, that it does not appear in the text of the same Letters in the edition of Voltaire's Œuvres Complètes in the Panthéon Littéraire, Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1837.) “Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porté le plus loin la gloire du théâtre comique est feu M. Congreve. Il n'a fait que peu de pièces, mais toutes sont excellentes dans leur genre.... Vous y voyez partout le langage des honnêtes gens avec des actions de fripon; ce qui prouve qu'il connaissait bien son monde, et qu'il vivait dans ce qu'on appelle la bonne compagnie.”—Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 19.

73.

On the death of Queen Mary, he published a Pastoral—“The Mourning Muse of Alexis.” Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the orthodox way. The Queen is called Pastora. “I mourn Pastora dead, let Albion mourn, And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,” says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that— With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound, And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground,— (a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period.... It continues—) Lord of these woods and wide extended plains, Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face, Scalding with tears the already faded grass. To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come? And must Pastora moulder in the tomb? Ah Death! more fierce and unrelenting far, Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are; With lambs and sheep their hunger is appeased, But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized. This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess; that figure of the “Great Shepherd”, lying speechless on his stomach, in a state of despair which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit, are to be remembered in poetry surely, and this style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great Congreve! In the “Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas” (the young Lord Blandford, the great Duke of Marlborough's only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah Duchess! The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come into work here again. At the sight of her grief— Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forgo, And dumb distress and new compassion show, Nature herself attentive silence kept, And motion seemed suspended while she wept! And Pope dedicated the Iliad to the author of these lines—and Dryden wrote to him in his great hand: Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, But Genius must be born and never can be taught. This is your portion, this your native store; Heaven, that but once was prodigal before, To Shakespeare gave as much, she could not give him more. Maintain your Post: that's all the fame you need, For 'tis impossible you should proceed; Already I am worn with cares and age, And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage: Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expence, I live a Rent-charge upon Providence: But you whom every Muse and Grace adorn, Whom I foresee to better fortune born, Be kind to my remains, and oh defend Against your Judgement your departed Friend! Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue; But shade those Lawrels which descend to You: And take for Tribute what these Lines express; You merit more, nor could my Love do less. This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day. In Shadwell, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time, when gentlemen meet they fall into each other's arms, with “Jack, Jack, I must buss thee”; or, “'Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee, lad”. And in a similar manner the poets saluted their brethren. Literary gentlemen do not kiss now; I wonder if they love each other better. Steele calls Congreve “Great Sir” and “Great Author”; says “Well-dressed barbarians knew his awful name”, and addresses him as if he were a prince; and speaks of Pastora as one of the most famous tragic compositions.

74.

“To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey.... After full inquiry and impartial reflection we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can justly be claimed by any of our infirm and erring race.”—Macaulay. “Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable to believe that Addison's profession and practice were at no great variance; since, amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and his activity made him formidable, the character given him by his friends was never contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom interest or opinion united him, he had not only the esteem but the kindness; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove against him, though he might lose the love, he retained the reverence.”—Johnson.

75.

“Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had something more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man; but with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of silence.”—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes).

76.

“Milton's chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence lies in the sublimity of his thoughts. There are others of the modern, who rival him in every other part of poetry; but in the greatness of his sentiments he triumphs over all the poets, both modern and ancient, Homer alone excepted. It is impossible for the imagination of man to disturb itself with greater ideas than those which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth books.”—Spectator, No. 279. “If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one.”—Ibid., No. 417. These famous papers appeared in each Saturday's Spectator, from January 19 to May 3, 1712. Besides his services to Milton, we may place those he did to Sacred Music.

77.

“Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards.”—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes). “ ‘Leave him as soon as you can,’ said Addison to me, speaking of Pope; ‘he will certainly play you some devilish trick else: he has an appetite to satire.’ ”—Lady Wortley Montagu (Spence's Anecdotes).

78.

Lancelot Addison, his father, was the son of another Lancelot Addison, a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield and Archdeacon of Coventry.

79.

“The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his company, declared that he was ‘a parson in a tye-wig’, can detract little from his character. He was always reserved to strangers, and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of Mandeville.”—Johnson, Lives of the Poets. “Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison: he had a quarrel with him, and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to say of him—‘One day or other you'll see that man a bishop—I'm sure he looks that way; and indeed I ever thought him a priest in his heart.’ ”—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes). “Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as between two and three in the height of summer, and lie abed till between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative whilst here, and often thoughtful: sometimes so lost in thought, that I have come into his room and stayed five minutes there before he has known anything of it. He had his masters generally at supper with him; kept very little company beside; and had no amour that I know of; and I think I should have known it, if he had had any.”—Abbé Philippeaux of Blois (Spence's Anecdotes).

80.

“His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound.”—Macaulay.

81.

“Our country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing the present he made him of the Musae Anglicanae.”—Tickell (Preface to Addison's Works).

82.

“It was my fate to be much with the wits; my father was acquainted with all of them. Addison was the best company in the world. I never knew anybody that had so much wit as Congreve.”—Lady Wortley Montagu (Spence's Anecdotes).

83.

Mr. Addison To Mr. Wyche. “Dear Sir, “My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done could I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have escaped for ye present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at Crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible for me to express ye deep sense I have of ye many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met with in my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, I dare say it will be thought a very good excuse when I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As your company made our stay at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long lived as Methusaleh, or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc in ye cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can't forbear troubling you with my hearty respects to ye owners of them, and desiring you to believe me always, “Dear Sir, “To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty's Resident at Hambourg, “May, 1703.” —From the Life of Addison, by Miss Aikin, vol. i, p. 146.

84.

It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and Addison was, on the whole, satisfactory, from first to last. The value of Swift's testimony, when nothing personal inflamed his vision or warped his judgement, can be doubted by nobody. “Sept. 10, 1710.—I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele. “11.—Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him part of this evening. “18.—To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison's retirement near Chelsea.... I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison. “27.—To-day all our company dined at Will Frankland's, with Steele and Addison, too. “29.—I dined with Mr. Addison,” &c.—Journal to Stella. Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his Travels “To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age.”—Scott. From the information of Mr. Theophilus Swift. “Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person; and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of persons and things.”—Letters. “I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I have nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself.”—Swift to Addison (1717), Scott's Swift, vol. xix, p. 274. Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly communications. Time renewed them; and Tickell enjoyed Swift's friendship as a legacy from the man with whose memory his is so honourably connected.

85.

“Addison usually studied all the morning; then met his party at Button's; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it.”—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes).

86.

“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.”—Johnson, Lives of the Poets.

87.

“Mr. Addison wrote very fluently; but he was sometimes very slow and scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several friends; and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself; and too much concerned about his character as a poet; or (as he worded it) too solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very little matter after all!”—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes).

88.

“As to poetical affairs,” says Pope, in 1713, “I am content at present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion:— “Envy itself is dumb—in wonder lost; And factions strive who shall applaud him most. “The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hands than the head.... I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgement (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator”—Pope's “Letter to Sir W. Trumbull”. Cato ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue. It is worth noticing how many things in Cato keep their ground as habitual quotations, e.g.:— “ ... big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.” “'Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.” “Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.” “I think the Romans call it Stoicism.” “My voice is still for war.” “When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is a private station.” Not to mention:— “The woman who deliberates is lost,” And the eternal:— “Plato, thou reasonest well,” which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play!

89.

“The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused—to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, ‘Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.’ The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness; it neither found them, nor made them, equal.... Rowe's ballad of The Despairing Shepherd is said to have been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable pair.”—Dr. Johnson. “I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. At that time he declined it, and I really believe that he would have done well to have declined it now. Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both.”—Lady Wortley Montagu to Pope. Works, Lord Wharncliffe's ed., vol. ii, p. 111. The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who inherited, on her mother's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her father had purchased, and died, unmarried, at an advanced age. She was of weak intellect. Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship, for his Collection contains “Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr. Addison's going to Ireland”, in which her ladyship is called “Chloe”, and Joseph Addison, “Lycidas”; besides the ballad mentioned by the doctor, and which is entitled “Colin's Complaint”. But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a specimen:— What though I have skill to complain— Though the Muses my temples have crowned; What though, when they hear my sweet strain, The Muses sit weeping around. Ah, Colin! thy hopes are in vain; Thy pipe and thy laurel resign; Thy false one inclines to a swain Whose music is sweeter than thine.

90.

One of the most humourous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the Spectator tells us, particularly pleased his friend Sir Roger: “Mr. Spectator— “You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the Spectator, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their headdresses; for as the humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure. “The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are very airy and very proper for the season; but this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather; besides, I would fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their mothers before them? “I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops. “Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that it portends the downfall of the French king, and observe, that the farthingale appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same prognostication as the toil of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think that it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world rather than going out of it,” &c. &c.—Spectator, No. 127.

91.

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

92.

“I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor; with other particulars of a like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings; and shall give some account in them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history.... There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favour my mother's dream; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it. “As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my nonage I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always the favourite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that my parts were solid and would wear well. I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words; and, indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life.... “I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not more than half a dozen of my select friends that know me.... There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Tuesday night at St. James's Coffee-house; and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the ‘Cocoa-Tree’, and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these two years; and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's. In short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club. “Thus I live in the world rather as a ‘Spectator’ of mankind than as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever meddling in any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who are engaged in them—as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game.... In short, I have acted, in all the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper.”—Spectator, No. 1.