 Section 14 of Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Leeson. Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 1. Section 14. Selected Works by John Quincy Adams. 1767-1848. The chief distinction in character between John Adams and his son is the strangest one imaginable, when one remembers that to the fiery, combative, bristling Adams blood was added an equal strain from the gay, genial, affectionate Abigail Smith. The son, though of deep inner affections, and even hungering for good will if it would come without his help, was on the surface incomparably colder, harsher, and thornier than his father, with all the socially repellent traits of the race and none of the softer ones. The father could never control his tongue or his temper, and not always his head. The son never lost the bridle of either, and much of his terrible power and debate came from his ability to make others lose theirs while perfectly keeping his own. The father had plenty of warm friends and allies, at the worst he worked with half a party. The son, in the most superb part of his career, had no friends, no allies, no party, except the group of constituents who kept him in Congress. The father's self-confidence deepened in the son to a solitary and even contemptuous gladiatorship against the entire government of the country for long years of hate and peril. The father's irritable though generous vanity changed in the son to an icy contempt or white-hot scorn of nearly all around him. The father's spasms of acrimonious judgment steadied in the son to a constant ranker always finding new objects, but only John Quincy Adams could have done the work awaiting John Quincy Adams, and each of his unamiable qualities strengthened his fiber to do it. And if a man is to be judged by his fruits, Mr. Morse is justified in saying that he was not only preeminent in ability and acquirements, but even more to be honored for profound, immutable honesty of purpose and broad noble humanity of aims. It might almost be said that the sixth president of the United States was cradled in statesmanship. Born July 11, 1767, he was a little lad of ten when he accompanied his father on the French mission. Eighteen months elapsed before he returned, and three months later he was again upon the water, bound once more for the French capital. There were school days in Paris, and other school days in Amsterdam and in Leiden, but the boy was only fourteen, the mature old child, when he went to St. Petersburg as private secretary and interpreter to Francis Dana, just appointed minister Plenipotentiary to the court of the Empress Catherine. Such was his apprentice ship to a public career which began in earnest in 1794, and lasted with slight interruptions for fifty-four years. Minister to the United Netherlands, to Russia, to Prussia, and to England, commissioner to frame the Treaty of Ghent which ended the War of 1812, State Senator, United States Senator, Secretary of State, a position in which he made the Treaty with Spain which conceded Florida, and enunciated the Monroe Doctrine before Monroe and far more thoroughly than he, president, and then for many years member of the National House of Representatives, it is strange to find this man writing in his later years, my whole life has been a succession of disappointments. I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success to anything that I ever undertook. It is true, however, that his successes and even his glories always had some bitter ingredient to spoil their flavor. As United States Senator he was practically boycotted for years, even by his own party members, because he wasn't Adams. In 1807 he definitely broke with the Federalist Party for what he regarded as its slavish crouching under English outrages, conduct which had been for years estranging him, by supporting Jefferson's embargo, as better than no show of resistance at all, and was for a generation denounced by the New England Federalists as a renegade for the sake of office and a traitor to New England. The Massachusetts legislature practically censured him in 1808, and he resigned. His winning of the presidency brought pain instead of pleasure. He valued it only as a token of national confidence, got it only as a minority candidate in a divided party, and was denounced by the Jacksonians as a corrupt political bargainer. And his later congressional career, though his chief title to glory, was one long martyrdom, even though its worst pains were self-inflicted, and he never knew the immense victory he had actually won. The old man eloquent, after ceasing to be president, was elected in 1830 by his home district a representative in Congress and regularly re-elected till his death. For a long time he bore the anti-slavery standard almost alone, in the halls of Congress, a unique and picturesque figure, rousing every demon of hatred in his fellow members, in constant and inventum'd battle with them, and more than a match for them all. He fought single-handed for the right of petition as an indefeasable right, not hesitating to submit a petition from citizens of Virginia, praying for his own expulsion from Congress as a nuisance. In 1836 he presented a petition from 158 ladies, citizens of Massachusetts, for, I said, I had not yet brought myself to doubt whether females were citizens. After eight years of persistent struggle against the Atherton-Gag law, which practically denied the right of petition in matters relating to slavery, he carried a vote rescinding it, and nothing of the kind was again enacted. He had a fatal stroke of paralysis on the floor of Congress, February 21, 1848, and died two days later. As a writer he was perspicuous, vigorous, and straightforward. He had entered Harvard in the middle of the college course, and been graduated with honors. He had then studied and practiced law. He was professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard from 1806 to 1809, and was well-drilled in the use of language, but was too downright in his temper and purposes to spend much labor upon artistic effects. He kept an elaborate diary during the greater part of his life, since published in twelve volumes of memoirs by his son Charles Francis Adams, a vast storehouse of material relating to the political history of the country, but as published largely restricted to public affairs. He delivered orations on Lafayette, on Madison, on Monroe, on Independence, and on the Constitution, published essays on the Masonic Institution and various other matters, a report on weights and measures of enormous labor and permanent value, lectures on rhetoric and oratory, a tale in verse on the conquest of Ireland with the title Dermot-McMorro, an account of travels in Silesia, and a volume of poems of religion and society. He had some facility in Rhyme, but his judgment was not at fault in informing him that he was not a poet. Mr. Morse says that no man can have been more utterly void of a sense of humor or an appreciation of wit, and yet he very fairly anticipated Holmes, in his poem On the Wants of Man, and hits rather neatly on a familiar foible in the verse with which he begins Dermot-McMorro. It's strange how often readers will indulge their wits a mystic meaning to discover, secrets ne'er dreamt of by the bard-divalge, and where he shoots a cluck will find a plover. Satiric shafts from every line promulge detect a tyrant where he draws a lover. Nay, so intent his hidden thoughts to see, cry, if he paint a scoundrel, that means me. Later to his father, at the age of ten. Dear sir, I love to receive letters very well, much better than I love to write them. I make but a poor figure at composition. My head is too fickle. My thoughts are running after birds' eggs, play, and trifles, till I get vexed with myself. Mama has a troublesome task to keep me steady, and I own I am ashamed of myself. I have but just entered the third volume of Smollett, though I had designed to have got it half through by this time. I have determined this week to be more diligent, as Mr. Thakster will be absent at court, and I cannot pursue my other studies. I have set myself a stint and determined to read the third volume half out. If I can but keep my resolution, I will write again at the end of the week and give a better account of myself. I wish, sir, you would give me some instructions with regard to my time, and advise me how to proportion my studies and my play in writing, and I will keep them by me and endeavor to follow them. I am, dear sir, with a present determination of growing better yours. P.S. Sir, if you will be so good as to favor me with a blank book, I will transcribe the most remarkable occurrences I meet with in my reading, which will serve to fix them upon my mind. From the Memoirs at the Age of Eighteen April 26th, 1785, a letter from Mr. Gary of February 25th says that Mr. Adams is appointed minister to the Court of London. I believe he will promote the interests of the United States as much as any man, but I fear his duty will induce him to make exertions which may be detrimental to his health. I wish, however, it may be otherwise. For I now to go with him, probably my immediate satisfaction might be greater than it will be in returning to America. After having been traveling for these seven years almost all over Europe, and having been in the world and among company, for three, to return to spend one or two years in the pale of a college, subjected to all the rules which I have so long then freed from, then to plunge into the dry and tedious study of the law for three years, and afterwards not expect, however good an opinion I may have of myself, to bring myself into notice, under three or four years more, if ever, it is really a prospect somewhat discouraging for a youth of my ambition. For I have ambition, though I hope its object is laudable, but still, oh, how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes favors, or on those of anybody else. I am determined that so long as I shall be able to get my own living in an honorable manner, I will depend upon no one. My father has been so much taken up all his lifetime with the interests of the public, that his own fortune has suffered by it, so that his children will have to provide for themselves, which I shall never be able to do, if I loiter away my precious time in Europe, and shun going home until I am forced to it, with an ordinary share of common sense which I hope I enjoy, at least in America I can live independent and free, and rather than live otherwise I would wish to die before the time when I shall be left at my own discretion. I have before me a striking example of the distressing and humiliating situation a person is reduced to by adopting a different line of conduct, and I am determined not to fall into the same error. From the Memoirs, January 14, 1831 I received a letter from John C. Calhoun, now Vice President of the United States, relating to his present controversy with President Jackson and William H. Crawford. He questions me concerning the letter of General Jackson to Mr. Monroe, which Crawford alleges to have been produced at the Cabinet meetings on the Seminole War, and asks for copies, if I think proper to give them, of Crawford's letter to me which I received last summer, and of my answer. I answered Mr. Calhoun's letter immediately, rigorously confining myself to the direct object of his inquiries. This is a new bursting out of the old and rankerous feud between Crawford and Calhoun, both parties to which, after suspending their animosities and combining them together to effect my ruin, are appealing to me for testimony to sustain themselves each against the other. This is one of the occasions upon which I shall eminently need the direction of a higher power to guide me in every step of my conduct. I see my duty to discard all consideration of their treatment of me, to adhere in everything that I shall say or write to the truth, to assert nothing positively of which I am not absolutely certain, to deny nothing upon which there remains a scruple of doubt upon my memory, to conceal nothing which it may be lawful to divulge, and which may promote truth and justice between the parties. With these principles I see further the necessity for caution and prudence in the course I shall take. The bitter enmity of all three of the parties, Jackson, Calhoun, and Crawford, against me, an enmity the more virulent because kindled by their own ingratitude and injustice to me, the interest which every one of them, and all their partisans, have in keeping up that load of obliquy and public odium which their foul columnies have brought down upon me, and the disfavor in which I stand before a majority of the people excited against me by their artifices, their demerits to me are proportioned to the obligations to me. Jackson's the greatest, Crawford's the next, Calhoun's the least of positive obligation, but darkened by his double-faced setting himself up as a candidate for the presidency against me in 1821, his prevarications between Jackson and me in 1824, and his icy-hearted dereliction of all the decencies of social intercourse with me, solely from the terror of Jackson, since the 4th of March, 1829, I walk between burning plow shares, let me be mindful where I place my foot. From the Memoirs, June 7, 1833 The first seedling apple-tree that I had observed on my return here just out of the ground was on the 22nd of April. It had grown slowly but constantly since, and had put out five or six leaves. Last evening, after my return from Boston, I saw it perfectly sound. This morning I found it broken off, leaving one lobe of the seed-leaves and one leaf over it. This may have been the work of a bug or perhaps of a caterpillar. It would not be imaginable to any person free from hobby-horse or fanciful attachments how much mortification such an incident occasions. St. Evrimand, after removing into the country, returned to a city life because he found himself in despair for the loss of a pigeon. His conclusion was that rural life induced exorbitant attachment to insignificant objects. My experience is conformable to this. My natural propensity was to raise trees, fruit and forest, from the seed. I had it in early youth, but the course of my life deprived me of the means of pursuing the bent of my inclination. One shell-bark walnut tree in my garden, the root of which I planted 8th October 1804, and one mazard cherry tree in the grounds north of the house, the stone of which I planted about the same time, are the only remains of my experiments of so ancient a date. Had my life been spent in the country, and my experiments commenced while I was at college, I should now have a large fruit garden, flourishing orchards of native fruit, and very valuable forests, instead of which I have a nursery of about half an acre of ground, half full of seedlings, from five years to five days old, bearing for the first time perhaps twenty peaches, and a few blossoms of apricots and cherries, and hundreds of seedlings of the present year perishing from day to day before my eyes. Come the memoirs, September 9, 1833. Cold and cloudy day, clearing off toward evening. In the multitudinous whimsies of a disabled mind and body, the thick coming fancies often come to me that the events which affect my life and adventures are specially shaped to disappoint my purposes. My whole life has been a succession of disappointments. I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success to anything that I ever undertook, yet with fervent gratitude to God I confess that my life has been equally marked by great and signal successes which I neither aimed at nor anticipated. Fortune, by which I understand providence, has showered blessings upon me profusely. But they have been blessings unforeseen and unsought. Non nobis domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuoda gloriam. I ought to have been taught by it three lessons. One of implicit reliance upon providence, two of humility and humiliation, the thorough conviction of my own impotence to accomplish anything, three of resignation, and not to set my heart upon anything which can be taken from me or denied. The Mission of America, from his Fourth of July oration at Washington, 1821. And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of congrieved rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, what has America done for mankind, let our answer be this. America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that a seldoma, the European world, will be contests between inveterate power and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The front lit upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence, but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatris of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit. The Right of Petition Quoted in Memoir by Josiah Quincy Sir, it is well known that, from the time I entered this house down to the present day, I have felt it a sacred duty to present any petition couched in respectful language from any citizen of the United States, be its object what it may, be the prayer of it that in which I could concur, or that to which I was utterly opposed, I adhere to the Right of Petition, and let me say here that, let the petition be, as the gentleman from Virginia has stated, from free negroes prostitutes as he supposes, for he says there is one put on this paper, and he infers that the rest are of the same description. That has not altered my opinion at all. Where is your law that says that the mean, the low, and the degraded shall be deprived of the Right of Petition if their moral character is not good? Where in the land of free men was the Right of Petition ever placed on the exclusive basis of morality and virtue? Petition is supplication, it is in treaty, it is prayer, and where is the degree of vice or immorality which shall deprive the citizen of the Right to supplicate for a boon, or to pray for mercy? Where is such a law to be found? It does not belong to the most abject despotism. There is no absolute monarch on earth who is not compelled by the constitution of his country to receive the petitions of his people, whosoever they may be. The sultan of Constantinople cannot walk the streets and refuse to receive petitions from the meanest and vilest in the land. This is the law even of despotism, and what does your law say? Does it say that before presenting a petition you shall look into it and see whether it comes from the virtuous and the great and the mighty? No, sir, it says no such thing. The Right of Petition belongs to all, and so far from refusing to present a petition because it might come from those low in the estimation of the world it would be an additional incentive if such an incentive were wanting. Nullification from his Fourth of July oration at Quincy, 1831 Nullification is the provocation to that brutal and foul contest of force which has hitherto baffled all the efforts of the European and Southern American nations to introduce among them constitutional governments of liberty and order. It strips us of that peculiar and unimitated characteristic of all our legislation, free debate. It makes the bayonet the arbiter of law. It has no argument but the thunderbolt. It were senseless to imagine that twenty-three states of the Union would suffer their laws to be trampled upon by the despotic mandate of one. The act of nullification would itself be null and void. Force must be called in to execute the law of the Union. Force must be applied by the nullifying state to resist its execution. AT, hot from hell, cries havoc and lets slip the dogs of war. The blood of brethren is shed by each other. The citizen of the nullifying state is a traitor to his country by obedience to the law of his state, a traitor to his state by obedience to the law of his country. The scaffold and the battlefield stream alternately with the blood of their victims. Let this agent but once intrude upon your deliberations and freedom will take her flight for heaven. The declaration of independence will become a philosophical dream, and uncontrolled despotic soverities will trample with impunity through a long career of after-ages at interminable or exterminating war with one another upon the indefesible and unalienable rights of man. The event of a conflict of arms between the Union and one of its members, whether terminating in victory or defeat, would be but an alternative of calamity to all. In the holy records of antiquity we have two examples of a confederation ruptured by the severance of its members, one of which resulted after three desperate battles in the extermination of the seceding tribe, and the victorious people instead of exulting in shouts of triumph came to the house of God and abode there till even before God, and lifted up their voices and wept sore and said, O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel that there should be today one tribe lacking in Israel? The other was a successful example of resistance against tyrannical taxation and severed forever the confederacy, the fragments forming separate kingdoms, and from that day their history presents an unbroken series of disastrous alliances and exterminating wars of assassinations, conspiracies, revolts and rebellions until both parts of the confederacy sunk in tributary servitude to the nations around them, till the countrymen of David and Solomon hung their hearts upon the willows of Babylon and were totally lost among the multitudes of the Chaldean and Assyrian monarchies, the most despised portion of their slaves. In these mournful memorials of their fate, we may behold the sure, too sure prognostication of our own, from the hour when force shall be substituted for deliberation in the settlement of our constitutional questions. This is the deplorable alternative, the extirpation of the seceding member, or the never ceasing struggle of two rival confederacies, ultimately bending the neck of both under the yoke of foreign domination, or the despotic sovereignty of a conqueror at home, may heaven avert the omen, the destinies of not only our posterity, but of the human race are at stake. Let no such melancholy forebodings intrude upon the festivities of this anniversary. Serene skies and balmy breezes are not congenial to the climate of freedom. Progressive improvement in the condition of man is apparently the purpose of a superintending providence. That purpose will not be disappointed. In no delusion of national vanity, but with a feeling of profound gratitude to the God of our fathers, let us indulge the cheering hope and belief that our country and her people have been selected as instruments for preparing and maturing much of the good yet in reserve for the welfare and happiness of the human race. Much good has already been effected by the solemn proclamation of our principles, much more by the illustration of our example, the tempest which threatens desolation may be destined only to purify the atmosphere. It is not in tranquil ease and enjoyment that the active energies of mankind are displayed. Toils and dangers are the trials of the soul. Doomed to the first by his sentence at the fall, man, by his submission, converts them into pleasures. The last are since the fall the condition of his existence. To see them in advance, to guard against them by all the suggestions of prudence, to meet them with the composure of unyielding resistance, and to abide with firm resignation, the final dispensation of him who rules the ball. These are the dictates of philosophy. These are the precepts of religion. These are the principles and consolations of patriotism. These remain when all is lost, and of these is composed the spirit of independence, the spirit embodied in that beautiful personification of the poet, which may each of you, my countrymen, to the last hour of his life apply to himself. Thy spirit independence let me share, Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye, thy steps I follow with my bosom bear, nor heed the storm that howls along the sky. In the course of nature, the voice which now addresses you must soon cease to be heard upon earth. Life and all which it inherits, lose of their value as it draws toward its close. But for most of you, my friends and neighbors, long and many years of futurity are yet in store. May they be years of freedom, years of prosperity, years of happiness, ripening for immortality. But were the breath which now gives utterance to my feelings, the last vital air I should draw, my expiring words to you and your children should be independence and union forever. End of section 14. Section 15 of Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 1. Section 15. Selections from Selected Poems by Sarah Flower Adams. Sarah Flower Adams, 1805 to 1848. This English poet, whose hymn, Nearer My God to Thee, is known wherever the English language is spoken, was born at Great Harlow Essex, England in 1805. She was the daughter of Benjamin Flower, who in 1799 was prosecuted for plain speaking in his paper, The Cambridge Intelligencer. From the outcome of his trial is to be dated the liberty of political discussion in England. Her mother was Eliza Gould, who first met her future husband in jail, with or she had gone on a visit to assure him of her sympathy. She also had suffered for liberal opinions. From their parents, two daughters inherited a distinguished nobility and purity of character. Eliza excelled in the composition of music for congregational worship, and arranged a musical service for the Unitarian South Place Chapel London. Sarah contributed first to the monthly repository conducted by W. J. Fox, her Unitarian pastor, in whose family she lived after her father's death. In 1834 she married William Bridges Adams. Her delicate health gave way under the shock of her sister's death in 1846, and she died of decline in 1848. Her poetic genius found expression both in the drama and in hymns. Her play, Vivia Perpetua, 1841, tells of the author's rapt aspiration after an ideal symbolized in a pagan's conversion to Christianity. She published also The Royal Progress, a ballad, 1845, on the giving tip of the feudal privileges of the Isle of Wight to Edward I, and poems upon the humanitarian interests which the Anti-Chorne Law League endeavored to further. Her hymns are the happiest expressions of the religious trust, resignation, and sweetness of her nature. Nearer my god to thee was written for the South Place Chapel Service. There are stories of its echoes having been heard from a dilapidated log cabin in Arkansas, from a remote corner of the north of England, and from the heights of Benjamin in the Holy Land. But even its devotion and humility have not escaped censure, arising perhaps from denominational bias. The fault found with it is the fault of Addison's How Are They Servants Blasto, Lord, and the fault of the Salmody begun by Sternhold and Hopkins, which, published in Geneva in 1556, electrified the congregation of 6,000 souls in Elizabeth's reign. It has no direct reference to Jesus. Compilers of hymn-books have sought to rectify what they deem a lapse in Christian spirit by the substitution of a verse beginning, Christ alone beareth me. But the quality of the interpolated verse is so inferior to the lyric itself that it has not found general acceptance. Others, again, with an excess of zeal, have endeavored to substitute the cross for a cross in the first stanza. An even share of its extraordinary vogue must in bear justice be credited to the tune which Dr. Lowell Mason has made an inseparable part of it, though this does not detract in the least from its own high merit or its capacity to satisfy the feelings of a devout soul. A taking melody is the first condition of even the loveliest songs obtaining popularity. And this hymn was sung for many years to various tunes, including chants, with no general recognition of its quality. It was Dr. Mason's tune written about 1860, which sent it at once into the hearts of the people. He sendeth son, he sendeth shower. He sendeth son, he sendeth shower, alike, there needful to the flower. And joys and tears alike are sent to give the soul fit nourishment. As comes to me or cloud or sun, Father, thy will, not mine, be done. Can loving children air reproof with murmurs whom they trust in love? Creator, I would ever be a trusting loving child to thee. As comes to me or cloud or sun, Father, thy will, not mine, be done. O near will I at life repine enough that thou has made it mine. When falls the shadow cold of death I yet will sing with parting breath. As comes to me or cloud or sun, Father, thy will, not mine, be done. Nearer my God to thee, nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee. In though it be a cross that raises me, still all my song shall be nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee. Though like a wanderer the sun gone down, darkness be over me, my rest a stone. Yet in my dreams I'd be nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee. There let the way appear steps unto heaven, all that thou sendest me in mercy given. Angels to beckon me nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee. Then with my waking thoughts bright with thy praise, out of my stony griefs betel I'll raise. So by my woes to be nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee. Or if on joyful wing cleaving the sky, sun, moon, and stars forgot, upward I fly. Still all my song shall be nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee. End of Section 15. Section 16. Essay on Joseph Addison by Hamilton Wright Mabey. Joseph Addison, 1672 to 1719 by Hamilton Wright Mabey. There are few figures in literary history more dignified and attractive than Joseph Addison. Few men, more eminently representative, not only of literature as a profession, but of literature as an art. It has happened more than once that literary gifts of a high order have been lodged in very frail moral tenements. That taste, feeling, and felicity of expression have been divorced from general intellectual power, from intimate acquaintance with the best in thought and art, from grace of manner and dignity of life. There have been writers of force and originality who failed to attain a representative eminence to identify themselves with their art in the memory of the world. There have been other writers without claim to the possession of gifts of the highest order, who have secured this distinction by virtue of harmony of character and work, of breadth of interest, and of that fine intelligence which instinctively allies itself with the best in its time. Of this class, Addison is an illustrious example. His gifts are not of the highest order. There was none of the spontaneity, abandon, or fertility of genius in him. His thought made no lasting contribution to the highest intellectual life. He sent no pulses beating by his eloquence of style, and fired no imagination by the insight and emotion of his verse. He was not a scholar in the technical sense, and yet in an age which was stirred and stung by the immense satiric force of swift, charmed by the wit and elegance of Pope, moved by the tenderness of steel, and enchanted by the fresh realism of default, Addison holds the most representative place. He is above all others the man of letters of his time. His name instantly evokes the literature of his period. Born in the rectory at Milston, Wiltshire, on May 1672, it was Addison's fortune to take up the profession of letters at the very moment when it was becoming a recognized profession, with a field of its own, and with emoluments sufficient in kind to make decency of living possible, and so related to a man's work, that their acceptance involved loss neither of dignity nor of independence. He was contemporary with the first English publisher, Jacob Thompson. He was also contemporary with the notable reorganization of English prose, which freed it from exaggeration, complexity, and obscurity. And he contributed not a little to the flexibility, charm, balance, and ease, which have since characterized its best examples. He saw the rise of polite society in its modern sense, the development of the social resources of the city, the enlargement of what is called the reading class, to embrace all classes in the community, and all orders in the nation. And he was one of the first, following the logic of a free press, an organized business for the sale of books, and the appearance of popular interest in literature, to undertake that work of translating the best thought, feeling, sentiment, and knowledge of his time, and of all times, into the language of the drawing room, the club, and the street, which has done so much to humanize and civilize the modern world, to recognize these various opportunities, to feel intuitively the drift of sentiment and conviction, and so to adjust the uses of art to survive, as to exalt the one, and enrich and refine the other, involved not only the possession of gifts of a high order, but that training which puts a man in command of himself, and of his materials. Addison was fortunate in that incomparably important education, which assails a child through every sense, and above all through the imagination, in the atmosphere of a home, frugal in its service to the body, but prodigal in its ministry to the spirit. His father was a man of generous culture, an Oxford scholar, who had stood frankly for the monarchy and the piscopy in Puritan times, a voluminous and agreeable writer, of whom Steele says that he bred his five children with all the care imaginable in a liberal and generous way. From this most influential of schools, Addison passed on to other masters from the grammar school at Lichfield to the well-known Charter House and Thence to Oxford, where he first entered Queen's College and later became a member of Magdalene, to the beauty of whose architecture and natural situation the tradition of his walks and personality adds no small charm. He was a close student, shy in manner, given to late hours of work. His literary tastes and appetite were early disclosed, and in his 22nd year he was already known in London, had written an account of the greatest English poets, and had addressed some complementary verses to Dryden, then the recognised head of English letters. While Addison was hesitating what profession to follow, the leaders of the political parties were casting about for men of literary power. A new force had appeared in English politics, the force of public opinion, and in their experiments to control and direct this novel force, politicians were eager to secure the aid of men of letters. The shifting of power to the House of Commons involved a radical readjustment, not only of the mechanism of political action, but of the attitude of public men to the nation. They felt the need of trained and persuasive interpreters and advocates of the resources of wit, satire and humour. It was this very practical service, which literature was in the way of rendering to political parties, rather than any deep regard for literature itself, which brought about a brief but brilliant alliance between groups of men who had not often worked together to mutual advantage. It must be said, however, that there was among the great Whig and Tory leaders of the time a certain liberality of taste, and a care for those things which give public life dignity and elegance, which were entirely absent from Robert Walpole and the leaders of the two succeeding reigns, when literature and politics were completely divorced, and the government knew little and cared less for the welfare of the arts. Addison came on the stage at the very moment when the government was not only ready but eager to foster such talents as his. He was a Whig of pronounced although modern type, and the Whigs were in power. Lord Somers and Charles Montague, better known later as Lord Halifax, were the heads of the ministry and his personal friends as well. They were men of culture, lovers of letters, and not unappreciative of the personal distinction which already stamped the studious and dignified Magdalene and Scholar. A Latin poem on the piece of Rhyswick dedicated to Montague, happily combined virginian elegance and felicity with weak sentiment and achievement. It confirmed the judgment already formed of Addison's ability, and setting aside with friendly insistence the plan of putting that ability into the service of the church, Montague secured a pension of £300 for the purpose of enabling Addison to fit himself for public employment abroad by thorough study of the French language and of manners, methods, and institutions on the continent. With eight Latin poems published in the second volume of the Musee Anglicane as an introduction to foreign scholars and armed with letters of introduction from Montague to many distinguished personages, Addison left Oxford in the summer of 1699 and, after a prolonged stay of Bluie for purposes of study, visited many cities and interesting localities in France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Holland. The shy, reticent but observing young traveller was everywhere received with the courtesy which early in the century had made so deep an impression on the young Milton. He studied hard, saw much, and meditated more. He was not only fitting himself for public service, but for that delicate portraiture of manners which was later to become his distinctive work. Clarendon had already drawn a series of lifelike portraits of men of action in the stormy period of the revolution. Addison was to sketch the society of his time with a touch at one's delicate and firm to exhibit its life in those aspects which emphasise individual humour and personal quality against a carefully wrought background of habit, manners, usage, and social condition. The habit of observation and the wide acquaintance with cultivated and elegant social life which was a necessary part of the training for the work which was later to appear in the pages of the spectator were perhaps the richest educational results of these years of travel and study. For Addison the official is a comparatively obscure figure but Addison the writer is one of the most admirable and attractive figures in English history. Addison returned to England in 1703 with clouded prospects. The ascension of Queen Anne had been followed by the dismissal of the wigs from office. His pension was stopped, his opportunity of advancement gone, and his father dead. The skies soon brightened however the support of the wigs became necessary to the government. The brilliant victory of Blenheim shed luster not only on Marlborough but on the men with whom he was politically affiliated, and there was great dearth of poetic ability in Tory ranks at the very moment when a notable achievement called for brave and splendid verse. Lord Goodolphin, that easygoing and eminently successful politician of whom Charles II once shrewdly said that he was never in the way and never out of it, was directed to Addison in this emergency, and the story goes that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, afterward Lord Carlton, who was sent to express to the needy scholar the wishes of the government, found him lodged in a garret over a small shop. The result of this memorable embassy from Politics to Literature was The Campaign, an eminently successful poem of the formal occasional order which celebrated the victory of Blenheim with tact and taste, pleased the ministry, delighted the public, and brought reputation and fortune to its unknown writer. Its excellence is in skillful avoidance of fulsome adulation, in the exclusion of the well-worn classical allusions, and in a straightforward celebration of those really great qualities in Marlborough which set his military career in brilliant contrast with his private life. The poem closed with a simile which took the world by storm. So when an angel, by divine command, with rising tempests, shakes a guilty land, such as of late old pale Britannia past, calm and serene he drives the furious blast, and, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm, Addison left off at a good moment, says Thackeray. That simile was pronounced to be the greatest ever produced in poetry. That angel, that good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and landed him in the place of Commissioner of Appeals, Vice Mr. Locke, providentially promoted. In the following year, Mr. Addison went to Hanover with Lord Halifax, and the year after was made under Secretary of State. O angel visits, you come few and far between to literary gentleman's lodgings. Your wings seldom quiver at the second floor windows now. The prize poem was followed by a narrative of travel in Italy, happily written, full of felicitous description, and touched by a humour which, in quality and manner, was new to English readers. Then came one of those indiscretions of the imagination which showed that the dignified and somewhat sober young poet, the parson in a tie wig, as he was called at a later day, was not lacking in gaiety of mood. The opera Rosamond was not a popular success, mainly because the music to which it was set fell so far below it in grace and ease. It must be added, however, that Addison lacked the qualities of a successful libretto writer. He was too serious, and despite the lightness of his touch, there was a certain rigidity in him which made him an apt adversification which required quickness, agility and variety. When he attempted to give his verse gaiety of manner, he did not get beyond awkward simulation of an ease which nature had denied him. Since conjugal passion is come into fashion, and marriage so blessed on the throne is like a Venus I'll shine, be fond and be fine, and so trusty shall be my Adonis. Meantime, in spite of occasional clouds, Addison's fortunes were steadily advancing. The Earl of Walton was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Addison accepted the lucrative post of secretary. Spencer had found time and place during a similar service in the same country to complete the Fairy Queen, although the fair land in which the loveliest of English poems has its action was not unvext by the chronic turbulence of a mercurial and badly used race. Irish residence was coincident in Addison's case, not only with prosperous fortunes and with important friendships, but also with the beginning of the work on which his fame securely rests. In Ireland, the acquaintance he had already made in London with Swift ripened into a generous friendship, which for a time resisted political differences when such differences were the constant occasion of personal animosity and bitterness. The two men represented the age in an uncommonly complete way. Swift had the greater genius. He was, indeed, in respect of natural endowment, the foremost man of his time, but his nature was undisciplined, his temper uncertain, and his great powers quite as much of the service of his passions as of his principles. He made himself respected, feared, and finally hated, his lack of restraint and balance, his ferocity of spirit when opposed, and the violence with which he assailed his enemies, mutualized his splendid gifts, marred his fortune, and sent him into lonely exile at Dublin, where he longed for the ample world of London. Few figures in literary history are more pathetic than that of the old Dean of St. Patrick's. Broken in spirit, failing in health, his noble faculties gone into premature decay, forsaken, bitter, and remorseful. At the time of Addison's day in Ireland, the days of Swift's eclipse were, however, far distant. Both men were in their prime. That Swift loved Addison is clear enough, and it is easy to understand the qualities which made Addison one of the most deeply loved men of his time. He was of an eminently social temper, although averse to large companies, and shy and silent in their presence. There is no such thing, he once said, as real conversation but between two persons. He was free from malice, meanness, or jealousy, pope to the contrary, notwithstanding. He was absolutely loyal to his principles and to his friends, in a time when many men changed both with as little compunction as they changed wigs and swords. His personality was singularly winning, his features regular, and full of refinement and intelligence, his bearing dignified and graceful, his temper kindly and in perfect control, his character without a stain, his conversation enchanting. Its charm confessed by persons so diverse in taste, as pope, Swift, Steele, and Young. Lady Mary Montague declared that he was the best company she had ever known. He had two faults of which the world has heard much. He loved the company of men who flattered him, and at times he used wine too freely. The first of these defects was venial, and did not blind his judgment either of himself or his friends. The second defect was so common among the men of his time that Addison's occasional overindulgence, in contrast with the excesses of others, seems like temperance itself. The harmony and symmetry of this winning personality has, in a sense, told against it, for men are prone to call the well-balanced nature cold, and the well-regulated life, phariseic. Addison did not escape charges of this kind from the wild livers of his own time, who could not disassociate genius from proflicacy, nor generosity of nature from prodigality. It was one of the great services of Addison to his generation, and to all generations, that in an age of violent passions, he showed how a strong man could govern himself. In a time of reckless living, he illustrated the power which flows from subordination of pleasure to duty. In a day when wit was identified with malice, he brought out its power to entertain, surprise, and delight, without taking on the irreverent levity of Voltaire, the bitterness of swift, or the malice of pope. It was during Addison's stay in Ireland that Richard Steele projected the Tatler, and brought out the first number in 1709. His friendship for Addison amounted almost to a passion. The intimacy was cemented by harmony of tastes and diversity of character. Steele was ardent, impulsive, warm-hearted, mercurial, full of aspiration and beset by lamentable weaknesses, preaching the highest morality and constantly falling into the prevalent vices of his time. A man so lovable of temper, so generous a spirit, and so frank and nature, that his faults seem to humanize his character rather than to weaken and stain it. Steele's gifts were many, and they were always at the service of his feelings. He had an Irish warmth of sympathy, and an Irish redness of humour, with great facility of inventiveness, and an inexhaustible interest in all aspects of human experience. There had been political journals in England since the time of the Revolution, but Steele conceived the idea of a journal which should comment on the events and characteristics of the time in a bright and humorous way, using freedom with judgment and taste, and attacking the vices and follies of the time with the light equipment of wit rather than with the heavy armament of the formal moralist. The time was ripe for such an enterprise. London was full of men and women of brilliant parts, whose manners, tastes and talk presented rich material for humorous report and delineation, all for satiric comment. Society, in the modern sense, was fast-taking form, and the resources of social intercourse were being rapidly developed. Men in public life were intimately allied with society and sensitive to its opinion, and men of all interests, public, fashionable, literary, gathered in groups at the different chocolate or coffee houses, and formed a kind of organised community. It was distinctly an aristocratic society, elegant in dress, punctilious in manner, exacting in taste, ready to be amused and not indifferent to criticism when it took the form of sprightly badenage or of keen and trenchant satire. The informal organisation of society, which made it possible to reach and affect the town as a whole, is suggested by the division of the Tatler. All accounts of gallantry, pleasure and entertainment shall be under the article of Bites Chocolate House, poetry under that of Will's Coffee House, learning under the title of Grecian, foreign and domestic news you will have from St. James's Coffee House, and what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own apartment. So wrote Steele in his introduction to the readers of the new journal, which was to appear three times a week at the cost of a penny. Of the coffee houses enumerated, St. James's and White's were the headquarters of men of fashion and of politics, the Grecian of men of legal learning, Will's of men of letters. The Tatler was successful from the start. It was novel in form and in spirit. It was sprightly without being frivolous, witty without being indecent, keen without being libelous or malicious. In the general licence and coarseness of the time, so close to the restoration and the powerful reaction against Puritanism, the cleanness, courtesy and good taste which characterised the journal had all the charm of a new diversion. In paper number 18, Addison made his appearance as a contributor and gave the world the first of those inimitable essays which influenced their own time so widely and which have become the solace and delight of all times. To Addison's influence may perhaps be traced the change which came over the Tatler and which is seen in the gradual disappearance of the news element and the steady drift of the paper away from journalism and toward literature. Society soon felt the full force at the extraordinary talent at the command of the new censor of contemporary manners and morals. There was a well directed and incessant fire of wit against the prevailing taste of dramatic art, against the vices of gambling and dueling, against extravagance and affectation of dress and manner and there was also criticism of a new order. The Tatler was discontinued in January 1711 and the first number of the spectator appeared in March. The new journal was issued daily but it made no pretensions to newspaper timeliness or interest. It aimed to set a new standard in manners, morals and taste without assuming the ears of a teacher. It was said of Socrates, wrote Addison, in a memorable chapter in the new journal, that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men, and I shall be happy to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and in coffee houses. For more than two years the spectator discharged with inimitable skill and success the difficult function of chiding, reproving and correcting without irritating, wounding or causing strife. Swift found the paper too gentle but its influence was due in no small measure to its persuasiveness. Addison studied his method of attack as carefully as Matthew Arnold, who undertook a similar educational work in our own time, studied his means of approach to a public indifferent or hostile to his ideas. The 274 papers furnished by Addison to the columns of the spectator may be said to mark the full development of English prose as a free, flexible, clear and elegant medium of expressing the most varied and delicate shades of thought. They mark also the perfection of the essay form in our literature, revealing clear perception of its limitation and of its resources, easy mastery of its possibilities of serious exposition and a pervading charm, ability to employ its full capacity of conveying serious thought in a manner at once easy and authoritative. They mark also the beginning of a deeper and more intelligent criticism, for their exposition of Milton may be said to point the way to a new quality of literary judgment and a new order of literary comment. These papers mark, finally, the beginnings of the English novel, for they contain a series of character studies full of insight, delicacy of drawing, true feeling and sureness of touch. Addison was not content to satirise the follies, attack the vices, and picture the manners of his times. He created a group of figures which stand out as distinctly as those which were drawn more than a century later by the Hand of Thackeray, our greatest painter of manners. Defoe had not yet published the first of the great modern novels of Incident and Adventure in Robinson Crusoe, and Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett were unborn or unknown when Addison was sketching Sir Roger Decoverly and Will Honeycomb and filling in the background with charming studies of life in London and in the country. The world has instinctively selected Sir Roger Decoverly as the truest of all the creations of Addison's imagination, and it sheds clear light on the fineness of Addison's nature that among the four characters in fiction whom English readers have agreed to accept as typical gentlemen, Don Quixote, Sir Roger Decoverly, Henry Esmond, and Colonel Newcomb, the old English baronet holds a secure place. Finished in style, but genuinely human in feeling betraying the nicest choice of words and the most studied care for elegant and effective arrangement, and yet penetrated by geniality, enlivened by humour, elevated by high moral aims, often using the dangerous weapons of irony and satire, and yet always well-mannered and kindly, these papers reveal the sensitive nature of Addison and the delicate but thoroughly tempered art which he had at his command. Rarely has literature of so high an order had such instant success, for the popularity of the spectator has been rivaled in English literature only by that of the Waverly novels or of the novels of Dickens. Its influence was felt not only in the sentiment of the day and in the crowd of imitators which followed in its wake, but also across the channel. In Germany especially, the genius and methods of Addison made a deep and lasting impression. No man could reach such eminence in the first quarter of the last century without being tempted to try his hand at playwriting, and the friendly fortune which seemed to serve Addison at every turn reached its climax in the applause which greeted the production of Cato. The motive of this tragedy, constructed on what were then held to be classic lines, is found in the two lines of the prologue it was an endeavour to portray. A brave man, struggling in the storms of fate, and greatly falling with a falling state. The play was full of striking lines, which were instantly caught up and applied to the existing political situation. The theatre was crowded night after night, and the resources of Europe in the way of translations, plaudits and favourable criticisms were exhausted in the endeavour to express the general approval. The judgement of a later period housed, however, assigned Cato a secondary place, and it is remembered mainly on account of its many felicitous passages. It lacks real dramatic unity and vitality. The character of Cato is essentially an abstraction. There is little dramatic necessity in the situations and incidents. It is rhetorical, rather than poetic. Declamatory, rather than dramatic. Johnson aptly described it as rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Addison's popularity touched its highest point in the production of Cato. Even his conciliatory nature could not discern the envy which such brilliant success naturally aroused, nor wholly escaped the bitterness which the intense political feeling of the time constantly bred between ambitious and able men. Political differences separated him from swift, and Steele's uncertain character and inconsistent course blighted what was probably the most delightful intimacy of his life. Pope doubtless believed that he had good ground for charging Addison with jealousy and insecurity, and in 1715 an open rupture took place between them. The story of the famous quarrel was first told by Pope, and his version was long accepted in many quarters as final, but later opinion inclined to hold Addison guiltless at the grave accusations brought against him. Pope was morbidly sensitive to slights, morbidly eager for praise, and extremely irritable. To a man of such temper, trifles light as air became significant of malice and hatred. Such trifles unhappily confirmed Pope's suspicions. His self-love was wounded, sensitiveness became animosity, and animosity became hate, which in the end inspired the most stinging bit of satire in the language. Should such a one resolved to reign alone, there, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, view him with jealous yet with scornful eyes, hate him for art that caused himself to rise, down with faint praise, ascent with civil lear, and without sneering teach the rest to sneer, alike unused to blame or to commend, a timorous foe and a suspicious friend, fearing even fools where flatterers besieged, and so obliging that he never obliged, willing to wound and yet afraid to strike. There was just enough semblance of truth in these inimitable lines to give them lasting stinging power, but that they were grossly unjust is now generally conceded. Addison was human, and therefore not free from the frailties of men of his profession, but there was no meanness in him. Addison's loyalty to the Whig party and his ability to serve it kept him in intimate relations with its leaders and bound him to its fortunes. He served the Whig cause in parliament, and filled many positions which required tact and judgment, attaining at last the very dignified post of Secretary of State. A long attachment for the Countess of Warwick culminated in marriage in 1716, and Addison took up his residence in Holland House, a house famous for its association with men of distinction in politics and letters. The marriage was not happy if reporters to be trusted. The union of the ill-adapted pair was in any event short-lived. For three years later, in 1719, Addison died in his early prime, not yet having completed his 48th year. On his deathbed, Young tells us he called his steps unto his side and said, See in what peace a Christian can die. His body was laid in Westminster Abbey. His work is one of the permanent possessions of the English-speaking race. His character is one of its finest traditions. He was, as truly as Sir Philip Sidney, a gentleman in the sweetness of his spirit, the courage of his convictions, the refinement of his bearing, and the purity of his life. He was unspoiled by fortune and applause, uncorrupted by the tempting chances of his time. Stainless, in the use of gifts which in the hands of a man less true, would have caught the contagion of Pope's malice, or of Swift's corroding cynicism. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Raven Notation Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 1, Section 17, Selected Works by Joseph Addison. Sir Roger DeCovalli at the play. From the spectator, number 335. My friend Sir Roger DeCovalli, when we last met together at the club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy with me, assuring me at the same time that he had not been at a play these 20 years. The last I saw said Sir Roger was the committee, which I should not have gone to neither, had not I been told beforehand that it was a good Church of England comedy. He then proceeded to inquire of me who this distressed mother was, and upon hearing that she was Hector's widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man, and that when he was a schoolboy, he had read his life at the end of the dictionary. My friend asked me in the next place if there would not be some danger in coming home late, in case the Mohawk should be abroad. I assure you, says he, I thought I had fallen into their hands last night, for I observed two or three lusty black men that followed me halfway up Fleet Street, and mended their pace behind me, in proportion as I put on to get away from them. You must know, continued the night with a smile. I fancied they had a mind to hunt me, for I remember an honest gentleman in my neighbourhood, who was served such a trick in King Charles II's time, for which reason he has not ventured himself in town ever since. I might have shown them very good sport had this been their design, for as I am an old Fox Hunter I should have turned and dodged, and had played them a thousand tricks they had never seen in their lives before. So Roger added, that if these gentlemen had any such intention, they did not succeed very well in it, for I threw them out, says he, at the end of Norfolk Street, where I doubled the corner and got shelter in my lodgings, before they could imagine what was become of me. However, says the Knight, if Captain Sentry will make one with us tomorrow night, and if you will both of you call upon me about four o'clock, that we may be at the house before it is four, I will have my own coach in readiness to attend you, for John tells me he has got the four wheels mended. London Bucks, who disguised themselves as savages, and roamed the streets at night, committing outrages on persons and property. The Captain, who did not fail to meet me there at the appointed hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same sword which he had made use of at the Battle of Steenkirk. Sir Roger's servants, and among the rest my old friend the Butler, had, I found, provided themselves with good oaken plans to attend their master upon this occasion. When he had placed him in his coach, with myself at his left hand, the Captain before him, and his Butler at the head of his footman in the rear, we convoied him in safety to the playhouse, where, after having marched up the entry in good order, the Captain and I went in with him, and seated him betwixt us in the pit. As soon as the house was full, and the candles lighted, my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure, which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself, at the sight of a multitude of people who seemed pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself, as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit, that he made a very proper centre to a tragic audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus, the knight told me that he did not believe the King of France himself had a better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend's remarks, because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism, and was well pleased to hear him at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end. One while he appeared much concerned for Andromache, and a little while after as much for Hermane, and was extremely puzzled to think what would become of Pyrrhus. When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's importunities, he whispered me in the year that he was sure she would never have him, to which he added, with a more than ordinary environments, you can't imagine, Sir, what tis to have to do with a widow. Upon Pyrrhus, his threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his head and muttered to himself, I do if you can. This part dwelt so much upon my friend's imagination, that at the close of the third act, as I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, these widows, Sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray, says he, you that are a critic, is this play according to your dramatic rules, as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do not know the meaning of. The fourth act very luckily began before I had time to give the old gentleman an answer. Well, says the knight, sitting down with great satisfaction, I suppose we are now to see Hector's ghost. He then renewed his attention, and, from time to time, fell appraising the widow. He made, indeed, a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom, at his first entering, he took for a stionax, but he quickly set himself right in that particular. Though, at the same time, he owned he should have been very glad to have seen the little boy, who, says he, must need to be a very fine child by the account that is given of him. Upon Haman is going off with a menace to pierce, the audience gave a loud clap, to which Sir Roger added, on my word, a notable young baggage. As there was a very remarkable silence and stillness in the audience during the whole action, it was natural for them to take the opportunity of these intervals between the acts, to express their opinion of the players and of their respective parts. Sir Roger, hearing a cluster of them praise or estes, struck in with them, and told them that he thought his friend Pilatus was a very sensible man. As they were afterwards applauding Pyrrhus, Sir Roger put in a second time, and let me tell you, says he, though he speaks but little, I like the old fellow in Whiskers as well as any of them. Captain Sentry, seeing two or three wags who sat near us, lean with an attentive ear towards Sir Roger, and, fearing lest they should smoke the night, plucked him by the elbow and whispered something in his ear, that lasted till the opening of the fifth act. The night was wonderfully attended to the account which Orestes gives of Pyrrhus his death, and, at the conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody piece of work that he was glad it was not done upon the stage. Seeing afterwards Orestes in his raving fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and took occasion to moralise, in his way, upon an evil conscience, adding that Orestes, in his madness, looked as if he saw something. As we were the first that came into the house, so we were the last that went out of it, being resolved to have a clear passage for our old friend, whom we did not care to venture among the justling of the crowd. Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his entertainment, and we guarded him to his lodgings in the same manner that we brought him to the playhouse, being highly praised for my own part, not only with the performance of the excellent piece which had been presented, but with the satisfaction which it had given to the old man. L. A visit to Sir Roger de Coverley, from the Spectator, number 106. Having often received an invitation from my friend, Sir Roger de Coverley, to pass away a month with him in the country, I last week accompanied him fither, and am settled with him for some time at his country house, where I intend to form several of my ensuing speculations. Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humour, lets me rise and go to bed when I please, dine at his own table, or in my chamber as I think fit, sit still, and say nothing without bidding me be merry. When the gentleman of the country come to see him, he only shoes me at a distance, as I have been walking in his fields, I have observed them stealing a sight of me over a hedge, and have heard the night desiring them not to let me see them, for that I hate it to be stared at. I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family, because it consists of sober and stead persons, for as the night is the best master in the world, he seldom changes his servants, and as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him, by this means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet de charme for his brother, his butler is grey-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy counsellor. You see the goodness of the master even in the old house-dog, and in a grey pad that is kept in the stable, with great care and tenderness out of regard to his past services, though he has been useless for several years. I could not but observe with a great deal of pleasure the joy that appeared in the countenances of those ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at his country's seat. Some of them could not refrain from tears at the sight of their old master, every one of them pressed forward to do something for him, and seemed discouraged if they were not employed. At the same time the good old knight, with a mixture of the father and master of the family, tempered the inquirers after his own affairs with several kind questions relating to themselves. This humanity and good nature engages every body to him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with. On the contrary, if he coughs or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stand nearby to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants. My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, as well as the rest of his fellow servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me, because they have often heard their master talk of me as of his particular friend. My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting himself in the woods or the fields, is a very venerable man who is ever with Sir Roger, and has lived at his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty years. This gentleman is a person of good sense and some learning of a very regular life and a bludgeoning conversation. He heartily loves Sir Roger, and knows that he is very much in the old knight's esteem, so that he lives in the family rather as a relation than a dependent. I have observed in several of my papers that my friend Sir Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is something of a humorist, and that his virtues, as well as imperfections, are, as it were, tinged by a certain extravagance, which makes them particularly his and distinguishes them from those of other men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same degree of sense and virtue would appear in their common and ordinary colours. As I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good man, whom I have just now mentioned, and without staying for my answer told me, that he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table, for which reason he desired a particular friend of his at the university to find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a little of backgammon. My friend, says Sir Roger, found me at this gentleman, who, besides the endowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though he does not show it. I have given him the personage of the parish, and because I know his value, have settled upon him a good annuity for life. If he outlives me, he shall find that he was higher in my esteem than perhaps he thinks he is. He has now been with me thirty years, and though he does not know I have taken notice of it, has never in all that time asked anything of me for himself, though he is every day soliciting me for something in behalf of one or other of my tenants, his parishness. There has not been a lawsuit in the parish since he has lived among them. If any dispute arises, they apply themselves to him for the decision. If they do not acquiesce in his judgment, which I think never happened above once or twice at most, they appeal to me. At his first settling with me, I made him a present of all the good sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit. Accordingly he has digested them into such a series, that they follow one another naturally, and make a continued system of practical divinity. As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gentleman we were talking of came up to us, and upon the nights asking him who preached to-morrow, for it was Saturday night, told us, the Bishop of St. Athath in the morning, and Dr. South in the afternoon. He then shewed us his list of preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of pleasure Archbishop Tilletson, Bishop Saunderson, Dr. Barrow, Dr. Callamy, with several living authors who have published discourses of practical divinity. I know sooner saw this venerable man in the pulpit, but I very much approved of my friends insisting upon the qualifications of a good aspect and a clear voice, for I was so charmed with the gracefulness of his figure and delivery, as well as with the discourses he pronounced, that I think I never passed any time more to my satisfaction. A sermon repeated after this manner is like the composition of a poet in the mouth of a graceful actor. I could heartily wish that more of our country clergy would follow this example, and instead of wasting their spirits in laborious compositions of their own, would endeavour after a handsome elocution and all those other talents that are proper to enforce what has been penned by greater masters. This would not only be more easy to themselves, but more edifying to the people. The Vanity of Human Life, The Vision of Mirza, from the spectator number 159. When I was at Grand Cairo, I picked up several Oriental manuscripts, which I have still by me. Among others I met with one entitled The Visions of Mirza, which I have read over with great pleasure. I intend to give it to the public, when I have no other entertainment for them, and shall begin with the first vision, which I have translated word for word, as follows. On the fifth day of the moon, which according to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagda, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation on the Vanity of Human Life, and passing from one thought to another, surely said I, Man is but a shadow, and life a dream. Whilst I was thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a little musical instrument in his hand. As I looked upon him, he applied it to his lips, and began to play upon it. The sound of it was exceeding sweet, and brought it to a variety of tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different from anything I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly heirs that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their first arrival in paradise, to wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures of that happy place. My heart melted away in secret raptures. I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of the genius, and that several had been entertained with music who had passed by it, but never heard that the musician had before made himself visible. When he had raised my thoughts by those transporting heirs which he played, to taste the pleasures of his conversation, as I looked upon him like one astonished, he beckoned to me, and by the waving of his hand directed me to approach the place where he sat. I drew near with that reverence which is due to a superior nature, and as my heart was entirely subdued by the captivating strains I heard, I fell down at his feet and wept. The genius smiled upon me with a look of compassion and affability that familiarised him to my imagination, and at once dispelled all the fears and apprehensions with which I approached him. He lifted me from the ground and taken me by the hand. Niza, he said he, I have heard thee in thy soliloquies. Follow me. He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it, cast thy eyes eastward, said he, and tell me what thou seest. I see, said I, a huge valley and a prodigious hide of water rolling through it. The valley that thou seest, said he, is the veil of misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of the great tide of eternity. What is the reason, said I, that the tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick mist at the other. What thou seest, said he, is that portion of eternity which is called time, measured out by the sun and reaching from the beginning of the world to its consummation, examined now, said he, this sea that is bound with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it. I see a bridge, said I, standing in the midst of the tide. The bridge thou seest, said he, is human life. Consider it attentively. Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found that it consisted of three score and ten entire arches with several broken arches, which added to those that were entire, made up the number about a hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches, but that a great flood swept away the rest and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it. But tell me further, said he, what thou discoverest on it. I see multitudes of people passing over it, said I, and a black cloud hanging on each end of it. As I looked more attentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed underneath it, and upon further examination, perceived, there were innumerable trapped doors that they concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon, but they fell through them into the tide and immediately disappeared. These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that the throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner towards the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together towards the end of the arches that were entire. There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, but continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so longer walk. I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking up towards the heavens in a thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before them, but often, when they thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed and down they sunk. In this confusion of objects, I observed some with simeters in their hands, and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on trapdoors, which did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have escaped had they not been forced upon them. The genius, seeing me indulge myself in this melancholy prospect, told me I had dwelt long enough upon it. Take thine eyes off the bridge, said he, and tell me if thou yet seeest anything thou dost not comprehend. Upon looking up, what means, said I, those great flights of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge, and settling upon it from time to time. I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants, and among many other feathered creatures, several little wind-boys that perch in great numbers upon the middle arches. These, said the genius, are envy, avarice, superstition, despair, love, with the like cares and passions that infest human life. I here fetched a deep sigh. Alas, said I, man was made in vain. How is he given away to misery and mortality, tortured in life, and swallowed up in death? The genius, being moved with compassion towards me, bid me quit so uncomfortable a prospect. Look no more, said he, on man in the first stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity, but cast thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it. I directed my sight as I was ordered, and, whether or not the good genius strengthened it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate, I saw the valley opening at the farther end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean that had a huge rock of atoms running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal parts. The clouds still rested on one half of it, in so much that I could discover nothing in it, but the other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands that were covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the side of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers, and could hear a confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle that I might fly away to those happy seats, but the genius told me there was no passage to them, except through the gates of death that I saw opening every moment upon the bridge. The islands, said he, had lies so fresh and green before thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in number than the sands on the seashore. There are myriads of islands behind those which thou here discoverst, reaching farther than thine eye, or even thine imagination can extend itself. These are the mansions of good men after death, who, according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are distributed among these several islands, which abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled in them. Every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective inhabitants. Are not these, oh myriza, habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable, that gives the opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain, who has such an eternity reserved for him? I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I, shoo me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant. The genius, making me no answer, I turned about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had left me. I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating, but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of Baghdad, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the side of it. An essay on fans from the spectator, number 102. I do not know whether to call the following letter a satyr upon curquets, or a representation of their several fantastical accomplishments, or what other title to give it. But, as it is, I shall communicate it to the public. It will sufficiently explain its own intentions, so that I shall give it to my reader at length, without either preface or proscript. Mr. Spectator. Women are armed with fans, as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them. To the end, therefore, that ladies may be entire mistresses of the weapon which they bear, I have erected an academy for the training up of young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the most fashionable airs and motions that are now practiced at court. The ladies who carry fans under me are drawn up twice a day in my great hall, where they are instructed in the use of their arms, and exercised by the following words of command. Handle your fans, unfurl your fans, discharge your fans, ground your fans, recover your fans, flutter your fans. By the right observation of these few plain words of command, a woman of a tolerable genius who will apply herself diligently to her exercise for the space of but one half year, shall be able to give her fan all the graces that can possibly enter into that little modish machine. But to the end that my readers may form to themselves a right notion of this exercise, I beg leave to explain it to them in all its parts. When my female regiment is drawn up in a ray, with every one her weapon in her hand, upon my giving the word to handle their fans, each of them shakes her fan at me with a smile, then gives her right hand woman a tap upon the shoulder, then presses her lips with the extremity of her fan, then lets her arms fall in an easy motion, and stands in a readiness to receive the next word of command. All this is done with a close fan, and is generally learned in the first week. The next motion is that of unfurling the fan, in which are comprehended several little flirts and vibrations, as also gradual and deliberate openings, with many voluntary fallings asunder in the fan itself, that are seldom learned under a month's practice. This part of the exercise pleases the spectators more than any other, as it discovers on a sudden an infinite number of cupids, garlands, alters, birds, beasts, rainbows, and the like agreeable figures that display themselves to view, whilst every one in the regiment holds a picture in her hand. Upon my giving the word to discharge their fans, they give one general crack that may be heard at a considerable distance when the wind sits fair. This is one of the most difficult parts of the exercise, but I have several ladies with me who at their first entrance could not give a pop loud enough to be heard at the further end of a room, who can now discharge a fan in such a manner that it shall make a report like a pocket pistol. I have likewise taken care, in order to hinder young women from letting off their fans in wrong places or unsuitable occasions, to shoe upon what subject the crack of a fan may come improperly. I have likewise invented a fan, with which a girl of sixteen, by the help of a little wind which is enclosed about one of the largest sticks, can make as loud a crack as a woman of fifty with an ordinary fan. When the fans are thus discharged, the word of command in course is to ground their fans. This teaches a lady to quit her fan gracefully, when she throws it aside in order to take up a pack of cart, adjust a curl of hair, replace a falling pin, or apply herself to any other matter of importance. This part of the exercise, as it only consists in tossing a fan with an air upon a long table, which stands by for that purpose, may be learned in two days time, as well as in a twelve month. When my female regiment is thus disarmed, I generally let them walk about the room for some time, when on a sudden, like ladies that look upon their watches after a long visit, they all of them hasten to their arms, catch them up in a hurry, and place themselves in their proper stations upon my calling out, recover your fans. This part of the exercise is not difficult, provided a woman applies her thoughts to it. The fluttering of the fan is the last, and indeed masterpiece, of the whole exercise. But if a lady does not misspend her time, she may make herself mistress of it in three months. I generally lay aside the dog days, and the hot time of the summer for the teaching this part of the exercise, for as soon as ever I pronounce flutter your fans, the place is filled with so many zeffers and gentle breezes, as are very refreshing in that season of the year, though they might be dangerous to ladies of a tender constitution in any other. There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the flutter of a fan. There is an angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amorous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the fan, insomuch that if I only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns or blushes. I have seen a fan so very angry that it would have been dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to have come within the wind of it, and at other times, so very languishing that I have been glad for the lady's sake the lover was at a sufficient distance from it. I need not add that a fan is either a prude or a curcuit, according to the nature of the person who bears it. To conclude my letter I must acquaint you that I have from my own observations compiled a little treatise for the use of my scholars, entitled The Passions of the Fan, which I will communicate to you if you think it may be of use to the public. I shall have a general review on Thursday next, to which you shall be very welcome, if you will honour it with your presence. I am Anci. P. S. I teach young gentlemen the whole art of galanting a fan. N. B. I have several little plain fans made for this use to avoid expense. L. Him. From the spectator, number 465. The spacious firmament unhigh, with all the blue ethereal sky, and spangled heavens a shining frame, their great original proclaim. The unwearyed sun from day to day does his creator's power display, and publishes to every land the work of an almighty hand. Soon as the evening shades prevail, the moon takes up the wondrous tale, and nightly to the listening earth repeats the story of her birth. While all the stars that round her burn, and all the planets in their turn, confirm the tidings as they roll, and spread the truth from pole to pole. What though, in solemn silence all, move round the dark terrestrial ball? What though, no real voice nor sound, amid their radiant orbs be found? In reason's ear, they all rejoice, and titter forth a glorious voice. Forever singing as they shine, the hand that made us is divine. End of section 17