Addison Part 6

It is, however, by no means undeserved in its application to the cla.s.s of plays which grew up after the Restoration. Under that _regime_ the moral spirit of the Shakesperian drama entirely disappears. The king, whose temper was averse to tragedy, and whose taste had been formed on French models, desired to see every play end happily. "I am going to end a piece," writes Roger, Earl of Orrery, to a friend, "in the French style, because I have heard the King declare that he preferred their manner to our own." The greatest tragedies of the Elizabethan age were transformed to suit this new fashion; even King Lear obtained a happy deliverance from his sufferings in satisfaction of the requirements of an effeminate Court.

Addison very wittily ridicules this false taste in the fortieth number of the _Spectator_. He is not less felicitous in his remarks on the sentiments and the style of the Caroline drama, though he does not sufficiently discriminate his censure, which he bestows equally on the dramatists of the Restoration and on Shakespeare. Two main characteristics appear in all the productions of the former epoch--the monarchical spirit and the fashion of gallantry. The names of the plays speak for themselves: on the one hand, _The Indian Emperor_, _Aurengzebe_, _The Indian Queen_, _The Conquest of Granada_, _The Fate of Hannibal_; on the other, _Secret Love_, _Tyrannic Love_, _Love and Vengeance_, _The Rival Queens_, _Theodosius, or the Power of Love_, and numberless others of the same kind. In the one set of dramas the poet sought to arouse the pa.s.sion of pity by exhibiting the downfall of persons of high estate; in the other he appealed to the sentiment of romantic pa.s.sion. Such were the fruits of that taste for French romance which was encouraged by Charles II., and which sought to disguise the absence of genuine emotion by the turgid bombast of its sentiment and the epigrammatic declamation of its rhymed verse.

At the same time, the taste of the nation having been once turned into French channels, a remedy for these defects was naturally sought for from French sources; and just as the school of Racine and Boileau set its face against the extravagances of the romantic coteries, so Addison and his English followers, adopting the principles of the French cla.s.sicists, applied them to the reformation of the English theatre. Hence arose a great revival of respect for the poetical doctrines of Aristotle, regard for the unities of time and place, attention to the proprieties of sentiment and diction--in a word, for all those characteristics of style afterwards summed up in the phrase "correctness."

This habit of thought, useful as an antidote to extravagance, was not fertile as a motive of dramatic production. Addison worked with strict and conscious attention to his critical principles: the consequence is that his _Cato_, though superficially "correct," is a pa.s.sionless and mechanical play. He had combated with reason the "ridiculous doctrine in modern criticism, that writers of tragedy are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical justice."[54] But his reasoning led him on to deny that the idea of justice is an essential element in tragedy. "We find," says he, "that good and evil happen alike to all men on this side the grave; and, as the princ.i.p.al design of tragedy is to raise commiseration and terror in the minds of the audience, we shall defeat this great end if we always make virtue and innocence happy and successful.... The ancient writers of tragedy treated men in their plays as they are dealt with in the world, by making virtue sometimes happy and sometimes miserable, as they found it in the fable which they made choice of, or as it might affect their audience in the most agreeable manner."[55] But it is certain that the fable which the two greatest of the Greek tragedians "made choice of" was always of a religious nature, and that the idea of Justice was never absent from it; it is also certain that Retribution is a vital element in all the tragedies of Shakespeare. The notion that the essence of tragedy consists in the spectacle of a good man struggling with adversity is a conception derived through the French from the Roman Stoics; it is not found in the works of the greatest tragic poets.

This, however, was Addison's central motive, and this is what Pope, in his famous Prologue, a.s.signs to him as his chief praise:

"Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move The hero's glory or the virgin's love; In pitying love we but our weakness show, And wild ambition well deserves its woe.

Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause, Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws: He bids your b.r.e.a.s.t.s with ancient ardour rise, And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.

Virtue confessed in human shape he draws-- What Plato thought, and G.o.dlike Cato was: No common object to your sight displays, But what with pleasure heav'n itself surveys; A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, And greatly falling with a falling state."

A falling state offers a tragic spectacle to the thought and the reason, but not one that can be represented on the stage so as to move the pa.s.sions of the spectators. The character of Cato, as exhibited by Addison, is an abstraction, round which a number of other lay figures are skilfully grouped for the delivery of lofty and appropriate sentiments.

Juba, the virtuous young prince of Numidia, the admirer of Cato's virtue, Portius and Marcus, Cato's virtuous sons, and Marcia, his virtuous daughter, are all equally admirable and equally lifeless. Johnson's criticism of the play leaves little to be said:

"About things," he observes, "on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right; and of _Cato_ it has not been unjustly determined that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here 'excites or a.s.suages emotion;'

here is 'no magical power of raising fantastic terror or wild anxiety.' The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care; we consider not what they are doing or what they are suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say. Cato is a being above our solicitude; a man of whom the G.o.ds take care, and whom we leave to their care with heedless confidence. To the rest neither G.o.ds nor men can have much attention, for there is not one among them that strongly attracts either affection or esteem. But they are made the vehicles of such sentiments and such expressions that there is scarcely a scene in the play which the reader does not wish to impress upon his memory."

To this it may be added that, from the essentially undramatic bent of Addison's genius, whenever he contrives a train of incident he manages to make it a little absurd. Dennis has pointed out with considerable humour the consequences of his conscientious adherence to the unity of place, whereby every species of action in the play--love-making, conspiracy, debating, and fighting--is made to take place in the "large hall in the governor's palace of Utica." It is strange that Addison's keen sense of the ridiculous, which inspired so happily his criticisms on the allegorical paintings at Versailles,[56] should not have shown him the incongruities which Dennis discerned; but, in truth, they pervade the atmosphere of the whole play. All the actors--the distracted lovers, the good young man, Juba, and the blundering conspirator, Semp.r.o.nius--seem to be oppressed with an uneasy consciousness that they have a character to sustain, and are not confident of coming up to what is expected of them.

This is especially the case with Portius, a pragmatic young Roman, whose praiseworthy but futile attempts to unite the qualities of Stoical fort.i.tude, romantic pa.s.sion, and fraternal loyalty, exhibit him in a position of almost comic embarra.s.sment. According to Pope, "the love part was flung in after, to comply with the popular taste;" but the removal of these scenes would make the play so remarkably barren of incident that it is a little difficult to credit the statement.

The deficiencies of _Cato_ as an acting play were, however, more than counterbalanced by the violence of party spirit, which insisted on investing the comparatively tame sentiments a.s.signed to the Roman champions of liberty with a pointed modern application. In 1713 the rage of the contending factions was at its highest point. The Tories were suspected, not without reason, of designs against the Act of Settlement; the Whigs, on the other hand, were still suffering in public opinion from the charge of having, for their own advantage, protracted the war with Louis XIV. Marlborough had been accused in 1711 of receiving bribes while commander-in-chief, and had been dismissed from all his employments.

Disappointment, envy, revenge, and no doubt a genuine apprehension for the public safety, inspired the attacks of the Whigs upon their rivals; and when it was known that Addison had in his drawers an unfinished play on so promising a subject as _Cato_, great pressure was put upon him by his friends to complete it for the stage. Somewhat unwillingly, apparently, he roused himself to the task. So small, indeed, was his inclination for it, that he is said in the first instance to have asked Hughes, afterwards author of the _Siege of Damascus_, to write a fifth act for him. Hughes undertook to do so, but on returning a few days afterwards with his own performance, he found that Addison had himself finished the play. In spite of the judgment of the critics, _Cato_ was quickly hurried off for rehearsal, doubtless with many fears on the part of the author. His anxieties during this period must have been great. "I was this morning,"

writes Swift to Stella on the 6th of April, "at ten, at the rehearsal of Mr. Addison's play, called _Cato_, which is to be acted on Friday. There was not half a score of us to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough to see the actors prompted every moment, and the poet directing them, and the drab that acts Cato's daughter (Mrs. Oldfield) out in the midst of a pa.s.sionate part, and then calling out, 'What's next?'"

Mrs. Oldfield not only occasionally forgot the poet's text, she also criticised it. She seems to have objected to the original draft of a speech of Portius in the second scene of the third act; and Pope, whose advice Addison appears to have frequently asked, suggested the present reading:

"Fixt in astonishment, I gaze upon thee Like one just blasted by a stroke from heaven Who pants for breath, and _stiffens, yet alive_, In dreadful looks: a monument of wrath."[57]

Pope also proposed the alteration of the last line in the play from

"And oh, 'twas this that ended Cato's life,"

to

"And robs the guilty world of Cato's life;"

and he was generally the cause of many modifications. "I believe," said he to Spence, "Mr. Addison did not leave a word unchanged that I objected to in his _Cato_."[58]

On the 13th of April the play was ready for performance, and contemporary accounts give a vivid picture of the eagerness of the public, the excitement of parties, and the apprehensions of the author. "On our first night of acting it," says Cibber, in his Apology, speaking of the subsequent representation at Oxford, "our house was, in a manner, invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at noon; and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late for their places. The same crowds continued for three days together--an uncommon curiosity in that place; and the death of Cato triumphed over the injuries of Caesar everywhere." The prologue--a very fine one--was contributed by Pope; the epilogue--written, according to the execrable taste fashionable after the Restoration, in a comic vein--by Garth. As to the performance itself, a very lively record of the effect it produced remains in Pope's letter to Trumbull of the 30th April, 1713:

"Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible had been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author said of another may the most properly be applied to him on this occasion:

'Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost, And factions strive who shall applaud him most!'[59]

The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other, while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than the head. This was the case, too, with the Prologue-writer, who was clapped into a staunch Whig at the end of every two lines. I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, between one of the acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledgment, as he expressed it, for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator.

The Whigs are unwilling to be distanced this way, and therefore design a present to the same Cato very speedily; in the meantime they are getting ready as good a sentence as the former on their side; so betwixt them it is probable that Cato (as Dr. Garth expressed it) may have something to live upon after he dies."

The Queen herself partook, or feigned to partake, of the general enthusiasm, and expressed a wish that the play should be dedicated to her.

This honour had, however, been already designed by the poet for the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, so that, finding himself unable under the circ.u.mstances to fulfil his intentions, he decided to leave the play without any dedication. _Cato_ ran for the then unprecedented period of thirty-five nights. Addison appears to have behaved with great liberality to the actors, and, at Oxford, to have handed over to them all the profits of the first night's performance; while they in return, Cibber tells us, thought themselves "obliged to spare no pains in the proper decorations"

of the piece.

The fame of _Cato_ spread from England to the Continent. It was twice translated into Italian, twice into French, and once into Latin; a French and a German imitation of it were also published. Voltaire, to whom Shakespeare appeared no better than an inspired barbarian, praises it in the highest terms. "_The first English writer who composed a regular tragedy_ and infused a spirit of elegance through every part of it was,"

says he, "the ill.u.s.trious Mr. Addison. His _Cato_ is a masterpiece, both with regard to the diction and the harmony and beauty of the numbers. The character of Cato is, in my opinion, greatly superior to that of Cornelia in the _Pompey_ of Corneille, for Cato is great without anything of fustian, and Cornelia, who besides is not a necessary character, tends sometimes to bombast." Even he, however, could not put up with the love-scenes:

"Addison l'a deja tente; C'etoit le poete des sages, Mais il etoit trop concerte, Et dans son Caton si vante Les deux filles en verite, Sont d'insipides personages.

Imitez du grand Addison Seulement ce qu'il a de bon."

There were, of course, not wanting voices of detraction. A graduate of Oxford attacked _Cato_ in a pamphlet ent.i.tled _Mr. Addison turned Tory_, in which the party spirit of the play was censured. Dr. Sewell, a well-known physician of the day--afterwards satirised by Pope as "Sanguine Sewell"--undertook Addison's defence, and showed that he owed his success to the poetical, and not to the political, merits of his drama. A much more formidable critic appeared in John Dennis, a specimen of whose criticism on _Cato_ is preserved in Johnson's _Life_, and who, it must be owned, went a great deal nearer the mark in his judgment than did Voltaire. Dennis had many of the qualities of a good critic. Though his judgment was often overborne by his pa.s.sion, he generally contrived to fasten on the weak points of the works which he criticised, and he at once detected the undramatic character of _Cato_. His ridicule of the absurdities arising out of Addison's rigid observance of the unity of place is extremely humorous and quite unanswerable. But, as usual, he spoiled his case by the violence and want of discrimination in his censure, which betrayed too plainly the personal feelings of the writer.

It is said that Dennis was offended with Addison for not having adequately exhibited his talents in the _Spectator_ when mention was made of his works; and he certainly did complain in a published letter that Addison had chosen to quote a couplet from his translation of Boileau in preference to another from a poem on the battle of Ramilies, which he himself thought better of. But the fact seems to have been overlooked that Dennis had other grounds for resentment. In the 40th number of the _Spectator_ the writer speaks of "a ridiculous doctrine of modern criticism, that they (tragic writers) are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical justice." This was a plain stroke at Dennis, who was a well-known advocate of the doctrine; and a considerable portion of the critic's gall was therefore expended on Addison's violation of the supposed rule in _Cato_.

Looking at _Cato_ from Voltaire's point of view--which was Addison's own--and having regard to the spirit of elegance infused through every part of it, there is much to admire in the play. It is full of pointed sentences, such as--

"'Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Semp.r.o.nius, we'll deserve it."

It has also many fine descriptive pa.s.sages, the best of which, perhaps, occurs in the dialogue between Syphax and Juba respecting civilised and barbarian virtues:

"Believe me, prince, there's not an African That traverses our vast Numidian deserts In quest of prey, and lives upon his bow, But better practises these boasted virtues.

Coa.r.s.e are his meals, the fortune of the chase; Amidst the running streams he slakes his thirst, Toils all the day, and at th' approach of night On the first friendly bank he throws him down, Or rests his head upon a rock till morn-- Then rises fresh, pursues his wonted game, And if the following day he chance to find A new repast, or an untasted spring, Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury."

But in all those parts of the poem where action and not ornament is demanded, we seem to perceive the work of a poet who was constantly thinking of what his characters ought to say in the situation, rather than of one who was actually living with them in the situation itself. Take Semp.r.o.nius' speech to Syphax, describing the horrors of the conspirator's position:

"Remember, Syphax, we must work in haste: Oh think what anxious moments pa.s.s between The birth of plots and their last fatal period.

Oh! 'tis a dreadful interval of time, Filled up with horror all, and big with death!

Destruction hangs on every word we speak, On every thought, till the concluding stroke Determines all, and closes our design."

Compare with this the language of real tragedy, the soliloquy of Brutus in _Julius Caesar_, on which Addison apparently meant to improve:

"Since Ca.s.sius first did whet me against Caesar I have not slept.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection."

These two pa.s.sages are good examples of the French and English ideals of dramatic diction, though the lines from _Cato_ are more figurative than is usual in that play. Addison deliberately aimed at this French manner. "I must observe," says he, "that when our thoughts are great and just they are often obscured by the sounding phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions in which they are clothed. Shakespeare is often very faulty in this particular."[60] Certainly he is; but who does not see that, in spite of his metaphoric style, the speech of Brutus just quoted is far simpler and more natural than the elegant "correctness" of Semp.r.o.nius.

CHAPTER VII.

ADDISON'S QUARREL WITH POPE.

It has been said that with _Cato_ the good fortune of Addison reached its climax. After his triumph in the theatre, though he filled great offices in the State and wedded "a n.o.ble wife," his political success was marred by disagreements with one of his oldest friends; while with the Countess of Warwick, if we are to believe Pope, he "married discord." Added to which he was unlucky enough to incur the enmity of the most poignant and vindictive of satiric poets, and a certain shadow has been for ever thrown over his character by the famous verses on "Atticus." It will be convenient in this chapter to investigate, as far as is possible, the truth as to the quarrel between Pope and Addison. The latter has. .h.i.therto been at a certain disadvantage with the public, since the facts of the case were entirely furnished by Pope, and, though his account was dissected with great acuteness by Blackstone in the _Biographia Britannica_, the partizans of the poet were still able to plead that his uncontradicted statements could not be disposed of by mere considerations of probability.

Pope's account of his final rupture with Addison is reported by Spence as follows: "Philips seems to have been encouraged to abuse me in coffee-houses and conversations. Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley in which he had abused both me and my relations very grossly. Lord Warwick himself told me one day 'that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with Mr. Addison; that his jealous temper would never admit of a settled friendship between us; and, to convince me of what he had said, a.s.sured me that Addison had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and had given him ten guineas after they were published.' The next day, while I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison to let him know 'that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his; that, if I was to speak severely of him in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty way; that I would rather tell him himself fairly of his faults and allow his good qualities; and that it should be something in the following manner.' I then subjoined the first sketch of what has since been called my satire on Addison. He used me very civilly ever after; and never did me any injustice, that I know of, from that time to his death, which was about three years after."[61]

Such was the story told by Pope in his own defence against the charge that he had written and circulated the lines on Addison after the latter's death. In confirmation of his evidence, and in proof of his own good feeling for and open dealing with Addison, he inserted in the so-called authorised edition of his correspondence in 1737 several letters written apparently to Addison, while in what he pretended to be the surrept.i.tious edition of 1735 appeared a letter to Craggs, written in July, 1715, which, as it contained many of the phrases and expressions used in the character of Atticus, created an impression in the mind of the public that both letter and verses were written about the same time. No suspicion as to the genuineness of this correspondence was raised till the discovery of the Caryll letters, which first revealed the fact that most of the pretended letters to Addison had been really addressed to Caryll; that there had been, in fact, no correspondence between Pope and Addison; and that, therefore, in all probability, the letter to Craggs was also a fict.i.tious composition, inserted in the so-called surrept.i.tious volume of 1735 to establish the credit of Pope's own story.

We must accordingly put aside, as undeserving of credence, the poet's ingeniously constructed charge, at any rate in the particular shape in which it is preferred, and must endeavour to form for ourselves such a judgment as is rendered probable by the acknowledged facts of the case.