Halleck's New English Literature Part 37

The results of this special prank with the astrologer were: first, to cause the wits of the town to join in the hue and cry that Partridge was dead; second, to increase the contempt for astrologers; and, third, in the words of Scott: "The most remarkable consequence of Swift's frolic was the establishment of the _Tatler_." Richard Steele, its founder, adopted the popular name of Isaac Bickerstaff.

Taine says of Swift: "He is the inventor of irony, as Shakespeare of poetry." The most powerful instance of Swift's irony is shown in his attempt to better the condition of the Irish, whose poverty forced them to let their children grow up ignorant and dest.i.tute, or often even die of starvation. His _Modest Proposal_ for relieving such distress is to have the children at the age of one year served as a new dish on the tables of the great. So apt is irony to be misunderstood and to fail of its mark, that for a time Swift was considered merely brutal; but soon he convinced the Irish that he was their friend, willing to contribute both time and money to aid them.

His ironical remarks on _The Abolishing of Christianity_ were also misunderstood.

His poems, such as _A Description of a City Shower_, and _Cadenus and Vanessa_, show the same general characteristics as his prose, but are inferior to it.

We shall search Swift's work in vain for examples of pathos or sublimity. We shall find his pages caustic with wit, satire, and irony, and often disfigured with coa.r.s.eness. One of the great pessimists of all time, he is yet tremendously in earnest in whatever he says, from his _Drapier's Letters_, written to protect Ireland from the schemes of English politicians, to his _Gulliver's Travels_, where he describes the court of Lilliput. This earnestness and circ.u.mstantial minuteness throw an air of reality around his most grotesque creations. He pretended to despise Defoe; yet the influence of that great writer, who made fiction seem as real as fact, is plainly apparent in Gulliver's remarkable adventures.

Although sublimity and pathos are outside of his range, his style is remarkably well adapted to his special subject matter. While reading his works, one scarcely ever thinks of his style, unless the attention is specially directed to it. Only a great artist can thus conceal his art. A style so natural as this has especial merits which will repay study. Three of its chief characteristics are simplicity, flexibility, and energetic directness.

JOSEPH ADDISON, 1672-1719

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOSEPH ADDISON. _From the painting by Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller, National Portrait Gallery._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF ADDISON.]

Life.--Joseph Addison was born in the paternal rectory at Milston, a small village in the eastern part of Wiltshire. He was educated at Oxford. He intended to become a clergyman, but, having attracted attention by his graceful Latin poetry, was dissuaded by influential court friends from entering the service of the church. They persuaded him to fit himself for the diplomatic service, and secured for him a yearly pension of 300. He then went to France, studied the language of that country, and traveled extensively, so as to gain a knowledge of foreign courts. The death of King William in 1702 stopped his pension, however, and Addison was forced to return to England to seek employment as a tutor.

The great battle of Blenheim was won by Marlborough in 1704. As Macaulay says, the ministry was mortified to see such a victory celebrated by so much bad poetry, and he instances these lines from one of the poems:

"Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, And each man mounted on his capering beast; Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer went to Addison's humble lodgings and asked him to write a poem in honor of the battle. Addison took the town by storm with a simile in which the great general was likened to the calm angel of the whirlwind. When people reflected how calmly Marlborough had directed the whirlwind of war, they thought that no comparison could be more felicitous. From that time Addison's fortunes rose. Since his day no man relying on literary talents alone has risen so high in state affairs. He was made a.s.sistant Secretary of State, Secretary for Ireland, and finally chief Secretary of State.

Though Addison was a prominent figure in the political world, it is his literary life that most concerns us. In his prime he wrote for _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_, famous newspapers of Queen Anne's day, many inimitable essays on contemporary life and manners. Most newspaper work is soon forgotten, but these essays are read by the most cultivated people of to-day. In his own age his most meritorious production was thought to be the dull tragedy of _Cato_, a drama observing the cla.s.sical unities. Some of his _Hymns_ are much finer.

Lines like these, written of the stars, linger in our memories:--

"Forever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine."

Addison had a singularly pleasing personality. Though he was a Whig, the Tories admired and applauded him. He was a good ill.u.s.tration of the truth that if one smiles in the mirror of the world, it will answer him with a smile. Swift said he believed the English would have made Addison king, if they had been requested to place him on the throne. Pope's jealous nature prompted him to quarrel with Addison, but the quarrel was chiefly on one side. Men like Macaulay and Thackeray have exerted their powers to do justice to the kindliness and integrity of Addison.

Addison died at the age of forty-seven, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RICHARD STEELE.]

Collaborates with Steele.--Under the pen name of Isaac Bickerstaff, Richard Steele (1672-1729), a former schoolmate and friend of Addison, started in 1709 _The Tatler_, a periodical published three times a week. This discussed matters of interest in society and politics, and occasionally published an essay on morals and manners. Steele was a good-natured, careless individual, with a varied experience as soldier, playwright, moralist, keeper of the official gazette, and pensioner. He says that he always "preferred the state of his mind to that of his fortune"; but his mental state was often fickle, and too much dependent on bodily luxuries, though he was patriotic enough to sacrifice his personal fortune for what he considered his country's interest.

We find Addison a frequent contributor to _The Tatler_ after its seventeenth number. Steele says: "I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbor to his aid; I was undone by my auxiliary; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him."

_The Tatler_ was discontinued in 1711, and Steele projected the more famous _Spectator_ two months later. Addison wrote the first number, but the second issue, which came from Steele's pen, contains sketches of those characters which have become famous in the _Sir Roger de Coverley Papers_. Steele's first outline of Sir Roger is a creation of sweetness and light:--

"His tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young women profess to love him, and the young men are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit."

The influence of such a character must have been especially wholesome on the readers of the eighteenth century. Without the suggestive originality of Steele, we might never have had those essays of Addison, which we read most to-day; but while Steele should have full credit for the first bold sketches, the finished portraits in the De Coverley gallery are due to Addison. Steele says of his a.s.sociate, "I claim to myself the merit of having extorted excellent productions from a person of the greatest abilities, who would not have let them appear by any other means."

It is well, however, to remember that Steele did much more work than is popularly supposed. Beginning with March 1, 1711, there were 555 issues of _The Spectator_ published on succeeding week days. To these were added 80 more numbers at irregular intervals. Of these 635 numbers, Steele wrote 236 and Addison 274.

In many respects each seemed to be the complement of the other.

Steele's writings have not the polish or delicate humor of Addison's, but they have more strength and pathos. Addison had the greater genius, and he was also more willing to spend time in polishing his prose and making it artistic. From the far greater interest now shown in Addison, the student should be impressed by the necessity of artistic finish as well as of excellence in subject matter.

Addison's Essays--The greatest of Addison's _Essays_ appeared in _The Spectator_ and charmed many readers in Queen Anne's age. The subject matter of these _Essays_ is extremely varied. On one day there is a pleasant paper on witches; on another, a chat about the new woman; on another, a discourse on clubs. Addison is properly a moral satirist, and his pen did much more than the pulpit to civilize the age and make virtue the fashion. In _The Spectator_, he says: "If I meet with anything in city, court, or country, that shocks modesty or good manners, I shall use my utmost endeavors to make an example of it." He accomplished his purpose, not by heated denunciations of vice, but by holding it up to kindly ridicule. He remembered the fable of the different methods employed by the north wind and the sun to make a man lay aside an ugly cloak.

Addison stated also that one of his objects was to bring "philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and a.s.semblies, at tea tables and coffeehouses." His papers on Milton did much to diminish that great poet's unpopularity in an age that loved form rather than matter, art rather than natural strength.

The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers.--The most famous of Addison's productions are his papers that appeared in _The Spectator_, describing a typical country gentleman, Sir Roger de Coverley, and his friends and servants. Taine says that Addison here invented the novel without suspecting it. This is an overstatement; but these papers certainly have the interest of a novel from the moment Sir Roger appears until his death, and the delineation of character is far in advance of that shown in the majority of modern novels. We find ourselves rereading the _De Coverley Papers_ more than once, a statement that can be made of but few novels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR ROGER IN CHURCH. _From a drawing by B.

Westmacott_.]

General Characteristics.--Addison ranks among the greatest of English essayists. Some of his essays, like the series on _Paradise Lost_, deal with literary criticism; but most people to-day read little from his pen except the _Sir Roger de Coverley Papers_, which give interesting pictures of eighteenth-century life and manners.

Before we have read many of Addison's essays, we shall discover that he is a humorist of high rank. His humor is of the kind that makes one smile, rather than laugh aloud. Our countenance relaxes when we discover that his rules for an eighteenth-century club prescribe a fine for absence except in case of sickness or imprisonment. We are quietly amused at such touches as this in the delineation of Sir Roger:--

"As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in very good order, and will suffer n.o.body to sleep in it besides himself; for, if by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it, he stands up and looks about him, and, if he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes them himself, or sends his servants to them."

Addison is remarkable among a satiric group of writers because he intended his humor to be "remedial,"--not merely to inflict wounds, but to exert a moral influence, to induce human beings to forsake the wrong and to become more kindly. We may smile at Sir Roger; but we have more respect for his kindliness, after reading in _Spectator_ No.

383, how he selected his boatmen to row him on the Thames:--

"We were no sooner come to the Temple Stairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services.

Sir Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking towards it, 'You must know,' says Sir Roger, 'I never make use of anybody to row me, that has not either lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that had been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop, and kept a barge, I would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg.'"

Such humor, which finds its chief point in a desire to make the world kindlier, must have appealed to the eighteenth century, or _The Spectator_ could not have reached a circulation of ten thousand copies a day. Addison would not now have his legion of warm admirers if his humor had been personal, like Pope's, or misanthropical, like Swift's.

Of his style, Dr. Samuel Johnson says, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coa.r.s.e, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the study of Addison."

Benjamin Franklin, as we know from his _Autobiography_, followed this advice with admirable results. Addison's style seems as natural and easy as the manners of a well-bred person. When we have given some attention to dissecting his style, we may indeed discover that a prose model for to-day should have more variety and energy and occasionally more precision; but such a conclusion does not mean that any writer of this century would like the task of surpa.s.sing the _De Coverley Papers_.

ALEXANDER POPE, 1688-1744

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALEXANDER POPE. _From the portrait by William h.o.a.re_.]

Life.--Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688. His father, a devout Catholic, was a linen merchant, who gave his son little formal schooling, but allowed him to pick up his education by reading such authors as pleased his fancy.

He was a very precocious child. At the age of twelve he was writing an _Ode on Solitude_. He chose his vocation early, for writing poetry was the business of his life.

In his childhood, his parents removed from London to Binfield, a village in Berkshire, nine miles from Windsor. When he was nearly thirty years old, his translation of the _Iliad_ enabled him to buy a house and grounds at Twickenham on the Thames, about twelve miles above London. He lived here for the rest of his life, indulging his taste for landscape gardening and entertaining the greatest men of the age.

After early middle life, his writings made him pecuniarily independent, but he suffered much from ill health. In his _Lives of the English Poets_, Dr. Samuel Johnson says of Pope:--

"By natural deformity, or accidental distortion, his vital functions were so much disordered that his life was a long disease... When he rose, he was invested in a bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarce able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so slender that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of stockings...

"In all his intercourse with mankind, he had great delight in artifice, and endeavored to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected methods. _He hardly drank tea without a stratagem._"

The publication of his correspondence tangled him in a mesh of deceptions, because his desire to appear in a favorable light led him to change letters that he had sent to friends. His double-dealing, intense jealousy, and irritability, due to his physical condition, caused him to become involved in many quarrels, which gave him the opportunity to indulge to the utmost his own satiric tendency. In one of his late satires, _The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, he charged Addison with the inclination to--

"d.a.m.n with faint praise, a.s.sent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer."

On the basis of what he wrote, we may divide his life into three periods. During his first thirty years, he produced various kinds of verse, like the _Essay on Criticism_ and _The Rape of the Lock_. The middle period of his life was marked by his translation of Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. In his third period, he wrote moral and didactic poems, like the _Essay on Man_, and satires, like the _Dunciad_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POPE'S VILLA AT TWICKENHAM. _From an old print._]