impositions, lessening their quotas, breaking their stipulations, garrisoning the towns we took for them, without supplying their troops, with many other infringements, all which we were forced to submit to, because the general was made easy, because the moneyed men at home were fond of the war, because the Whigs were not yet firmly settled and because the exorbitant degree of power which was built upon a supposed necessity of employing particular persons would go off in a peace. It is needless to add that the emperor and other princes followed the example of the Dutch, and succeeded as well for the same reasons."

Joseph Addison (1672-1719).

"Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison."— Samuel Johnson.

Joseph Addison, the son of Lancelot Addison, a clergyman of some reputation, was born at Milston in Wiltshire, in 1672. In his early years he was sent to the Charterhouse school, and when fifteen years of age he entered Oxford, where he distinguished himself by his scholarship and by his taste for Latin poetry. In his twentysecond year he made his first attempt in English verse; this was an "Address to Dryden," by which the old poet's friendship was won. A eulogistic poem on William III., gained for the young author a pension of three hundred pounds. He at once left England that he might cultivate his tastes by travel. Soon after his return he published his "Travels in Italy," a work which displays great hostility to Catholicism. The death of William III. deprived Addison of his pension, and he returned to London, where he lived in poverty, but with that dignified patience and quiet reserve which made his character so estimable. His next composition was the "Campaign," a poem, celebrating the victory of Blenheim. It was written at the request of Godolphin, then lord treasurer, who when he

saw the passage in which Addison compares the victorious Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirlwind, immediately made Addison a commissioner of appeals. The famous passage runs thus:

"So when an angel by divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er 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."

From the writing of that successful poem, the career of Addison was brilliant and prosperous. He was appointed under-secretary of state, and afterward chief secretary for Ireland..

Addison won no distinction as a member of the House of Commons, or as a public officer. His timidity prevented him from speaking with effect, and his powers of conversation deserted him when in the presence of more than two or three hearers. In 1716, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, to whose son he had been tutor, but the union seems not to have added to the happiness of either. He would often escape from the elegance of Holland House to spend his days and nights with old friends in the clubs and coffee-houses. He died at the early age of forty-seven. A distressing asthma had afflicted his closing years, and other trials had attended him; but his serene and gentle spirit lost none of its patience.

The fertility of invention displayed in his charming papers published in the Tattler, Spectator and Guardian, the variety of their subjects, and the felicity of their treatment will ever place them among the masterpieces of

wonderfully activate

fiction and of criticism. His delineations of character are wonderfully delicate. That inimitable personage, Sir Roger de Coverley, is a perfectly finished picture worthy of Cervantes or of Walter Scott. His tragedy of "Cato" is strictly classical in form, but is stiff and frigid. It is now comparatively neglected, although it abounds with fine passages. As a poet, Addison does not take the highest rank.

CATO'S SOLILOQUY.

It must be so Plato, thou reasonest well-
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the Soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us;

'Tis Heaven itself that points out a hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.

Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!
The wide, th' unbounded prospect lies before me;
But shadows, clouds and darkness rest upon it.
Here will I hold. If there's a power above us,

(And that there is, all Nature cries aloud

Through all her works), he must delight in virtue;
And that which he delights in must be happy.

But when or where? - This world was made for Cæsar,
I'm weary of conjectures - this must end 'em.

Thus am I doubly armed. My death and life,

My bane and antidote are both before me.
This in a moment brings me to an end;

But this informs me I shall never die.
The Soul secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger and defies its point:
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;