Returning to England in the Fall of 1703, Addison found himself without employment, for his political friends, the Whigs, were not in control, and he must have depended chiefly upon his fellowship for support. His Campaign, Dec. 14, 1704, started him on his successful career. In 1705 he published his Remarks on Italy, a book popular enough to be parodied. In 1707 he brought out the Present State of the War, perhaps his most effective political pamphlet, and in 1708 he was elected to Parliament. He was a member of the House of Commons from 1708 until his death. After holding minor offices he was sent in 1709 to Ireland as secretary to Lord Wharton, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and was also made Keeper of the Records.

His success in politics but stimulated his literary ambition. The Tatler, 1709-1710, and the Spectator, 1710-1711, proved him to be the first essayist of his day and gave him a prestige that few writers have enjoyed. In 1707 he brought out an opera, Rosamond, which failed to please the town, but in 1713 he retrieved himself by his Cato which met with unusual success. In this same year he published the Guardian, and in 1714 revived the Spectator which ran from June 18th, to December 20th. In 1715 he wrote the Freeholder to support the Hanoverian succession. He married, August, 1716, Charlotte Countess of Warwick. His only child, a daughter, died unmarried in 1797. In 1717 he was given his highest office, that of Secretary of State, but he resigned this position the following

year, and was retired with a pension of £1500. He died at Holland House, June 17, 1719.

In reviewing the career of Addison the most striking fact in it is the universal esteem with which he was regarded in that time of political bitterness and fierce hatreds. Pope alone attacked him, but the character of Atticus in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot is not, as Thackeray called it, a "black wound." Modern criticism has shown beyond cavil that Pope by his jealousy and malice is disqualified as a witness against Addison. No man of either party was so beloved. When the Whigs went down in disastrous defeat, Addison was returned to Parliament. "I believe if he had a mind to be chosen king he would hardly be refused" writes Swift. Mrs. Manly, whose pen was dipped in gall, can only urge against Addison that he has abandoned literature for politics.3 "O pity! that politics and sordid interest should have carried him out of the road of Helicon. Why did he

prefer gain to glory? . . . Virgil himself nor Virgil's greater master, Homer, could not boast. of finer qualifications than Maro [Addison]: Maro! who alone of all the poets truly inspired, could degenerate his godlike soul, prostitute that inborn genius, all those noble accomplishments of his, for gold, turn away his eyes from the delicious gardens of Parnassus, of which he was already in possession, to tread the wandering maze of business."

(1) Thackeray, English Humourists, Pope.
(2) Journal to Stella, Oct. 12, 1710.

(3) Memoirs of Europe towards the close of the Eighth Century, 1710, page

THE WRITINGS OF ADDISON.

As a writer, Addison's career was determined by two ruling passions, to enlarge upon the popular phrase of his day. These were his whole-souled admiration for Greek and Roman literature, and his desire, or better, his determination to reform the taste, the manners and the morals of his time. He does not leave the reader to infer these governing principles, he states them repeatedly in the clearest language, and they give to even his most trifling essays a rare and gracious dignity, and to all his writings a sense of unity which the works of his greatest contemporaries do not possess.

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By nature, Addison was self-controlled. Steele well describes him when he said that with "patience, foresight, and temperate address he always waited and stemmed the torrent.' Others might plunge headlong into the stream of life; for Addison moderation and not impulse was the rule of existence. His mind was essentially a judicial one, and the restraint for which critics have praised him was a matter of temperament rather than of conscious choice. With such a character, he first becomes known as a scholar without pedantry, a veritable lover of books. He gives his days and nights to the Classics; even Pope did not surpass him in his reverence for the "bards (1) The Theatre No. 12, Jan. 2 to April 5, 1720.

triumphant! born in happier days." In his Italian travels, his mind dwells on the descriptions of Italy which he found in the Latin poets, and that land of lyric inspiration serves but as a commentary on their lines. Though he constantly cites Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, yet he quotes more often the Latin writers. Naturally a close student of the Augustan age, he was also thoroughly familiar with the poets of the Silver age, and the Latin writers of the Renaissance. His own Latin verses won the admiration of scholars and were regarded as models of style. It may be said that his mind took its temper from Rome rather than from Athens. Landor asserted that in his own writings, he was sometimes at a loss for the right English word, but never for the Latin one. Similarly when Addison wishes to illustrate or enforce a statement, the Latin story, the Latin phrase comes inevitably to his mind. A single illustration will suffice. He is familiar with the tale of the duel of the lutanist and the nightingale, but he has read it in Strada's hexameters, and makes no reference to Ford's rendering of the story, nor to Crashaw's masterpiece.1

Addison's study of the Classics confirmed his instinctive tastes, and led him to seek in his own verse for self-restraint, polish, and good-sense. Despite his admiration for Milton, there could be no sweet disorder in the dress of his Muse, in whose singing we never hear those "nameless graces which no methods teach." The "lays of artful Addison are indeed coldly correct." 2

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(1) Tatler, No. 119. (2) See The Enthusiast, 1740, by Joseph Warton.

His formal poems are faint not only in their expression, but in their thought. Gray was hardly too severe when in a letter to Horace Walpole he declared that Addison had not "above three or four notes in poetry, sweet enough indeed, like those of a German flute, but such as soon tire and satiate the ear with their frequent return." 1 "1 The Account of the Greatest English Poets is interesting only as showing the attitude of a brilliant student of twenty-two towards the literature of his own land. The much admired Letter from Italy and the fortune-bringing Campaign have at the best a certain eloquence. The descriptions in the Letter are faint and conventional. The Campaign, in spite of Macaulay's eulogy, is by no means free from bombast and exaggeration. It lacks the one quality which above all others it should possess― the gaudium certaminis, and there is more of the shock of battle in a single page of Marmion than in all its hundreds of lines. As a piece of Dramatic verse, Cato, the admiration of Voltaire, possesses passages of fine declamation, but the authentic voice of Tragedy is rarely heard in it. The interest in Addison's longer poems is, accordingly, an historical interest; his name has saved them, and the lines which we read and reread for the pure delight of verse, the phrases that haunt the memory, are few indeed. Though a much better versifier than Swift, yet with Swift Addison lacked the poetic temperament. His hymns are the exception to this statement. When he forgets his Classic models, when hexameters and heroic couplets no (1) The letter is not dated. See Tovey's Letters of Thomas Gray, page 182.