has lost all the softness of her own. In re- grounds two distinguished men, one a gard to myself, however, as I have neither Tory, the other a Whig. Madame courage nor inclination to argue with her, I have never been personally hurt at her want D'Arblay tells the story thus: "A simiof gentleness, a virtue which nevertheless lar ebullition" of political rancour with seems so essential a part of the female cha that which so difficultly had been conracter, that I find myself more awkward and less at ease with a woman who wants it than quered for Mr. Canning foamed over I do with a man." " the ballot box to the exclusion of Mr. Rogers." This is a good style of its kind; and the following passage from Cecilia is also in a good style, though not in a faultless one. We say with confidence, either Sam Johnson or the Devil. An offence punishable with imprisonment is, in this language, an offence "which produces incarceration." To be starved to death is "to sink from inanition into nonentity." Sir Isaac "Even the imperious Mr. Delvile was Newton is "the developer of the skies more supportable here than in London. in their embodied movements;" and Secure in his own castle, he looked round Mrs. Thrale, when a party of clever him with a pride of power and possession which softened while it swelled him. His people sat silent, is said to have been superiority was undisputed: his will was provoked by the dulness of a taciwithout control. He was not, as in the great capital of the kingdom, surrounded by competitors. No rivalry disturbed his peace; no equality mortified his greatness. All he saw were either vassals of his power, or guests bending to his pleasure. He abated, therefore, considerably the stern gloom of his haughtiness, and soothed his proud mind by the courtesy of condescen sion. We will stake our reputation for critical sagacity on this, that no such paragraph as that which we have last quoted, can be found in any of Madame D'Arblay's works except Cecilia. Compare with it the following sample of her later style. "If beneficence be judged by the happiness which it diffuses, whose claim, by that proof, shall stand higher than that of Mrs. Montagu, from the munificence with which she celebrated her annual festival for those hapless artificers who perform the most abject offices of any authorized calling, in being the active guardians of our blazing hearths? Not to vain glory, then, but to kindness of heart, should be adjudged the publicity of that superb charity which made its jetty objects, for one bright morning, cease to consider themselves as degraded outcasts from all society." We add one or two shorter samples. Sheridan refused to permit his lovely wife to sing in public, and was warmly praised on this account by Johnson. "The last of men," says Madame D'Arblay, "was Doctor Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integrity by nullifying the labours of talents." The Club, Johnson's Club, did itself no honour by rejecting on political turnity that, in the midst of such renowned interlocutors, produced as narcotic a torpor as could have been caused by a dearth the most barren of all human faculties." In truth, it is impossible to look at any page of Madame D'Arblay's later works without finding flowers of rhetoric like these. Nothing in the language of those jargonists at whom Mr. Gosport laughed, nothing in the language of Sir Sedley Clarendel, approaches this new Euphuism. It is from no unfriendly feeling to Madame D'Arblay's memory that we have expressed ourselves so strongly on the subject of her style. On the contrary, we conceive that we have really rendered a service to her reputation. That her later works were complete failures, is a fact too notorious to be dissembled: and some persons, we believe, have consequently taken up a notion that she was from the first an overrated writer, and that she had not the powers which were necessary to maintain her on the eminence on which good luck and fashion had placed her. We believe, on the contrary, that her early popularity was no more than the just reward of distinguished merit, and would never have undergone an eclipse, if she had only been content to go on writing in her mother tongue. If she failed when she quitted her own province, and attempted to occupy one in which she had neither part nor lot, this reproach is common to her with a crowd of distinguished men. Newton failed | people, took without scruple liberties when he turned from the courses of the which in our generation seem almost stars, and the ebb and flow of the incredible. ocean, to apocalyptic scals and vials. Bentley failed when he turned from Homer and Aristophanes, to edite the Paradise Lost. Inigo failed when he attempted to rival the Gothic churches of the fourteenth century. Wilkie failed when he took it into his head that the Blind Fiddler and the Rent Day were unworthy of his powers, and challenged competition with Lawrence as a portrait painter. Such failures should be noted for the instruction of posterity; but they detract little from the permanent reputation of those who have really done great things. Yet one word more. It is not only on account of the intrinsic merit of Madame D'Arblay's early works that she is entitled to honourable mention. Her appearance is an important epoch in our literary history. Evelina was the first tale written by a woman, and purporting to be a picture of life and manners, that lived or deserved to live. The female Quixote is no exception. That work has undoubtedly great merit, when considered as a wild satirical harlequinade; but, if we consider it as a picture of life and manners, we must pronounce it more absurd than any of the romances which it was designed to ridicule. Indeed, most of the popular novels which preceded Evelina were such as no lady would have written; and many Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama; and she did it in a better way. She first showed that a tale might be written in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London might be exhibited with great force, and with broad comic humour, and which yet should not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy. She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful and delightful species of composition. She vindicated the right of her sex to an equal share in a fair and noble province of letters. Several accomplished women have followed in her track. At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honourably distinguished by fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling. Several among the successors of Madame D'Arblay have equalled her; two, we think, have surpassed her. But the fact that she has been surpassed gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude; for, in truth, we owe to her not only Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, but also Mansfield Park and the Absentee. of them were such as no lady could THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF without confusion own that she had ADDISON. (JULY, 1843.) AIKIN. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1843. read. The very name of novel was held in horror among religious people. In decent families, which did not pro- The Life of Joseph Addison. BY LUCY fess extraordinary sanctity, there was a strong feeling against all such works. Sir Anthony Absolute, two or three years before Evelina appeared, spoke the sense of the great body of sober fathers and husbands, when he pronounced the circulating library an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. This feeling on the part of the grave and reflecting, increased the evil from which it had sprung. The novelist having little character to lose, and having few readers among serious SOME reviewers are of opinion that a lady who dares to publish a book renounces by that act the franchises appertaining to her sex, and can claim no exemption from the utmost rigour of critical procedure. From that opinion we dissent. We admit, indeed, that in a country which boasts of many female writers, eminently qualified by their talents and acquirements to influence the public mind, it would be of most pernicious consequence that inac-| Queen Anne's tea table at Hampton. curate history or unsound philosophy She seems to have written about the should be suffered to pass uncensured, Elizabethan age, because she had read merely because the offender chanced to much about it; she seems, on the other be a lady. But we conceive that, on hand, to have read a little about the such occasions, a critic would do well age of Addison, because she had deterto imitate the courteous Knight who mined to write about it. The consefound himself compelled by duty to quence is that she has had to describe keep the lists against Bradamante. men and things without having either He, we are told, defended successfully a correct or a vivid idea of them, and the cause of which he was the cham- that she has often fallen into errors of pion; but, before the fight began, ex- a very serious kind. The reputation changed Balisarda for a less deadly which Miss Aikin has justly earned sword, of which he carefully blunted stands so high, and the charm of Addithe point and edge.* son's letters is so great, that a second edition of this work may probably be required. If so, we hope that every paragraph will be revised, and that every date and fact about which there can be the smallest doubt will be carefully verified. Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. Several of her works, and especially the very pleasing Memoirs of the Reign of James the First, have fully entitled her to the privileges enjoyed by good writers. One of those privileges we hold to be this, that such writers, when, either from the unlucky choice of a subject, or from the indolence too often produced by success, they happen to fail, shall not be subjected to the severe discipline which it is sometimes necessary to inflict upon dunces and impostors, but shall merely be reminded by a gentle touch, like that with which the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, that it is high time to wake. Our readers will probably infer from what we have said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed us. The truth is, that she is not well acquainted with her subject. No person who is not familiar with the political and literary history of England during the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, can possibly write a good life of Addison. Now, we mean no reproach to Miss Aikin, and many will think that we pay her a compliment, when we say that her studies have taken a different direction. She is better acquainted with Shakspeare and Raleigh, than with Congreve and Prior; and is far more at home among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's than among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs which surrounded • Orlando Furioso, xlv. 68. To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as any sentiment can be, which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, however, that this feeling will not betray us into that abject idolatry which we have often had occasion to reprehend in others, and which seldom fails to make both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot be equally developed; nor can we expect from him perfect self knowledge. We need not, therefore, hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some compositions which do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as superficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to say of a writer that, in a high department of literature, in which many eminent writers have distinguished themselves, he has had no equal; and this may with strict justice be said of Addison. As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration which he received from those who, bewitched by his fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts of life to his generous and delicate friendship, worshipped him nightly, in LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. his favourite temple at Button's. But, after full inquiry and impartial reflection, we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of our Some bleinfirm and erring race. mishes may undoubtedly be detected in his character; but the more carefully it is examined, the more will it appear, to use the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the noble parts, free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy. Men may easily be named, in whom some particular good disposition has been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all men who have been tried by equally strong temptations, and about whose conduct we possess equally full information. 733 heats or by the rains, by the soldiers In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from Tangier, his son Joseph His father was the Reverend Lance- was born. Of Joseph's childhood we lot Addison, who, though eclipsed by know little. He learned his rudiments his more celebrated son, made some at schools in his father's neighbourfigure in the world, and occupies with hood, and was then sent to the Charter credit two folio pages in the Biographia House. The anecdotes which are popuBritannica. Lancelot was sent up, as larly related about his boyish tricks do a poor scholar, from Westmoreland to not harmonize very well with what we Queen's College, Oxford, in the time know of his riper years. There remains of the Commonwealth, made some pro- a tradition that he was the ringleader gress in learning, became, like most of in a barring out, and another tradition his fellow students, a violent Royalist, that he ran away from school and hid lampooned the heads of the University, himself in a wood, where he fed on and was forced to ask pardon on his berries and slept in a hollow tree, till bended knees. When he had left col-after a long search he was discovered lege, he earned a humble subsistence and brought home. If these stories be by reading the liturgy of the fallen true, it would be curious to know by Church to the families of those sturdy what moral discipline so mutinous and squires whose manor houses were scat-enterprising a lad was transformed into tered over the Wild of Sussex. After the gentlest and most modest of men. We have abundant proof that, whatthe Restoration, his loyalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain to the ever Joseph's pranks may have been, garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk he pursued his studies vigorously and was sold to France, he lost his employ-successfully. At fifteen he was not only ment. But Tangier had been ceded fit for the university, but carried thither by Portugal to England as part of the marriage portion of the Infanta Catharine; and to Tangier Lancelot Addison A more miserable situation can hardly be conceived. It was difficult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were more tormented by the was sent. a classical taste and a stock of learning which would have done honour to a Master of Arts. He was entered at Queen's College, Oxford; but he had not been many months there, when some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the hands of Dr. Lancaster. 734 The that he was distinguished among his Dean of Magdalene College. young scholar's diction and versifica- fellow students by the delicacy of his veteran feelings, by the shyness of his manners, tion were already such as professors might envy. Dr. Lancas- and by the assiduity with which he ter was desirous to serve a boy of such often prolonged his studies far into the promise; nor was an opportunity long night. It is certain that his reputation wanting. The Revolution had just for ability and learning stood high. taken place; and nowhere had it been Many years later, the ancient doctors hailed with more delight than at Mag- of Magdalene continued to talk in their dalene College. That great and opu- common room of his boyish compolent corporation had been treated by sitions, and expressed their sorrow that James, and by his Chancellor, with an no copy of exercises so remarkable had insolence and injustice which, even in been preserved. It is proper, however, to remark that such a Prince and in such a Minister, may justly excite amazement, and which Miss Aikin has committed the error, had done more than even the prosecu- very pardonable in a lady, of overrating tion of the Bishops to alienate the Addison's classical attainments. In one Church of England from the throne. department of learning, indeed, his proA president, duly elected, had been ficiency was such as it is hardly possiblə violently expelled from his dwelling to overrate. His knowledge of the a Papist had been set over the society Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catulby a royal mandate: the Fellows who, lus down to Claudian and Prudentius, in conformity with their oaths, had re- was singularly exact and profound. fused to submit to this usurper, had He understood them thoroughly, enbeen driven forth from their quiet cloistered into their spirit, and had the ters and gardens, to die of want or to finest and most discriminating perceplive on charity. But the day of redress tion of all their peculiarities of style The and melody; nay, he copied their manand retribution speedily came. intruders were ejected: the venerable ner with admirable skill, and surpassed, House was again inhabited by its old we think, all their British imitators inmates learning flourished under the who had preceded him, Buchanan and rule of the wise and virtuous Hough; Milton alone excepted. This is high and with learning was united a mild praise; and beyond this we cannot with and liberal spirit too often wanting in justice go. It is clear that Addison's the princely colleges of Oxford. In serious attention during his residence consequence of the troubles through at the university, was almost entirely which the society had passed, there concentrated on Latin poetry, and that, had been no valid election of new if he did not wholly neglect other promembers during the year 1688. In vinces of ancient literature, he vouch1689, therefore, there was twice the safed to them only a cursory glance. ordinary number of vacancies; and He does not appear to have attained thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to more than an ordinary acquaintance procure for his young friend admit- with the political and moral writers tance to the advantages of a foundation of Rome; nor was his own Latin prose then generally esteemed the wealthiest by any means equal to his Latin verse. His knowledge of Greek, though doubtin Europe. At Magdalene Addison resided du-less such as was, in his time, thought ring ten years. He was, at first, one of respectable at Oxford, was evidently those scholars who are called Demies, less than that which many lads now but was subsequently elected a Fellow. carry away every year from Eton and His college is still proud of his name: Rugby. A minute examination of his his portrait still hangs in the hall; and works, if we had time to make such an strangers are still told that his favourite examination, would fully bear out these walk was under the elms which fringe remarks. We will briefly advert to a the meadow on the banks of the Cher- few of the facts on which our judgment well. It is said, and is highly probable, | is grounded. |