drawing the character of Atticus, and unquestionably meant for Addison. Of all the accusations so brilliantly launched against him, Addison might plead guilty to none save the very venial one of loving to surround himself with an obsequious circle of literary admirers: but all the blacker portions of the portrait are traceable to the pure malignity of the venomous but sparkling satirist. The character of Addison seems to have approached, as near as the frailties and imperfections of our nature will allow, to the ideal of a perfectly good man. In him indulgence in detail did not exclude severity of principle, and tolerance and fervor were united in his religious sentiments. Everybody knows the story of his sending for the young Earl of Warwick, his former pupil, when on his death-bed, and telling him that he had asked his presence that he might see how a Christian can die. The scene must have made a deep impression, even upon that wild and worthless reprobate, who was the scandal of his time for his profligate adventures. § 4. Of the works of this admirable man and excellent writer, it is the prose portion which gives him the right to the very high place he holds in the English Literature of the eighteenth century; and among the prose works, almost exclusively those Essays which he contributed to the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian. The immense fertility of invention displayed in these charming papers, the variety of their subjects, and the singular felicity of their treatment, will ever place them among the masterpieces of fiction and of criticism. The variety of them is indeed extraordinary; and though we know that the primary hints for some of them may have been given by Swift, yet enough, and more than enough, remains to testify to the richness and inventiveness of Addison's own genius. These papers are of all kinds: sometimes we have an apologue like the Vision of Mirza, sometimes the Transmigrations of the Monkey, or the judgment of women in Hades; at other times we have calm and yet fervent religious musings on the starry heavens or in Westminster Abbey; then a playful mock criticism, or a description of Mr. Penkethman, the Puppet-show, or the Opera; then a noble appreciation of the half-neglected grandeur of Milton, or the rude, energetic splendor of the old ballad of Chevy Chase. Nothing is too high, nothing too low, to furnish matter for amusing and yet profitable reflection: from the patched and cherrycolored ribbons of the ladies, to the loftiest principles of morality and religion, everything is treated with appropriate yet unforced appositeness. Addison was long held up as the finest model of elegant yet idiomatic English prose; and even now, when a more lively, vigorous, and colored style has supplanted the neat and somewhat prim correctness of the eighteenth century, the student will find in Addison some qualities that never can become obsolete - a never-failing clearness and limpidity of expression, and a singular appropriateness between the language and the thought. Like the Pyrrha of Horace, the style of this author is simplex munditiis. The age of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian was the age of clubs in England; and Steele, in order

to give vivacity and individuality to his journals, supposed that they were edited by some imaginary person, the philosophic spectator of the gayeties and follies of society, some Isaac Bickerstaff, or some shortfaced gentleman. None of these are of much felicity, except the invention of the Club in the Spectator, consisting of representatives of the chief classes of town and rural society. Thus we have Sir Andrew Freeport as the type of the merchants, Captain Sentry of the soldiers, Sir Roger de Coverley of the old-fashioned country-gentlemen, and Will Honeycomb of the men of fashion and pleasure: while linking them all together is Mr. Spectator himself, the short-faced gentleman, who looks with a somewhat satirical yet good-humored interest on all that he sees going on around him. In the conception and impersonation of these characters, which were in all probability first thought of by Steele, there is nothing very happy or very extraordinary, with the exception of the inimitable personage of Sir Roger de Coverley, and the adventures and surroundings of the worthy old knight. It is a perfect, finished picture, worthy of Cervantes or of Walter Scott; and the manner in which the foibles and the virtues of the old squire are combined is a proof that Addison possessed humor in its highest and most delicate perfection. The account of Sir Roger's visit to London, of his conduct at the Club, of his expedition by water to Westminster Abbey, of his remarks on the statues and curiosities he sees there, is the perfection of tender, delicate, loving humor; and Mr. Spectator's description of his visit to the old provincial magnate in his Gothic Hall, his exhibition of his picture-gallery, his behavior at church and upon the bench of the quorum, his long-standing amour with the widow, and the inimitable sketches of his dependants, the chaplain, the butler, and Will Wimble, the poor relation, — all these traits of character and delicate observation of nature must ever place Addison very high among the great painters of human nature.

§ 5. Addison's poetry, though rated very high in his own time, has since fallen in public estimation to a point very far below that occupied by his prose. His Latin productions are remarkable for their elegance and a classic purity of turn and diction, and they show very great address in that difficult department in the art of the modern imitator of ancient verse, the rendering in graceful and idiomatic Latinity ideas and objects purely modern. Nevertheless, Addison's Latin poetry, like that of all moderns, labors under the fatal defect of being, after all, but a skilful cento, and an artificial reproduction of thought in a language which was not the real language of the writer. The songs in Rosamond are very pleasing and musical; and, had Addison continued to write in that manner, he would undoubtedly have left something which rival authors would have found it very difficult to surpass. Perhaps the portion of his poetical works which is destined to survive longest the dangers of complete oblivion is his Hymns, which not only breathe a fervent and tender spirit of piety, but are in their diction and versification stamped with great beauty and refinement: the verses beginning,

"When all Thy mercies, O my God," and the well-known adaptation of the noble psalm, "The Heavens declare the Glory of God," derive, at least, as much of their effect from the sincere worship of a devout mind, of which they are the eloquent outpourings, as they do from any merely literary merits, though the latter are far superior to what is found in the general run of religious verse. The earlier and more ambitious poems of Addison, even including the once-lauded Campaign, have little to distinguish them from the vast mass of regular, frigid, irreproachable composition which was poured forth under the influence of Pope and the Classical school, when a certain refined mediocrity could be attained by a practice little better than mechanical, and when, of course, such mechanical address was fatal to the existence of any vigorous or original creation.

§ 6. The name of SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE (1628-1698) has already occurred in connection with the early life of Swift, who was for some time his dependant. He played an important part in the political and diplomatic history of the reigns of Charles II. and William III., and in particular negotiated with the great and good De Witt the treaty of alliance by which England, Holland, and Sweden opposed a barrier to the encroaching ambition of France. In middle life he retired from that active political life for which his timidity and selfishness, as well as his self-indulgent habits and weak health, unfitted him during a stormy and factious period, and amused himself, in his villa at Sheen, and afterwards at his lovely retreat of Moor Park, in Surrey, with gardening and elegant and somewhat dilettante literary pursuits. He produced a number of easy and graceful though superficial Essays, which were extravagantly lauded at a time when the rank of a writer much increased the public admiration of his works; but which are now read with interest principally on account of their easy good sense, their pleasing reflections on nature, and the agreeable and gentlemanly style in which they are written. He took part in the famous controversy suggested by the publication of the spurious Letters of Phalaris, but which had its origin in a discussion respecting the relative superiority of the Ancients or the Moderns; and he was treated by Bentley, not, indeed, with contempt, but with less respect than his contemporaries were in the habit of paying to the statesman and ambassador who condescended to enter the arena of literature. His writings upon this subject exhibit a degree of childish ignorance and presumption that would have warranted much more severe treatment at the hands of the great scholar, whose profound and accurate knowledge settled the question which his wit and pleasantry hád so much enlivened.*

§ 7. No name, among the brilliant circle which surrounded Pope and Swift, is more remarkable than that of BISHOP ATTERBURY (16621732). A Tory and Jacobite of the extreme Oxford type, he played a prominent part, both on the political and literary scene. He was

* For a full account of this controversy, see Notes and Illustrations (B) at the end of this chapter.

a man of great intellectual activity, of considerable though by no means profound learning, and of a violent, imperious, and restless temper. He took an active part in the controversy between Boyle and Bentley, and was for a time considered, by the people of fashion who knew nothing of the subject, to have completely demolished the dull, ill-bred Cambridge pedant. He was the principal author of the reply written in the name of Boyle, whose tutor he had been at Christ-Church. Of this great and illustrious college Atterbury was for some time dean; but his violent and overbearing spirit, as well as his extravagant Tory opinions, soon excited general confusion and dispute. He was in 1713 raised to the see of Rochester, and became conspicuous not only as a controversialist, but for the force and eloquence of his speeches in Parliament. Though he had solemnly sworn to conform to the Protestant and Hanoverian dynasty upon which the throne was now settled, he began, in disgust at the coldness and suspicion with which the Court regarded him, to engage in that secret and treasonable correspondence with the party of the exiled Stuarts, that ultimately caused his wellmerited fall. He had been known as an ardent favorer of the project for reinstating the Pretender at the death of Queen Anne, and in 1722 he was openly impeached by Parliament, convicted of treasonable practices, committed to the Tower, deprived of his bishopric, and condemned to exile. He resided first at Brussels, afterwards at Paris, and ultimately at Montpellier, and continued to show his attachment to the hopeless cause of the exiled family, though he refused an invitation to Rome, where the Pretender was residing. His conduct throughout appears to have been disingenuous, if not treacherous, in the highest degree. The private and personal side of Atterbury's character is far more attractive and respectable than his public conduct. His friendship for Pope was tender and sincere, and he was not only the great poet's most affectionate companion, but guided him with wise and valuable literary counsel. His fondness, too, for his daughter is a redeeming trait in his feverish and unhappy life; and there are few stories more pathetic than her hasty journey, to receive her father's blessing, to take the sacrament from his hand, and to die in his embrace. His taste in literature appears to have been sound, and the intense admiration he always showed for the genius of Milton is the more honorable to his judgment, as his extreme Tory opinions must have made it difficult for him to sympathize with the Puritan and Republican poet.

§ 8. LORD SHAFTESBURY (1671-1713), grandson of the famous chancellor, who was the friend and patron of Locke, himself enjoyed the tuition of that great and excellent man. His political and private conduct affords a striking contrast to the factiousness and profligacy of the chancellor; and his literary reputation, though now become comparatively obscure, stood very high both as a moralist and metaphysician, and also as an elegant and classical model of English prose. His collected works bear the title of Characteristics, and may still be read with interest. Shaftesbury's style is refined and regular, though some

what ambitious and finical; but he sometimes, as in his dialogue entitled the Moralists, rises to a lofty height of limpid eloquence, reminding the reader of the Platonic manner. His delineations of characters show much acuteness and observation, and have obtained for him the honor of comparison with La Bruyère, to whose neat antithetical mode of portrait-painting the thoughts and language of Shaftesbury bear no inconsiderable resemblance. As a writer on ethics he is remarkable for having strongly insisted on the existence in human nature of a distinct moral sense, enabling us to distinguish almost instinctively between good and evil actions. He is indeed by some considered the discoverer of this principle, antagonistic to those reasoners who maintain that the difference between virtue and vice is only relative and experimental.

§ 9. HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE (1678-1751), presents a strong contrast to the last-mentioned writer. His career as a statesman and orator was meteoric, and he astonished his age with the splendor and versatility of his talents. In early life he was notorious for his dissipation; but, addicting himself to politics, he became celebrated for his eloquence as a speaker and his vivacity as a party-writer. He was a member of the brilliant coterie of Pope and Swift, and was joined in the administration with Harley. The collision between his ardent and flighty character and the slow and plodding nature of his colleague produced a rupture which all the efforts of Swift could not heal; and on the death of Queen Anne, Bolingbroke, who had engaged in treasonable correspondence with the Court of St. Germains, was obliged to go into exile to escape the dangers of a formal impeachment. He had rendered himself odious to the nation by his share in the unpopular Treaty of Utrecht. In France he actually entered the service of the Pretender, but was soon dismissed through intrigue, and on receiving a pardon in 1723 returned to England, when he again made himself conspicuous for the virulence with which he opposed Walpole. He again retired to France for some time, and amused the declining years of life in the composition of many political, moral, and philosophical essays. One of these, the Idea of a Patriot King, he gave in MS. to Pope, and affected great anger when he discovered, after the poet's death, that the latter had caused a large impression to be printed, contrary to a solemn promise. Of his other works, his Letter to Sir William Windham in defence of his political conduct, and his Letters on the Study and Use of History, are the most important. The language of Bolingbroke is lofty and oratorical, but the tone of philosophical indifference to the usual objects of ambition generally strikes the reader as artificial and affected. It was to Bolingbroke that Pope addressed and dedicated the Essay on Man, and some of the not very orthodox positions maintained in that poem were borrowed from his brilliant writings, the poet being too unfamiliar with such speculations to be always able to distinguish the results to which they logically led; and Pope was indebted to the vigorous sophistry of Warburton, by which