were benighted in Haywood Forest, in Herefordshire, and the lady for a short time was lost. The adventure being related to their father on their arrival at the castle, Milton, at the request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote the Mask. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night; the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, each bearing a part in the representation."
This single circumstance of being the scene of the first representation of the Mask of Comus, one of Milton's most beautiful compositions, has given a perpetual interest to Ludlow Castle.
The genius of Butler was of a different stamp. It wanted the sublimity, the pathos, and tender sensibilities of that of Milton; but, on the other hand, for perception of the ridiculous; for a diving into the closest folds of cant and fanatical pretense; for a rough, bold, and humorous power of sketching ordinary life, it was unrivaled. A tower is still shown as the place where he wrote a part of his Hudibras. Whether it be the precise fact or not, it is idle to inquire. There our author has resided; there he is said to have written something or other, and the very room and spot of its composition are pointed out. It is best not to be too critical; and, on the other hand, if we believe, in general, that where a man of genius has lived he has also written, we shall seldom be far wrong. There is little doubt that here Butler, possessed of more leisure and independence than at any other period of his life, did really revise and prepare his work for press, of which the first part was published in 1663, and the second in the year following.
Here he married Mrs. Herbert, a lady of good family, with whom he lived in comfort, if not in affluence. Of the place where Comus was first acted by the real personages of it, and where Butler brought forth his Hudibras, some idea may be gratifying to the reader. It was deserted in the first year of William and Mary, in consequence of the dissolution of the Court of the Marches. From an inventory of the goods found in Ludlow Castle, bearing date 1708, in the eleventh year of Queen Anne, there appeared to be then forty rooms entire. Many of the royal apartments were in that condition; and the couch of state and the velvet hangings were preserved. In the chapel there were still to be seen on the panels many coats of arms; and in the hall many of the same kind of ornaments, together with lances, spears, firelocks, and old armor. On the accession of George I., an order came down to unroof the buildings, and strip them of their lead. Decay consequently ensued. Several panels bearing the arms of the lords president were converted into wainscoting for a public house in the town, a former owner of which enriched himself by the sale of materials clandestinely carried away. There remains, also, a rich embroidered carpet, hung up in the chancel of St. Lawrence's Church, said to be part of the covering of the council-board. The Earl of Powis, who previously held the castle in virtue of a long lease, acquired the reversion in fee by purchase from the crown in 1811.
The whole is now a scene of venerable ruin. The castle rises from the point of a headland, and its foundations are ingrafted into a bare gray rock. The north front consists of square towers with high connecting walls, which are embattled with deep interstices; and the old fosse, and part of the rock, have been formed into walks, which in 1722 were planted with beech, elm, and lime trees by the Countess of Powis, and those trees, now grown to maturity, add exceedingly to the dignity and beauty of the scene. Through a chasm on the west runs the broad and shallow River Teme. It were too long to describe all this mass of ruins, with its various courts, remains of barracks, and escutcheoned walls. The first view of the interior of the castle is fine. The court is an irregular square area, not very spacious, but the lofty embattled structures with which it is surrounded, though in ruin, still preserve their original outlines. The spacious hall is of sixty feet by thirty, the height about thirty-five feet, and is ornamented with a door with a beautiful pointed arch. The once elegant saloon, where the splendid scene of Comus was first exhibited; where chivalry exhausted her choicest stores, both of invention and wealth, and where hospitality and magnificence blazed for many ages in succession, without diminution or decay, is now totally dilapidated, and neither roof nor floor remains.
From the time of Butler's quitting this scene of his ease and happiness, he seems to have experienced only poverty and neglect. His wife's fortune is said to have been lost through bad securities; his expectations from the royal person, or the royal party whom he had so immensely served, were wholly disappointed; and in 1680 he died, where, on the authority of the son of his truest friend and benefactor, Mr. Longueville, he had lived some years, in Rose-street, Covent Garden. Mr. Longueville exerted himself to raise a subscription for his interment in Westminster Abbey, but in vain; he therefore buried him at his own cost in the church-yard of Covent Garden. About sixty years afterward, Mr. Bailey, a painter, Mayor of London, and a friend to Butler's principles, bestowed on him that monument in Westminster Abbey, which is well known.
Such were the life, fortunes, and death of the author of Hudibras, whose name, as Johnson justly observes, can only perish with his language. It was his misfortune to look for protection to a monarch, who only protected courtesans, and the most disgusting of libertines. Butler should have been a pimp, and not a poet, and he would soon have found employment enough. His neglect is but one opprobrium more added to the memory of a monarch, whose whole life was a nuisance and a disgrace to the country which tolerated him.
Dryden should have been transferred to the volume of the dramatic poets if the quality of his dramas had borne any relative proportion to their quantity, or to the quality of his poetry; but it is the latter which gives him his great and lasting distinction. They are his Satires, and Fables, and Translations; his Absalom and Achitophel; his Hind and Panther; his Palemon and Arcite; the Flower and the Leaf; and, in short, all those racy and beautiful stories which he threw into modern poetry from Chaucer and Boccacio; with his Virgil, and lyrical compositions, and, at the head of these, his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, that stamp his character with the English public as one of the most vigorous, harmonious, and truly British writers. Dryden displayed no great powers of creation; perhaps the literary hurry of his life prevented this; but he contemplated for years a national epic on Prince Arthur, and probably, had he possessed perfect leisure for carrying out this design, he would have astonished us as much with the display of that faculty as he delights us with the masterly vigor of his reasoning powers; with his harmony and nerve of style; and with the stiletto stabs of his annihilating satire. But from any necessity of criticism on his genius, the familiar acquaintance of every true lover of poetry with the merits and beauties which have fixed his immortality, fortunately for my space, fully exempts me. Even over the long succession of literary events in his life we must pass, and fix our attention on his homes and haunts. For nearly forty years, from 1660 to 1700, he was before the public as an active author; and on the disappearance of Milton from the field of life, he became, and continued to be, the most marked man of his time; yet it is astonishing how little is known of his town haunts and habits. Of his publications, the appearance of his dramas, the controversies into which he fell with his literary cotemporaries, his change of religion, and his clinging to the despotic government of the Stuarts, we know enough; but of his home life next to nothing. That he lived in Gerrard-street, and was a constant frequenter of Will's Coffee-house, Covent Garden, seems to be almost all that is known of his town resorts. Like Addison, and most literary men who have married titled ladies, he did not find it contribute much to his comfort. His wife was Lady Elizabeth Howard, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, and sister of his friend, Sir Robert Howard. Her temper is said to have been very peculiar, and that she looked down on Dryden as of inferior rank, though he was descended from a very old family, mixed with the most distinguished men of the nobility, and was the first man of his time; but conceit or the blindness of aristocratic pride do not alter the real nature or proportion of things, except in the vision of the person afflicted with them. Dryden was the great personage, and his titled wife the little one, and on him, therefore, lay the constant pressure of the unequal yoke he bore.
What, no doubt, rendered the conduct of his wife worse, was the pride of her family on the one hand, and the unlucky connection of Dryden's brothers with ordinary trades. His family, and that of his mother, the Pickerings, had taken a decided part during the civil wars for the Parliament, while that of his wife had been as zealous on the Royalist side. Besides this, Erasmus, his immediate younger brother, was in trade in King-street, Westminster; James, the fourth brother, was a tobacconist in London; one of his sisters was married to a bookseller in Little Britain, and another to a tobacconist in Newgate-street; these would be dreadful alliances to a family proud and poor. "No account," says Mitford, in his life of the poet, "has been transmitted of the person of Dryden's wife, nor has any portrait of her been discovered. I am afraid her personal attractions were not superior to her mental endowments; that her temper was wayward, and that the purity of her character was sullied by some early indiscretions. A letter from Lady Elizabeth to her son at Rome is preserved, as remarkable for the elegance of the style as the correctness of the orthography. She says: 'Your father is much at woon as to his health, and his defnese is wosce, but much as he was when he was heare; give me a true account how my deare son Charles is head dus.' Can this be the lady who had formerly held captive in her chains the gallant Earl of Chesterfield?"
"Lady Elizabeth Dryden," says Scott, "had long disturbed her husband's domestic happiness. 'His invectives,' says Malone, 'against the married state were frequent and bitter, and were continued till the latest period of his life;' and he adds, from most respectable authority, that the family of the poet held no intimacy with his lady, confining their intercourse to mere visits of ceremony. How could they? how could the tobacconist, and the other tobacconist's wife, and the little bookseller's wife of Little Britain, venture under the roof of the proud lady of the proud house of Howard, with 'her weak intellects and her violent temper?'"
A similar alienation, also, it is said, took place between her and her relatives, Sir Robert Howard, perhaps, being excepted; for her brother, the Honorable Edward Howard, talks of Dryden's being engaged in a translation of Virgil as a thing he had learned merely by common report. Her wayward disposition, Malone says, was, however, the effect of a disordered imagination, which, shortly after Dryden's death, degenerated into absolute insanity, in which state she remained until her own death in 1714, probably in the seventy-ninth year of her age.
Poor Dryden! what with his wife—consort one can not call her, and helpmeet she was not—and with a tribe of tobacconist brothers on one hand, and proud Howards on the other; and a host of titled associates, and his bread to dig with his pen, one pities him from one's heart. Well might he, when his wife once said it would be much better for her to be a book than a woman, for then she should have more of his company, reply, "I wish you were, my dear, an almanac, and then I could change you once a year." It is not well to look much into such a home, except for a warning. Yet the outside of that life, like many others, would have deceived an ordinary spectator. There all was brilliant and imposing. "Whether," says Sir Walter Scott, "we judge of the rank which Dryden held in society by the splendor of his titled and powerful friends, or by his connections among men of genius, we must consider him as occupying at one time as high a station, in the very foremost circle, as literary reputation could gain for its owner. Independent of the notice with which he was honored by Charles himself, the poet numbered among his friends most of the distinguished nobility. The great Duke of Ormond had already begun that connection which subsisted between Dryden and three generations of the house of Butler. Thomas Lord Clifford, one of the Cabal ministry, was uniform in patronizing the poet, and appears to have been active in introducing him to the king's favor. The Duke of Newcastle loved him sufficiently to present him with a play for the stage; the witty Earl of Dorset, then Lord Buckhurst, and Sir Charles Sedley, admired in that loose age for the peculiar elegance of his loose poetry, were his intimate associates, as is evident from the turn of The Essay on Dramatic Poesy, where they are the speakers. Wilmot, earl of Rochester, soon to act a very different part, was then anxious to vindicate Dryden's writings; to mediate for him with those who distributed the royal favor, and was thus careful, not only of his reputation, but his fortune. In short, the author of what was then held the first style of poetry, was sought for by all among the great and gay who wished to maintain some character for literary taste. It was then Dryden enjoyed those genial nights described in the dedication of the Assignation, when 'discourse was neither too serious nor too light, but always pleasant, and for the most part instructive; the raillery neither too sharp upon the present, nor too censorious upon the absent; and the cups such only as raised the conversation of the night, without disturbing the business of the morrow.' He had not yet experienced the disadvantages attendant on such society, or learned how soon literary eminence becomes the object of detraction, of envy, of injury, even from those who can best feel its merit, if they are discouraged by dissipated habits from emulating its flight, or hardened by perverted feeling against loving its possessors." But all this came; and, in the mean time, the poet had to work, like Pegasus in the peasant's cart, for the means to maintain this intercourse with such lofty society. And what did all these great friends do for him? They procured him no good post in return for good services rendered to their party, but the poet's meager office of the laureateship, which, added to that of historiographer to royalty, brought him £200 a year, and his butt of canary. Poor Dryden! with the cross wife, and the barren blaze of aristocracy around him, the poorest coal-heaver need not have envied him.
Neither did "glorious John" escape his share of annoyance from his cotemporaries of the pen, nor from the publishers. He had a controversy with his friend and brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard, on the true nature of dramatic poetry, which speedily degenerated into personal bitterness, and a long estrangement. Then came the Rehearsal, that witty farce in which he was ridiculed in the character of Bayes, and his literary productions, as well as personal characteristics, held up to the malicious merriment of the world by a combination of the wits and fashionable pen-men of the time; among them the notorious Villiers, duke of Buckingham, the author of Hudibras, the Bishop of Rochester, and others. The miserable Elkanah Settle was set up as a rival of him; and after these rose in succession the hostile train of the licentious Lord Rochester, Lord Shaftesbury, Milbourne, Blackmore, and others, by whom every species of spite, misrepresentation, and ridicule were for years heaped upon him. Nor did his enemies restrain themselves to the use of the pen in their attacks upon him. One of the most prominent events of Dryden's life is that of a ruffianly attack upon him as he returned from his club at Will's Coffee-house, on a winter's night. Lord Mulgrave had published a satire, called an Essay on Satire, in which Rochester and other wits and profligates of the time were introduced. The poem was a wretched affair; but Dryden, to oblige Mulgrave, had undertaken to revise it. Much labor he could not have bestowed upon it, it was so flat and poor; but Rochester thought fit to attribute it to Dryden himself; and a set of ruffians, supposed to be hired by him and the Duchess of Portsmouth, who had been also reflected on, fell on the poet as he passed through Rose-street, Covent Garden, on his way from Will's Coffee-house to his own house in Gerrard-street. A reward of £50 was in vain offered in the London Gazette and other newspapers for the discovery of the perpetrators of the outrage. The beating was, in those loose times, thought a good joke. The Rose Alley ambuscade became almost proverbial; and even Mulgrave, the real author of the satire, and upon whose shoulders the blows ought in justice to have descended, in his Art of Poetry, thus mentions the circumstance with a pitiful sneer:
Thus attacked with pens and cudgels by the envious writers of the day, Dryden was nearly starved by the booksellers. On one occasion, provoked by the refusal of timely supplies by Jacob Tonson, he did not do as Johnson did by Cave, knock him down with a quarto, but ran him through with a triplet, describing the bibliopole's person:
"Tell the dog," said the poet to the messenger by whom he sent these complimentary lines, "that he who wrote these can write more." But he needed not to write more; they were as effective as he could desire. Jacob, however, on his part, could make his tongue as pungent as Dryden could his verse. Johnson, in the "Life of Dryden," relates that Lord Bolingbroke one day making a call on Dryden, he heard another person enter the house. "That," said Dryden, "is Tonson. You will take care not to depart before he goes away; for I have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me unprotected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can prompt his tongue."
Perhaps the happiest hours of Dryden's life, next to those spent over his finest compositions in his study, were passed at Will's Coffee-house. After dinner, at two o'clock, he used to repair thither, where assembled all the most famous men of the time. There he reigned supreme. He had a chair placed for him by the chimney in winter, and near the balcony in summer; where, says his biographer, he pronounced, ex cathedrâ, his opinions upon new publications, and in general upon all matters of doubtful criticism. Latterly, all who had occasion to ridicule and attack him, represent him as presiding in this little senate. His opinions, however, were not maintained with dogmatism, but he listened to criticism, provided it was just, from whatever unexpected and undignified quarter it happened to come. In general, however, it may be supposed that few ventured to dispute his opinion, or to place themselves in the gap between him and the object of his censure.
Dryden's house, which he appears to have resided in from the period of his marriage till his death, was, as I have said, in Gerrard-street; the fifth on the left hand, coming from Little Newport-street, now No. 43. The back windows looked upon the gardens of Leicester House, of which circumstance the poet availed himself to pay a handsome compliment to the noble owner. His excursions to the country seem to have been frequent; perhaps the more so, as Lady Elizabeth always remained in town. In his latter days, the friendship of his relations, John Dryden, of Chesterton, and Mrs. Steward, of Cotterstock, rendered their houses agreeable places of abode to the aged poet. They appear, also, to have had a kind solicitude about his little comforts, of value infinitely beyond the contributions they made toward aiding him.
The principal traits of his domestic life have been collected together by Malone. From these, and from the pen of Congreve, we learn that he was, in youth, of handsome form and agreeable countenance; modest in his manner, reluctant to intrude himself on the notice and company of others, easily chilled and rebuffed by any thing like a distant behavior. He is described as most amiable and affectionate in his family, generous beyond his means, and most forgiving of injuries; all noble traits of character. Malone related, on the authority of Lady Dryden, that at that time the poet's little estate at Blakesley was occupied by one Harriots, grandson of the tenant who held it in Dryden's time, who stated that his grandfather used to take great pleasure in talking of him. He was, he said, the easiest and the kindest landlord in the world; and never raised the rent during the whole time he possessed the estate. The two most unfortunate circumstances in his life, next to his marriage, was his going over from Puritanism to popery, and from the liberal opinions of his family to the adherence of the worst of kings. For these changes it would be difficult to assign any better motive than that of mending his fortunes. But if this were the case, he was bitterly punished for it in both instances. The monarchs that he flattered were Stuarts, and the last of them being driven out, left him to encounter all the scorn, the sarcasms and sacrifices that were sure to come against him with the Dutch monarch of 1688. He was, instead of gaining more from royalty by his change, deprived of that which he had—the laureateship and office of historiographer; and saw them conferred, with £300 a year, on his unworthy rival, Shadwell. The change of his religion was equally unpropitious. His sons became more connected with Rome than England. Charles, the eldest, was chamberlain of the household of Pope Innocent XII., but having suffered by a fall from a horse, he returned to England, and was drowned in attempting to swim across the Thames at Datchett, near Windsor, in August, 1704. The second son, John, also went to Rome, and acted as the deputy of Charles, in the pope's household; he died at Rome. Both of these sons were poetical, and published. Erasmus Henry, the third son, went also to Rome, and became a captain in the pope's guards. He afterward returned to England, and succeeded to the family title of baronet, but not to the estate of Canons-Ashby, where he, however, continued to live with the proprietor, Edward Dryden, his cousin, till his death in 1710. Thus terminated the race of the great satiric poet.
In the county of Northampton there are various places connected with Dryden. He was of the old family of the Drydens, or Dridens, of Canons-Ashby, which family there still remains. The poet was born at the parsonage-house of Aldwinkle All-Saints. His father was Erasmus Dryden, and his mother Mary Pickering, the daughter of the rector of Aldwinkle, a son of the well-known Sir Gilbert Pickering, a zealous Puritan. It appears that our author's father lived at Tichmarsh, and that his son was born under his grandfather's roof. At Tichmarsh, accordingly, we find Dryden receiving his first education, whence he proceeded to Westminster, and studied under Dr. Busby, and thence to Cambridge.
Scott says, "If we can believe an ancient tradition, the poem of the 'Hind and Panther' was chiefly composed in a country retirement at Rushton, in Northamptonshire. There was an embowered walk at this place, which, from the pleasure which the poet took in it, retained the name of Dryden's Walk; and here was erected, about the middle of the last century, an urn, with the following inscription: 'In memory of Dryden, who frequented these shades, and is here said to have composed his poem of "The Hind and Panther."'"
This spot was, no doubt, the old house and park of the Treshams; that old, zealous Catholic family, of which one member, Sir Francis Tresham, played so conspicuous a part in the Gunpowder Plot. This Sir Francis Tresham had been actively engaged in the affair of the Earl of Essex, and his head had only been rescued from the block by his father bribing a great lady, and some people about the court, with several thousand pounds. This business was so closely veiled, that for some time the direct proofs of Tresham's connection with the business escaped the hands of the historians. The late examinations into the treasures of the State Paper Office have, however, made this fact, like so many others, clear. Long ago, also, original documents, fully proving it, fell into the hands of Mr. Baker, the excellent historian of Northamptonshire, including an admirable love-letter by this Sir Francis, who, notwithstanding his narrow escape, again rushed into the Gunpowder Treason, being a near relation of Catesby, the prime actor in it. The movements of Tresham in the matter have all the character of those of an actor in some strange romance. From the moment that he was admitted to the secret, Catesby was struck with inward terror and misgivings. Tresham augmented this alarm by beginning soon to plead warmly for warning the Lords Stourton and Mounteagle, who had married his sisters. A few days after, he suddenly came upon Catesby, Winter, and Fawkes, in Enfield Chase, and reiterated his entreaty. They refused; and then, on the 26th of October, as Lord Mounteagle was sitting at supper, at an old seat of his at Hoxton, which he seldom visited, and to which he had now come suddenly, a letter was brought in by his page, saying, he had received it from a tall man whose face he could not discern in the dark, and who went hastily away. The letter was tossed carelessly by Mounteagle to a gentleman in his service, who read it aloud. It was the very warning which Tresham wished so earnestly to convey to him. Mounteagle, in astonishment, carried the letter to Cecil the next morning, and thus the secret of the impending catastrophe was out. Once more Catesby and Winter appointed a meeting with Tresham in Enfield Chase. Their purpose was to charge him with the warning of Mounteagle, and, if he were found guilty, to stab him to the heart on the spot. But while they told him what had been done, they fixed their eyes searchingly on his countenance; all was clear and firm; not a muscle moved, not a tone faltered; he swore solemn oaths that he was ignorant of the letter, and they let him go. This man, when part of the conspirators were arrested, remained at large; while others fled, he hastened to the council to offer his services in apprehending the rebels. Finally, arrested and conveyed to the Tower himself, there, under torture, he implicated the Jesuits, Garnet and Greenway, in some treason in Queen Elizabeth's time, then retracted the confession, and died in agony, as the Catholics believed, of poison. Such was the career and end of this strange man. The family estate passed away into the hands of the Cockaynes, and is now the property of Mr. Hope. Could there be a more inspiring solitude for the composition of a poem, the object of which was to smooth the way for the return of Catholic ascendency, and that by a poet warm with the first fires of a proselyte zeal?
Among other places of Dryden's occasional sojourn may be mentioned Charlton, in Wiltshire, the seat of his wife's father, the Earl of Berkshire, whence he dates the introduction to his Annus Mirabilis; and Chesterton, in Huntingdonshire, the seat of his kinsman, John Driden, where he translated part of Virgil. In the country he delighted in the pastime of fishing, and used, says Malone, to spend some time with Mr. Jones, of Ramsden, in Wiltshire. Durfey was sometimes of this party; but Dryden appears to have underrated his skill in fishing, as much as his attempt at poetry. Hence Fenton, in his epistle to Lambard:
And, finally, Canons-Ashby connects itself inevitably with his name. It was the ancient patrimony of the family. It was not his father's, it was not his, or his sons, though the title generally connected with it fell to his son, and there his son lived and died; yet, as the place which gives name and status to the line, it will always maintain an association with the memory of the poet. These are the particulars respecting it collected by Mr. Baker. The mansion of the Drydens, seated in a small deer park, is a singular building of different periods. The oldest part, as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, or perhaps earlier, is built round a small quadrangle. There is a dining-room in the house thirty feet long by twenty feet wide, which is said to be entirely floored and wainscoted with the timber of one single oak, which grew in this lordship. In this room are various portraits of persons of, and connected with, the family. The drawing-room is traditionally supposed to have been fitted up for the reception of Anne of Denmark, queen of James I. The estate is good, but not so large as formerly, owing to the strange conduct of the late Lady Dryden, who cut off her own children, three sons and two daughters, leaving the whole ancient patrimonial property from them to the son of her lawyer, the lawyer himself refusing to have it, or make such a will. The estate here was, it appears, regained, but only by the sacrifice of one in Lincolnshire. Such are the strange events in the annals of families which local historians rarely record. How little could this lady comprehend the honor lying in the name of Dryden; how much less the nature and duties of a mother.
The monument of the poet in Westminster Abbey is familiar to the public, placed there by Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, bearing only a single word, the illustrious name of—Dryden.
Addison was a fortunate man; the houses in which he lived testify it. His fame as a poet, though considerable in his own time, has now dwindled to a point which would not warrant us to include him in this work, were not his reputation altogether of that kind which inseparably binds him up with the poetical history of his country. He was not only a popular poet in his own day, but he was the friend and advocate of true poetry wherever it could be found. It was he who, in the Spectator, first sounded boldly and zealously abroad the glory of John Milton. In our time the revival of true poetry, the return to nature and to truth, have been greatly indebted to the old ballad poetry of the nation. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, and others, attribute the formation of their taste in the highest degree to the reading of Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. But it was Addison who long before had pointed out these sources and these effects. It was he who brought forward again the brave old ballad of Chevy Chace; who reminded us that Sir Philip Sidney had said that it always stirred his heart like the sound of a trumpet. It was he who showed us the inimitable touches of nature and of true pathos in it. He showed us how alive was the old bard who composed it to all the influences of nature and of circumstances. How the stanza,
carried you at once to the scene. With what life, and spirit, and graphic power he introduced his heroes, and by their gallant bearing won at once your interest for them.
It was Addison who made his cotemporaries fully aware of the truly noble sentiments which animated that fine ballad; the challenge of Douglas, and its acceptance by Percy, being a splendid instance.
The life and vigor of the description of the battle—the impression given of the indomitable bravery of the British race—the exploit of Widdrington—the proud boast of the English monarch of the abundance of brave men in his kingdom—all were forcibly demonstrated by Addison; nor less the beautiful pathos of the poem.
Equally did Addison vindicate and commend to our hearts the sweet ballad of the Babes in the Wood, and others of the true school of nature and feeling. Who shall say that it was not owing to these criticisms that Bishop Percy himself was led to the study and the collection of the precious relics of former ages, that lay scattered about among the people? The services of Addison to the poetry of England are far greater through what he recommended than what he composed; and the man who, more than all others, contributed to make periodical literature what it has become, and gave us, moreover, Sir Roger de Coverley, and the spirit of true old English life which surrounds him, with all those noble papers in which religion and philosophy so beautifully blend in the Spectator, must ever remain enshrined in the most grateful remembrance of his countrymen.
Addison, I have said, was a fortunate man. It is well for us that he was in that one case so fortunate. It was the service that his pen could render to the government of the time, that raised him from the condition of a poor clergyman's son to a minister of state, and thus gave him afterward leisure to pursue those beautiful speculations in literature which have had so decided and so permanent an influence on our literature and modes of thinking. Addison had his faults, and was not without a few of those thorns in the side which few escape in their progress through the wilderness of the world; but, so far as we are concerned, we owe to him nothing but love and admiration. Thus much said, we must, in this brief article, leave all the details of his life and progress, of his travels and his literary contests and achievements, as matters well known, and confine ourselves to a survey of the abodes in which he lived.
He was born at the parsonage of Milston, in Wiltshire, an humble dwelling, of which a view may be seen in Miss Aikin's life of him; his father being then incumbent of the parish. He was sent to schools at Shrewsbury and Lichfield, and then to the Charter-house, where he formed that acquaintance with Richard Steele which resulted in such lasting consequences to literature. Thence he went to Oxford, where he continued till the age of five-and-twenty, when, finding that, notwithstanding his fellowship and the resource of his pupils, he was so far from realizing a livelihood that he was greatly in debt, he gave up all thought of taking orders, and devoted himself to public business Fully to qualify himself for this, he applied to Montague, afterward Lord Halifax, with whose friendship he was already honored, as well as with that of Lord Somers, and procured from government a pension of £300 a year to enable him to make the circle of European travel, and acquaint himself with the real condition of those countries with which every English statesman must come into continual practical contact. He first went over to France, saw Paris, and then settled down at Blois to make himself master of the language. He continued nearly a year and a half at Blois, and it was to his intense study during this time that he owed his great knowledge of French literature. He then sailed from Marseilles for Italy. "It was in December, 1700," says Miss Aikin, "that he embarked at Marseilles for Genoa, whence he proceeded through Milan, Venice, Ravenna, and Loretto to Rome; thence to Naples by sea, and proceeded by Florence, Bologna, and Turin, to Geneva; where he arrived exactly one year from his quitting Marseilles, and two and a half after his departure from England. At Geneva he was met by the news of the death of King William. This was followed by the dismissal of the Whigs from office, the consequent loss of his pension, and the blasting of all his hopes of further advantage from them for the present. Instead, therefore, of attending on Prince Eugene, as secretary from the English king, as was appointed for him, he turned aside on his own slender resources to take a survey of Germany. After making a pleasant tour through the Swiss cantons, he descended into the plains of Germany, but found the inhabitants all in arms, and full of apprehension of the Bavarian troops, and was advised not to trust himself in the territories of the Duke of Bavaria. He therefore lost all opportunity of seeing Munich, Augsburg, and Ratisbon, and was obliged to make his way through the Tyrol to Vienna. In Vienna he felt himself in great anxiety on account of money, and made his way back through Holland home. Before reaching it, he received a proposal to go on a second tour of Europe for three years, with the son of the Duke of Somerset, but refused the duke's offers. Soon after his return to England he was engaged to write a poem on the victory of Blenheim, to serve the Whig cause, and produced the Campaign; at the time a most successful poem, but now chiefly remembered by the passage in which he represents Marlborough, like the angel of divine vengeance, riding on the whirlwind and directing the storm." From this period his advance was rapid, and we here leave him to the biographer, and restrict ourselves to our proper task.
The change of circumstances from the humble author to the minister and the friend of ministers; from the simple clergyman's son to the husband of a countess, and the father-in-law of an earl, can not be more strikingly displayed than by the singular contrast of his abodes under these different characters. D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, says that Pope, when taking his usual walk with Harte in the Haymarket, desired Harte to enter a little shop, when, going up three flights of stairs into a small room, Pope said, "In this garret Addison wrote his Campaign." That was certainly somewhat different to Bilton and Holland House. But between the garret in the Haymarket and these princely houses there were some connecting and ascending steps in residence. Addison was always anxious to get a quiet retreat, amid trees and greenness, where he could write. Such was afterward his abode at Sandy End, a hamlet of Fulham. Here he appears to have occupied apartments in a lodging-house established at this place; whence several of the published letters of Steele are dated, written at times when he seems to have been the guest of Addison. From Sandy End, too, are dated some letters to Lord Warwick, his future son-in-law, then a boy, and very anxious to get news about birds and birds' nests, which Addison most cordially gives him. He then went to Ireland as chief secretary to the Earl of Wharton, on his appointment to the lord-lieutenancy, and resided for some time in that capacity in Dublin. After this, he removed to a lodging at Kensington, owing to his increasing intimacy at Holland House, and was about this time a frequent guest at Northwick Park, with the first Lord Northwick, and there one of the best portraits of him, by Kneller, still remains.
In 1716, he married the Dowager Countess of Warwick; but five years before this, that is, in 1711, he had made the purchase of Bilton, as a suitable residence for a person of his position in the state, and of that high connection toward which he was already looking. Before, however, we indulge ourselves with a view of Addison at Bilton, let us see the mode of his life in town, on the authority of Pope, Spence, and Johnson: "Of the course of Addison's familiar day, before his marriage, Pope has given a detail. He had in the house with him, Budgell, and perhaps Philips. His chief companions were Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett. With one or other of these he always breakfasted. He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went afterward to Button's.
"Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's family, who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russell-street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it was that the wits of that time used to assemble. It is said, when Addison suffered any vexation from the countess, he withdrew the company from Button's house.
"From the coffee-house he went to a tavern, where he often sat late, and drank too much wine. In the bottle, discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence. It is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours. He that feels oppression from the presence of those to whom he knows himself superior, will desire to set loose his powers of conversation; and who that ever asked succors from Bacchus was able to preserve himself from being enslaved by his auxiliary?
"Among those friends it was that Addison displayed the elegance of his colloquial accomplishments, which may easily be supposed such as Pope represents them. The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his company, declared that he was a parson in a tie-wig, can detract little from his character; he was always reserved to strangers, and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of Mandeville."—Johnson's Life of Addison.
The statement made by Dr. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, and by Spence, that Addison's marriage, like that of Dryden, was not a happy one, has lately been strongly argued against by Miss Aikin. One would gladly be able to acquiesce in it, and if we could believe the painter as well as Miss Aikin, we should be inclined to believe the Countess of Warwick possessed both unusual sense and sweetness of temper. The current of tradition, however, runs strongly the other way; and I fear we have not now sufficient strength of evidence to avert it. As little do I anticipate that Miss Aikin will prove Addison a very sober man; the statements of his cotemporaries, and the voice of tradition, are against her. We must be content to take the man with his failings and his secret griefs, the foils to a great reputation and a great prosperity.
Addison purchased the estate of Bilton for £10,000, and the money was principally advanced by his brother Gulston Addison, governor of Fort St. George, at Madras. Thither he conveyed his paintings, his library, and his collection of medals, which, as connected with his Dialogues on Medals, was very valuable. Here it may be supposed that, during the five years previous to his marriage, he passed much of his leisure time. It was a beautiful retirement, well calculated to dispose to thought, and worthy of the author of the Spectator. If we are to believe tradition, that he planted most of the trees now standing around it, he must have taken great pleasure in its embellishment. On his death, he left it to his only child, Charlotte Addison, who could not have been much more than two years old. Here she spent her long life, from the death of her mother, the countess, dying in 1797, at about eighty years of age. Miss Addison, for she was never married, is said to have been of weak intellect, a fact by many traced to the want of real and spiritual union between her parents, a supposition which the researches of our own times into the nature of man tend greatly to confirm. With the usual effect of aristocratic prejudice on a feeble mind, she is said to have been especially proud of her mother, but to have rarely mentioned her father. Being left to the care and education of her mother, this does not very strongly corroborate the case which Miss Aikin labors to establish. It does not tell very eloquently for that true affection which she tells us the countess bore toward Addison, and which she endeavors to prove by proving Addison's affection for her, evidenced by his making her his sole executrix, and guardian of his child. By the fruits we must judge of the woman as well as the tree, and the fruit of Lady Warwick's education of her child was, by all accounts, this, that she left her ashamed of her father the commoner, though an immortal man, and proud of her mother, a lady—and nothing more. There are many stories of the eccentricities and increasing fatuity of poor Miss Addison floating in the village and neighborhood of Bilton, which may as well die out with time. The disposal of her property marks the tendency of her feelings. Her grandfather, Dr. Lancelot Addison, was a native of Cumberland. There, at the time of Miss Addison making her will, still remained many near and poor relations, whom she entirely passed over, as she had done in her lifetime, and bequeathed Bilton to the Honorable John Bridgman Simpson, brother to Lord Bridgman, whose representative is now Earl of Bradford. This gentleman she chose to consider her nearest relation, because her mother's relation, though very near he could not be. Her mother, the countess, was the daughter of Sir Thomas Middleton, of Chirk Castle, Denbighshire, by a daughter of Sir Orlando Bridgman; so that this Mr. Bridgman Simpson, a relative of her grandmother, could be no very near relative of her own, while she must have had first cousins of the paternal line in plenty. Those relatives of her own name, and who would have handed down the property, bound up with the name of Addison, as a monument of their family fame, disputed her will, but ineffectually. She is buried there in the chancel of the church, but the gratitude of that aristocratic person on whom, to the prejudice of her own name and blood, she bestowed her whole estate, has never to this hour proved warm enough to furnish a single stone, or a single line, to mark where she lies. As if the name of Addison were something noxious or disgraceful, and should be carefully kept out of all mention which might decide its connection with Bilton,