01 - Life and Writings of Addison by Thomas Babington Macaulay

Delve into the life and legacy of Joseph Addison (1672-1719), a renowned English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. Best known for his contribution to The Spectator magazine alongside Richard Steele, Addisons remarkable life is brought to the fore in this engaging narrative. Explore the world of this gentle soul who managed to maintain his gentlemanly demeanor amidst the harsh world of political and literary rivalries. Commemorate the man who, through his persona in the Spectator, is loved by his contemporaries and continues to be respected by generations to come. This summary is brought to you by Pamela Nagami, M.D.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section one of Life and Writings of Addison. This is
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Read by Pamel Andagami, m d. Life and Writings of
Addison by Thomas Babington mac cauley, Part one to Addison,

(00:25):
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

(00:46):
to make both the idolator and the idle 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 that

(01:07):
do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic poems hardly equal
to Parnell's, some criticisms as superficial as Doctor Blair's, and
a tragedy not very much better than doctor Johnson's. It
is praise enough to say of a writer that, in
a high department of literature, in which many eminent writers

(01:29):
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

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delicate friendship, worshiped him knightly in his favorite temple at Buttons.
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 infirm
and erring race. Some blemishes may be undoubtedly detected in

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his character, But the more carefully it is examined, though
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

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disposition has been more conspicuous than an 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

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equally full information. His father was the Reverend Launcelot Addison, who,
though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some figure
in the world and occupies with credit two folio pages
in the Biographia Britannica. Lancelot was sent up as a
poor scholar from Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the

(03:18):
time of the Commonwealth. Made some progress in learning, became,
like most of his fellow students, a violent royalist, lampooned
the heads of the university, and was forced to ask
pardon on his bended knees. When he had left college,
he earned a humble subsistence by reading the liturgy of

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the Fallen Church to the families of those sturdy squires
whose manor houses were scattered over the wild of Sussex
after the Restoration. His loyalty was rewarded with the post
of chaplain to the Garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was
sold to France, he lost his employment, but Tangier had
been seated by Portugal to England as part of the

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marriage portion of the Infanta Catherine, and to Tangier Lancelot
Addison was sent. A more miserable situation can hardly be conceived.
It was difficult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were
more tormented by the heats or by the reins, by
the soldiers within the walls or the moors. Without it,

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one advantage the chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity
of studying the history and manners of the Jews and Mohammedans,
and of this opportunity he appears to have made excellent use.
On his return to England after some years of banishment,
he published an interesting volume on the polity and religion

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of Barbary, and another on the Hebrew customs and the
state of rabbinical learning. He rose to eminence in his
profession and became one of the royal chaplains, a doctor
of Divinity, Archdeacon of Salisbury and Dean of Lichfield. It
is said that he would have been made a bishop

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after the Revolution if he had not given offense to
the government by strenuously opposing the convocation of sixteen eighty
nine the liberal policy of William and Tillotson. In sixteen
seventy two, not long after doctor Addison's return from Tangier,
his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's childhood, we know little.

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He learned the rudiments at school in his father's neighborhood,
and was then sent to the charterhouse. The anecdotes which
are popularly related about his boyish tricks do not harmonize
very well with what we know of his riper years.
There remains a tradition that he was the ringleader in
a barring out, and another tradition that he ran away

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from school and hid himself in a wood, where he
fed on berries and slept in a hollow tree till,
after a long search, he was discovered and brought home.
If these stories be true, it would be curious to
know by what moral discipline so mutinous and enterprising a
lad was transformed into the gentlest and most modest of men.

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We have abundant proof that whatever Joseph's pranks may have been,
he pursued his studies vigorously and successfully. At fifteen, he
was not only fit for the university, but carried thither
a classical taste and a stock of learning which would
have done honor to a master of Arts. He was
entered at Queen's College, Oxford, but he had not been

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many months there when some of his Latin verses fell
by accident into the hands of Doctor Lancaster, deaned of
Maudlin College. The young scholars diction and versification were already
such as veteran professors might envy. Doctor Lancaster was desirous
to serve a boy of such promise, nor was an

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opportunity long wanting. The Revolution had just taken place, and
nowhere had it been hailed with more delight than at
Maudlin College. That great and opulent corporation had been treated
by James and by his chancellor, with an insolence and
injustice which even in such a prince and in such
a minister, may justly excite amazement, and which had done

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more than even the prosecution of the bishops to alienate
the Church of England from the throne. A president dully
elected had been violently expelled from his dwelling, a papist
had been set over the society by a royal mandate.
The fellows, who in conformity with their oaths, refused to
submit to this usurper, had been driven forth from their

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quiet cloisters and gardens to die of want or to
live on charity. But the day of redress and retribution
speedily came. The intruders were ejected. The Venerable House was
again an inhabited by its old inmates. Learning flourished under
the rule of the wise and virtuous Huff, and with

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Learning was united a mild and liberal spirit, too often
wanting in the Princely Colleges of Oxford. In consequence of
the troubles through which the society had passed, there had
been no election of new members during the year sixteen
eighty eight. In sixteen eighty nine, therefore there was twice

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the ordinary number of vacancies, and thus doctor Lancaster found
it easy to procure for his young friend admittance to
the advantages of a foundation, then generally esteemed the wealthiest
in Europe. At Maudlin, Addison resided during ten years. He
was at first one of those scholars who are called demis,

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but was subsequently elected a fellow. His college is still
proud of his name. His portrait still hangs in the hall,
and strangers are still told that his favorite walk was
under the elms which fringe the meadow on the banks
of the Charwell. It is said, and is highly probable,
that he was distinguished among his fellow students by the

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delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his manners,
and by the assiduity with which he often prolonged his
studies far into the night. It is certain that his
reputation for ability in learning stood high. Many years later,
the ancient doctors of Maudlin continued to talk in their
common room of boyish compositions, and expressed their sorrow that

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no copy of exercises so remarkable had been preserved. It
is proper, however, to remark that miss Aiken has committed
the error very pardonable in a lady of overrating Addison's
classical attainments in one department of learning. Indeed, his proficiency
was such as it is hardly possible to overrate his

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knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down
to Claudian and Prudentious was singularly, exact and profound. He
understood them, thoroughly entered into their spirit, and had the
finest and most discriminating perception of all their peculiarities of
style and melody. Nay, he copied their manner with admirable skill,

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and surpassed, we think all their British imitators who had
preceded him. Buchanan and Milton alone accepted. This is high praise,
and beyond this we cannot with justice go. It is
clear that Addison's serious attention during his residence at the
university was almost entirely concentrated on Latin poetry, and that

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if he did not wholly neglect other provinces of ancient literature,
he vouchsafed to them only a cursory glance. He did
not appear to have attained more than an ordinary acquaintance
with the political and moral writers of Rome. Nor was
his own Latin prose by any means, equal to his
Latin verse. His knowledge of Greek, though doubtless, such as

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was in his time thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently
less than that which many lads now carry away every
year from Eton in Rugby. A minute examination of his
work if we had time to make such an examination,
would fully bear out these remarks. We will briefly advert
to a few of the facts on which our judgment
is grounded. Great praise is due to the notes which

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Addison appended to his version of the second and third
books of the Metamorphoses. Yet these notes, while they show
him to have been in his own domain an accomplished scholar,
show also how confined that domain was. They are rich
and opposite references to Virgil, Statius, and Claudian, but they
contain not a single illustration drawn from the Greek poets. Now,

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if in the whole compass of Latin literature there be
a passage which stands in need of illustration drawn from
the Greek poets, it is the story of Pentheus and
the third book of the Metamorphoses. Avid was indebted for
that story to Euripides and Theocritus, both of whom he
has sometimes followed minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to

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Theocritus does Addison make the faintest delusion. And we therefore
believe that we do not wrong him by supposing that
he had little or no knowledge of their works. His
travels in Italy again abound with classical quotations happily introduced,
But his quotations, with scarcely a single exception, are taken

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from Latin verse. He draws more illustrations from Asonius and
Manilius than from Cicero. Even his notions of the political
and military affairs of the Romans seem to be derived
from poets and poetasters. Spots made memorable by events which
have changed the destinies of the world and have been

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worthily recorded by great historians, bring to his mind only
scraps of some ancient Pie or Haley. In the gorge
of the Apennines, he naturally remembers the hardships which Hannibal's
army endured, and proceeds to sight not the authentic narrative
of Polybius, not the picturesque narrative of Livy, but the

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languid hexameters of Silius Italicus on the banks of the Rubicon.
He never thinks of Plutarch's lively description, or of the
stern conciseness of the commentaries, or of those letters to
Atticus which so forcibly expressed the alternations of hope and
fear in its sensitive mind. At a great crisis. His

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only authority for the events of the civil war is Lucan.
All the best ancient works of art at Rome and
Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, without recalling one
single verse of Pindar or Calamachus, or of the Attic dramatists.
But they brought to his recollection in Nubo Passages and Horuce, Juvenile, Stacius,

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and Ovid. The same may be said of the Treatise
on Medals. In that pleasing work we find about three
hundred passages extracted with great judgment from the Roman poets.
But we do not recollect a single passage taken from
any Roman orator or historian, and we are confident that
not a line is quoted from any Greek writer. No

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person who has derived all his information on the subject
of medals from Addison would suspect that the Greek coins were,
in historical interests equal, and in beauty of execution far
superior to those of Rome. If it were necessary to
find any further proof that Addison's classical knowledge was confined

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within narrow limits, that proof would be furnished by his
essay and the evidences of Christianity. The Roman poets throw
a little or no light on the literary historical questions
which he is under the necessity of examining. In that essay.
He is therefore left completely in the dark, and it

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is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way
from blunder to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his
religious belief stories as absurd as that of the cock
Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's Vortigern puts
faith in the lie about the thundering Legion, is convinced

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that Tiberius moved the Senate to admit Jesus among the gods,
and pronounces the letter of Abgarus, King of Edessa to
be a record of great authority. Nor were these errors
the effects of superstition, For to superstition, Addison was by
no means prone. The truth is that he was writing

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about what he did not understand. Miss Aiken has discovered
a letter from which it appears that while Addison resided
at Oxford, he was one of several writers whom the
booksellers engage to make an English version of Herodotus, and
she infers that he must have been a good Greek scholar.
We can allow very little weight to this argument when

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we consider that his fellow laborers were to have been
Boyle and Blackmore. Boyle is remembered chiefly as the nominal
author of the worst book on Greek history and philology
that ever was printed, and this book, bad as it is,
Boyle was unable to produce without help of Blackmore's attainments
in the Ancient Tongues. It may be sufficient to say

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that in his prose he has confounded an aphorism with
an apathem, and that when in his verse he treats
of classical subjects, his habit is to regale his readers
with four false quantities to a page. It is probable
that the classical acquirements of Addison were of as much
service to him as if they had been more extensive.

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The world generally gives its admirs not to the man
who does what nobody else even attempts to do, but
to the man who does best what multitudes do well.
Bentley was so immeasurably superior to all the other scholars
of his time that very few among them could discover
his superiority. But the accomplishment in which Addison excelled his contemporaries,

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was then, as it is now, highly valued and assiduously
cultivated at all English seats of learning. Everybody who had
been at a public school had written Latin verses. Many
had written such verses with tolerable success, and were quite
able to appreciate, though by no means able to rival

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the skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His lines on
the barometer and the bowling Green were applauded by hundreds,
to whom the dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris was
as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk end of
Section one.