Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section four of Life and Writings of Addison by Thomas
Babington Macaulay. This librovox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Pamelinagami Part four. Anne had long felt a
strong aversion personal, political, and religious, to the Whig Party.
That aversion appeared in the first measures of her reign.
(00:24):
Manchester was deprived of the seals after he had held
them only a few weeks. Neither Summers nor Halifax was
sworn of the Privy Council. Addison shared the fate of
his three patrons. His hopes of employment in the public
service were at an end. His pension was stopped, and
it was necessary for him to support himself by his
(00:46):
own exertions. He became tutor to a young English traveler,
and appears to have rambled with his pupil over a
great part of Switzerland and Germany. At this time he
wrote his pleasing Treatise on Men. It was not published
until after his death, but several distinguished scholars saw the
manuscript and gave just praise to the grace of the
(01:09):
style and to the learning and ingenuity evinced by the
quotations from Germany. Addison repaired to Holland where he learned
the news of his father's death. After passing some months
in the United Provinces, he returned about the close of
the year seventeen o three to England. He was there
cordially received by his friends, and introduced by them into
(01:33):
the kit Cat Club, a society in which were collected
all the various talents and accomplishments which then gave luster
to the Whig Party. Addison was, during some months after
his return from the continent, hard pressed by pecuniary difficulties,
but it was soon in the power of his noble
patrons to serve him effectually. A political change, silent and gradual,
(01:58):
but of the highest importance, was in daily progress. The
accession of Anne had been hailed by the Tories with
transports of joy and hope, and for a time it
seemed that the Whigs had fallen, never to rise again.
The throne was surrounded by men supposed to be attached
to the prerogative and to the Church, and among these
(02:20):
none stood so high in the favor of the sovereign
as the Lord Treasurer Godolphin and the Captain General Marlborough.
The country gentlemen and country clergymen had fully expected that
the policy of these ministers would be directly opposed to
that which had been almost constantly followed by William, That
(02:41):
the landed interest would be favored at the expense of trade.
That no addition would be made to the funded debt,
That the privileges conceded to dissenters by the late King
would be curtailed, if not withdrawn, That the war with France,
if there must be such a war, would on our part,
be almost entirely naval. And that the government would avoid
(03:05):
close connections with foreign powers, and above all with Holland.
But the country gentlemen and country clergymen were fated to
be deceived, not for the last time. The prejudices and
passions which raged without control, and vicarages in cathedral closes
and in the manor houses of fox hunting squires, were
(03:27):
not shared by the chiefs of the ministry. Those statesmen
saw that it was both for the public interest and
for their own interest to adopt a Whig policy, at
least as respected the alliances of the country and the
conduct of the war. But if the foreign policy of
the Whigs were adopted, it was impossible to abstain from
(03:47):
adopting also their financial policy. The natural consequences followed. The
Rigidories were alienated from the government, the votes of the
Whigs became necessary to it. The votes of the Whigs
could be secured only by further concessions, and further concessions
(04:08):
the Queen was induced to make. At the beginning of
the year seventeen o four. The state of parties bore
a close analogy to the state of parties in eighteen
twenty six. In eighteen twenty six, as in seventeen o four,
there was a Tory ministry divided into two hostile sections.
The position of mister Canning and his friends in eighteen
(04:30):
twenty six corresponded to that which Marlborough and Godolphin occupied
in seventeen o four. Nottingham and Jersey were in seventeen
o four what Lord Eldon at Lord Westmoreland were in
eighteen twenty six. The Whigs of seventeen o four were
in a situation resembling that in which the Whigs of
(04:52):
eighteen twenty six stood in seventeen o four. Summrs Halifax,
Sunderland Cooper were not in office. There was no avowed
coalition between them and the Moderate Tories. It is probable
that no direct communication tending to such a coalition had
yet taken place. Yet all men saw that such a
(05:13):
coalition was inevitable, nay that it was already half formed.
Such or nearly such was the state of things. When
tidings arrived of the great battle fought at Blenheim on
the thirteenth of August seventeen o four by the Whigs.
The news was now hailed with transports of joy and pride.
(05:35):
No fault, no cause of quarrel could be remembered by
them against the commander whose genius had in one day
changed the face of Europe, saved the imperial throne, humbled
the House of Bourbon, and secured the Act of Settlement
against foreign hostility. The feeling of the Tories was very different.
(05:57):
They could not, indeed, without imprudence, openly expresswork wret at
an event so glorious to their country. But their congratulations
were so cold and sullen as to give deep disgust
to the victorious general and his friends. Godolphin was not
a reading man. Whatever time he could spare from business,
(06:18):
he was in the habit of spending a new market
or at the card table. But he was not absolutely
indifferent to poetry, and he was too intelligent an observer
not to perceive that literature was a formidable engine of
political warfare, and that the great Whig leaders had strengthened
their party and raised their character by extending a liberal
(06:39):
and judicious patronage to good writers. He was mortified, and
not without reason, by the exceeding badness of the poems
which appeared in honor of the Battle of Blenham. One
of these poems has been rescued from oblivion by the
exquisite absurdity of three lines. Think of two thousand gentlemen
(07:00):
at least, and each man mounted on his capering beast
into the Danube. They were pushed by shoals where to
procure better verses? The treasurer did not know. He understood
how to negotiate alone or omit a subsidy. He was
also well versed in the history of running horses and
fighting cocks, but his acquaintance with the poets was very small.
(07:24):
He consulted Halifax, but Halifax affected to decline the offer
of adviser. He had, he said, done his best when
he had power to encourage men whose abilities and acquirements
might do honor to their country. Those times were over.
Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered to pine in obscurity,
(07:47):
the public money was squandered on the undeserving. I do know,
he added, a gentleman who would celebrate the battle in
a manner worthy of the subject, but I will not
name him. Godolphin, who was expert at the soft answer
which turneth away wrath, and who was under the necessity
of paying court to the Whigs, gently replied that there
(08:09):
was too much ground for Halifax's complaints, but that what
was amiss should in time be rectified, and that in
the meantime the services of a man such as Halifax
had described should be liberally rewarded. Halifax then mentioned Addison,
but mindful of the dignity as well as of the
(08:29):
pecuniary interest of his friend, insisted that the Minister should
apply in the most courteous manner to Addison himself, and
this Godolphin promised to do. Addison then occupied a garret
up three pairs of stairs over a small shop in
the Haymarket. In this humble lodging, he was surprised on
the morning which followed the conversation between Godolphin and Halifax
(08:53):
by a visit from no less a person than the
right Honorable Henry Boyle, then Chancellor of the Exchange, and
afterwards Lord Carleton. This high born minister had been sent
by the Lord Treasurer as ambassador to the needy poet.
Addison readily undertook the proposed task, a task which, to
so good a whig was probably a pleasure. When the
(09:16):
poem was little more than half finished, he showed it
to Godolphin, who was delighted with it, and particularly with
the famous similitude of the Angel. Addison was instantly appointed
to a commissionership with about two hundred pounds a year,
and was assured that this appointment was only an earnest
of greater favors. The Campaign came forth and was as
(09:39):
much admired by the public as by the minister. It
pleases us less on the whole than the Epistle to Halifax,
yet it undoubtedly ranks high among the poems which appeared
during the interval between the death of Dryden and the
dawn of Pope's genius. The chief merit of the Campaign,
we think, is that which was noticed by Johnson, the
(10:01):
manly and rational rejection of fiction, the first great poet
whose works have come down to us. Sang of war,
long before war became a science or a trade. If
in his time there was enmity between two little Greek towns,
each poured forth its crowd of citizens, ignorant of discipline,
and armed with implements of labor rudely turned into weapons.
(10:23):
On each side, appeared conspicuous a few chiefs whose wealth
had enabled them to procure good armor, horses, and chariots,
and whose leisure had enabled them to practice military exercises.
One such chief, if he were a man of great
strength and agility and courage, would probably be more formidable
than twenty common men, and the force and dexterity with
(10:46):
which he hurled his spear might have no inconsiderable share
in deciding the event of the day. Such were probably
the battles with which Homer was familiar. But Homer related
the actions of men of a former generation, of men
who sprang from the gods and communed with the gods
face to face, of men, one of whom could with
(11:09):
ease hurl rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later
period would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally
represented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far
surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and most expert
combatants of his own age. Achilles clad and celestial armor,
(11:30):
drawn by celestial coursers, grasping the spear which none but
himself could raise, driving all Troy and Litia before him,
and choking this commander with dead was only a magnificent
exaggeration of the real hero, who strong, fearless, accustomed to
the use of weapons, guarded by a shield and helmet
(11:52):
of the best Sdonian fabric, and whirled along by horses
of the Salian breed, struck down with his own right arm,
foe after foe in all rude societies, similar notions are found.
There are at this day countries where the lifeguardsman Shaw
would be considered as a much greater warrior than the
(12:13):
Duke of Wellington. Bonaparte loved to describe the astonishment with
which the mamelukes looked at his diminutive figure. Murad Bay,
distinguished above all his fellows by his bodily strength and
by the skill with which he managed his horse and
his saber, could not believe that a man who was
(12:34):
scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, was
the greatest soldier in Europe. Homer's descriptions of war had
therefore as much truth as poetry requires, But truth was
altogether wanting to the performances of those who, writing about
battles which had scarcely anything in common with the battles
of his times, servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Solastalcus,
(13:01):
in particular, is positively nauseus. He undertook to record in
verse the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals of
the first order, and his narrative is made up of
the hideous wounds which these generals inflicted with their own hands.
As Drubil flings his spear, which grazes the shoulder of
council Nero, but Nero sends his spear into as Druble's side.
(13:25):
Phaebeus slays Turists and Buttes, and Marius and Narses, and
the long herodot Herbase, and the gigantic Thilus and Cepharis
and Monisis, and the trumpeter Marinus. Hannibal runs Perusinus through
the groin with a steak, and breaks the thigh bone
of Telecinus with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was
(13:46):
copied in modern times and continued to prevail down to
the age of Addison. Several versifiers had described William turning
thousands to flight by his single prowess and dyeing the
Boyne with Irish blood. Nay so estimable. A writer as
John Phillips, the author of The Splendid Shilling, represented Marlborough
(14:07):
as having won the Battle of Blenhem merely by strength
of muscle and skill in fence. The following lines may
serve as an example churchill viewing, where the violence of
Tallar most prevailed, came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With
speed precipitate, He rode, urging his way or hills of
(14:28):
gasping heroes and fallen steeds, rolling in death destruction, grim
with blood, attends his furious course around his head. The
glowing balls play innocent, while he, with dire, impetuous sway,
deals fatal blows among the flying gauls. In gallic blood.
He dyes his reeking sword and strews the ground with
(14:50):
headless ranks. What can they do or how withstand his
wide destroying sword. Addison, with excellent sense and taste departed
from this ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise for the
qualities which made Marlborough truly great energy, sagacity, military science.
(15:12):
But above all the poet extolled the firmness of that
mind which, in the midst of confusion, uproar and slaughter,
examined and disposed everything with the serene wisdom of a
higher intelligence. Here it was that he introduced the famous
comparison of Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirlwind. We
(15:33):
will not dispute the general justice of Johnson's remarks on
this passage, but we must point out one circumstance which
appears to have escaped all the critics. The extraordinary effect
which this simile produced when it first appeared, and which
to the following generations seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be
(15:53):
chiefly attributed to a line which most readers now regard
as a feeble parenthesis, such as of late or pale Britannia.
Past Addison spoke not of a storm, but of the storm.
The great tempest of November seventeen o three, the only
tempest which in our latitude has equaled the rage of
(16:15):
a tropical hurricane, had left a dreadful recollection in the
minds of all men. No other tempest was ever in
this country the occasion of a parliamentary addresser of a
public fast. Whole fleets had been cast away, large mansions
had been blown down, one prelate had been buried beneath
(16:35):
the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had presented
the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of families were
still in mourning, the prostrate trunks of large trees and
the ruins of houses still attested in all the southern counties.
The fury of the blast, the popularity which the simile
(16:57):
of the Angel enjoyed among Addison's contemporary has always seemed
to us to be a remarkable instance of the advantage
which in rhetoric and poetry the particular has over the
general end of Section four