08 - 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 eight of Life and Writings of Addison by Thomas
Babington mac caulay. This librovox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Pamelinagami, Part eight. We say this of Addison alone,
For Addison is the spectator. About three sevenths of the
work are his, And it is no exaggeration to say

(00:24):
that his first essay is as good as the best
essay of any of his coadjutors. His best essays approach
near to absolute perfection. Nor is their excellence more wonderful
than their variety. His invention never seems to flag, nor
is he ever under the necessity of repeating himself, or
of wearing out a subject. There are no dregs in

(00:47):
his wine. He regales us after the fashion of that
prodigal Nabob, who held that there was only one good
glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted
the first sparkling of a jest, it is withdrawn, and
a fresh glass of nectar is at our lips. On
the Monday, we have an allegory as lively and ingenious

(01:10):
as Lucian's auction of lives. On the Tuesday, an Eastern
apologue as richly colored as the tales of Shahrazade, on
the Wednesday, a character described with the skill of La Briere,
On the Thursday, a scene from common life equal to
the best chapters in the Vicar of Wakefield. On the Friday,

(01:30):
some sly horation, pleasantry on the fashionable follies, on hoops,
patches or puppet shows. And on the Saturday, a religious
meditation which will bear comparison with the finest passages in Maslin.
It is dangerous to select where there is so much
that deserves the highest praise. We will venture, however, to

(01:52):
say that any persons who wish to form a just
notion of the extent and variety of Addison's powers will
do well to read it once the following papers, the
Two Visits to the Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange,
The Journal of the Retired Citizen, The Vision of Mirza,
The Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and the Death of

(02:14):
Sir Roger de Coverley. The least valuable of Addison's contributions
to The Spectator are, in the judgment of our age,
his critical papers. Yet his critical papers are always luminous
and often ingenious. The very worst of them must be
regarded as creditable to him, when the character of the
school in which he had been trained is fairly considered.

(02:37):
The best of them were much too good for his readers.
In truth, he was not so far behind our generation
as he was before his own. No essays in the
Spectator were more censured and derided than those in which
he raised his voice against the contempt with which our
fine old ballads were regarded, and showed the scoff that

(03:01):
the same gold which burnished and polished gives luster to
the Eneide and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with
the rude dross of chevy Chase. It is not strange
that the success of the Spectator should have been such,
as no similar work has ever obtained. The number of
copies daily distributed was at first three thousand. It subsequently

(03:24):
increased and had risen to near four thousand when the
stamp tax was imposed. That tax was fatal to a
crowd of journals. The Spectator, however, stood its ground, doubled
its price, and though its circulation fell off, still yielded
a large revenue, both to the state and to the authors.

(03:47):
For particular papers, the demand was immense of some it
is said twenty thousand copies were required, but this was
not all. To have the Spectator served up every morning
with the bulak Kia en rolls was a luxury for
the few. The majority were content to wait till essays
enough had appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies

(04:10):
of each volume were immediately taken off, and new editions
were called for. It must be remembered that the population
of England was then hardly a third of what it
now is. The number of Englishmen who were in the
habit of reading was probably not a sixth of what
it is now. A shopkeeper or a farmer who found

(04:31):
any pleasure in literature was a rarity. Nay, there was
doubtless more than one night of the shire whose country
seat did not contain ten books, receipt books and books
on farriery included. Under these circumstances, the sale of the
Spectator must be considered as indicating a popularity quite as
great as that of the most successful works of Sir

(04:53):
Walter Scott and mister Dickens. In our own time. At
the close of seventeen twelve, the Spectator ceased to appear.
It was probably felt that the short faced gentleman in
his club had been long enough before the town, and
that it was time to withdraw them and to replace
them by a new set of characters. In a few

(05:15):
weeks the first number of The Guardian was published. But
The Guardian was unfortunate both in its birth and in
its death. It began in dulness and disappeared in a
tempest of faction. The original plan was bad. Addison contributed
nothing till sixty six numbers had appeared, and it was
then impossible even for him to make The Guardian what

(05:38):
the Spectator had been. Nester Ironside and the miss Lizards
were people to whom even he could impart no interest.
He could only furnish some excellent little essays, both serious
and comic, and this he did. Why Addison gave no
assistance to The Guardian during the first two months of

(05:58):
its existence is a question which has puzzled the editors
and biographers, but which seems to us to admit of
a very easy solution. He was then engaged in bringing
his Cato on the stage. The first four acts of
this drama had been lying in his desk since his
return from Italy. His modest and sensitive nature shrank from

(06:20):
the risk of a public and shameful failure, And though
all who saw the manuscript were loud in praise, some
thought it possible that an audience might become impatient, even
of very good rhetoric, and advised Addison to print the
play without hazarding a representation. At length. After many fits
of apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of his

(06:42):
political friends, who hoped that the public would discover some
analogy between the followers of Caesar and the Tories, between
some Pronius and the apostate Whigs, between Cato struggling to
the last for the liberties of Rome, and the band
of patriots who still stood firm round Halifax and Wharton.

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Addison gave the play to the managers of drury Lane
Theater without stipulating for any advantage to himself. They therefore
thought themselves bound to spare no cost in scenery and dresses.
The decorations, it is true, would not have pleased the
skillful eye of mister McCready. Jubis waistcoat blazed with gold lace,

(07:24):
Marsha's hoop was worthy of a duchess on the birthday,
and Cato wore a wig Worth fifty guineas. The prolog
was written by Pope and is undoubtedly a dignified and
spirited composition. The part of the hero was excellently played
by Booth. Steele undertook to pack a house. The boxes

(07:45):
were in a blaze with the stars of the peers
and opposition. The pit was crowded with attentive and friendly
listeners from the inns of court and the literary coffee houses.
Sir Gilbert Heathcott, Governor of the Bank of England, was
at the head of a powerful body of auxiliaries from
the city, warmed men and true Whigs, but better known

(08:06):
at Jonathan's and Garaways than in the haunts of wits
and critics. These precautions were quite superfluous. The Tories as
a body regarded Addison with no unkind feelings, nor was
it for their interest, professing as they did profound reverence
for law and prescription, and abhorrence both of popular insurrections

(08:28):
and of standing armies, to appropriate to themselves reflections thrown
on the great military chief and demagogue, who, with the
support of the legions and the common people, subverted all
the ancient institutions of his country. Accordingly, every shout that
was raised by the members of the Kitcat was re

(08:49):
echoed by the high churchmen of the October, and the
curtain at length fell amidst thunders of unanimous applause. The
delight and admiration of the town was described by the
Guardian in terms which we might attribute to partiality, were
it not that the Examiner the organ of the Ministry
held similar language. The Tories indeed found much to sneer

(09:12):
at in the conduct of their opponents. Steel had, on
this as on other occasions, shown more zeal than taste
or judgment. The honest citizens who marched under the orders
of Sir Gibby, as he was facetiously called, probably knew
better when to buy and sell stock than went to
clap and when to hiss at a play, and incurred

(09:34):
some ridicule by making the hypocritical Sempronius their favorite, and
by giving to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they
bestowed on the temperate eloquence of Cato Wharton, too, who
had the incredible effrontery to applaud the lines about flying
from prosperous vice and from the power of impious men

(09:56):
to a private station did not escape the sarcasms of
those who justly thought that he could fly from nothing
more vicious or impious than himself. The epilogue, which was
written by Garth, a zealous Whig, was severely and not
unreasonably censured as ignoble and out of place. But Addison

(10:16):
was described even by the bitterest Tory writers as a
gentleman of wit and virtue, and in whose friendship many
persons of both parties were happy, and whose name ought
not to be mixed up with factious squabbles. Of the
jests by which the triumph of the Whig party was disturbed,

(10:37):
the most severe and happy was Bowling Brooks. Between two acts.
He sent for Booth to his box, and presented him
before the whole theater with a purse of fifty guineas
for defending the cause of liberty so well against a
perpetual dictator. It was April, and in April one hundred

(10:58):
and thirty years ago, the London season was thought to
be far advanced. During a whole month, however, Cato was
performed to overflowing houses and brought into the treasury of
the theater twice. The gains of an ordinary spring. In
the summer, the drury Lane company went down to act
at Oxford, and there before an audience which retained an

(11:19):
affectionate remembrance of Addison's accomplishments and virtues. His tragedy was
acted during several days. The gownsmen began to besiege the
theater in the forenoon, and by one in the afternoon
all the seats were filled. About the merits of the piece,
which had so extraordinary an effect, the public, we suppose,

(11:40):
has made up its mind to compare it with the
masterpieces of the Attic stage, with the great English dramas
of the time of Elizabeth, or even with the productions
of Schiller's Manhood, would be absurd. Indeed, Yet it contains
excellent dialogue and declamation, and among plays fashioned on the
French model, be allowed to rank high, not indeed with Atali,

(12:03):
Zayir or Saul, but we think not below Sinna, and
certainly above any other English tragedy of the same school,
above many of the plays of Kurnae, above many of
the plays of Voltaire and Alfaieri, and above some place
of Racine. Be this as it may. We have little

(12:24):
doubt that Cato did as much as the Tatlers, spectators,
and freeholders united to raise Addison's fame among his contemporaries.
The modesty and good nature of the successful dramatist had
tamed even the malignity of faction. But literary envy, it
would seem, is a fiercer passion than party spirit. It

(12:47):
was by a zealous Whig that the fiercest attack on
the Whig tragedy was made. John Dennis published remarks on Cato,
which were written with some acuteness and with much co
wiseness and asperity. But Addison neither defended himself nor retaliated.
On many points, he had an excellent defense, and nothing

(13:09):
would have been easier than to retaliate. For Denis had
written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies. He had moreover
a larger share than most men of those infirmities and
eccentricities which excite laughter, and Addison's power of turning either
an absurd book or an absurd man into ridicule was unrivaled. Addison, however,

(13:32):
serenely conscious of his superiority, looked with pity on his assailant,
whose temper, naturally irritable and gloomy, had been soured by want,
by controversy, and by literary failures. But among the young
candidates for Addison's favor there was one distinguished by talents
above the rest, and distinguished, we fear not less by

(13:55):
malignity and insincerity. Pope was only twenty, but his powers
had expanded to their full maturity, and his best poem,
The Rape of the Locke, had recently been published. Of
his genius, Addison had always expressed high admiration, but Addison
had clearly discerned what might indeed have been discerned by

(14:17):
an eye less penetrating than his, that the diminutive, crooked,
sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on society for
the unkindness of nature. In The Spectator, the essay on
criticism had been praised with cordial warmth, but a gentle
hint had been added that the writer of such an

(14:38):
excellent poem would have done well to avoid ill natured personalities. Pope,
though evidently more galled by the censure than gratified by
the praise, returned thanks for the admonition and promised to
profit by it. The two writers continued to exchange civilities.
Council and small good offices. Addison public extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces,

(15:02):
and Pope furnished Addison with a prolog. This did not
last long. Pope hated Denis, whom he had injured without provocation.
The appearance of the Remarks on Cato gave the irritable
poet an opportunity of venting his malice under the show
of friendship. And such an opportunity could not but be
welcome to a nature which was implacably in enmity, and

(15:27):
which always preferred the tortuous to the straight path. He
published accordingly the Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis.
But Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great
master of invective and sarcasm. He could dissect a character
in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis, but of

(15:48):
dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had written
a lampoon on Denis, such as that on Atticus or
that on Sporus, the old Grumbler would have been crushed.
But Pope writing dialog resembled to borrow Horace's imagery in
his own. A wolf which, instead of biting, should take

(16:08):
to kicking or a monkey which should try to sting.
The narrative is utterly contemptible of argument. There is not
even the show, and the jests are such as if
they were introduced in a farce, would call forth the
hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about the drama,

(16:29):
and the nurse thinks that he is calling for a
dram there is. He cries, no parapetia in the tragedy,
no change of fortune, no change at all. Pray good, sir,
be not angry, said the old woman. I'll fetch change.
This is not exactly the pleasantry of Addison. There can
be no doubt that Addison saw through this officious zeal

(16:51):
and felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. So foolish and
spiteful a pamphlet could do him no good, and if
he was thought to have any hand in it, must
do him harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridicule, he
had never, even in self defense, used those powers inhumanely
or uncourteously, and he was not disposed to let others

(17:14):
make his fame in his interests a pretext under which
they might commit outrages from which he had himself constantly abstained.
He accordingly declared that he had no concern in the narrative,
that he disapproved of it, and that if he answered
the remarks, he would answer them like a gentleman, and

(17:34):
he took care to communicate this to Denis. Pope was
bitterly mortified, and to this transaction we are inclined to
ascribe the hatred with which he ever after regarded Addison,
end of section eight.