JOSEPH ADDISON, 1672-1719 Addison is essentially a classicist. When Steele had already joined issue with the world, and was engaged in characteristically sinning and repenting, Addison was still quietly pursuing his studies and writing Latin verses at Oxford. All his works, with the exception of the opera Rosamond, the comedy The Drummer, his essay of the Christian Religion, and his political writings, breathe the spirit of the Greek and Roman authors. His earliest works bear in subject-matter a close relation to the classics; he translates one of Virgil's Georgics, some of the third book of the Eneid, and Ovid's Metamorphoses; 'the most spirited verses Addison has written,' says Dr. Warton,' 'are an imitation of the Third Ode of the Third Book of Horace, which is indeed performed with energy and vigour.' The three publications which are a result of his visit to France and Italy are the Letter from Italy, a poem evidently written with Virgil in his thoughts; the Dialogues on Medals, in which he illustrates the Roman poets by means of their medals, and explains the signification of the Roman medals through their poets; and the Remarks on Italy, which is full of classical allusion. That his letters from the Continent to his friends are, contrary to the fashion of his time, free from quotations from the classics may be explained by a remark he makes in a letter to Chamberlain Dashwood. Having quoted a Latin verse, he adds: 'I should be afraid of being thought a pedant for my quotation, did not I know that the gentle 1 Addisoniana, by Sir R. Phillips, 1804, 1. 134. 2 July, 1702 (Works of Joseph Addison, ed. Greene, New York, 1856, 2. 482). man I am writing to always carries a Horace in his pocket.' Here, by the way, he has been quoting Martial, not Horace. When Addison, through Steele's enterprise of the Tatler, had been shown wherein his own strength lay, it might have been expected that he would depart from his classic models, to replace them by the living characters he was studying in the coffee-houses, at the opera, and at court. In a certain measure he does so, yet all that he writes is through the medium of that exquisite prose which he had made his own in the years of his almost complete absorption in the classics. The language and manners of the old Greek and Roman writers he caught, says Tickell in his description of Addison's studies at Oxford,1 ‘at that time of life, as strongly as other young people gain a French accent or a general air. An early acquaintance with the classics is what may be called the good-breeding of poetry, as it gives a certain gracefulness which never forsakes a mind that contracted it in youth. . . . If Mr. Addison's example and precepts be the occasion that there now begins to be a great demand for correctness, we may justly attribute it to his being first fashioned by the ancient models, and familiarized to propriety of thought and chastity of style.' He never fails to extol the classic writers, and to use them and those modern authors who have been trained in their school as his authorities; his 'true critics' are 'Aristotle and Longinus among the Greeks, Horace and Quintilian among the Romans, Boileau and Dacier among the French." He has a lively contempt for what he calls the Gothic style in literature and architecture. In No. 463 of the Spectator, in his Vision of the Golden Scales, he has this significant 1 Tickell's Life of Addison (Works of Joseph Addison, ed. Bohn, 1890, 1. iii-iv). References to the Works of Addison are always to the Bohn edition unless otherwise stated. 2 Spectator 592 (Wks. 4. 148). remark:1 'I found that an old Greek or Latin author weighed down a whole library of moderns.' It is difficult to tell who amongst the ancient authors is his favorite. Virgil he admires as the greatest of the Latin poets; for Ovid he has a sincere fondness; to Horace he is most akin in spirit. His is that curiosa felicitas spoken of by Petronius' as the distinguishing characteristic of Horace; his, too, is the golden mediocrity of Horace: neither Addison nor Horace rises to the sublime, nor does either ever fall below a definitely high standard of excellence. Those of his essays that are the most Horatian are the most charming; when he is writing like Horace, casually and somewhat disconnectedly, just as the thoughts come, he is at his best, though he himself half condemns his papers of this kind." Of his translations Johnson has said that they 'want the exactness of a scholar. That he understood his authors cannot be doubted: but his verses will not teach others to understand them, being too licentiously paraphrastical. They are, however, for the most part, smooth and easy; and what is the first excellence of a translator, such as may be read with pleasure by those who do not know the original.' Addison has justified his own method in No. 39 of the Lover, where, in approving Budgell's translation of the Characters of Theophrastus, he presents his views on translation, basing them upon Horace's lines, Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus 1 Wks. 3. 479. 2 Sat. 118. 5. 3 Spectator 476 (Wks. 3. 497). ♦ Addison (Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. by G. B. Hill, 1905, 2. 145). 54. P. 133-134. Budgell, he says,' 'has followed the rule which Horace has laid down for translators, by preserving everywhere the life and spirit of his author, without servilely copying after him word for word. This is what the French, who have most distinguished themselves by performances of this nature, so often inculcate, when they advise a translator to find out such particular elegancies in his own tongue, as bear some analogy to those he sees in the original, and to express himself by such phrases as his author would probably have made use of, had he written in the language into which he is translated. . . . A translator, who does not thus consider the different genius of the two languages in which he is concerned, with such parallel turns of thoughts and expression as correspond with one another in both of them, may value himself upon being a "faithful interpreter"; but in works of wit and humour will never do justice to his author, or credit to himself.' These views are exemplified in his own translation of the Third Ode of the Third Book of Horace, Justum et tenacem propositi virum. As the English language can seldom give an equivalent for the terse, elliptical Latin of Horace, he finds it necessary to amplify and embellish. For instance the first line, just quoted, grows in his hands to the couplet, The man resolved and steady to his trust, The 'tyrannus instans' becomes a fierce tyrant with 'stern brow' and 'harsh voice,' 'Auşter' is the 'rough whirlwind,' the 'magna manus' becomes the 'red arm' of 'fulminantis 1 Wks. 4. 336-337. 2 Ibid. 1. 83. Jovis,' a phrase which has already given its quality to 'arm,' and which in its turn is 'the angry Jove, That flings the thunder from the sky, And gives it rage to roar, and strength to fly.' Horace, with his usual economy of words, makes one verb do duty for four subjects; Addison has two sentences and two constructions in which to enclose his idea: first it is the man who 'may the rude rabble's insolence despise,' beguile the tyrant's fierceness, defy him, and smile with superior greatness; then, nor 'rough whirlwind' nor 'the red arm of angry Jove' can move 'the stubborn virtue of his soul.' For the simple assertion, 'impavidum ferient ruinæ,' Addison has the couplet, He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack, which has been justly censured by Pope in his Art of Sinking in Poetry. 'Augustus . . . purpureo bibit ore nectar' is rendered to his lips the nectar bowl applies; His ruddy lips the purple tincture show, And with immortal stains divinely glow. The use of the word 'applies' instead of the direct use of such a simple word as 'bibit,' is unpoetical; but the two last lines are a beautiful equivalent for Horace's 'purpureo ore.' The 'tigres indocili jugum collo trahentes' are at first 'his tigers' that drew him to the skies, Wild from the desert and unbroke; |