pile of building,' of which he had heard so much, the Cathedral of Milan, but thinks Palladio's Church of S. Justina at Padua 'the most handsome, luminous, disencumbered building in the inside' that he has ever

seen.

1. 37. J. F. Segrais (1624–1701) was a member of the French Academy, and the author of a pastoral poem, Athis, which Boileau deigned to praise in his Art Poetique.

P. 339, l. 14.

The allusion is to the forty shilling freeholds, which by a statute of Henry VI, still in force, conferred a vote for the county. P. 340, 1. 20. Ambergris, or Grey Amber, is a solid, opaque, ash coloured, fatty, inflammable substance, of a fragrant odour when heated; it is supposed to be produced in the viscera of the spermaceti whale. Pulvillio is a perfumed powder, highly fashionable in the last century, but now almost gone out of use.

P. 344, 1. 21.

Hobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury.

P. 346, l. 22. Surely not; for Butler's object in Hudibras was to 'pull down and degrade' the terrible Puritan soldiers who had set their heel on 'the neck of crownèd fortune proud,' and humbled the aristocracy and gentry of England; but this, as Addison himself had just said, is best done in doggerel.'

1. 34.

From Waller's lines on the Countess of Carlisle in mourning':'We find not that the Laughter-loving Dame Mourn'd for Anchises; 'twas enough she came To grace the mortal with her deathless bed, And that his living eyes such beauty fed.' 1. 38. L'Allegro, l. II.

P. 347, l. I. Baltasar Gracian, a Spanish Jesuit, (d. circa '1652) wrote under the name of his brother Lorenzo various critical works in prose, relating to poetry, rhetoric, style, and the conduct of life. The most celebrated of these is El Criticon, an allegorical picture of the course of human life. Gracian's works were much admired, and quickly translated into French and Italian. Yet his influence on Spanish literary taste was eminently pernicious; he introduced into Spanish prose that false taste, that gaudy and artificial style, surcharged with trope and ornament, that rage for conceits, which Gongora a few years before had, under the name of estilo culto, engrafted upon Spanish poetry.

P. 350, 1. 32. The reference is to the series of eighteen papers, ranging between Nos. 267 and 369, which Addison had devoted to an elaborate criticism on the Paradise Lost. Another series of eleven papers, Nos. 411421, on the Pleasures of Imagination, is mentioned a few lines below.

P. 352, 1. 4. In Dryden's comedy of Sir Martin Mar-all, which is translated pretty closely from Molière's L'Etourdi, Sir Martin, a foolish blundering kuight, serenades his mistress by candle-light, holding a lute and making grimaces as if he were singing, while his man, Warner, is really singing and playing in a dark room behind him.

P. 353, l. 4. The great merit of Handel had been discerned by some English noblemen who visited Hanover, and they prevailed upon him to come over to this country in 1710. Between this date and 1740 he composed thirty-one operas for the English stage, of which Rinaldo and Armida was the first. The half slighting way in which Addison speaks of Mynheer Handel' and his opera, coupled with his expression of wonder (p. 359) that any one should prefer the Italian Opera to the stupid borrowed play of Phædra and Hippolytus, make one suspect that Addison had little ear for music: the words and theatrical accessories in an opera seem to count far more with him than the airs and choruses.

P. 354, l. 12. Little beyond what Addison tells us is known of this Signor Nicolini, under whose auspices the opera was for the first time sung wholly in Italian on the English stage, the practice having been previously, that the English members of the troupe should sing in English, and the Italians in Italian.

P. 355, 1. 2. The opera of Hydaspes-composed, we believe, by Buononcini was produced at the Haymarket in 1710. Hydaspes is a sort of profane Daniel, who being thrown into an amphitheatre to be devoured by a lion, is saved, not by faith, but by love, the presence of his mistress among the spectators inspiring him with such courage, that after appealing to the monster in a minor key, and telling him that he may tear his bosom but cannot touch his heart, he attacks him in the relative major, and strangles him.' (Sutherland Edwards' History of the Opera.)

P. 356, 1. 37. Henri Quatre.

P. 357, l. 1. I am uncertain what play and what character are here

intended.

1. 16. It may be well here to note down a few particulars supplementary to the sketch given by Addison of the history of the Opera in England. The opera, which was gradually developed out of the sacred musical plays of the fifteenth century, assumed something like its present shape in Italy towards the close of the sixteenth. Cardinal Mazarin introduced the Italian opera into France in 1645; it was immediately imitated by French composers, and the first French opera appeared in the following year. Cambert, one of the earliest French operatic composers, was driven by some intrigue among the musicians, about the year 1670, to repair to England; he was well received by Charles II, and appointed director of the Court music. A taste for opera and operatic music naturally arose in the more cultivated portion of English society at the same period. It was gratified in the first place by the produc

tions of English composers of great merit,—would that they had left worthy inheritors of their genius!-Lock and Purcell. To these men the stream of that noble national music which England once possessed descended, through the Masques, pageants, ballads, and songs of the Elizabethan and Stuart periods; but about this time it appears to have dried up. Lock's beautiful music to Macbeth, as altered by Davenant, was performed in 1673. But neither this, nor the music which Purcell wrote in 1681 (his first effort designed for the stage) for Lee's tragedy of Theodosius,-though of an operatic cast-falls strictly under the definition of opera. Soon, however, operas in English, written partially upon the Italian model, were produced. Dryden wrote two, King Arthur and Albion and Albanius; for the first Purcell supplied the music, in 1691; for the second, the Frenchman Grabut. Purcell also composed the music for Betterton's opera of The Prophetess, for that called The Fairy Queen, an adaptation from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, and for the Tempest, another absurd adaptation, by Dryden and Davenant, of Shakespeare's play. But this bright spirit was taken away from us by an untimely death in 1695. About that time, says Downes, Betterton, the chief actor and manager of his day, finding that the taste of the English nobility inclined decidedly to foreign music, expended during ten years great labour and large sums of money to bring over Italian and French singers, with little gain to himself but large profits to them. The mantle of Purcell unfortunately fell on Clayton, a composer of execrable music, which, when Buononcini and others were rising up in Italy, and Handel in Germany, decided the question speedily against native talent.' This Clayton composed the music for Arsinoe, an opera translated into English from the Italian, and designed to be performed entirely in the Italian manner. Arsinoe was brought out in 1705, Mrs. Tofts taking the part of prima donna, and Marguerite de l' Epine singing Italian airs before and after the performance. Addison's own opera of Rosamond, the music by Clayton, appeared in 1707, and failed signally. (Downes' Roscius, Sutherland

Edwards' History of the Opera.)

1. 22. For a notice of this opera see the preceding note. P. 358, 1. 8. The music of the opera of Camilla was written by Marco Antonio Buononcini, the brother of the composer of Almahide and Hydaspes. It was brought out at the opera-house built by Sir John Vanbrugh in 1705, and sung partly in English, partly in Italian, Mrs. Tofts sustaining effectively the part of Camilla, while the tenor Valentini addressed her in impassioned strains in a language of which she did not know a word. The music of this opera is said to have been very beautiful. (Sutherland Edwards.) If the opera of the same name mentioned in Baker's Biogr. Dram. as having been brought out at Drury Lane in 1706 be not a different work, the English words were by one Owen Mac Swiny.

P. 359, I. 17. The modern libretto, in which the Italian words are on one side and an English translation on the other, had probably not yet come into use when Addison wrote.

1. 34. The Phædra and Hippolytus, translated and altered by Edmund Smith from Racine's great tragedy of Phédre, was brought out at the Haymarket in 1709, and almost immediately damned.

P. 360, 1. 8. Unfortunately English music was of such a poor quality that it could not stand its ground; nor are things much better at the present day. 1. 32. See note to p. 357, l. 16.

P. 362, 1. 25.

Baptista Lully, though not absolutely the founder of French opera, was one of its earliest promoters; his first opera came out in 1673. He rose to great honour through the favour of Louis XIV, and died at Paris in 1687.

1. 33. The Pit.

P. 364, 1. 30.

See the thirteenth chapter of Aristotle's Poetics.

P. 365, 1. 3. The Orphan and Venice Preserved are by Otway, Edipus by Lee and Dryden, Oroonoko by Southerne; for the rest see note on p. 250, 1. 10.

་

1. 12. The Mourning Bride is Congreve's only tragedy; Tamerlane and Ulysses are by Rowe. Speaking of the first appearance of these plays, Downes says that the Mourning Bride (1697) had such success that it continued acting uninterrupted thirteen days together;' that Tamerlane (1700), through the excellent acting of Betterton, Vanbrugh, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mrs. Barry, became a stock play; and that Ulysses (1705), being excellently well performed, had a successful run, but fell short of Tamerlane and the Ambitious Step-mother, by the same author. (This is the same Downs the prompter,' under whose name there is a curious letter in No. 193 of the Tatler.) On the Phædra and Hippolytus see note to

P. 359.

1. 20. The Tragi-comedy was not the product of the English theatre.' The play of La Celestina, the earliest regular dramatic piece known, written in Spain in the fifteenth century, was called a 'tragicomedia ;' and one or more of the plays of Timoneda, a Spanish dramatist rather anterior to Shakespeare, were so designated. Tragi-comedy was much in favour with Beaumont and Fletcher, the latter of whom describes it as a kind of play which ends happily, but in which some of the principal characters are brought so near to destruction that the true tragic interest is excited. Addison's description of such a play is generally quite true, that it was a 'motley piece of mirth and sorrow;' but this is what the public taste demanded, both in Spain and in England, at the time when the national drama in each country was in full vigour. Lope de Vega, no less than Shakespeare, relieved his tragic scenes with comic talk and droll situations; for, as he honestly said, the people pays for amusement, and it must have it.'

P. 366, 1. 7. George Powell was both author and actor; at one time he was regarded as rivalling Betterton; but he was negligent and idle, and presumed too much on his own powers, so as to lose at last the favour of the public. In his later years he took to drinking, and died in 1714.

1. 31. The first and third acts of Edipus were written by Dryden, the rest by Lee.

P. 367, 1. 9. The Conquest of Mexico is the second title of Dryden's popular heroic play, The Indian Emperor.

1. 26. In the last act of Otway's tragedy of Venice Preserved, in the middle of an impassioned and highly wrought scene between Jaffier and Belvidera, the bell is heard to toll for the execution of Pierre, the archconspirator.

P. 369, 1. 31.

P. 370, 1. 9.

P. 371, 1. 35.

The tragedy of Les Horaces.

The Electra.

Christopher Bullock (d. 1724), besides writing several plays himself, was a good and sprightly actor in his day, the parts of 'fops, pert gentlemen,' &c., being sustained by him with effect. (Baker's Biogr. Dramatica.) Henry Norris was chiefly known for his admirable performance in Farquhar's comedy of The Constant Couple, whence he acquired the nick-name of 'Jubilee Dicky.'

P. 373, 1. 33. Downes tells us that about 1690 Congreve's Old Bachelor and Double Dealer, and Southerne's Fatal Marriage, were acted with much applause at Drury Lane, 'specially Mr. Doggett's and Madame Barry's performances being unparallelled.' He was a most successful actor of comedy for many years, and retiring from the stage with a competence, settled at Eltham, where he died in 1721. He was a staunch friend to the Hanove rian succession, and founded the race for Thames watermen known as that for 'Doggett's coat and badge,' which is annually rowed on the 1st August, the anniversary of George I's accession.

P. 374, l. 10.

Eolus (Virg. Æn. i. 81),

-'cavum conversa cuspide montem

Impulit in latus.'

P. 375, 1. 14. Scenery and scenic effects were unknown to the English stage before the civil war, and for some time after the Restoration. They gradually came into use during the reign of Charles II, the competition of the different theatres compelling a continual enlargement of these sources of attraction, when they were once introduced. (Wright's Hist. Histrionica.)

1. 15. Salmoneus, a king of Elis, is said in Greek mythology to have endeavoured to imitate the lightnings of Jove by driving his chariot over a brazen bridge, and scattering blazing torches around him as he passed. For his impiety Jupiter smote him with his thunderbolts, and assigned to him a hot place in Tartarus. (Virg. Æn. vi. 585.)

1. 25. Thomas Rymer (1639–1714) was a member of Grays Inn, but preferring literature to the law, entered the field of dramatic criticism, and in the ambition to be himself the great sublime he drew,' produced the model tragedy of Edgar in 1677. This play, which is in rhyme, has an Anglo-Saxon plot; St. Dunstan, who is of course represented as an ambitious turbulent monk, plays an important part; Edgar, however, defies the proud ecclesiastic, and resolves to marry his god-child in spite of him; the piece, though called a